With TRT, RBC should increase, not decrease.
HTC was close to 50. When you get to some high T levels, HTC will be too high and you will need to donate blood, have blood removed or perhaps live with lower T levels. You need to avoid added iron [enriched] in vitamins, breads, rice, breakfast cereals, flour etc. The steady doses of T from dosing suggested are HTC friendly compared to the peaks of weekly injections.
You seem to be a T hypermetabolizer and such guys need to take 300mg/week to get where others are at 100mg/week. And the effective half-life is a lot shorter too. So while weekly injections are too far apart and we suggest twice a week, in this case, that is inadequate and EOD/E2D injections are required.
Self inject 86mg T EOD [every other day], subq over upper leg with #29 1/2" 0.5ml insulin syringe, slow to load. Subq is fully absorbed, but slower with smoother serum levels.
At age 38, fertility probably not a concern, but when you get on effective TRT your testes will shrink if not already. 250iu hCG subq EOD preserves the testes.
You need to be testing E2 - estradiol and almost all guys benefit from been near E2=22pg/ml and almost always anastrozole is needed for that. Try 0.5mg anastrozole twice a week. Do E2 labs after 3 weeks.
Try to get FT tested direct instead of calculated.
If you get labs with E2=30 while using anastrozole, you can get to E2=22pg/ml by dose change factor of 30/22 - the magic of a competitive drug.
Almost all doctors a rather useless at male hormone care. Doing things right requires knowledge and making an effort to understand some complexities. You can understand what is needed and why by reading the stickies. You can show some of this to your doc. Doctors are the biggest problem, so there is a link on finding a TRT doc.
You did not get TSH tested. Thyroid is a major hormone system and low thyroid hormone has most of the same symptoms as low-T. Please conform to last paragraph in this post.
Please read the stickies found here: About the T Replacement Category - #2 by KSman
- advice for new guys - need more info about you
- things that damage your hormones
- protocol for injections
- finding a TRT doc
Evaluate your overall thyroid function by checking oral body temperatures as per the thyroid basics sticky. Thyroid hormone fT3 is what gets the job done and it regulates mitochondrial activity, the source of ATP which is the universal currency of cellular energy. This is part of the body’s temperature control loop. This can get messed up if you are iodine deficient. In many countries, you need to be using iodized salt. Other countries add iodine to dairy or bread.