Unexpected Voice Training Side-effect #1

Ah; it’s good that you have some prior experience when it comes to administering injections! Honestly, self-administering isn’t that that much more challenging per se; the main issues are just (a) that sometimes you are working at an awkward angle, and (b) overcoming the psychological barrier to causing oneself discomfort.

It’s really interesting that you bring up the Bionix ShotBlocker, by the way - that was invented in my town! I have a colleague whose daughter is a patient at a pediatric clinic involved in its development; the kid absolutely swears by it! If you end up giving that a go, do report back and let us know how it works.

why the fuck did I willingly switch to injectable estrogen im fucking terrified of needles

Night surprise

Our three eldest cats have a simple routine: play, eat, sleep. For whatever reason, the youngest cat is the opposite: sleep, eat, play.

She is also very smart. She loves the laser pointer, and knows that it lives next to our bedside table; and will sit on the aforesaid table and sing to us when she wants to play.

This is all very cute except at nighttime, as we would like to sleep and she would like to play. This was the case last night, and unfortunately the cat would not listen to our polite requests to desist and so she was shut out of the room.

What then followed was a twenty-minute admixture of singing from the hallway and banging on the door. Eventually she grew bored, and decided to revisit another of her favorite pastimes (trying to pry the under-sink closet in the bathroom open; a process that involves more loud banging).

In the middle of the night, I visit the bathroom and as I’m sitting there in the dark, doing my thing, the youngest cat just casually strolls out of the closet like Samara crawling out of the television!

Unexpected HRT side-effect #12

In my former life, I was not above eating the occasional calorie-laden novelty food item (”Try our Kitchen Sink Burger!”) or having pizza for dinner and leftover pizza for breakfast. And this was all good and well.

Post-HRT however, I have learned (the hard way! Oh, oh, very much the hard way!) that I can no longer overindulge in this fashion. My gastrointestinal tract is a great deal more sensitive and will rebel in most spectacular fashion if I try to force-feed it some kind of burrito that inexplicably counts among its contents an individual’s annual supply of cheese and over one pound of french fries.

As much as some might mourn this change, I see it as a positive - now I’m eating the way that frankly, I should have always been eating. Still, not something that I was anticipating from a therapy the primary purpose of which is to make me look more girly!

“Oh boy! It looks like I’m going to make it through the entire night without a single nocturnal panic attack!”

The nefarious 6:41am:

I see @foone has switched from reblogging deer girls… to reblogging John Deere girls. 🙂

Imagine the frustration of trying to do maintenance on your robot gf only to find out her wiring diagrams, code, and repair manual are considered confidential and proprietary and only factory certified technicians are allowed or able to work on her. Now imagine working tirelessly to build a wiring diagram, reverse engineer her code, and documenting troubleshooting and maintenance procedures

Clothing

It’s fascinating to me how much male and female fashion differ; and how much variety there is in the latter.

It used to be that I would buy shirts; and I would buy pants; and generally speaking, pretty much any shirt would match any set of pants. Getting dressed was limited to randomly picking out one of each.

(To be fair, one can go fairly in-depth with male fashion; and I will be the first to put my hand up and state that I did not do so, as - I now recognize in retrospect - I found the act of shopping for male clothing dysphoric.)

Now I have all these amazing pieces of clothing; but there is so much variety - so much range! - that that any one item will only match a few others (or even none at all)!

I will invariably find myself thinking: “Now I need to buy x to go with this”... And I am loving it!

Cat tent

I will often sit in bed with my knees up; and our insane baby cat has now decided that the impromptu blanket fort this creates is the perfect place to snuggle.

It’s the fucking cutest.

Absence

Apologies for not being particularly present of late; I’ve been dealing with some frustrating health issues.

As I noted previously, I was gifted a cold by a coworker in early December. The following week I contracted another respiratory virus. This was was rather more severe:

First, it induced acute bronchitis; the net effect of which is that I ended up in the ER with an oxygen saturation level of 85%. The blood tests, EKG, and chest X-ray all came back clear; so I was discharged with antibiotics and a course of steroids.

The day after, the virus began to affect me neurologically. My long-term memory, short-term memory, and focus all started to wane. I developed a sensation of weakness in my arms, palpitations, insomnia, severe anxiety, and an impending sense of doom.

The palpitations, anxiety, and sense of doom thankfully receded. Unfortunately, I also lost the ability to regulate my temperature and my blood pressure when changing position.

It looked like I was over the worst of it, until I spontaneously developed neuropathy in my lower limbs. That earned me another trip to the ER, where they ruled out - in their words - “Anything super-deadly”. (I also got my first ever IV catheter, which I found kind of annoying; and a lumbar puncture, which was pretty interesting!)

The neuropathic symptoms have also receded somewhat; but the weakness in my left arm has grown worse, and now there’s a tremor in my second and third fingers. I’m currently waiting on additional neurological tests to determine the cause (’waiting’ being the operative word; after all, heaven forbid I have an MRI without my health insurer getting to sign off on it first)!

I know where a lot of people’s minds are going to go given the timing, and I don’t blame them; but: it wasn’t COVID. Two antigen tests, three PCR tests, and a nucleocapsid antibody test all indicate that this was a routine respiratory virus that just got completely out of control.

Two fun sidebars though:

First: between the tests from last year’s check-up, and the tests from the ER, I discovered that my lymphocyte numbers are routinely low. As measures go, it’s not a one-to-one predictor of immune health; but it does suggest that there’s something not quite right with my immune system, and that this might explain why even minor illnesses cause me significant secondary issues.

Second: I’ve written at length about how COVID tests set off my PTSD. (It’s not a rational reaction; but one borne of my younger self confusing their invasive and required nature with past violations of my bodily autonomy.)

The second go-around at the ER, the nurse performing the test was extremely thorough and as a result, I experienced arguably the most discomfort of any test to date. However, I was able to manage the situation well; in large part, I now recognize, because that selfsame nurse had a warm and sympathetic bedside manner.

That leads me to think that it’s less the physical discomfort of these acts that I find triggering; and more that they are being performed without care or consideration for my person. I’m still trying to make sense of the ramifications of this insight; but it’s beginning to seem like the core of the problem is that I’ve been dehumanized in the past, and this is what I’m so afraid of happening again.

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!

Dress-up

An interesting aspect of the trans experience is looking back on one’s former life, and inspecting certain signs, behaviors, interests and activities through the lens of hindsight.

In this particular instance: for many years I have enjoyed video games in which one can control the appearance of the various player characters. I have spent considerable time armoring my rogues, outfitting my Sims, and coordinating the ring attire of virtual pro-wrestlers.

It occurred to me recently that I was in some respects engaging in a kind of ersatz dress-up. Much like actual dress-up, I also now find the skills that I developed being applied in my day-to-day fashion choices: pairing tops and bottoms, socks and shoes, and so on.

I can’t even begin to untangle what aspects of a person's behavior are based on their biology and others, their social identity; but it’s fascinating, digging up these examples where - even while boxed in by the gender expectations of that time and place - I was seeking, and finding, ways to escape that jail.