We All Know That The Golden Throne Is Failing; And That A Time Will Come When It Will No Longer Be Able

(Original from theavengers; via feed-the-roses.)

Oh no

I was doing my progesterone shot last night and the plunger in the syringe got stuck 20% of the way in. I really put some force behind but, but it wasn’t moving and I was terrified that if it did suddenly give way I’d dump the entire contents of the syringe into my thigh in a split-second.

(I’m not sure of the exact ramifications for doing so, but my nurse practitioner was quite clear during instruction that this was an undesirable outcome.)

I really didn’t want to toss the rest of the progesterone (it’s not like I had more on hand), so I withdrew the syringe and switched to a fresh needle. Poked myself again, depressed the plunger, and...

...The syringe got stuck again.

As classic “Well, what the hell do I do now?” scenarios go, sitting there with an immovable syringe sticking out of your thigh has to count pretty highly, I reckon.

I wiggled the plunger a bit and applied more force than sensible, and finally the damn thing overcame whatever the resistance was and immediately dumped half the load (so I guess I will find out why that’s a no-no in short order). Everything proceeded smoothly from there.

I’m still nonplussed as to what the issue was. A manufacturing defect in the syringe itself perhaps? Some kind of sediment in the progesterone blocking the barrel of the needle? I have no idea.

I just really hope that this doesn’t happen again...

Update 1: I talked to my friend about this and her first go-around, the needle disengaged from the syringe while it was in her leg. OMG!

Update 2: I had more soreness than usual but was otherwise okay; so I’m guessing that firehosing half the dose didn’t do too much damage, thankfully.

Unexpected HRT side-effect #6

I’m not really up to speed on Tumblr etiquette yet, but I believe the polite thing to do when dealing with heavy material is to provide a content preface. To that end: this is a kinda heavy. There’s abuse and stuff.

Sooo... PTSD. This is an actual, unexpected side effect of HRT. Let me explain.

I’ve previously touched on the idea that I have a female-structured brain; that certain parts of it require estrogen to function correctly; and that during the pre-HRT portion of my life, these parts operated poorly (or not at all).

A large - and rather nuanced - group of these malfunctions come under the umbrella heading of ‘emotional processing’ (or lack thereof); including the inability to:

Fully feel my emotions,

Understand them,

Connect them to my thoughts,

Communicate them to others;

...And perhaps most importantly, make sense of (and move past) the various negative events that life likes to throw at us.

Once HRT kicked in and supplied the estrogen my brain so desperately craved, all of this changed! I cannot stress what an incredible experience it was to go from zero to full emotional processing capacity virtually overnight.

The next thing I discovered, however - much to my chagrin - was that far from passing through the troughs of life with a stiff upper lip, rather I had simply deferred my response to those events. Now the bill was due.

I relived a lot of grief and anger: at the loss of loved ones; at lines crossed; at years in the wrong body.

One day, I had a disagreement; the matter was settled amicably, but afterwards I felt ill at ease. Without even understanding why, I gathered up my three animal friends and retreated into our walk-in closet; turned out the lights, and just... sobbed. Great, unrelenting torrent of tears. I didn’t understand what was happening; only that I was terrified, and hurting.

After what felt like hours, my wife coaxed me back into the light and to normalcy.

As night approached the following evening, it happened again. And again. And again. Every night, for months on end.

During these episodes, I would experience repetitive, intrusive thoughts for which I had no context. “Please don’t hurt me!”; “Please stop hurting me!”; “Let me go!”; “Why did he hurt me?”

In retrospect, what I have been able to piece together is as follows:

These events were flashbacks. They relate to a trauma that I have no memory of; perhaps because it happened very early on in my life. Based on the intrusive thoughts - and other indicators, such as an intense phobia of forcible restraint and what I believe may have been unconscious efforts on my part to relive the original acts - I believe the trauma was sexual in nature.

HRT kick-started my brain; and the first item on the agenda was - completely unbeknownst to me - processing this forgotten trauma.

For the curious - I’m much better now; my wife and I are no strangers to PTSD symptoms and well-versed when it comes to handling them. Still; I cannot say that when I undertook that first estradiol shot, that I ever imagined it would unearth this particular landmine in my psyche.

Darker

If my writing has taken a slight turn towards the darker of late, it’s because of this:

I have a tremendous aptitude for self-denial; specifically when it comes to convincing myself that I am not worthy of focus and attention (and thus by extension my concerns, challenges, and issues).

This is of course most notably exemplified by how I managed to deny the obvious regarding my transgender status for so many years.

When I did finally come to that conclusion however, I was at least thankful that I had escaped a lot of the vicious side-effects that other trans individuals faced: crippling dysphoria; self-loathing; depression; a propensity for being predated on, and so on.

What I’m now recognizing is that I did experience many of these things; but could not express them in terms that made sense to myself (let alone other people). This is a good thing; but it also means exploring those thoughts and memories, and I do a great deal of that work here.

So: nothing to worry about here; just digging through an old Pandora’s Box!

Orikan: *Rewinds time*

Trazyn: "...A shred of truth within this tale of yours."

Orikan: "BASTARD!"

"Stop laughing Trazyn, I have a Gf, she's just from another dynasty"

Dose two: addendum

I feel like I might have spoken too soon on my COVID vaccine side effects dying down; I’m now four days post-hoc and it feels like I still have some issues (muscle aches and swollen glands on the injection side; feverishness if I overexert myself).

