Good News from the Doc

Image from JJ Hart.

Yesterday was my Hematology appointment at the Cincinnati Veteran's Administration hospital.    

The hospital itself is surrounded by other medical facilities mostly owned and operated by the University of Cincinnati, so space is at a premium which means parking spaces are also. Even though we have a handicapped placard for the windshield, sometimes spaces close by to the door are not close enough for me to easily walk to. Regardless, I was going to try to make it yesterday with the help of my new cane. Plus, in addition to the walk to the door, I knew my wife Liz and I were facing an equally long walk once we arrived in the hospital.

I was scared and was running on extra energy as we finally made our way to the medical department where the appointment was scheduled so we actually were there ahead of time. I was scared of what the doctor would tell me about my platelets being down again from my last bloodwork. Of course, then I began to read up on what it meant and Leukemia was one of the possibilities. Then I started to build all sorts of negative bridges in my head about my mortality. So my blood pressure and nervous energy was at an all tine high when I finally met with a medical team of three. One doctor and two other fellows, whatever that meant. I was hoping for the best and expecting the worst.

It turned out almost all my worry was for nothing . I had  what was called an iron overload in my body. I have had it before and it seemingly went away for years before coming back to haunt me. It used to be I needed to go for regular blood draws called "phlebotomies" which brought the iron problem under control. So instead of Leukemia, I have too much iron in my system again which can cause fatigue, joint pain and skin discoloration among more serious issues.

From the doc, I was then sent down a couple of floors to the vampires so they could do more bloodwork before setting me free. I should mention through it all so far I was treated with respect and was never mis-gendered. I was referred to as Ms. Hart or my first name all through my visit to the VA hospital...until the very end. Just as I was leaving the bloodwork room, the woman said "thank you Sir.' Ruining my perfect day in the gender department. 

However, I was not going to let one person spoil my medical and gender euphoria I felt when we stopped off for lunch on the way home and we were referred to as "Ladies"  again. 

I am sure, I will get back my bloodwork today and will find out when my first phlebotomy in years will be scheduled. Hopefully I will feel improvement soon because Liz and I are planning a trip to the Florida Keys in January and more energy along with less back pain would be a welcome relief. As I will need all the gender euphoria I can get to help me along.

I will have much more later as we get closer to the date, in the meantime, I have some iron to get rid of.

Finding your Happy Place

 

Image from Priscilla du Preeze
on UnSplash

These days you may think finding any sort of happiness as a transgender woman or trans man may be impossible but it is not.

Take this morning for me as an example. As I was getting dressed and viewed my bare thighs before I put on my pants, I had forgotten how nice it is to view their increasingly femininized form thanks to the use of gender affirming hormones. In other words, I have developed my own hips, finally following years of hormonal usage. In many ways I took the slow cautious route when I started down the medical transition path on the advice of my doctor. He advised me to take minimum dosages until we could judge the effects on my body.

At the age of sixty, my body took to the new feminine hormones wonderfully and naturally. Soon I was put on higher doses of HRT and bigger changes began to take place rather quickly. I had set up a semblance of a timetable of when I wanted to shed all my male clothes and live fulltime as a woman but it turned out the timetable was a waste of time. What happened was I became very androgynous looking in a very short period of time. While I was developing an increasingly noticeable set of breasts, my skin began to soften which in turn softened the lines of my face. So much so that anyone who knew me from before would notice the difference.

Even though I was shocked at the rapid exterior transformation of my body, the whole process felt so exciting and natural I could not wait to do more and more as I accessed my new transgender womanhood. It all meant setting up new plans and timetables on who I was going to tell and when. By this time in my life I had outlived most of my family and close friends, so telling many people was not going to become a problem. I had even retired so I did not have to worry about transitioning at a job. All of this left me with two main people to come out to. My only daughter and only slightly younger brother. 

I knew at the time, I had a better chance of succeeding at telling my daughter the truth about me than my brother. My daughter was much more liberal while my brother's in-laws were right wing Baptists and I figured he would sell me out to appease them. It turned out I was right on both accounts. I found my happy place when my daughter totally accepted me and was down when my brother did not. I took my fifty fifty win/loss record and moved on.

To this day my happy place continues with my daughter and her extended family. In fact, my wife Liz and I just accepted an invitation to Thanksgiving dinner at my daughter's Mother-in-Law's house which makes up for the decade long snub from my brother. 

As the holidays approach, I hope all of you can find a happy place to celebrate with family, blood relation or not. In the transgender community, often we find the best family in non traditional situations. It is a wonderful time of the year to discover or re-discover a new happy place for yourself.

Outreach in Transition

Paula from the UK.

Recently, I received this comment  from long time reader "Paula" who is from the UK: 

"Here in the UK we are all pretty nervous about talking to journalists, especially TV journalists as so much of what is broadcast is at best negative and at worst downright attacks. Having said that the work you are doing is important, as more and more of us approach our dotage with more of us out than ever before elderly LGBT+ care will be more important than ever."

Thanks for the comment Paula and after a weekend to think about doing the interview, the voices in my head told me to shy away from doing it. Due to me mostly listening to the voices I have in my head and going forward, after seeing our new president in action, I have decided to dial back much of my outreach activities and be more careful of the crazies who are popping up. 

Hopefully, none of that will impact the blog in anyway which I am still dedicated to and I remain true to my initial vision when I began this writing journey over a decade ago. I wanted to share my transgender experiences with anyone who could benefit from them. 

Looking ahead at my own future, I am fortunate to be surrounded by a supportive cast of transgender allies who could help me when  potential difficult situations arise. The main one I can see happening is if tRumpt and his minions try to meddle with my Veterans Administration health care which could mean I would have to seek out a new more expensive source for my gender affirming hormones. I will have to jump off of that bridge if it ever happens. 

A  much closer bridge to jump off of for me is coming up Wednesday when I go to my Hematology appointment. Following my last round of blood work, I was told my platelets were low again and I needed a consult. Never a good thing to hear when you are seventy five like I am but I will see what they say coming up very shortly. 

One way or another, I thought I would keep you all involved with what I was doing with my curtailed outreach attempts. Most certainly I will continue my Cincinnati Alzheimer's diversity committee work I do and as I said continue to write the blog which has undergone so many changes over the years. When I look back on any of the early posts I wrote, they were mostly appearance related whereas today the posts are lifestyle intensive.  

May we all survive the future the best we can. In the meantime, thanks so very much for reading along with my experiences. Hopefully they can help you in the best possible way.