Emptying the Abode

He noticed a young fair-haired woman watching him with a yearning expression as he cheerfully lost stacks of silver pennies on the throw of the dice.
--Ken Follett, World Without End

I have little over one work day left, before I am temporarily unemployed, before I start my three day trip to Salt Lake City. I just solved probably my last programming challenge at my current employer (the elimination of a Transactional annotation that was causing TransactionNotFoundExceptions), but enough geek talk.

My living room is fairly empty. I hauled the bookcase, mini-trampoline, coffee table and sleeper sofa out by the bin where all but the sleeper sofa were claimed by other residents. The furniture costs me less to replace than hiring professional movers. I was almost talked into renting a U-Haul, but since I am traveling alone, it would put me in a vulnerable situation needing someone to help me unload, and I'd rather not put myself in that kind of position again.

I still have more packing to do, and more furniture to carry out.

Meanwhile, it seems that everyone is going to the hospital these days. My mother is in for a heart attack she suffered. They have her on a medicated stint to help prevent clotting, a genetic condition that I just found out runs in the family. She's really weak, but there was no permanent damage done to her heart.

My Aunt, my dad's sister, fell in the bathtub and hurt either her shoulder or her hip. I heard both as my foster sister explained it to me. She had to wait until my cousin showed up to help her out of the bathtub and to the hospital.

And then last night around 1 AM I got a call from a girlfriend asking me to pick her up from the local hospital because of an altercation she got into with her parents. She was fine. One of her therapists insisted that she get an immediate psychiatric evaluation done. As a result, I brought her back home with me so that she can recover.

And I wound up having heart-to-heart chats with my adopted little brother trying to help him understand how someone who was "all boy" would have needed to change genders over 30 years later. It had been 13 or more years since we last talked, and we caught up, filling in the details. We have both changed significantly over the years, but I would have to say I probably have changed a bit more. After chatting online via Facebook the night before last, I heard his voice and his wife's voice and they heard mine. All-in-all, our friendship still stands, while I get to know him a little better and vice versa.

So my plans tonight are to print out my last timesheet for tomorrow and focus on having all the packing done and large furniture out the door. It might be a late night, and for some reason, I'm thinking cheap 5 dollar pizza.

Hugs and God Bless,
Sophie

Tying It All Together

The thing that really bothers me of late is the fact that I had another inguinal hernia caused by my retractile testes again over the weekend. As usually happens, I was experiencing pain in my lower abdomen, significantly above the groin. When I investigated, I found that, as it chronically happens every few months, my significantly smaller testicle on the left side had retracted, and by applying pressure on the abdomen, I eventually returned it to the upper groin, where I was able to finally get it back out. It's ipsilateral, which means it only occurs on my left side.

Technically, this is considered a version of cryptorchidism, which I may have inherited from my father, who was born with an undescended testicle on the same side, and had to have it surgically corrected through a process called orchipexy, where the testes is surgically attached to the scrotum. If uterine tissue is present, usually a hysterectomy is also performed. In my case, it descends and stays down most of the time, so the doctors only repeatedly threatened an operation if it became problematic.

My first recallable incident, according to my mother, occurred when she took me to the doctor afraid that I may have appendicitis because of my abdominal pain. The doctor at the time noticed the "undescenced" testicle and issued the first "threat of surgery" that I can recall.

There is a possiblity that the condition may have been engendered by my own mother's high hormone counts, as she recalls a checkup with the doctor for her own puberty giving her such a diagnosis.

I found the following article snippet suggesting evidence to support a link between natal estrogen levels  and cryptorchidism:

The major clinical data concern the boys born of women treated during their pregnancy with diethylstilbestrol (DES), a very potent estrogen agonist, from 1950 to 1970. Some studies have reported alterations in sperm quality and a higher incidence of genital malformations, cryptorchidism, and testicular cancer than for the control population (Glaze 1984, Strohsnitter et al. 2001), whereas others found no such change (Wilcox et al. 1995). These discrepancies may be due to differences in the period of treatment during pregnancy, suggesting that there may be a specific period of sensitivity to xenoestrogens in the testis. A recent analysis of these epidemiological studies by Storgaard et al.(2006) pointed out that DES seems to have a negative effect on sperm count only if administered at high dose during the first semester of pregnancy.

-- Géraldine Delbès, Christine Levacher, and René Habert, "Estrogen effects on fetal and neonatal testicular development"

But it doesn't explain the fact that my rectractile experience is so intense, that it only occurs on one side or that I can swear there is a cervix and at least a vaginal cavity under my left scrotum, where someone drunkenly thought they were penetrating a vagina, and being able to penetrate deeply using my own hand.

