I Did The Thing.

Questionnaire

When I set up my MRI appointment, the scheduler needed me to answer a twenty-five point questionnaire. This is very understandable: an MRI machine is one of the most powerful magnetic devices an individual might interact with in their life; and if that individual happens to have in or about their person items that react strongly to a magnetic field, Consequences Might Ensue.

You can reasonably guess the sort of questions asked:

“Do you have a pacemaker?”

“Do you have any implanted electrodes, pumps, or catheters?”

“Do you have any artificial joints, plates, bone screws?”

Now this is all good and well - until we get to the use of contrast. Under some circumstances, patients can be injected with a special fluid that will highlight the inner workings of the area being imaged. This is generally harmless...

...Unless you a pregnant.

This is why the questions veer towards:

“Are you pregnant, or have reason to believe you might be pregnant?”

“When was your last menstrual period?”

I clocked pretty quickly why I was being asked these questions; and answered with “Definitely not” and “Never” in short order. “Never?”, responded the scheduler. “Yep; I can’t get pregnant and I’ve never had a period. Crazy, right?”

(I suppose I could have cited the time I had menstrual cramps; or perhaps the five days of rampant bleeding that followed the installation of a genital piercing during my younger days. I’m not sure this would have clarified matters any, however.)

Once everything was set up, my health system’s very fancy patient portal sprung into action; letting me know that I had... a pre-MRI questionnaire to fill out. I dutifully did so; trusting that providing a date of “N/A” was enough to get the point across.

Yesterday I had a phone call from a very nice scheduling person; reminding me that my appointment was coming up and covering a couple of last minute items. One of these was that she needed to know whether or not I might be pregnant; and if I happened to know the approximate date of my last menstrual period.

Again, I stated that the answer was “Never”, and she responded incredulously, and I gently explained that I was a trans woman and that as much as I would like to be the proud owner of my very own uterus, medical science hadn’t quite come that far yet.

I might come across as a touch bothered by the repeated inquiries in this area; but if so, it’s only because there seems to be a lack of communication inside the health system. (My medical record lists my trans status, but this data point isn’t taken into account when the questionnaire is presented; one can indicate that the question isn’t applicable, but this isn’t recorded.)

Truly, I would not be surprised if I get to my appointment and the very first thing they do is to inquire once again as to whether I might be pregnant...

There is however a silver lining in all this medical madness: every clerk, technician, nurse and doctor I’ve talked to in recent weeks apparently had no idea that I was anything other than a cis woman - and was surprised when it became necessary for me to inform them.

For someone that never thought she would pass, who still feels like she doesn’t pass: that’s kind of amazing.

Holding out

During last week's singing lesson, Chelsea - my instructor - proposed that I try my hand at the classic Can't Help Falling In Love. This represents an interesting challenge, as the chorus reaches all the way up to B4 (and my current range quickly falters at around G4 and above).

I really wanted to nail this, so I made a point of practicing extensively every day this week. Unfortunately it became quickly apparent that the persistent cold I've been dealing with has now taken up residence in my chest; and that this was severely hampering my efforts.

Suffice to say, I was more than a little trepidatious as to how today's lesson would go!

At one point we started working on switching from chest voice to head voice (a process whereby you close certain vocal muscles, pitching the voice up). I generally struggle to do this on command, but there is one specific line in one specific song where it I find it easy (and indeed, had started to switch into head voice long before I even knew that was a thing).

I was demonstrating this and Chelsea paused: "You know that", (checks reference note), "...You just hit a C4, right? That's higher than what we've been working on. You've been holding out on me!"

...And I was just filled with the most girlish sense of glee!

(Evidently I need not have worried.)

Due to scheduling, my next lesson will be in a little over a week and a half; so let's see if I can't spend the intervening time nailing those high notes!

Unexpected HRT side-effect #5

I got my artistic creativity back.

For real.

I was bursting with creativity as a teenager. I wrote, I drew, I painted, I modeled, I designed, I composed. I would be overtaken by these ideas and was compelled to bring them into being.

...Then it went away.

