The Fog Is Lifting

Two months ago I made some changes to my dietary supplements. I was dutifully taking a multivitamin and supplement of B vitamins and Iron. But I was still anemic and my energy levels were low. Basically, thing didn't change. I have always bordered on anemic and with my psych meds and my depression, my energy levels have always been iffy. Unless I was in a manic phase, I just had no oomph to do anything. 

A friend of mine showed me an article on supplements and absorption and it made perfect sense to me. I took it to my doctor and he confirmed that it was likely that I wasn't absorbing much of the supplements. The hard processed cocktail of chemicals was doing me no good at all. It was time for a change. 

As much as I can, I have switched to whole food supplement or vitamins that dissolve in the mouth. And wow, has it made a difference. I ditched the multivitamin all together. I am now taking an iron supplement that is in a capsule called Gentle Iron and it dissolves quickly instead of the slow iron that dissolves slowly, or not at all. My B supplement is a chewable tablet. My Vitamin D3 is now a gel capsule. Just making those changes has made a huge difference. 

After a month of being on the new supplements, I added a few more. I am taking Turmeric with Ginger in capsule form. These are supposed to reduce inflammation - something I need desperately - and they are gentler on the system than Ibuprofen or Aleve. I haven't been on them long enough to tell if they are really working, but nothing bad has happened so I'll stay the course. I also added a specific Omega-3 supplement that was mentioned in an article on dietary needs for those with mental illness: Nutritional therapies for mental disorders. It is called VegEPA and it has fish oil and Evening Primrose oil. It is supposed to help the damaged parts of the brain work better. My final addition was a supplement from a company called Host Defense that uses mushrooms that are shown to help the brain and other parts of the body function better. The one I chose was Stress Decompress. 

The change has been remarkable. One of the frustrating things about Schizophrenia is that the anti-psychotic medications help with the hallucinations, delusions, and paranoia, but they do nothing for the dissociation and lack of concentration. Well, something in my new cocktail is working because I have actually had the energy and interest to do things. I started some rehab on my indoor garden and I have started a gardening blog to document what I am doing. I have written 5 entries in the past 2 weeks. I am reading books. I am cleaning. I am actually doing things. It feels wonderful. 

This mixture of supplements won't work for everyone. Talk to your doctor first. But it is something to consider. Also, if you want to know more about the mushroom supplements, there is an awesome documentary on Netflix that got me into fungi. If is called Fantastic Fungi and the brand of supplement I use - Host Defense - was started my the mycologist featured in the show. Even if you don't want to get into taking mushrooms for your health, it is still a great watch. 

Things are changing. I am feeling better than I have years. Fingers crossed that it continues. 

Fighting The Pain

Chronic pain is probably the biggest stressor in my life. I have had it so long that I tend to block it out, but it still wears me down. I often don't realize how bad it has gotten until I cannot sleep. Then it is past time for a visit to the pain clinic. 

Most of my severe pain is caused by osteoarthritis, which is something that is hard to treat successfully. My two worst areas - my left shoulder and my neck - have been treated in the past by steroid injections every 6 months or so. My neck pain, which is cause by arthritis and bone spurs, finally got bad enough that my pain specialist recommended radiofrequency ablation of some of the nerves. Both of my parents have had it done and report good results and my specialist said it should provide relief for a year or more. 

Of course, they can't just go ahead and do the procedure. Any and all insurance companies require tests to be sure the procedure will work. So first they go in and inject lidocaine in the affected areas and I spend the day tracking how much relief I get and for how long. If the relief is 80% or more for at least three hours - which I got - then they do a second test. This time a stronger local pain medication is injected (I can't remember what it is called) and I again track how much relief I get. This one was also successful so we scheduled the ablation. Now, these two tests need to be to weeks apart. So I get the lidocaine, I get a couple hours relief, then I hurt like crazy for two weeks. Fortunately we were able to schedule the ablation just three days after the second test. 