But then I found in an article on Wikipedia that there is a genetic hormone deficiency that might explain not only the potentially hidden female parts, but also the cryptorchidism and the specific form of gender identity disorder that I have, where I have a fluid sense that is predominantly female and feminine, but slightly androgynous male from time to time:

Anti-Müllerian hormone also known as AMH is a protein that, in humans, is encoded by the AMH gene. It inhibits the development of the Müllerian ducts (paramesonephric ducts) in the male embryo...

...AMH prevents the development of the mullerian ducts into the uterus and other mullerian structures. The effect is ipsilateral, that is each testis suppresses Müllerian development only on its own side. In humans, this action takes place during the first 8 weeks of gestation. If no hormone is produced from the gonads, the Mullerian ducts automatically develop, while the Wolffian ducts, which are responsible for male reproductive ducts, automatically die...

Functional AMH receptors have also been found to be expressed on neurons in the brains of embryonic mice, and are thought to play a role in sexually diamorphic brain development and consequent development of gender-specific behaviours...

In men, inadequate embryonal AMH activity can lead to the Persistent Müllerian duct syndrome (PMDS), in which a rudimentary uterus is present and testes are usually undescended. The AMH gene (AMH) or the gene (AMH-RII) for its receptor are usually abnormal. AMH measurements have also become widely used in the evaluation of testicular presence and function in infants with intersex conditions, ambiguous genitalia, and cryptorchidism.

-- "Anti-Müllerian hormone" 

So an AMH defiency is a very plausible hypothesis for me, and as the following Wikipedia suggests explains that what I have felt physically since I was 16 is potentially grounded in reality, and not wishful thinking. As a matter of fact, it seems a reasonable diagnosis, via Occam's razor. The actual Wikipedia article on PMDS (Persistent Mullerian Duct Syndrome) is rather enlightening:

Typical features include undescended testes (cryptorchidism) and the presence of a small, underdeveloped uterus in a male infant or adult...

Cryptorchidism in AMH deficiency suggests that AMH may play a role in transabdominal testicular descent, perhaps by facilitating contraction of the gubernaculum.



Other Müllerian derivatives which may be present in at least a rudimentary form are the cervix, upper part of the vagina, and fallopian tubes.

Although persistent Müllerian duct syndrome is classified as an intersex condition, it does not involve ambiguity or malformation of the external genitalia.

-- "Persistent Mullerian duct syndrome"

As likely as it may seem in my case, it usually takes surgery to confirm, even though I have seen no other condition, yet, that adequately "explains the pain."


The other concern is that there are SRS doctors who will refuse to operate on intersex patients, possibly because it implies custom procedures, rather than something that can be reliably factorized.

The good news is that while I did disclose my retractile testicle, the surgeon saw no indicators that he could not perform my SRS.

It's just a matter now of getting to Salt Lake City in a couple of weeks, getting my relocation bonus once I start working, and use part of it to schedule the procedure with the required downpayment, then "things" should indeed seem normal for once in my life.

Hugs and God Bless,
Sophie

Yang for My Yin

The yin-yang view of the world is serenely cyclic. Fortune and misfortune, life and death, whether on small scale or vast, come and go everlastingly without beginning or end, and the whole system is protected from monotony by the fact that, in just the same way, remembering alternates with forgetting.
-- Alan Watts, Tao: The Watercourse Way

"I'll do it," I heard a voice say and looked up from the mats I had just spread in front of the shredded tire to see a clean-cut handsome young gentleman walking up the road toward me.

And behind him, another gentleman asked, "Do you need any help?"

After they conferred for a few moments among themselves, it was decided who would change my tire.

That made the third time in a row that gentlemen have taken oven the tire changing process for me.When I told Mike a little later, he snarked, "Maybe I should wear a dress."

That was yesterday morning on the way to work.

To make matters more interesting, I got a call later that morning from my hiring manager that the company I am leaving was willing to do something for me that they have never done for anyone else. They offered to up my hourly rate to almost match the company, offered to convert me to salaried contract with not quite as much paid time off as the new company and a promise to do what the could to fix my insurance next April.

This made my decision to leave tougher. But in the end three factors decided it for me: 1) the benefits at the new company are hard to ignore, 2) where were these benefits when I asked for them 4 1/2 months ago, and 3) I have already announced to people that I am leaving for Salt Lake City. I told her today when she called back that I was incredibly honored by their proposal and that made it an even tougher decision. She replied that she is not looking forward to breaking my supervisor's heart.

Yesterday, after work, I notified my landlord I was moving. We discussed the purse snatching and he told me that he was waiving the break-lease so that I could put the unfortunate events behind me. I was given the apartment checklist so that I would know exactly what I would be charged for if I failed to clean and vacate the apartment.