This I ascribed to the usual factors: newfound work and family responsibilities that overtook my time.

Now I posit a different theory: it’s my belief that I have a female-structured brain; and that the operation of certain parts of it require a sufficient provision of estrogen. Suffice to say, by the end of the teenage years, estrogen was in rather short supply and my brain malfunctioned accordingly.

That is no longer an issue; and I find myself once again not only bursting with ideas but more importantly, utterly driven to birth them into the world. The catgirl shirt was one such project; now I’m about to complete a painting (details omitted here, as it’s mildly NSFW).

It’s good to be back!

Dysphoria

After receiving our second COVID vaccine doses, my spouse, daughter and I all experienced side effects. Now, there isn’t an objective way to measure a person’s discomfort; but subjectively, it appears that I had a better time of things than they did.

Of course, this might not be accurate. I may be female now, but the majority of my life was spent operating under the rule of male gender norms. One such unspoken rule was that bearing one’s discomfort stoically was admirable, and complaining unseemly; and I internalized that.

(It is therefore entirely possible that we experienced equal degrees of malaise; but I sought to downplay mine.)

There is also a growing body of evidence to suggest that the side-effects are hitting XX chromosome-holders harder - possibly resulting from some kind of interaction between estrogen and the immune system.

(Alas, I could not test this theory as I was almost at the end of my estradiol cycle when we got our booster shots; and even then, my cycle only superficially emulates the far more complex interactions of the real thing.)

Whatever the case may be... It felt like another unwanted and unneeded reminder that despite legally changing my name, changing my pronouns, adopting a new wardrobe and updating my appearance, engaging in all manner of medical treatments... That I am, and always will be, a woman with an asterisk at the end of that word.

Maybe one day I’ll make peace with that fact... but not today.

Okay, but I have to give some context to my spouse’s tags here:

As a teenage, I played the beloved Nintendo 64 classic GoldenEye 007 with my two brothers; and we were speculating as to what the upper limit was for number of enemies slain in any given mission.

To test this, we used various cheats to render the player character invincible, arm him with two rapid-firing machine guns, disable reloads, and provide an infinite supply of ammunition.

We then proceeded to the latter part of the Facility mission; where - during the climax - a never-ending supply of Russian soldiers spawn, and enter the room via the same narrow doorway.

By the simple expedient of placing the player character on the other side of the door, these hapless troops had no option but to run directly into his cross-hairs. We then used a rubber band to hold the fire button on the controller down, and went to dinner.

Returning an hour later, we discovered that our hero James Bond had single-handedly killed no less than 3,000 men; at a rate of a little less than one per second.

Fast forward: I’m in college, and my (soon-to-be) spouse is living with me in my dorm. Fortuitously we had the same Nintendo 64 to entertain us; and a copy of GoldenEye 007′s spiritual successor: Perfect Dark.

My spouse greatly delighted in playing the mission Mr. Blonde’s Revenge; in which the titular protagonist golden-haired behemoth fights his way to the top of a skyscraper with the intent of kidnapping the CEO stationed at the top.

For whatever reason (class, I assume), I had to leave; and when I came back, my spouse was still playing. On completing the mission, we discovered that they had also managed to end the lives of some 3,000 unlucky guards.

Here’s the important difference: during the experiment my brothers and I conducted, we reached this goal by taking advantage of a quirk of level design to automate, at speed and scale, the dispatch of enemy NPCs.

My spouse, on the other hand, had committed their incredible murder spree by hand; endlessly stalking the lower floor of the skyscraper and by various turns firing upon, blowing up, and bludgeoning each new security officer that had the misfortune of ending up in their cross-hairs.

(And filling them with crossbow bolts. So many, many crossbow bolts.)

Hence the epithet: “Captain Overkill”.

Unexpected HRT side-effect #16: addendum

I mentioned previously that - improbable though it seems - HRT has awoken in me a love of all things spicy.

That particularly journey began with my friend A; who developed her own love of hot sauce when she transitioned, and shared it with me.

I now find out, completely independently, that my adopted daughter P - also well on her hormone therapy way - has suddenly discovered a fascination with hot foodstuffs.

