Wednesday, May 8, 2013

No, you can't get T, but let's set you up for a pap smear...

As mentioned before, my family is very poor. My mother and I have the state run insurance, or at least I will for another couple of years until she can no longer claim me as a dependent.

And today I was finally arsed to get the ball rolling in the direction of taking T.

The first phone call to Molina Health revealed that Testosterone injections, as related to Gender Dysphoria, are not medically necessary. I could not help but to call the bullshit there. I know it wasn't her fault. I know that she was simply relaying the information given to her.

But goddamnit I wanted to reach through the phone and shake her till her teeth rattled, and tell her all about my detailed fantasies about self-surgery with a .22.

None of this was helped by the fact that the first thing the ever-so-helpful customer service representative did was inform me that there is a recommendation for a pap smear on my chart, and would I like to set that up? No, no thank you, I would like to set up an appointment to get that removed...

(On that note, actually no, no I would not: While I will be more than overjoyed when the bleeding stops, I am comfortable enough with my microphallus, and have too many reservations about surgery to consider anything more than a mastectomy at this point. Beyond that, I am young enough currently to be unsure as to my wishes to procreate: I would like to have the option of utilizing my Creation Box, should I eventually decide to. But all of this is the subject of another post.)

That phone call left me with the frustrating "It's just not a covered benefit..."

So I let myself calm down for a minute, and called them back.

"So I'm transgender and need testosterone injections, which apparently aren't covered under my plan. So how do I contest this?"

The second phone was more promising.

"It's not a covered benefit" means something more along the lines of "Well, it's not something everyone will need, so we won't cover it unless your doctor says you need it, and then it's not a guaranteed yes."

Apparently I need to get my Primary Care Provider to send an authorization form, after which they'll probably cover my T, given medical necessity. Think that recurrent self-destructive fantasies and constant body dysmorphia and dysphoria might perhaps be clues as to the medical necessity of a treatment? I do...

So. Time to call my Primary Care Provider and set up an appointment with her. My status has changed since the last time I went to the doctor, and it takes a minute to update my information. The nice lady on the phone puts me on hold to transfer me to my doctor's staff to make an appointment, and....

My phone dies.

Well, I almost got something actually done today...

PS: And my common coffee shop inexplicably has a phone charger, plugged in and abandoned at least over night, that fits my phone. I may get something done today after all.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

On Protective Equipment, and Second-Hand Things.

Today, I bought elbow and knee pads for my skateboard, because while I don't mind the falling or the getting hurt or the colourful bruises, I definitely mind the downtime. I would like to be able to get back up and keep going, not need to take three days to recover.

And when I bought the pads, I had this awful twinge of guilt: I already have elbow and knee pads. I don't really need to buy new ones. They're somewhere in a box in Spokane, and I've had them for twelve years. They're scuffed to hell, the elastic and velcro is shot, and they are in Spokane.

I don't really need to buy new pads.

Except that I really, really do.

a) Protective equipment is important, and may make my mommy less neurotic about the fact that her baby is on a skateboard.

2) The pads I have in Spokane were second hand when I got them from Goodwill twelve years ago. They are now ancient, itchy, slide around, and are in Spokane.

There is something very important to me about the fact that I went out and bought not only a new pice of sports equipment, but a set of new protective equipment to go along with.

My family is very poor. We have lived below the poverty level my entire life. We have a place to live, property and a house (in Spokane), so I cannot say that I ever really wanted for anything. I have never been homeless, I have never gone hungry.

But damn if I haven't spent my whole life in second-hand everything. Don't get me wrong, I still find myself combing Goodwill for things, and thriftstores are the very best way to get unique and interesting clothing at a price I can afford ($1.99 Grossgrain ruby silk suspenders? I think so!), but... It is very disheartening to know that the kneepads you're wearing have already been through a hundred accidents before you ever got your knees into them.

Half of what made my karate equipment so important for me was the fact that everything was new. No one else had owned my gi before, nor any of my belts, nor even the shirt that went under my top. It was mine. My first brand-new bike was a major milestone, and I paid for half of that myself. I got a new helmet and lock with that -- I bought the helmet myself, and the man who ran the bikeshop gave me the lock.

