Catching up on other news

[cosmolinguist]

Last Monday morning I was supposed to have a voice therapy appointment but our internet was borked. I had to drag D out of bed just after 9 and make him deal with a confusing and mysterious problem. He bodged a solution really quickly but I was supposed to have a voice therapy appointment at 9:30 and I'd texted the clinician warning her that I wasn't sure I'd be able to make it. We had

Thank you for letting me know. Unfortunately as it is such late notice this will count as a missed appointment. Please let me know if you would like to re-book the session, and if there is anything we can do to support attending going forwards. If you do not reply within 7 days we will assume that you do not wish to continue voice therapy and you will be discharged.

Something about that "if you would like to re-book the session" rubbed me the wrong way -- I waited years for this referral! -- and all of a sudden I didn't want to re-book. I was put off by how the technical problems were handled at the first appointment, and even though they didn't recur and I was confident I wouldn't have them again because once she agreed to use Teams I gave her my work address where Teams works fine every day so I didn't anticipate any recurrence.

I just. Still felt weird about it, like I was doing it wrong by treating this as an investigation about something I'm curious about rather than something where I had clear and specific Transition Goals in mind. Indigo might be a little too patient-led for me, heh; I appreciate the ways it's more flexible and less judgmental than the old Gender Identity Clinic system, but this isn't the first time I've struggled with mismatched expectations: I'm expecting some kind of information that doesn't exist and even when I ask for it I'm told to look at social media websites I don't use; I'm like you're the NHS, don't you have a photocopy-burned brochure for me?

(This feeling I'm having here is like a grain of sand in comparison to the deserts-worth of the same feeling that I'm having when it comes to top surgery... I've written thousands of words about that so far and it's still not ready to share.)

It just felt like too high a hill to climb, so I've let the seven days go by and now I'm discharged from the service. I hope someone else who's chomping at the bit for their voice to sound different in some particular way is making good use of the appointment instead.

Comments

[otter]

You didn't even say you COULDN'T make it by 9:30? That sounds so inflexible and unreasonable. I support letting that one go, as you did.

[diffrentcolours]

I'm sorry to hear the UPS crapping out was the root cause of this. In case it should ever happen again, it's worth remembering that you can get your laptop to use your phone Internet, either wirelessly or with a cable. I'll show you how if you don't know already.

[cosmolinguist]

I know how to do it on my work laptop (which would've been relevant because that's what I would've used.

But this was the kind of precipitating incident that, if it hadn't been this it would've been something else so please don't feel bad. It just didn't feel like it was worth fighting to get around this, I didn't think that'd get me a "you're one step away from being discharged" anyway but also if it was something I really wanted I'd have chased that up and it would've been fine.

[cmcmck]

As you say, the old GIC system was abominable but this doesn't sound a whole heap better!

[barakta]

This is possibly why some of my students are SO frightened of invariable technical problems for meetings. They may well be blamed even when it's The Other Side or just tech being shit... Horrible really. Teams plays all sorts of silly buggers all the time, it's easier if you know how to use it properly, but I've still had to do the old reboot Windows entirely a few times.

Seems a bit quick to cancel your appointment before it starts rather than say "I can wait till 09:45" etc or whatever. Almost like someone didn't read your message and sent canned words back which boils my piss as well. If I wanted to talk to a fuckwitted bot with terrible natural language processing, I'd talk to NatWest's Cora.

I am sorry this wasn't the right shape of thing for you but glad you can say "nope" and decide to let them slide off and hopefully be useful for others in whatever way they need.

[silveradept]

That's am escalation from a simple technical issue to something much more aggravating. And it's not like you can plan am unplanned page within the window of cancelation.

It feels like someone just demonstrated they lack the empathy to help you with something as intimate as your voice, and rather than ignore that warning sign, you followed it.