gynecology – Stories That Are All True

Daily writing prompt

What are your daily habits?

When I wrote about this prompt last year, I remember saying that I didn’t have any daily habits. That was 100% true at the time, but now I’m charged with creating a structure with which I can live. My care team at Cognitive Behavioral Health does not think I am ready for a job yet, so I am muddling through what that actually means. Am I disabled for good and should start pursuing government assistance, or am I capable of slowly creating my own recovery into the workforce? My writing does provide a little bit of income, and as I get more popular here and on Medium, I see results. I’ve been a blogger for a very long time, but so far I’ve only had one fan who was so impressed she thought I should be world famous. I would like a few more of those. 😉 But nothing good will happen if I do not take care of myself.

This starts with setting medication reminders in my phone. My day flags if I do not have the correct doses at the right time. I have always been good about taking my medication because I had a doctor tell me that most bipolar patients stop taking their medication when they feel better, not realizing that it’s the medication that’s making them feel that way. However, I was not so on top of it that I remembered to take it at the same time. I’m also on a lot more medication than I used to be……………

I’ll talk about my psychiatric drugs because I think that people need to learn about them. I am not a doctor, just a waiting room that doesn’t suck (thanks, Paul Gilmartin. I stole that line from you). Crazy meds need to be talked about because it’s such a major undertaking to be put on them:

Lamictal (lamotrigine)
- The first time I was put on this mood stabilizer was the first time I knew what it was like to live without depression. It took about six weeks for the fog to lift, but I’d never been more grateful in my life. The only side effect I’ve experienced so far is nausea, and it was very hard to deal with for a long time. Now, I’ve just decided to stay on it regardless of the side effects because other mood stabilizers make my weight balloon. It’s also an old drug now, so it’s relatively cheap if you don’t have insurance.
Lexapro (escitalopram)
- This is the gold standard of SSRIs, and most bipolar people don’t take them. That’s why I think my diagnosis may be wrong, that I actually have autism and not bipolar disorder. In a bipolar patient, SSRIs tend to make them flip out with suicidal ideation, negative/intrusive thoughts, etc. My SSRI keeps me at an even keel when I am really paying attention to my body. As for side effects, I haven’t noticed any of them.
Buspar (buspirone)
- This is what replaced my benzos for anxiety, because it is not related to them and yet performs the same function. It’s better for me because there’s no risk of addiction long term. I do not have an addictive personality, but better safe than sorry. I have been on Klonopin for over 10 years, but my new clinic doesn’t prescribe benzos to anyone. The entire hospital system has put their feet down over it, so I have to adjust. Now that I’ve been on it for several weeks, I am unsure whether it works or not. I will keep you posted. The one thing I do know is that it’s the most important drug for me to take at the same time every day, because it will flat stop working if I miss even one dose.

My crazy meds aren’t the only ones I take, they’re just the most important for keeping my structure stable. It feels like everything is hitting all at once as I age, because I didn’t have to worry about hormone replacement therapy even a year ago.

As an aside, it’s a big joke with my sister that because I’m enby, I thought that if I was going to do hormone replacement therapy, it would be in the other direction…. after that particular doctor’s appointment, I went home and consoled myself by buying both the book and audiobook of “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe.” I needed some Stress Tabs #10 and some candy bars (but maybe not 11). As it turns out, the book and audio were not enough. I also watched the movie on Prime just to see Kathy Bates… “how do you accidentally run into someone…. how do you accidentally run into someone six times?” I get it now. I’m older and I have more insurance.

My medication is working, and for that I am grateful. Now, my schedule runs from sun up to sun down, skipping the night owl routine altogether. And in fact, when I took my sleeping medication yesterday, the sun wasn’t even fully down yet. I prefer to work in the quiet of the morning, especially on the weekends before the kids in my apartment complex wake. The ones who live above me are particularly loud, which is why I’m glad I have good headphones. I hunker down in my office after a night of wild dreams and try to remember what they are. It provides a writing exercise that’s all my own, propelling me into really thinking about my life and what I want to accomplish. I accomplish nothing without coffee, through which all things are possible.

