Author: Alyxander James

Choices

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I am continuing to heal. This has been the last week that I’ll get to take off from work, and while I’m really enjoying all the free time, there is definitely a part of me that’s looking forward to getting back into a routine.

It’s been an interesting week of lots of emotions, for reasons I’m not going to get into here (although if we’re friends, feel free to ask me about it elsewhere and I can fill you in). It’s also been my first full week without drains, and I feel like, despite some continued swelling on the right side of my chest, I am finally getting a sense of what my body looks like now.

I realized on Tuesday that I am already certain that undergoing this surgery was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I knew that I would feel different after surgery, and I was pretty sure that different would be better. I had no idea how much more comfortable I would feel in my skin, though. Even though I’m still in some pain and am far from fully healed, I’m still so much more comfortable. I can breathe so much more easily, not just metaphorically, but literally, my lung capacity has increased now that I’m not binding. And I’m sure that will continue once I’m done with the compression vest, too. (I started a new harmonica class at the Old Town School of Folk Music this week. It’s been about a year since I had my harmonicas out, and I could not believe how much easier it was to play now that I’m not fighting my clothing for deep breaths.)

I’m happier with how my shirts fit. I’ve been wearing a lot of hand knit sweaters this week, since it’s cooled off, and while I liked most of them well enough before, I like them even more now. The super oversized sweater I knit last year that I never really wore because I hated how it hung off my chest? Now it’s just a super oversized sweater that feels cozy and comfortable. I had thought I’d never really knit a cardigan because I hated how they gapped across my chest. No longer a problem!

I’m going to finish this post off, for the curious, with a link to a photo of one of my very first shirtless selfies, taken last week. If you’re weirded out by medical things, you might not want to click through (my incisions still look pretty gnarly), but for those of you interested in a visual on how my healing is going, you can find that here!

Recovery Continues

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It’s been just over a week since I had chest masculinization surgery.

Generally, I’m feeling great. I’m beyond ready to have the drains removed, but by the time you read this, that’s probably already happened – the appointment is scheduled for Thursday morning. That’s also when I’ll get a better look at what my chest is really looking like. I’ve seen under the compression vest I’m in a couple of times now, but it’s been accompanied by the stress of a shower (which, when you’re not allowed to face the water or let the little nipple bolster/cushion things be hit directly by the water, and you don’t have your full range of arm motion, is a pretty stressful experience), and the ever-present drains were a factor then. Still, from what I can see, I’m pretty happy. The right side of my chest is pretty bruised, but that’s not particularly surprising after surgery. All in all, my biggest reaction so far has been feeling like this wasn’t that big of a change. This is untrue, but since my chest in real life now looks like it already did in my head, it feels a little like not much happened.

A couple of days ago I traded the heavier pain killers for ibuprofen, which has been working out fine. The worst I’ve had for pain has been what feel like muscle aches. Nothing too serious, mostly just distracting when it happens. The meds have done a good job of taking the edge off, which is about all I ever hope for with pain medication.

My partner’s dad stayed with us and helped out around the apartment for the past ten days; he went home last night. It was great to have him here, and I’m grateful for his help and support!

My week has mostly involved reading (I’ve finished Mara Wilson’s autobiography, Where Am I Now?, which I bought a few days before surgery, and Terry Pratchett’s Wintersmith, which my best friend sent me for recovery reading), knitting (slowly, on a project where tension and gauge don’t make much of a difference), napping, and watching movies. Which is to say it’s been relaxing and (thankfully) uneventful. Next week I will be totally on my own at home, so that’ll be an adventure, but I’m not worried about it. I’m supposed to go back to work the week after, but I might opt to work from home that week, just to ease back into things. We’ll see how it goes.

Thanks for all of your support. I’ve been flooded with sweet texts, emails, and Facebook messages, and I have no doubt all the love coming my way is part of what’s making this all go so smoothly.

Post-Op

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Hello, friends! I am writing this Wednesday morning, my first full day post-op, so this is going to be a short one, probably.

