Sunday, July 11, 2010

XXY: Altered Living and Gender

I am left with a sense of loss today. Yet once again the trajectory of learning has unlocked another key to the mystery of my life. More specifically, I have reached the realization that my parents had to have known that I was not normal because they participated in treatments more than basic health care and that their certainty that the worst possible outcome is that I would be gay. You would not believe their paranoia over the possibility of their child growing up gay, or maybe you would. Very clearly not about me, it is about their fear, that my parents would subject me to what amounts to experimental procedures in order to fix something that was not broken.

What I'm saying is that the body I live for is not as God made me, but as a set of medical professionals aided by my fearful parents altered me to. I have been trying for the past decade now to get copies of all of my medical records. Some of them were easy to get, others that I know must exist because of liability limits in the USA; The holders refuse to acknowledge I was ever treated by their institution. Evidently if we sweep the very existence of what amounts to torture and illegal human experimentation out of existence then there is no need to supply that information to the patient. Originally I thought my parents agreed to these treatments because they feared I might be gay; but then wrote out a time line and realized I was wrong the fear of my being gay came after the treatments. So really, let me get this straight...after being treated for .. years .. my parents only remaining concern about my ability to live a happy and good life is that I might at some future point be gay. Why would I be gay?

Why indeed, would the last fear be their child growing up gay?

What an odd question, that after treatments, with one on going treatment that nearly killed me twice (testosterone, you would think they had learned the first time), why would my parents then hold this one great fear that I would be gay. Would it be because I was not born male? If a woman was heterosexual innately wired to love men you would not consider her to be gay, but if she was "fixed" and told to be a male, and "treated" and told she was a male. Then there might be that fear, "Oh god my baby might grow up to be gay." I would not write this article in this reference frame if I did not have a reasonable basis to do so. Which I do, and its all a medical mess. Just recently in one of those starry blue sky moments where many lines suddenly cross and a miracle occurs and the person has a realization, to know exactly what the problem is; I stumbled on the concept of lunar and menstrual cycles. Of course I know women have menstural cycles, and of course I declined to look into them because I was male; Right? For years I have kept a spreadsheet of my life and how that life goes day to day. It seemed too trivial that a host of the problems I have been dealing with stem from not understanding something so basic, why would a doctor or my parents not have told me about this? I feel betrayed. I dropped a 29 day cycle on top of that spreadsheet, and with two exceptions it matched the odd cycle of 10-12 days a month of anxiety, 4 days of despair, and 6 days of unexplainable moodiness. Without the connection to the lunar or menstrual cycle, I could predict the dawn of each of these happenstances, and could predict months in advance which day I would experience deep despair, or really high anxiety, or panic attacks. It would have to be a failed menstrual cycle. The hormone levels are supposed to rise and when they do not anxiety, panic, and despair each a worsening level of response to something my body is screaming that it needs. This happens because those hormone levels estradiol and progesterone do not rise. I have taken the time to get numerous tests and re-tests done. And every time pre-cursor hormones like Luteinizing Hormone (LH) and Follicular Stimulating Hormone (FSH) as well as the other precursor hormones are always a steady low level; A very low level.

Some would call this panhypopituitarism in a female. Others are calling it Klinefelter's Syndrome in a male with primary hypogonadism and unexplained issues relating to the pituitary/hypothalamus axis, or just Klinefelter's Syndrome with primary and secondary hypogonadism with other issues. Regardless of what the many specialists want to call it, why is it always me who has to invent a method of treatment?

When I acknowledge this certainty, and I embrace the 29 day cycle all the anxiety, depression, panic, and despair become a sudden distant memory. To believe that now for the first time in almost 30 years I can enjoy a month without complications, is almost unbelievable to me. Because of the very well documented women's menstrual cycle, I know when to add estradiol, and when to add progesterone and there is no more anxiety. To think how many years I have struggled with this, and they never told me.... not once.

Does not leave alot of trust for the medical field, nor for parents. Whose ethics, fears, and eugenicist morals are worth more to them than treating patients fairly, honestly, and with forthright cause.

About living as a woman.. I was one once. I have lived as one since. And now I blend both the female and the male. And to hell with all the people who can't deal with it.

Onnineko

4 comments:

  1. Could it be that your parents ,having never had a child such as you,were simply afraid of the unknown.From the little I know of you,I'm not aware of you having any siblings,that being the case,your parents 'concern' had a strong foundation....don't you think ?

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  3. Yes, XXy, that is entirely possible.. but there is enough evidence to the contrary. And I've written little enough of my history for anyone to guess or substantiate much of anything. There might be a reason for that, perhaps...

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  4. When you started your really long paragraph I got bored and stopped reading.

    I know of no association between XXY, seminiferous tubule dysgenesis and sexual orientation.

    And parents, parents are wonderful people, the psychologically healthy ones are anyway. They raise psychologically healthy children.

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