Coffee is also part of remembering to take my medication, because I have found that a lot of caffeine is just enough to control my ADHD, but Ritalin or Adderrall is too big a jump. I have a coffee machine that makes a cup at a time, and my preferred coffee is Cafe Bustelo. It’s in honor of my old chef, John Kinkaid, because we used to walk to a Cuban restaurant between prep and service for their Cafe Bustelo lattes.

I mentioned in “Why It All Still Hurts” that I was working on a nonprofit, and I am… but that dream has been deferred. Kinkaid was killed in a car accident. I am still reeling from the grief, but I got Kindle Unlimited and added five books on starting a nonprofit to my library. Again, the idea is dinner with dignity, offering the unhoused food they could never afford on their own, and opening my kitchen up to take homeless people on as apprentices if they’d like to learn the trade. I am still sold on this idea, it’s just going to take a lot longer to accomplish than I thought.

That’s because the longer I think about it, the more ideas I have. What if instead of this one nonprofit, we were able to build a library like Oodi in Baltimore? There, I could have my cooking classes and a place to serve food, plus books and maker tools for everyone. My structure these days is centered on how to spend the government’s money for the good of the people. Learning about Oodi and all the services they provide gave me a bigger goal than just “dinner with dignity.” It would give the unhoused a place to go. Maybe my purpose is not to go to Finland, but to bring Finnish ideas to a city that needs them. I want to redirect Maryland’s money from the DC metro area and Annapolis to Baltimore, because it is so underserved. A lot of the city is completely trashed out with no way to fix anything…. or so it seems from an outsider’s perspective that just moved here in December.

I need more time to watch and wait, gathering stakeholders and formatting a business plan. Perhaps my structure will always be internal, because that’s how autists work best. I do not want to go down in history as merely a blogger. I want to create something beautiful that will last and bring hope to people that might not be feeling it that day.

I find that working on giving hope to other people is the easiest way to claim hope for myself. I am slowly building a structure into which I can grow, taking others’ ideas and implementing them like a plant takes root in the soil.

But it all starts with remembering to take my medication.

Daily writing prompt

Who would you like to talk to soon?

View all responses

I sent my dad a funny text message the other day, that it was time for baby’s first colonoscopy, so add that one to the baby book (I sent my mother a similar text message the day I got my first gray eyebrow). A few days later, though, I started to panic because I don’t have any close friends in Baltimore. I just moved here in December, and having a colonoscopy requires someone to drive you home and keep an eye on you after the sedative. My dad and my sister are too busy to fly up here at a moment’s notice, so I don’t generally ask them for anything due to fear of hearing “no.” I could hear what my cognitive behavioral health specialist would think of that and he called bullshit in my head before I even asked him.

I chose my sister, Lindsay, because at the moment there was more chance that my sister would come up than he would as he’s already in charge of a million different things, much less my ass.

See what I did there?

So, gathering my strength, I sent my sister a text message asking if, since I could schedule around her, could she come up for this procedure? I was surprised and pleased when she said yes, and I might even get to see her twice as she already has to be in DC for something later (DC and Baltimore are not far apart, about 35 miles….. the time to travel varies greatly by traffic……. pro tip is to always take the train.). She said that if I scheduled the procedure for 10 June, then we’d be able to celebrate my mother’s birthday on the 11th. I told her I had to see the gastroenterologist first, but that sounded entirely doable depending on the availability of the hospital schedule.

I know for sure that it’s going to be my first time drinking the sludge, two years past when I should have done it because the original guidelines were that I didn’t have to worry about it until 50. It has moved to 45 without me noticing so now I’m late. Typical. But better late than never. I don’t have a history of gut problems, so I don’t foresee a problem with cancer or anything else. I just know that my sister’s job is to do some work while I sleep it off or something.

