My name is Gordon Russell. I am 46, I live in Dumfries, and I work as a Lung Cancer Specialist Nurse. Every day I sit with patients facing some of the most difficult news imaginable, helping them and their families understand what lies ahead.
I have spent years helping others through their hardest moments. It took me far too long to ask for help with my own.
Before and after TRT
When everything fell apart
My dad was a policeman and a drinker. We had a difficult relationship growing up, and at one point we lost touch completely for four years.
It was one of my own patients who told me he was in critical care.
I got there in time. We rebuilt what had been lost and had five genuinely good years together before he died of prostate cancer.
It knocked me for six.
After he died, nothing felt right. I was studying sports and nutrition at the time, trying to build towards personal training, but I felt completely hopeless. My diet fell apart, I started drinking more, and my libido dropped off a cliff. My body stopped responding to exercise the way it always had. I had been going to the gym since I was a teenager and suddenly nothing was working. I was sluggish, falling asleep straight after dinner most nights.
Sarah, my wife, could see I had lost my lust for life. The drive I had always had was simply gone.
I told myself it was grief. Stress. Getting older. I pushed through, the way men tend to do.
Finding the missing piece
When I finally went to my GP, he was thorough and he tried to help. Depression came up, and antidepressants were suggested. But something told me there was a piece of the puzzle missing. This did not feel like depression.
Fortunately, working as a specialist nurse meant I had clinical colleagues around me every day. I went to see an endocrinologist at my own hospital and asked to get my hormones checked. My testosterone came back seriously low.
The NHS started me on testosterone replacement therapy (TRT), but with injections every 12 to 13 weeks I had lots of ups and downs and never felt consistently well. My libido would return for a few weeks and then vanish. It started to affect my relationship with Sarah in ways I struggled to explain. The closeness between us had faded and neither of us really knew why.
After eight months of going round in circles, I started looking for a better way.