For the procedure itself I for the first time decided to be sedated. Usually I just deal with the needles. But burning nerves sounded sufficiently scary that I wanted to be doped up. Unfortunately I wasn't dopey enough. I had to use a different doctor for the procedure than I usually use because I could only have it done on days my dad was off work. Obviously I couldn't drive myself. I also found out the day of that they would only do one side that day and the other side would be done in two weeks (what is it with two weeks?). The doctor was OK, but he didn't communicate with  me like my usual doctor does. The needles/probes need to go into four spaces between vertebrae on each side and it took the new doc forever to get the correct spots. He ended up calling in nurses to pull my shoulders down so he could get to the bottom one. After all the shifting and poking, the actual ablation was nothing. And the sedation was light enough that I was almost immediately able to get dressed and leave. 

Since then I have been in hell. The left side of my neck is a bit sore, but feels a lot better. Hooray for ablation and steroids. But by comparison my right side is absolutely killing me. I have been unable to bock the pain so I am wearing lidocaine patches and using diclofenac gel. As bad as the procedure was, I cannot wait to get the right side done so I am no longer lopsided. And I have made a note to make sure that I always use the doctor I am used to. 

While I wait, I am unable to wear any of my racerback bras because they pull on my neck and make the pain unbearable. And no matter what, my neck is agony by the end of the day. I plump up my pillow and lie down and just let my neck rest. 

One more week. 

But What Does Asexual And Agender Mean To Me?

Yesterday I had a great visit with my friend Melody. She has been very supportive of me as I rediscover myself. And she had some great questions for me. 

The most insightful was what does it mean to be Asexual. We talked about sexual attraction and I told her how I never really enjoyed sex. It was too much effort for too little return. And it didn't matter the number of partners or the gender. It was a relief when I moved to Utah and I was officially removed from the dating pool. No pressure. 

But she dug deeper, and it really made me think. For instance, we were talking about one of our favorite shows "Lucifer". Tom Ellis is a magnificent specimen of a male, complete with butt dimples. And Leslie-Ann Brandt is gorgeous. As we talked about great scenes with Mr. Ellis' derrière, she asked what the attraction was if I had no desire for sex. After all, most people would have a sexual attraction to one or both of those actors. 

I had to think hard to describe the attraction. And it finally clicked. 

Have you ever watched a thoroughbred horse run or a big cat crouch and leap? They are beautiful. The muscles move smoothly under the skin and how they move is pure poetry. But as you watch them move, it isn't sexual. It is an appreciation for a beautiful animal in motion. That is how I feel about a well-proportioned human. I love watching dancers and gymnasts. The play of muscles as they run and leap is beautiful. And that is how I feel about Mr. Ellis or Ms. Brandt. They are works of art. I have no doubt that if Michelangelo were alive today, he would find either of them good models to be immortalized in marble. 

But Asexual is more than lack of attraction. For me, it partners with being Agender. I have slowly been changing my outward appearance to match how I feel about myself. I am Transexual, but I do not want to become male. Instead I am moving toward androgyny. It is one of the many reasons I keep my head shaved. And I have scheduled my double mastectomy, which will happen in about a year. I am doing the simple mastectomy with no reconstruction. I other words, all the tissue taken and no nipples afterward. I cannot wait. 

Again, Melody dug deeper. Why not just get a breast reduction? Why no nipples? 

The answer is simply that, just as I do not see other people as sexual objects, I do not want to be one myself. To me, my DDD-sized breasts are extraneous lumps of fat hanging from my chest that attract unwanted attention. I need them completely gone. As for the nipples? I have no need for them. And without them there can be no question of whether it is "proper" for my chest to show. 

She even asked about my wardrobe and how that would be different. I was wearing a sleeveless tunic that had darts and shirring around the neck so that it would fit nicely around the breasts. I hate it, but it fits. It will be one of the first pieces of clothing to go into the donation box. Some days I want to look pretty and I would love to be able to wear a nice, cool, spaghetti-strap sun dress without worrying about falling out of it. Some days I want to be able to wear a nice men's dress shirt without worrying about the buttons popping off (it has happened more than once). I want to be able to wear a muscle shirt to the gym and a regular tank top when I go out in the heat. I wonder what it would be like to be able to button up a cardigan without the buttons straining and looking like the slutty girl in a horror movie. My T-shirts would fit. Oh, I can't wait. 