Sometimes, you need new equipment. Sometimes, you need to spend the money, go to the shop, and find the new equipment to ensure safety and security. Sometimes it just has to be new. Second-hand is fine, but I know that I will get my $47 out of these pads. I know that these will last me for several years, and probably won't feel like they're made out of fiberglass insulation. I know that no one has fallen off of anything and scuffed them up, and I know that no one has sweated sweaty knee sweat into them.

There are some things for which second-hand is a good thing. There are some things which are less so.

And sometimes, you just need to replace the old, used, second-hand, other-side-of-the-state things with something new.

And not just New-to-You, either.

Monday, May 6, 2013

On T, Therapy, Lumps, Singing, and Dysphoria.

As I mentioned last time, I started therapy, and got my letter for T. This was a month or so ago, and I have yet to call my doctor to attempt to set up a meeting to talk about it.

I am terrified. The last time I called my doctor for anything specific, I got roped into a "well woman visit". The last thing I need right now is someone staring up my cooch, talking to me about "women's medicine". I am uncomfortable enough with the concept that my anatomy is inverted and lumpy without someone reminding me pointedly of the fact.

I have been wanting this for many, many years. I eagerly await facial hair, a cracking voice, increase in muscle mass, weight redistribution, and even the goddamn acne. I am not looking forward to readjusting my emotional state (I'm just barely getting that under control as-is), or the act of getting surgery, but I am more than ready to get the lumps off my chest. I have been ready to lose my lumps since they showed up, which culminated in my second (abortive) round of therapy, when I realized that I was beginning to make, if not plans, then calculations about taking a gun to my breasts to get them off. While I quickly abandoned the therapy (it's hard when you don't click), the thoughts and calculations are still very much there. These are calculations that resurface every time I step into the shower or attempt to change clothes.

Binders are helpful, but they can only do so much, and I am still "Ma'am"ed and "Miss"ed and "She"d, etc, on a daily basis. I am hopeful, when I do manage to get arsed to call my doctor, that the T will cause breast shrinkage, as it has with some I know. I am hoping that, perhaps, a beard will go some way to stop the "Ma'am"ing. For that matter, I'm hoping I'll be able to grow a beard relatively quickly. Or, well, a bit of a beard. A few hairs to stroke in thought.

I say that I am looking forward to the change in my voice. I have fears -- several of them -- about where my voice will end up -- I do not want my father's voice -- or rather, I do not want the voice he most often used. I do not want to end up with a nasal whine and a harmonica. I do not want to lose my ability to sing.

I should go into that more: I have a degree in Ethnomusicology (sort of), and I have been singing most of my life. I have been told, on numerous occasions, that I would have a good sining voice if I trained it properly. I have been told that I am an Alto, or a Mezzo-soprano. I have never thought I had a good voice. Always, I have been either too high, or too low. I hold with me the belief that I am constantly off-key. My singing voice, as time went on, went from being a reprieve to being an integral part of my dysphoria.

I have stopped singing, almost entirely, in the past few years. Nothing has ever sounded right, and it is simply sounding more wrong the farther into myself I step. In coming back into grips with who I am, what ability to sing I had in the first place has fled and hid under a rock. I am hoping that, with testosterone, I will find my voice coming back to me -- or rather, coming to me at all.

I would love to drop to a tenor. I would love, for once, to open my mouth and have the sound that comes out be the sound I want to be making. I would love to be able to match key and pitch.

I think -- I think -- that I will start singing again -- practicing singing, pointedly -- as part of my medical transition. If I can work up the nerve, I may document the changes through recordings. I dread a hoarsening of my voice, a tightening and decrease in projection and power, and having to re-learn the making of noise with my facehole. On the other hand, I am a Pro at Projection, and learned to project with diligence and luck the first time, so that might be easier than I'm worried about. I wouldn't exactly mind a hoarse singing voice, provided it did all the things I want it to do. And, relearning singing may mean that I actually, you know, learn to sing this time.

