Ranging My Life

And it was the old lady, Mrs. Goodman, who first made of me a confidant. Looking back, I see now that her eccentricity was really only a powerful refusal to have truck with the superficial, her incantatory way of talking only that ancestral harking back of the elders, which we reject to our loss. She was one of those interior monologuists who are driven by a lifelong need to see the formal design of their own lives, to fix its rubric firmly among the chapters of the world, and she ruminated best in the presence of a listener manque--a servant, a stranger, or a child. Since she was also one of those blessed of the earth whose own family is the hub of their sky, it was of the Goodmans that, incessantly, I learned. She ranged her life, theirs, with the passion of a critic, and like the best of these, with a wildness of phrase and a soundness of judgment that gave me something of the method, too.
-- Hortense Calisher, False Entry

Tonight, after midnight, I am going to finalize the booking of my flight to Thailand when the withdrawal check from my retirement moves from a pending deposit to funds available; then I am going to transfer the remainder of my surgery balance to a Bangkok bank, and move on to focusing on my passport. I now have less than 6 months to go before I have my genitals surgically corrected to remove a chronic annoyance.

I saw a hematologist/oncologist on Friday. An expert in her field, she doubts that I have hemochromatosis, so she ordered me to get genetic marker testing done for C282Y and H63D , two genes that are known to be the source of hereditary hemochromatosis (HH). She deduced from my hematocrit levels and my medications that I was transsexual. Her child is going to school with two "sex-changers," as she called it, and she was very accepting of me. I finally had an upper physical check done, while wearing a robe to cover my breasts, because she likes to do a physical on all new patients. She suspects that my iron may be elevated because of some metabolic stress; she mentioned the phrase "liver biopsy," which makes me incredibly uncomfortable.

After the two vials of blood were drawn from me, I headed back home, finding myself incredibly drowsy. After a short nap, I opted to draw a bath and do my estrogen injection in the evening, because I didn't want the PMS wave to make me so ill I couldn't attend the Gender Conference on Saturday.

The conference was great! I met and did performance poetry under the tutelage of Elisha Lim, took part in a focus group on the barriers to transgender health care, and enjoyed a closed interactive session on Transgender Romance. I met so many of my emerging friends, and felt an incredible synergy as we all came together.

Afterwards, we danced at an after-conference party at the Sugar Place and listened to music and prose from Elisha Lim. He sat for a moment to read off my cell-phone what I am planning to present tomorrow at Sugar House Coffee. He is a very buoyant, positive-energy individual and I feel fortunate to have met him.

Hugs and God Bless,
Sophie