This is what Asexual and Agender look like for me. Some others might have different views. I would love to hear them.

Finally Finding The Real Me

This past year as been a horrid one. Being on lockdown for more than 400 days really messed with my OCD and my schizophrenia. But being "trapped" also let me really think about who I am when I am not trying to conform to other people's ideals. 

I have been open about being schizophrenic. That was actually the easy part. Coming out as Pansexual was harder. But what I learned while having a lot of time for introspection is that I am not Pansexual, I am Asexual. I never really enjoyed sex of any kind, although I pretended I did to make my now-ex fiancé happy. This is why I was not upset when he slept around. It took the pressure off so I didn't have to fake it. And I acted like I thought any big-busted woman should act by wearing low-cut shirts and tight tops. My DDDs were a part of me that both men and lesbian or bi-sexual women thought of as sexy and I went with it. 

Underneath it all, I was very unhappy. The 90s were a hard part of my life. I was hiding my mental illness and I was only out as bi-sexual at the time because that was most acceptable. In private I was cutting, mostly on my legs where it wouldn't be seen, but also on my breasts because I hated them. I hated the attention they got and I hated that those big blobs of fat on my chest attracted sexual attention. But I hid all of this. I was just learning that there was such thing as bi-sexual. Trans and genderqueer and such were foreign to me. 

When I moved from Los Angeles to Southern Utah, a lot of the pressure came off. I had no pressure to date or find any kind of sexual partner. In fact, my last date was in 1998. I loved that I didn't fit in to the LDS pigeonhole and so I had a good reason not to find a boyfriend or girlfriend. 

As the 2000s went by, I still flaunted my cleavage because again, if you got it, flaunt it. That was the norm. I still did some cutting, but at least I didn't have anyone touching my breasts, which I have always hated. Slowly I tried changing my wardrobe to more gender neutral: jeans and a T-shirt. Unfortunately, it gets into the 110s during the summer here and the tank tops and shorts I wear to keep cool are too revealing for me to be really comfortable. But I try to ignore it. I ended up getting a complete hysterectomy a few years back and that was wonderful thing for me. I was closer to being asexual and agender. 

Then came 2020, the year of the lockdown. I did a lot of reading and a lot of research. I found out about the term gender dysphoria and how insurance has been known to cover top surgery (in my case a double mastectomy) if it can be proven to be medically necessary. Oh, I was elated. Could I actually get rid of my breasts? That would be wonderful. 

My primary physician referred me to a local plastic surgeon who is an expert in breast reconstruction. I actually had to wait 8 months for the consult because everything was backlogged. During that time I did more research and more self examination and confirmed to myself that this was what I wanted. 

The appointment came and the doctor was wonderful. He was polite. He used the name and pronouns I wanted and his staff was courteous and professional. He gave me some options, including prepaying at a discount or having my psychiatrist write a letter to support my surgery and it would be added to my file as part of the insurance claim. He made me feel so comfortable. 

I had some things to think about, but it didn't take me long to decide to go with this surgeon, even if it meant waiting another year to get a surgery date. I am going with the simple mastectomy, which is a total removal, including no nipples. As for the insurance, if it doesn't cover it, I can appeal. And if I end up making payments on it the rest of my life, it will be worth it. 

So, what does all this mean? This means I know who I am now. 

I am Transgender. No, I am not transitioning from female to male. I am transitioning from female to non-gender. I am neutral, neither male nor female. Some days I want to look pretty and wear a dress. Other days I want to look masculine and wear a muscle shirt and jeans. I cannot wait for my breasts to be gone so that I can wear masculine clothing more comfortably. 

I am not he/him. I am not she/her. I am they/them. My name is not Kathryn or Kate, it is Ryn. And I am finally getting a body that matches the real me. 