This morning, I noticed a huge blister leaking water high up on the bathroom wall. I called emergency maintenance this morning for them to take care of it. There were definite traces indicating that the leak was probably coming from upstairs.

I don't know if they checked the apartment upstairs, but the last I heard they had peeled the blister open and the water was still leaking--then went off somewhere.

I still have to call the Salt Lake City landlord to let her know that I am ready to move forward, given the photos and information she sent me. Of course, I don't know yet how I am going to afford it if my application for a new credit card to cover the moving expenses until my first paycheck arrives gets denied.

It seems like I am in a tight Yin-Yang spiral where fortune and misfortune are following rapidly on each others' heels.

Hugs and God Bless,
Sophie

A New Beginning

His words spun a spell around me, my mind filling with images that simultaneously aroused and repulsed me.
- Katie McAlister, Playing with Fire

I got the job. Unbelievably, somehow, I got the job, despite accidentally let slip a little crude humor at lunch and calling the director of develoment the wrong name--twice. I got the job.

In two weeks, I get to start over, start fresh, begin working where nobody (with the exception of Human Resources) knows my past. Little reminders like the name on my corporate email account, having to use a separate bathroom, and being denied hormones by the insurance company will become a thing of the past.

Last Wednesday, I flew up to Salt Lake City for the opportunity at a job making slightly more than I did last year before I got laid off, before I moved to Kentucky and transitioned. A whirlwind of prepping the Saturday before, and hair and makeup tips from Ryan were not the only things that helped me land this job. What really helped was being patient and transitioning on the job instead of between jobs last August, when a lawyer in Houston recommended I do so.

Last year, I flew up to Seattle in September, presenting as female for an interview, but because I hadn't worked as a woman, I was somewhat nervous during the interview process, unsure if I would be accepted, even though the company policy stated they would; and I'm sure that nervousness rubbed off.

When I interviewed last Thursday, it was like another day going to work. I dressed a little nicer, but not over the top in a skirt suit. In fact, I had the luck of the sleeve of my blouse opting to pick that moment to start parting from the blouse. I kept my light-weight sleeved shawl on for the entire interview.

And the magic of the moment was that I was being myself, and I hit my stride. Sure, I couldn't answer every question, but the bulk of the interview was to actually gauge my social skills, and I heard that there were no complaints of the 10 men that interviewed me and treated my as a lady the whole time. I found out later, when I looked at the buisiness card that one of the architects gave me to call if I had any questions, that he was not just "an architect;" he is the director of architecture.

I can't emphasize more the benefits of transitioning at work if you can.

So I will start my cross-country drive out on the 16th. This weekend left me feeling a little morose. I have many friends in Louisville, and it's a bit like cutting off my arm. I'm replanting in soil I have never been in. I have to re-establish a support safety net for myself, and a life outside of work. I'll be alone again, until I earn people's confidence in Salt Lake City.

And I'll be stealth. I'll have a permanent job with good benefits and I'll be able to afford to make my financial commitments. They also tell me there is no ghetto in Salt Lake City.

I'll also be entering a long-distance relationship for the next few months. Facebook, email and Instant Messaging should help me deal with some of the longing for my close friends.

I resigned yesterday. It was not easy. Tonight, I get to tell my laser tech that it's the last appointment, and I will go spend some time with Ryan afterwards.

Hugs and God Bless,
Sophie

Right Ingredients

The setup had all the right ingredients. He'd had plenty of practice in Miami, plenty of time to sharpen his instincts.

-- Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Relic

I received the itenerary confirmation for my trip to Salt Lake City tomorrow night. Tonight, I pack. I'll be back in Louisville late Thursday night.

I stopped by on the way home from work to spend some time relaxing with Ryan. It felt good and I got to speak a little with her mother, who doesn't seem at all hostile toward me. I was a little nervous returning home, because it was just after nine pm, the time of the mugging last week. After racing in the house twice, once with the purse, and once for the laundry, I noticed I had a phone call. My neighbor had borrowed a cell phone to let me know she saw two people that fit the description of my attackers patrolling the neighborhood, and said they appeared to live in a nearby apartment.

The job I am interviewing for is for an agile software development environment, all new development, and pays enough for me to make my financial obligations, and it's a permanent position. I was told that they noticed I had a "healthy scientific curiosity" as well.

I have also noticed that there were a couple of visits to my blog from readers in Salt Lake City around the first of the month. Could someone there have scoped me out already and put two-and-two together? I don't usually post my last name or the name of companies on my blog, because it exposes me in a potential harmful way. But there's enough information that has been accidentally posted to lead from my full legal name to here. It's just a matter of following the bread crumbs to find me here.

