Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

I got a text from the gender clinic a while ago saying "You are due a mandatory in person annual review appointment," so that's what I'm going to this morning.

I asked D to come with me, which he kindly has taken off work for, and on the bus in to town he said "So what do I need to know about this appointment?" I said I had very little idea myself and read out the text: mandatory, in person, review.

I did this on the phone last year, but all I remember is that that's when I was first told that I'm too fat to get top surgery. I think otherwise I'm very straightforward: I take my T, I don't forget, my GP is good at prescribing it, I'm not too unhappy with any of the side effects. Last year I could say I was doing counseling from them and I was told I was getting near the top of the voice coaching waiting list (though, another year on, I've still heard nothing about that...)

I told D "I think it's just, like, a meds review but for the whole real, not just meds."

"A boy review," he said.

I grinned. "Yeah!" I rested my head on his shoulder and asked "How is your boy?"

"Pretty good," he smiled. "Could do with more sleep."

So yeah, I'm off for my boy review.

I introduced my counselor to the "stress bucket" metaphor today.

Some of you may remember it was a Gary thing. I described it here:

The stress bucket is a metaphor about a bucket with a little hole in the bottom. Stress fills up the bucket. The little hole gradually empties it. We learned about what things are good for emptying a dog's stress bucket quicker and also how long the effects of an overflowing stress bucket can hang around.

It immediately made sense to me as someone with chronic anxiety, so while we carried on using it about Gary (it was always so useful), I apply it to myself too. And when my counselor was getting tangled in some other metaphors that reminded me of this, I told it to her. She seemed to really like it and extending the metaphor was useful for us during the whole conversation.

My good little dog, still helping out my brain even now.

Had to miss counseling last week because of traveling for work, so I haven't spoken to my counselor since my grandma was still alive.

I feel like I barely got to scrape off the top layer of all the crud that has accumulated in my brain/body since then.

And I'm exhausted now.

The message still just seems to be things are hard for you in several areas right now: family, politics, work... I'm not doing anything "wrong" but I'm doing all I can, I can't do anything more either.

She keeps saying she hopes I get a break. I do too.

Gary has a little corner of the living room now.

In our living room, on top of the storage cupboard, is a framed professional photo of the three of us, me holding Gary, all of us looking at him and smiling, sitting on top of a pink box-folder size box with a scalloped edge on the lid. The box is fuzzy because he loved that texture, he'd have liked to rub his face on this box. Inside are his ashes in a pewter heart with pawprints on it, his favorite blanket, and his leash/harness.

Next to the box is a digital painting of a photo of Gary wearing a bow tie, the one time we got something approximating "clothes" on him, and for just the length of time it took to get the photo. We say it's his "school picture day" picture because that's what he looks like!

Hanging from that frame is a jack russell-shaped Christmas ornament with Gary's name on it, which was taken off the gay tree on my desk where I'd given it pride of place when I decorated it, a few long weeks ago.

There's a small packet of poppy seeds that we were given by the vet hospital, which hag will plant in our garden when it's time to.

And there's a little thing I got D for Christmas which says "home is where the dog is" that was made by a local artist and which I added one of the Gary stickers to (that V made a few months ago from an amazing digital painting of him that they did).

At least two friends have offered to depict Gary, in a painting and ceramic, once we can get them reference photos which is so overwhelmingly sweet of them to offer. So eventually we'll have those things there too.

Now that I've used up all my NHS counseling and am for the first time able to pay for it privately, I can frame this to myself in the funniest ways. Like "After work today I paid a lady £X to tell her how good Gary is." I did, but it was actually so helpful and I'm glad I could do that.

Always a good sign when your reaction makes the phlebotomist feel bad!

I don't like crying every time, I'm not even that upset, it's just a thing my body does! I hate having to perform social rituals of appeasing other people around this!

She was very nice but, like, telling me her veins aren't good either and she has to get blood taken from [an unusual part of her body] made me nearly barf and could be triggering for other people so...

The point where no blood has yet been taken is stressful enough, it doesn't feel like a great time to mention that even if her intentions are solidarity.

(Thinking about it after I got home, it was triggery for me too. Particularly for something that happened almost exactly a year ago, which also doesn't help.)

Then they wanted my blood pressure too. The phlebotomist went to get a machine, there wasn't one in the room, and someone else came in with it and did it.

Or tried to.