Life Under Pressure

My sister Abbie and her kids Carter, Lauren, and Spencer have set up Zoom chats with my parents and I. It's actually pretty awesome, especially since they live just outside Detroit so we rarely see them. It's fun seeing how big the kids have gotten. 

As part of the chats, the kids ask us questions. It looks like they are cards from some sort of game and it is interesting to answer them. Questions range from how did my parents meet and where were you born to what is the scariest thing that ever happened to you and what is your favorite food. I have learned some things about my parents with the questions, and I know they have learned a bit about me. 

One question that came up yesterday is what is the most stressful thing to happen to you. The only answer I could come up with was "my entire life". I think they thought I was being evasive or flippant, but it is a real answer. My whole life is one big mess of stress and pressure. 

As a kid, I was responsible for my younger siblings. I made dinner for the family starting at age 8 when my mom had to go back to work. I started working as a full-time babysitter when I was 11 so I could afford school clothes and I started my first "real" job at Taco Bell when I was 14 for the same reason. I was a constant overachiever and took extra classes in school and I would read anything and everything I could get my hands on. I was always worried that I wouldn't get and A and that the kids I were tutoring wouldn't do well in their classes. I was a champion at making everything my responsibility. 

I was diagnosed with chemical depression when I was 11 years old and started antidepressants. And I started hearing voices and having hallucinations when I was about 16. I had never even heard the word schizophrenia, let alone knew what it was so I assumed my voices were angels or the voice of God. Naturally, the person I went to about it was our Bishop. I was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and the clergy aren't formally trained. At that age, though, I had no idea what that meant. I assumed the Bishop was a conduit for the Holy Spirit so he was safe to talk to. Well, he told me that only men can be prophets so my voices were of the devil. He challenged me to confess what I had done in my life to open myself to the devil. I was the ultimate goody two shoes and couldn't find a thing. His answer was that I must have done something in the pre-existence and I had to find a way to atone for whatever I had done. This resulted in my first suicide attempt, and when that failed I continued my life convinced that I was inherently evil and nothing I could do would fix that. Despite years of therapy, I still can't shake that first lesson that my schizophrenia means I did something horrible before I was even born. 

I ended up leaving the LDS church and moved with a friend to Los Angeles. I found Wicca and other pagan religions and when I was 19 I had a psychotic episode that landed me in the hospital. I was officially diagnosed with early-onset schizophrenia and was treated for several months. At that time, though, the treatment was teaching you to act as if everything is fine. If I could act like a "normal" person, then I could be release. I spent the next 20 years or more hiding everything and just trying to be "normal". I worked my way through college and then moved to Utah and worked my ass off to try to get rid of my debt. I was always broke, which always added to my stress. And I never dared tell anyone, not even my doctors, that I had schizophrenia. I admitted to the depression because that was more socially acceptable, but the stigma surrounding schizophrenia was too daunting. 

I finally had a major psychotic break in 2012, which rendered me unable to hold a job. I went through 3 years of paperwork, interviews, and hearings to get on disability and even then, my payout was minimal. If my parents weren't kind enough to let me live with them, I would be on the streets or in the state mental facility. I have spent the past 9 years trying to recover, but it just isn't happening. I am better, but still broken. 

And the stress is still there. It has changed, but it is almost worse. Every single day I am fighting the OCD, the depression, the bipolar swings, and the hallucinations. My medications help, but once you are 49 and you have had a major mood disorder since you were 11, the brain just doesn't work right. I struggle every moment of every day to distinguish what is real and what isn't. Will I kill myself today? Nah, I'll keep going. But that one voice is starting to get loud. I'll need extra meds today. I need groceries, but I don't have enough of my disability check left after paying my medical bills to afford any. I have to depend on my parents. Oh, and my body won't digest most proteins so I have to read every label to make sure there is no wheat, nuts, dairy, or any meat. I cook 95% of my food because I cannot trust most restaurants to be honest about the contents of the meals I order. 

My whole life is stress. I am under pressure and I can only hope that my therapy sessions, my days playing in the garden, my yoga, and my medications will release enough of that pressure so I don't have another break.