Each fear I have about what the coming months and years will bring is cut and countered with the intangible "what if?" For each new terror of what might happen, there is also the possibility that what might happen might be wonderful.

So now I just have to work up the nerve to call my doctor and figure out what my insurance covers.

Saturday, May 4, 2013

So apparently I'm bad at this.

Winter has been hard. Winter has been very hard, and filled with depression, anxiety, dead pets, and boundless creativity. I've written a new comic (More on that later, elsewhere), lost fifty pounds, started counseling, got a letter for T, started gardening, worked around and through the dread of turning into my father, and gone mad and taken up skateboarding.

I fell into a massive depression some time mid-september, and have barely begun to rise out of it.  Winter is almost always a time of depression for me (lack of light YAY!), but this year was particularly awful. Start September with not one but two people living in my living room, in my already tiny apartment. One of the people living in my living room quickly left, and soon a coup was staged in which we (the second person living in my living room and I) took the Big Bedroom away from our third. So now I have a roommate. An actual, living in my room with me roommate.

... So about how I'm an introvert...

We have been doing fairly well at not killing each other.

In November one of my rats died, after long illness, which in no way helped the depression.

A couple days later, I started writing a new comic, upon realizing that this winter the depression was so crushing I couldn't get myself to exit my Plant Closet (Where I grow plants and write stories...). If I find myself being unable to do anything, I may as well do something creative. I'll go into that story Elsewhere. The important thing is that I wrote the story from start to finish, finished the script, went back and edited the script, and then got to work on thumbnails. I'm currently working on chapter six (of thirteen) in thumbnails, and have fourteen pages of watercolour (almost) finished. My depression this year has been productive on the creativity front, if nothing else.

As winter turned into spring, my cat got lumps, went crazy, and disappeared. We've decided that he's walked Back to Canada. I miss having a cat about the house.

And then I started gardening.

I've been growing plants in my closet for a year or so. As of right now, in concert with medicinal herbs, I have several kinds of tomatoes, two variety of eggplants, kale, chard, three kinds of lettuce, two kinds of potatoes, three kinds of beets, three kinds of carrots, several culinary herbs, ground cherries, and bok choi. I have a couple of small plastic greenhouses, to which many of my plants have been transferred, and a couple of tubs of dirt along the side of our apartment building. In doing this, I have stirred up a hundred hopes and fears and neuroses.

I have a longstanding dread of turning into my father. As of lately, I've been given the answer as to what it is that I'm terrified of, and I'm sure I'll be writing another long post about that in the future. For now, let us say this: I am in the process of working through where on the spectrum of Narcissistic Personality Disorder my father was, and where I myself currently fall.

There were several things upon which my father defined himself, and was defined by those around him.

So now that I smoke pot, garden, am unemployed, am disabled, wear my hair long, and now own a skateboard, how the hell am I supposed to not turn into the Demon Tom?

We shall see, shan't we?

Mostly, it involves reminding myself that those feelings of anxiety over how my actions make the other party involved feel are exactly the feelings that my father, apparently, never had.

So all I have to do in order to avoid turning into the subject of someone's future therapy sessions is remember that other people have feelings too? Sounds simple enough...

And to top it all off, I bought a skateboard yesterday. It's a longboard, made from bamboo, and I've probably spent about five minutes actually riding the thing. And about fifteen falling/jumping/sliding off of it, and freaking out because of the voice in my head telling me that I'm a weakling and a coward. Tomorrow, I go to spend fifty more dollars, and get the elbow and knee pads so that I won't acquire any more extraneous kneecaps than I already have. (The bruise currently riding the head of my tibia is several very impressive colours, and far less swollen than it was yesterday. The one on my ass hurts less than it did this morning...)

I remember when I was trying to learn to skateboard the first time. I was young (~9?), and my father forgot the elbow- and kneepads when we set out to go find some pavement. And, when your child is too scared to get on the skateboard because they don't want to hurt themselves... the answer is yell for an hour and call your child a weakling, and a coward. Not go back and get the protective gear that it was your job, as the parent, to remember to bring in the first place?

Not turning into that asshole is going to be easier than I thought...