I've been going to the gym so when she tried to use the too-small blood pressure cuff on me, we both noticed it. it barely velcroed together and when she started the machine, the cuff just popped open like I am the goddam Hulk or something.

She was like "I don't know if we have a bigger cuff...." and I was like what in this whole building?? Fat people just can't get basic healthcare here at all?!

She said "I didn't know I'd be doing blood pressure or I'd have brought my own machine from home, it has a larger cuff."

The only suggestion she could make to get my stupid blood pressure taken is that I make an appointment with her and she can bring it that day!

And I can't even do that until three weeks from now!

So now I have another appointment, luckily no needles, but she's gonna weigh me too for BMI reasons.

When I got a message from my counselor today, apologizing for having to cancel our session this afternoon at short notice, I we a little disappointed at first because I hadn't been able to speak with her last week either (she had something else going on the whole week), but then I remembered that she'd flagged at the beginning of the last session that we only have I wanna say four left.

I'm allowed 16, which is a ton by NHS standards, but it's still not many to deal with a lifetime of fucked-upness. She asked me how I felt about this (I understand that there's going to be a limit because there are a lot of other transes who need this help, but I'm bummed out) and then said before the next session I might want to think about whether there's anything I want to bring up/work on that we hadn't talked about yet.

I hadn't really put any thought in to this and I've been getting by on a combination of "here's what happened this week and here's all the context you need in order to understand that" and lately more filling in some background -- I might have mentioned here but there was one week where I realized that I hadn't even mentioned that I had a brother who died or that I had ever been married, which seemed faintly ridiculous because those are pretty big details about who I am and How I Got Like This.

There's nothing coming to mind in terms of things I'd want to talk about and haven't yet. But I don't want to feel like I am "wasting" the time left.

I have found it really useful to have someone to talk to who Gets It about BMI being bullshit and covid-cautiousness and other stuff that I braced myself for having to argue about or at least explain, and I totally didn't.

Feels like a gift I don't want to squander.

She said she'll be in touch later this week to rearrange, so I have at least a few more days and maybe another week to think about this. I'll try to be more deliberate about it now!

I'm just coming up to a year on T (a fact I'm only certain of because it's time to renew the year-long prescription pre-payment certificate that I got not long after I started! there's the "HRT date in bio" types and then right at the other end of the bell curve there's me, heh).

And it has come to my attention that there's plenty of joy shared by exogenous-estrogen folks on the social media where I hang out and far fewer exogenous-testosterone types sharing what's good about our hormones for us.

I think there are a lot of reasons for there being fewer of us and less being shared (I've had my own reasons for not talking about every little thing I notice every time I appreciate it). But it ends up meaning that what people hear about testosterone gives an impression leaving us wondering (as a friend put it) "if it's going to turn my skin into hard, cracked, yet greasy leather covered in spikes."

My friend goes on to say "The terfy rhetoric of T being the "bad hormone" that makes you angry and ugly and E being the "good hormone" is not helping. There is not actually a lot of real info out there to counteract that."

I'm always here to refute TERFs.

And to maybe help my future exogenous-testosterone buddies, and celebrate with those alongside me in this.

I'm only one person, every body is different etc., but T has had almost no downside for me so talking about what's good about it is really easy for me to do!

So after a bit less than a year of exogenous testosterone, here's some positives for me:

• the acne has not been bad at all! I have always had acne, it wasn't "teenage acne" because it never went away, so what I mean is the last year hasn't been noticeably worse than previous ones.

• plus most of the acne on my chin and jawline seems to have left a new hair in its wake, and I love my facial hair so it feels worth it ;)

• my skin does feel soft because it's fuzzy! I am growing soft little hairs on my belly and my shoulders and more on my legs and I love feeling them. I stroke my fuzzy jaw all the time as a nice stim.

• I don't know if my voice sounds that different but, more importantly to me, it feels different. It resonates more in my body. This makes me happy every time I notice it.

• My muscles are more responsive to exercise and I catch myself finding physical tasks easier than I expect them to be.

• [genital related thing]

Had to wake up an hour early to walk (luckily not in the rain! it was pouring earlier) to my GP, over the most inaccessible crossing I encounter, to get blood drawn.

A real Monday morning delight, especially for a needlephobe like me!

Though, now that I think about it, a phobia is an irrational fear and I think "I hate this because my veins always disappear and it takes forever and it hurts and I'm sick of strangers seeing me cry especially because it gets me misgendered" isn't even irrational.