Surgery happened yesterday afternoon, and went very well. The operation itself took less time than the surgeon had estimated it would, although I made up for that time in recovery (I was a sleepy bear and it took me a while to wake up all the way). I really wasn’t nervous at all – the entire staff at the surgical center was charming and kind, and I felt very well-informed every step of the way. By far the worst part of the process was getting the IV started (my line is always, “I am not afraid of needles, but my veins are,” and that definitely proved true yesterday), but even that wasn’t unbearable.

Today I’m pretty sore, but thanks to help from my partner and his dad, who came down to help us out this first week, I’m staying on top of meds and getting top-notch aftercare.

Thanks to everyone who has texted, emailed, Facebooked, or otherwise sent good vibes my way! I’m definitely feeling them.

Counting Down

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The countdown to surgery is officially in the single digits, now. All the paperwork has been submitted, insurance has approved it, and I’m all set to go.

It still doesn’t feel totally real. But it’s getting closer to feeling like reality every day.

I’m excited, but it’s not a particularly exuberant excitement. I’ve got some pre-op jitters, for sure, but for the most part, I’m feeling pretty calm. It’s a quiet sort of excitement. It feels right. It’s been a long time coming, and considering the fact that binding is increasingly painful (even just in the past few weeks), it’s definitely the right time to do this. (On that note, I saw this study on binding going around on Facebook, which has also been a long time coming, and I hope to see more like this.)

There’s an awareness suffusing the excitement of the fact that there’s no going back from this. Not that I want that as an option, but I’m aware that this is a level of permanent change that could keep relationships with certain members of my extended family from ever coming back. I don’t know that most of those relationships are salvageable, anyway, but this does feel more…final, I guess.

I’ve been binding for five years as of this month. I’ve squeezed myself into various rib-crushing configurations of compression shirts almost every single day of that five years. When I started, I thought it was going to be a thing I just did occasionally, to play with gender. I didn’t have any idea how much I would like my flat-chested silhouette. The first day I wore a binder, I spent most of it aware of how much harder it was to breathe, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do it again. The next morning, I put it back on without thinking much about it. There were times when the particular type of binder I was using caused so much pain in my ribs that I had to stop binding and switch to sports bras for a few weeks, and that was almost more agonizing that the rib pain. Thankfully, binder technology has come a long way in five years, and thanks to gc2b I’ve been able to bind much more comfortably (and, presumably, more safely) for the past couple of years. But I am so, so ready to be done.

I am ready to be done wearing a binder plus and undershirt plus a regular shirt every. single. day.

I am ready to relearn what it’s like to breathe to my full lung capacity.

I am ready to be done with aching ribs and chest muscles.

And most of all, I’m ready to be able to look in the mirror and see a reflection that matches my mental image of myself.

Happy Autumn Thoughts

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I realized something this, as the temperatures finally started to descend: I think fall my have replaced winter as my favorite season. When I was a kid, I had pretty awful seasonal allergies, and since pollen is a non-issue in a Minnesota December, and since I really do find snow pretty and peaceful, and since I tend to overheat easily, I was always a big fan of winter over any other season.

Now, I don’t mind winter, but I can’t deny the general inconvenience of it. Waiting for the bus in a snowdrift is no fun. Trekking to work over unshoveled, icy sidewalks is no picnic, either. And now that the arrival of fall doesn’t automatically mean sniffles for me, I’m coming to enjoy it more and more. Sweater weather, and apple cider, and leaves changing color…it’s a really beautiful time of year.

I’m glad that I’m going to be recovering from surgery at a time of year where I don’t need to be running the air conditioner to be comfortable, but can have the windows open and enjoy the crisp fall air.

And speaking of surgery, this week has brought with it the most exciting news I could have received: insurance has agreed to cover the procedure. This is still a pretty unbelievable thing: most of the people I know who have undergone this surgery have had to save up and pay it all out of pocket.  I really wasn’t sure how I was going to make it work without insurance. I got the news at exactly two weeks until the big day…waiting was awful. But now it looks like it really is going to happen, and things really are going to work out the way I’ve been almost afraid to hope they would. So happy thoughts all around.