But this isn’t the only medical thing happening in my life. I have to have a Well Woman exam, which I am calling a Well “Woman” exam. Here’s why this is exciting. My doctor asked if I had a problem seeing a male doctor, and told me his name…. but the hospital system isn’t updated and his deadname popped up. Therefore, for the first time EVER IN THE HISTORY OF MY LIFE I GOT A TRANS MAN AS A GYNECOLOGIST!!!!!

I think.

His deadname could be a man’s name, but it would be highly, highly unusual….. like me. There are male Leslies out there, but not many in the modern age. If he is a bio male, I don’t care. Doctors don’t really have a gender to me. Their pronouns are they/them because the doctor and the God inside them live concurrently. You cannot be successful as a doctor if you do not make peace with the fact that you are God every day to the people sitting in front of you…. and that they will think you are Old Testament if you accidentally kill their loved one, and New Testament if you succeed. If there is a gender in my head, doctors are divided into surgical and medical.

I have so little community that I thought about calling the gynecologist’s office and asking if that doctor would like me removed from his service because he needed friends, too. I haven’t seen him yet, so no harm, no foul. But in the end, I decided that I would need an ally inside the system as well as friends in the community. If I am right and the name in the system is a deadname, then I am sure he can point me in the right direction of people who’d be willing to drive me home after a medical procedure because I actually know them well enough to ask. For instance, just pointing me to community resources is enough, and I know he would care about those things.

Gynecology is already set up to take care of women culturally, so I don’t think trans men would be any different. There is a different questionnaire for my gynecologist’s office than I’ve ever seen in any doctor’s office ever. Taking care of women culturally is asking questions like:

Have you ever been a victim of domestic violence?
Are there guns in the house?
Are the guns within reach of your children?

My psychiatrist is also trying to protect me because I told her that as an enby, I had body dysphoria over my breasts and that I had a lot of back pain due to them, anyway, so I would like a referral. The big beautiful bill passed the House, and she has never mentioned trans medicine again, saying, “did you ask your PCP about your back pain?” Coded language. I’m into it. If this bill fails in the Senate, we’ll have a buffer zone with which to work. But we are both preparing for the worst. That’s because I am not lying in order to get a breast reduction/double mastectomy. Body dysphoria is not genetic, but the back pain I experience certainly is.

The good news is that with exercise, I’m losing some of the fat tissue in my breasts on my own. Life doesn’t feel so heavy. Even my mammogram technician said that my breasts were very dense. My stepmother (a medical doctor) told me that caffeine makes it worse, so I have never done myself any favors in this area. If you were here watching me type, you would laugh. There’s a tallboy of Death Wish Coffee next to me (it’s delicious), so obviously I follow instructions to the letter.

Rule following gets you nowhere in my line of work, which is probably why I’m willing to lay out my medical history and future in front of you. You will learn more from me than you will hurt me with your criticisms of what I’m doing, because those will be different audiences altogether. Trans men need to see themselves, and I don’t know what kind of trans man I am yet. Am I the kind that wants drugs to rearrange my fat deposits as well? I do not know. What I do know is that of everything I struggle with in terms of trans medicine, it’s my voice that bothers me the most…. for evil and for awesome.

On one hand, I will tell you that I’m a soprano and when I’m warmed up, I’m cooking.

This is just an example because it’s unaccompanied, a loop for my friend Aaron to use in a storytelling podcast for The Sinners’ Table that’s coming down the pike. Now, let’s turn it up to 11:

This is another clip from a voice lesson in which I laugh about the fact that I do not know what happens when I’m singing. The afterburners turn on and I just go. It makes me wish I’d chosen voice at HSPVA and Clements (though at Clements I was in one year of choir and made All-Region). Now that it’s 12 years later, I can tell you that I was fighting a war in my head, two women battling it out for my affections…. the one who trained my voice vs. the one that deserved the victory lap. When Joseph (Houston voice teacher) says, “are you thinking differently?,” it’s realizing that this piece was designed to serve up gratitude.