This was my first of three medical appointments for this week. And near the end of our work day diffrentcolours and I made one for Gary. (He's fine, they just need to change one of his meds.) I can't tell if it's a good thing or a bad thing that they're all on different days. Tomorrow is now the only day free of medical stuff.

They're all in-person appointments too! I think today was my second in-person visit to the doctors office; I mostly just talk to them on the phone! But in the other two I'm probably going to be discharged from physiotherapy and I also finally got the replacement appointment for the one booked for the beginning of January, where I expected to be told I didn't have to wear the aircast any more. Wow it feels like a long time ago now! It's been six weeks or so since then.

I had my second physio appointment today. (An online chum of mine who lives in Germany recently broke their ankle in what sounds like a similar way: they dislocated and broke it, needed metalwork. But they had their operation that same day (well, late at night I guess) and was seen by a physio a few times while they were in the hospital afterwards and then it's been two or three times a week at their home! Imagine!)

I'd been doing my exercises pretty faithfully, forgetting a day or two (which the physio assured me is no big deal) but otherwise keeping at them. I found them easy and they didn't cause pain or fatigue so I didn't mind them at all.

The physio was really happy with how I was doing. Everything from just watching me walk into her little cubicle at the beginning of the appointment, to my range of motion when she checked that: it was exactly the same in both feet today. Again my left ankle is still a little weaker but only to the extent that's inevitable.

So I've got new exercises to do, and I tried a stationary bike which left me sad I don't have regular access to one because it felt really good on my ankle. I can do bodyweight lunges and squats and stuff at the gym as long as I "tolerate it" (i.e. it doesn't hurt), which is exciting because I'm going back to what we're now calling "trans gym" tomorrow. I confessed I did a little of that last week, just trying out like if my ankle would hold up for a plank or whatever, but the physio said she was fine with me trying that stuff and doing it if it felt okay. Indeed, one of my new exercises is just lunges because they move your ankle all around.

With how well I'm progressing and the fact that we're away in two weeks, I won't go back for a month. And that might be my discharge appointment.

I would be getting my foot out of foot jail, and being able to officially stop the horrid blood-thinner injections (I cried again at last night's), this week if this week wasn't Christmas.

Instead, my appointment isn't until next Friday.

I was never doing as many of the injections as prescribed, at first because the prescribed information didn't match (I was literally told to stop it altogether everywhere except on the stickers on the boxes, i.e. the thing I can't read myself, and all my attempts to call and find out which is correct came to nothing) and then just because I had to balance this against my mental health. But when I saw the doctor to get my cast off, he confirmed it should have been twice a day all along and as a result I've stayed at once a day. Most days. Unless I'm too sleepy or I forget.

It's hard to keep my foot in foot jail all the time. Yesterday morning, I was so distracted and so sleep-deprived while I was getting ready and doing morning chores that twice I tried to go downstairs without putting the boot on. It has gone from "I don't need this for small amounts of walking" to "the inability to bend my foot is actually impeding my ability to walk around Tesco or walk the dog" or whatever.

Also I've been increasingly abandoning sections of the foot jail, heh.

It's a hard plastic shell on the back and sides of your leg, which a fabric liner that you velcro over the leg, a hard plastic cover for the top of your foot and shin (which we've been calling "the shin guard" even though that's a different thing), and then big velcro straps over all of this to hold everything together.

First to go for me was the shin guard, which provided very welcome support at first but eventually felt too constrictive and heavy. This also started what I'm now recognizing as a pattern of "I forgot this and then realized I'm better off without it."

Then last week I realized that the fabric over my toes sticks out behind the end of the hard plastic shell, and I found this out by being out in wet weather so my socks were immediately sodden and then my toes were wet and freezing cold until I could get home. Not a great design! I left the fabric to dry and put the boot on without it and again found it much lighter and mostly more comfortable (the hard plastic is sore underfoot if I walk at all, which I fixed by putting a slipper in the boot and that was fine until, again, I forgot about it when I went outside in the rain and it got wet)!

So the last couple days I feel like I'm just wearing the skeleton of the air cast boot, and I'm still finding that too much!

I'm very conscious of not wanting to walk or stand too much, not wanting to impede recovery, because I've had no physio input since I was given exercises to do right after I broke it. But there's been no guidance about how to behave now as it's healing. Which is understandable (the poor underfunded NHS!) but also frustrating.

And it makes waiting an extra week even more difficult.