Barometric Blues

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I’m writing this on Wednesday, which has been a weird one for weather.

It felt like it was still 5:30 am dark until at least 9:30 am. Between the darkness and the rain, it was a pretty depressing start to the day. Add the fact that the wind turned my trusty umbrella inside out for the first time in the eight years that I’ve owned it, mangling one of the bows and rendering it pretty useless, and the fact that I woke up with a sore throat that isn’t going away on its own, and I was quite grouchy before I even got to work.

The rest of the day has been alternating sun and clouds and the tension of potential storms, an endless and excruciatingly dull conference call, and too much time spent wondering what to include on the “development plan” my boss has asked me to pull together in advance of my yearly review, and it’s all combining to give me a headache and make me wish I’d stayed home today.

Sometimes when I say I’m feeling “under the weather,” I’m being less metaphorical than people think. Barometric pressure changes do weird things to this Bipolar brain of mine.

It’s not just headaches. Several of my coworkers were complaining in the morning about the headaches they woke up with when the weather changed. I get those, sometimes, too, but that’s not all of it.

Something about storms and rapidly changing weather patterns makes me feel like my grasp on reality is a little…tenuous, I guess. Like I’m walking the edge of the abyss of psychosis and one wrong step could sent me tumbling away.

There’s not really any empirical evidence in my life that this is the case. I’ve never really had a psychotic episode. I’ve never actually lost my grip on reality. Barometric shifts have never done more than make me profoundly uncomfortable.

I’ve had panic attacks on days like these, though, when the air makes me feel claustrophobic. I panic when I feel like reality is going to get away from me, even though I’ve never actually experienced the realization of that fear.

I have known people who would tell me this is altogether untrue, that in fact I spend much of my life disconnected from reality, that my very identity is proof of this. On a less severe level, there are people who would say that surely, someone who loves fantasy and plays D&D has to have made some sort of break with reality. I have heard these arguments from several family members over the years.

But the thing is…yes, I enjoy my escapist indulgences from time to time. I like getting lost in a book for a while, or inside the head of a character I’m playing (although at least half the time I find role playing as someone else is in fact some of the best therapy). But I am always, always, always aware of the reality I’m escaping from. I’ve known people who can’t keep truth straight from fiction. I am not one of those people. I’ve never lost sight of what’s real and true around me.

There’s something about the tension in the space before a storm, though, that makes me feel like I’m not completely in control of myself, and that’s really terrifying.

I’m not really sure where I’m going with this. All that to say, I guess, that brains are complicated and react to things that may or may not make immediate apparent sense. So, you know…be gentle with each other.

Brains Can Be Sneaky

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Being Bipolar is an adventure.

Sometimes, I can feel the shifts in the cycle coming, like the ache in my joints when the weather changes, only the ache is in my brain and it feels less like an ache and more like an electrical current under my skull.

Other times, it jumps out from behind a corner, beats me up, takes my lunch money, and leaves me wondering what in the world happened to get me here.

This week has been an example of the latter. I have so many things to be excited about, and so much to work on to get there, and yet DepressedBrain has decided to come to visit. I’m so tired all the time, and I’m spending way more time than seems necessary feeling paralyzed by the sadness.

With DepressedBrain has come what feels like a particularly paranoid iteration of AnxietyBrain. My internal monologue seems to get stuck on an endless stream of worst-case scenarios if I let my mind wander. Which, as you might imagine, is a super fun time while waiting to find out if my insurance is going to cover this otherwise extraordinarily expensive surgery that’s now less than a month away.

Still, it does feel like things are falling into place, and I am tentatively hopeful that everything is going to work out.

It’s a Process

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Holy shit, it’s September!

That’s about as coherent as my thoughts have gotten over the past few days. I feel like I’ve done a pretty good job with anxiety management lately, but as October draws closer, I find I’m often just a big old bundle of nerves.

I’m still waiting on a letter from my doctor that is a crucial part of raising my chances of having insurance cover surgery next month (if I’m lucky, I’ll have the letter by the end of the day today).