Now, my journey is to decide what kind of singer I am, because drugs to redistribute my fat deposits so that I look more like a trans man than a woman will also make me a tenor. Some days, I think that would make me happy. Some days, I lean into my diva attitude because it’s very much like my trumpet player attitude. I have also noticed that most trans men develop vocal fry, and that is not appealing to me, either. Again, priorities.

I think I am happiest with staying in one place for now, moving cautiously toward enby because I do not know what the drugs will do and cannot predict whether I will be happy with them. I have been stuck on the idea of breast reduction or double mastectomy forever because Tig Notaro has my perfect body. She doesn’t identify as nonbinary, but she looks exactly like I want to look.

It makes me feel bad that she got her look through cancer because I can imagine us getting into a huge fight over it. “I got this look through cancer and you want to do this voluntarily? Are you crazy?” Well, now we are talking about a completely separate issue. I am most definitely crazy, but I take medication for that. As far as I’m aware, there is no brain surgery that removes crazy, but if there was, I would have gotten a referral for that, too.

I’m tired of talking into a void, and want to get louder about trans issues. That’s because nonbinary and trans do not mean the same thing, but we are the same umbrella. I can wear either flag…. and in fact I would like Jonna Mendez to know that I got the most fabulous t-shirt for pride ever created. It’s gray and has the enby flag colors across a bar code, with “Assume Nothing” up the side.

The reason Jonna would think it was cool is that “Assume Nothing” is rule number one in her world (she used to be Chief of Disguise at CIA). I could learn a lot from her, I think, because as an autist I have to assume everything. It is what allowed me to compile scripts in my head to be able to respond like a neurotypical………… when I could social mask.

Now, I see that she has the right idea and I don’t. Go into every conversation as if you don’t know anything and join other people’s realities. It is the only way to see all of them with grace. The transition has not been the smoothest, but I am learning. I am certain that everyone in my life deserves my sincerest apologies for the way I’ve acted over the last 12 years, because I’ve been completely alone, trusting in my own intuition. It’s not ideal.

Now, I’m branching out. I’m trying to be more open in hopes of attracting energy to me. I am done hiding in the shadows.

But I might want to hide in the shadows until after my colonoscopy is finished. Nobody wants to see that. 😉

Exercise tells me which way I will go, because I cannot make a decision about my body while I am consumed with depression and anxiety over the way I look. I do not struggle with weight loss or gain, I just needed to feel good about something and I chose having the routine of getting to the gym as something that would help me feel less terrible. I have cerebral palsy, so I chose my workout carefully. There’s a program on the treadmills that will keep your heart rate in the target zone with incline rather than speed. Therefore, every session feels more like hiking than jogging.

It makes me happy because Bryn lives in Portland, Oregon and I’m sure that if I asked her, she’d be happy to drive me out the Gorge when I visited. I do not remember whether she likes to hike or not, but if she doesn’t I am sure she would drop me off at the base of Multnomah Falls and pick me up several miles down the road as I limp toward the car, energy spent. It makes me feel good to be prepared for that kind of hiking, because Multnomah is easy…. as you go, it gets harder. I haven’t made it to Larch Mountain without feeling like death warmed over, but perhaps I will as time goes on. And that’s without even researching hiking in my area, because I haven’t done it yet. I need to, because my entire hiking experience cannot be based on sacred memories.

The treadmill is my hiking sandbox. I can wander as far as I want through the rolling hills of any city in the world thanks to being able to watch YouTube on my phone. It’s a lot more fun to think about difficult questions and answers while also staring at the beauty of Paris, Copenhagen, Helsinki, and Oslo.

What is not difficult is realizing that my life is bigger than me. Recording it for other trans people to read is my gift to you, because there’s just not a lot out there. Of course all who show up are welcome, but I am trying to reach an intentionally small audience. We are in a culture war where the focus is on trans women and what they might possibly do to cis women.

The biggest indicator of who the real perpetrators of violence might be is a movie I watched long ago. I’d tell you about it, but boys don’t cry.