As much as I report on such phenomena with my tongue firmly in cheek, I'm beginning to think that this might an actual measurable side effect!

Housewife

I wish I was a housewife.

Perhaps I have overly romantic notions about such a thing; but I greatly enjoy cooking and cleaning and other domestic pursuits. It brings me such great joy, ensuring each day that my wife comes back to a house that is just a little nicer than the one she left.

Similarly, I greatly enjoyed the time I was able to spend with my daughter during her infancy; and took delight in being her tour guide to the world. Keeping home and raising my child seems pretty neat!

Instead I threw myself strongly into being a financial provider; and now I see that the same energy can exist in the role of homemaker - merely expressed through many small acts of love, rather than the singular act of acquiring income.

I try (with limited success) not to be overly regretful of my life choices. At least in this instance however, I do not blame myself; as I ended up a software developer and not a homemaker because of the godawful capitalist system we toil under and not because my perceived gender at the time drove the choice.

All the same: I wish I was a housewife.

Flowers

One of the first additions to my all-new female wardrobe was a floral raglan shirt. I own multiple dresses adorned with flowers; and my most recent clothing purchase was a pair of floral-bedecked high-tops.

As a kid, I spent a lot of time drawing flowers. I loved laying out the stems and leaves in intricate, rhythmic patterns; punctuated by colorful collections of petals.

I’ve documented previously my experience with PTSD-type issues; and during one such episode, I opted to seek calm via art therapy. I immediately defaulted to drawing a collection of flowers; each one different; ever-overlapping one another.

Incredibly, it only occurs to me now - far into my transition - that I love flowers.

It is a powerful testament to gender norms - to the guilt and fear they breed; the warping effect they have on our view of ourselves and the world around us - that only now, decades after the fact, that I can acknowledge this love.

Routines

I have a trans friend named ‘G’. She started her transition when she was 58; and it was perhaps three years after that I began my own journey and we started talking. She has been an incredible source of advice on the subject of hormone therapy, for which I am eternally grateful.

(She is also the recipient of a painting I recently completed; one of the few small ways in which I could think to pay her back.)

The two of us having been discussing for some time the strange phenomenon of when we can (or can’t) see our female selves in the mirror. I’m not sure if this is something that affects a large proportion of trans women or is perhaps more limited to just the older crowd; but it’s definitely something we both deal with.

I have a routine in the morning (or did; I’ve recently been struck down by a non-COVID virus and I’m waiting to see how that shakes out). It looks something like this:

Put up hair,

Reinstall helix clicker rings,

Apply makeup,

Let down and style hair.

During stages (1) through (3), I am acutely aware of every facial feature that I cannot currently control and broadcasts masculinity. As soon as I get to stage (4) however and the hair drops, suddenly I can see myself again in fully female form.

It’s interesting because the first set of feelings are not, per se, dysphoric in nature. Rather, it feels like... imposter syndrome? G and I have discussed how our preparatory routines are, in some respects, akin to a magic act; so perhaps seeing the mechanisms by which the tricks are achieved causes ones suspension of disbelief to temporarily halt?

What we do both know is that the more time passes, the more we both become comfortable in our new identities. This is why I wonder whether age plays a factor in the phenomenon - almost as if the adoption of a new gender requires clearing the (significant) backlog of experience as a prior gender...

…And again in the season one Babylon 5 episode, “Infection”:

“You and the rest, you forgot the first rule of the fanatic: when you become obsessed with the enemy, you become the enemy!”

That JMS repeated himself virtually verbatim goes to show that this is a message he felt very strongly about (and rightfully so)!

That video of Alex Hirsch reading S&P notes for Gravity Falls conveys a few things to me:

1) the U.S. entertainment industry (especially animation) is run by older conservative types who make up offensive terms and get really mad about them.

2) the people who run Disney would be the first to fall in line with a fascist regime.

3) most of the media we consume is tailor-made and watered-down to appeal to the tastes of older, deeply religious conservative audiences.

4) conservatism, not the left, is and always has been the biggest voice of censorship in American culture.