As a follow up to my earlier post located here:

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I did bloodwork and have received the results, which shed some light on my theory: I was right and wrong at the same time.

Although I had only been on a relatively low dose of Testosterone for 7 weeks at the time of blood draw, my HPTA had already reached total shutdown. This can be seen by looking at the LH/FSH levels (extremely low levels of those hormones indicate a HPTA shutdown for gonadotropin).

My total Testosterone levels were at 767 - which is about where I should be for my age (34). It is interesting to me that I went to HPTA shutdown so quickly at such a normal level.

I am not sure when I reached the shutdown point, but this is what I do know:
1. after my first injection, a large one (200mg) my shadows became less pain and their frequency dropped to one a day.
2. at the 3 week point, I injected at 100mg, and the frequency dropped to every two days.
3. at the 5 week point I injected 100mg and the shadows were gone, and I had no signs of headache, insomnia disappeared, night sweats evaporated, and I got my life back.

I still believe that although I did not solve the underlying problem, I did remove the symptoms. If the underlying problem is a hypothalamus dysfunction, then shutting down one of its greater functions (sex hormone production) seemed to stop the symptoms. My guess is that I got to shutdown somewhere near week 5-6 and that is why I am now pain free.

I encourage everyone who is dealing with clusters to have full hormone panels done - and view the results yourselves. Don't rely on physicians or the lab to interpret them - be your own health advocate. Most of the time if you are in the "normal range" they won't dig any deeper, but 301 in a 300-900 range says "low" to me, likewise 899 in the same range says "high" to me. Look at all of your hormones, not just steroidal (T3,T4, Estrodiol, LH, FSH, Cortisol, DHEA-S, Free and Total Testosterone, etc). Ideally you would want all of those to be dead center of the average range for your age and gender (not the range the lab says is normal).

If anyone has any questions about my experience with TRT and clusters, please don't hesitate to ask.