It’s physically irritating, mentally debilitating, and it only fuels my anger more towards the sum group of people inflamed this situation for their own selfish reasons.

(I will also add: a couple of years ago, the spouse and I caught a very strange, persistent cold virus; the lymph nodes in my upper torso and neck flared up like nobody’s business and remained that way for almost eight to ten weeks.

It scared the hell out of me, as that kind of persistent swelling is generally associated with far worse ailments; and I was still in my passive ideation phase at the time and was pretty convinced that This Was It. Thankfully it went away on its own; but in retrospect, I’m realizing that this episode might be another unprocessed issue I now have to unpack and deal with.)

Unexpected HRT side-effect #3

So... your sense of smell becomes more sensitive. That’s not particularly unknown (although you’ll hardly find it on the informed consent form). No, the unexpected part is this:

CATS SMELL SO GOOD.

Oh my god! They are like tiny precious babies. All I want to do is inhale my cats (while they look on in utter and well-justified bewilderment).

Absence

Apologies for not being particularly present of late; I’ve been dealing with some frustrating health issues.

As I noted previously, I was gifted a cold by a coworker in early December. The following week I contracted another respiratory virus. This was was rather more severe:

First, it induced acute bronchitis; the net effect of which is that I ended up in the ER with an oxygen saturation level of 85%. The blood tests, EKG, and chest X-ray all came back clear; so I was discharged with antibiotics and a course of steroids.

The day after, the virus began to affect me neurologically. My long-term memory, short-term memory, and focus all started to wane. I developed a sensation of weakness in my arms, palpitations, insomnia, severe anxiety, and an impending sense of doom.

The palpitations, anxiety, and sense of doom thankfully receded. Unfortunately, I also lost the ability to regulate my temperature and my blood pressure when changing position.

It looked like I was over the worst of it, until I spontaneously developed neuropathy in my lower limbs. That earned me another trip to the ER, where they ruled out - in their words - “Anything super-deadly”. (I also got my first ever IV catheter, which I found kind of annoying; and a lumbar puncture, which was pretty interesting!)

The neuropathic symptoms have also receded somewhat; but the weakness in my left arm has grown worse, and now there’s a tremor in my second and third fingers. I’m currently waiting on additional neurological tests to determine the cause (’waiting’ being the operative word; after all, heaven forbid I have an MRI without my health insurer getting to sign off on it first)!

I know where a lot of people’s minds are going to go given the timing, and I don’t blame them; but: it wasn’t COVID. Two antigen tests, three PCR tests, and a nucleocapsid antibody test all indicate that this was a routine respiratory virus that just got completely out of control.

Two fun sidebars though:

First: between the tests from last year’s check-up, and the tests from the ER, I discovered that my lymphocyte numbers are routinely low. As measures go, it’s not a one-to-one predictor of immune health; but it does suggest that there’s something not quite right with my immune system, and that this might explain why even minor illnesses cause me significant secondary issues.

Second: I’ve written at length about how COVID tests set off my PTSD. (It’s not a rational reaction; but one borne of my younger self confusing their invasive and required nature with past violations of my bodily autonomy.)

The second go-around at the ER, the nurse performing the test was extremely thorough and as a result, I experienced arguably the most discomfort of any test to date. However, I was able to manage the situation well; in large part, I now recognize, because that selfsame nurse had a warm and sympathetic bedside manner.

That leads me to think that it’s less the physical discomfort of these acts that I find triggering; and more that they are being performed without care or consideration for my person. I’m still trying to make sense of the ramifications of this insight; but it’s beginning to seem like the core of the problem is that I’ve been dehumanized in the past, and this is what I’m so afraid of happening again.

Night surprise

Our three eldest cats have a simple routine: play, eat, sleep. For whatever reason, the youngest cat is the opposite: sleep, eat, play.

She is also very smart. She loves the laser pointer, and knows that it lives next to our bedside table; and will sit on the aforesaid table and sing to us when she wants to play.

This is all very cute except at nighttime, as we would like to sleep and she would like to play. This was the case last night, and unfortunately the cat would not listen to our polite requests to desist and so she was shut out of the room.

What then followed was a twenty-minute admixture of singing from the hallway and banging on the door. Eventually she grew bored, and decided to revisit another of her favorite pastimes (trying to pry the under-sink closet in the bathroom open; a process that involves more loud banging).

In the middle of the night, I visit the bathroom and as I’m sitting there in the dark, doing my thing, the youngest cat just casually strolls out of the closet like Samara crawling out of the television!

The spackle technique looks great! The pattern scales perfectly; and the cross-hatching of the brush strokes reminds me of modern digital camouflage (and by extension, suggests that the Kroot received their cold-weather gear from their Tau allies).

This definitely seems like the direction to go in; and I'm very excited to see the finished result! 🙂

Work in progress shot of my first four Kroot.

Using Farstalkers as Carnivores simply because they have cloaks - my Tau are going to have snow bases, so the Kroot will match, and there is a limit to the amount of genetic cold weather resistance you can inherit by eating dire-lemmings, ice-ferrets and Valhallans.

Not at all happy with the snow camo pattern I botched onto these guys tho... Might have to go back to the drawing board.