Once I have that letter in hand, I can turn it (along with the letter from my therapist) in to the surgeon’s office, who will submit all of that to my insurance, and then I cross all appendages and wait to hear if I’m covered, or if I’m going to be in a whole lot more credit card debt at the end of all of this.

Still, despite the anxiety, things are going pretty well. I am constantly reminded that my people are the best people, and I am super grateful for that. I have such a great support system, and multiple creative outlets, and a cute, cozy place to live with the love of my life. So even though I have several thousand dollars of credit card debt that might be about to double hanging over my head, I feel like I can’t really complain too much. I’m finally in a place where I feel like things really are going to work out, somehow.

Dealing with Disappointment

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In last week’s blog, I mentioned that I was preparing to play my longest-yet set on Sunday. I spend a fair bit of time practicing, there were a handful of people who were planning to come see me…and then, as I was on my way to the venue, I got a Facebook message informing me that the bar had double-booked, and my set had been cancelled.

As you might imagine, I was disappointed. My immediate reaction was to turn around and run home, where I would have spent the evening sulking. Thankfully, my partner had a rather clearer head in the moment than I did, and suggested we try to meet up for drinks with one of the friends who had been planning to come to the show.

Our friend was up for drinks, and while I was still super disappointed, I actually ended up having a really lovely evening. I was able to get past being angry pretty quickly. It made me particularly thankful for friends who are super supportive and who were angry on my behalf.

I ended up spending Tuesday evening recording most of the songs that would have been in my set. Most of them had been posted somewhere on my SoundCloud page in the past, but I had a few new ones to post by the end my little recording session, and because I don’t have much else to write about this week, I’m going to post them here, too.

This first song is one that I wrote back in the songwriting class I took in January/February. We were given the assignment of being “dream collectors.” I posted on Facebook asking my friends to tell me their most interesting dreams. I got a bunch of fantastic responses, and it was hard to choose just a few for the song, and harder still to distill them down to a verse each, but I’m really pleased with the result.

This song is one that I wrote in my most recent songwriting class. The assignment was to write a “nice” breakup song: the sort where you wish the other person well. I think this song might make me seem more evolved and less grudge-holding than I sometimes am, but oh, well.

And finally, here’s another one I wrote in the most recent songwriting session. This is one of the weirder songs I’ve ever written, musically. It started as a word list, and turned into something that’s one part theology, one part blasphemy, and one part social commentary.

Momentum

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Despite the fact that the entire rest of my work team was on vacation last week, making for a rather sleepy week at the office, it feels like my life is really picking up speed.

I’m less than 50 days out from chest masculinization surgery. There are a handful of details to finish nailing down between now and then, but for the most part, it looks like it really is going to happen. It’s starting to feel real. It still feels like it’s a long way off, but then I start looking at the actual numbers, and really…it’s coming up faster than I think I’m allowing myself to process.

I’m playing two different shows in the next couple of weeks. Sunday night I’ll be playing my longest on-stage set ever (a whopping 45 minutes). I was asked to do the show with one week’s notice, and in a moment of madness, I agreed. I’ll manage to get everything polished enough to play by then, but it’s definitely nerve-wracking. It might be my last big show of the year, depending on how recovery goes after surgery, so there’s also some self-inflicted pressure there, to go out with a bang.

In a few weeks, I’ll be participating in a show comprised entirely of covers of songs written by one of my dear songwriting friends. So that’s two additional songs I need to get cemented in my head within the next few weeks. I’m excited and honored to have been asked to participate, and I think it’ll be a really fun night. I never really do covers, because I generally feel like I can’t do another musician’s work justice. So it’s an exciting challenge.

I’m trying to cherish all the time I’m spending playing my guitar right now, since it’s going to be a major challenge (and for a while, an impossibility) post-op.

I’ve been a little down the past few days, for no real reason I can figure aside from the cyclical nature of my brain. But I’m aware that things are falling into place, and that’s a comforting thing to realize.