I have already Google'd for the Unitarian church up that way. They have grown to the point that they have two morning services every Sunday, and they are one of the charter churches that formulated the Welcoming Congregation Statement. My first priority if I get this job is to establish a support safety net for myself. The best place for me to do that is among the women at the church, and within that group, those who have same-sex partners. And I need to connect with the transgender support community there. This will probably take a few months again. But then I'll be ready to handle co-located a relationship in SLC. Meanwhile, I'll be having to maintain our relationship via long distance. I wish I could stay in Louisville, but under the current circumstances, I just can't afford it.

Hugs and God Bless,
Sophie

Recovery

S: (v) recover, retrieve, find, regain (get or find back; recover the use of) "She regained control of herself"; "She found her voice and replied quickly"


S: (v) recuperate, recover, convalesce (get over an illness or shock) "The patient is recuperating"


S: (v) recover, go back, recuperate (regain a former condition after a financial loss) "We expect the stocks to recover to $2.90"; "The company managed to recuperate"


S: (v) recover, recoup, recuperate (regain or make up for) "recuperate one's losses"


S: (v) reclaim, recover (reuse (materials from waste products))


S: (v) recover (cover anew) "recover a chair"

-- WordNet Definition of Recovery

Thank you, everyone, for your support. I am finding a surprising amount of it here and with people from my church and Ryan.

When something drastic and terrible happens to us, sometimes and most especially in a blindside moment, when are shaken to our very core. Our vulnerabilities and rage are exposed to the world, and we start hoping and praying for recovery. We want things back the way they were.

Unfortunately, in the strictest sense, recovery is never complete. Something has definitely changed. After Ryan was in a horrible accident, it must have taken her a long time to recover her confidence to drive, and likewise, my own confidence going outdoors at night after the mugging. Many times we don't gain full functionality back, nor can we, because something at a very systematic level has been changed forever. I can, perhaps, find my voice and reply to the moment quickly, but that orginal state, that elusive state is now blocked by the memory of the event , if nothing else.

Getting over the shock is something that I am very much attempting to do; and a big part of that is keeping myself occupied on what I need to do. I am nervous in the evenings now: around men, my apartment, my car. I take my purse inside by itself now first, I try to remember to have the keys out before I unlock the door. If I forget, I take my purse to the hood of the car and face out while digging. I am in a sense of hypervigilance, and in some ways it's a good thing, if I can learn from it and let it go.

Point blank: I'm scared, but I'm dealing with it and moving on.

So I am focusing on not only regaining from my prior financial loss when I was laid off last year, but taking a shot at an opportunity to improve it. To prep for my interview, I had the acrylics redone on my nails, had my hair conditioned and the bangs layered gently around my face, and had wardrobe, hair and makeup coaching from Ryan. In fact, I hit another milestone that I completely forgot about. This was my first cut back into a feminine pattern. The bangs had grown so long that their weight was flattening my hair. With the feathering all around this time, I now have a nice bounce with body. The hairdresser kept the length and we agreed that my hair may now be full and long enough to let it grow out in its natural color. We'll give it a shot at least. The flight to Salt Lake City's on Wednesday after work, and the interview's Thursday.

When I dropped Ryan off last night at the preserve where she lives, it felt so peaceful. The chaos of my week was felt more sublimely and balanced out by the noisy chirp of the crickets and forest creatures under the pale moon and clouds. Peace, at last. When I finally settle in to a permanent home, that's what I want. Something deeply immersed in a natural refuge not too far from an available city.

So, as I go through the process of recovering my exposed emotions, and taking solace in a church member's freely offered shoulder to shed a few irrational tears, I will re-cover myself with love, a renewed sense of my surroundings, both good and bad, and do my best to breathe every moment of life in me.

I have once again been stripped to nothing but raw emotion, and I now have the opportunity to once again choose the layers that will ultimately make up the composite me.

Hugs and God Bless,
 
  Sophie

Purse Snatching

One young man ran up behind me, pinned my arms and held my waist as soon as I had my house key from my purse. Another young man, who had reached me at the same time, just reached up and pulled the strap, which instantly tore away, and they took off running, while I called for help with no one responding.

That's it. My credit cards, identifying information, makeup, etc. was gone in seconds. The pepper spray did me no good. Nor did having my keys in my hand. I can't go to work without ID, and being contract, that means I don't get paid for the time it's going to take me to get new identification. I'm screwed.

And I'm going to need identification for an in-person job interview because the company is flying me to Salt Lake City for the face-to-face interview.

Welcome to Womanhood, and another good reason to leave Louisville.

But I finally met someone here I really like to be with, and likes to be with quirky me.

*Sigh,

- Sophie