Decidedly Obscure Human Complaints.

Uh, something unprecedented and exciting has occurred in the land of my facial hair. I’m not sure when exactly it happened, but it did - last month I had developed what I’d argue passed as fo’ real real facial hair. It got to the point where, as I posted about prior, I could shampoo it, condition it, comb it, and trim it. Life was good. And then Halloween happened - where I had to shave it for my costume. Life was sad. But fun.

This is where the unprecedented and exciting took place:

After shaving, I looked noticeably different. My baby bare face was actually jarring to me. Now, this is unprecedented and exciting because this is the first time I’ve ever a.) grown facial hair and b.) shaved it and actually looked different because what I shaved was actually noticeable.

It’s taken me two days now to adjust to my baby bare faced self and I’m growing it back as.fast.as.I.can. I suspect that I’m going to turn into my dad who went 20+ years without shaving until doing so and horrifying everyone about a month ago. Which was also exciting and unprecedented seeing as that was the first time I’d experienced having more facial hair than my dad. Or brother. Boo-ya.

Even better - when I went back to school Monday with nothing but sparse stubble my peers were also jarred. Which, again, reaffirms how fo’ real real my facial hair had become! I received comments like, “You look so much younger!!!”, or, “Where’d your facial hair go???”, or, “All you preparing for No Shave November or what?”.

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Had the most difficult time getting my prescription refill (testosterone cypionate) this time around! Generally I just wander in to the pharmacy and say, “I wanna refill.”. I give money, take bag of needles and bottle o’ T, and stumble back out into the world. But when I attempted to refill this time around ON injection day I was told, “Oh, you’re out of refills. Oh, and your doctor won’t authorise a refill until you make an appointment with her.”

Oh, alright. Fair enough. Except that I just got paid and due for a shot.

When I tried to schedule an appointment with her I was told, “You owe us money. It’s in collections. Here’s their number.” Wha? From when? Where? Whyyyyy is this the first time I’ve heard of it and it’s in collections!?

Turns out, even though my doctor’s office had my current address and name - they had never communicated that to billing. So here I was, bumbling along assuming that all of my info is current, but meanwhile billing had my old name and an old ass address that I’d lived at three years ago before even beginning hormone therapy. And, presumably, have been sending bills to ever since.

Yet, throughout this time I’ve obliviously owed mula, I’ve been making appointments every 6 months. For, uh, almost 3 years. And was told nothin’.

Until, one day, I try to refill and suddenly need to make an appointment and it happens to be when I’m due and suddenly can’t because I suddenly owe money to collections and suddenly can’t make an appointment.

Lame-o. Anyway, fortunately it turned out to be a small sum and I’m paying it and was able to make an appointment and refill my prescription. But for a minute there, I had no medication. If I didn’t have an awesome friend back up, I would’ve endured withdrawal and, potentially, medical complications from said withdrawal!

I was already starting to get mega-weird from just missing one day.

See, I inject every Thursday. And last Friday when I went to inject, something bizarre happened. Pre-needle-pokin’ I generally repeat the mantra, “It’s just like butta. It’s just like butta.” But somehow I got it in my head that my leg is a firm chunk o’ callous meat and my spaghetti noodle appendage of an arm wouldn’t be able to stab the needle in fast or hard enough to make it through all of the way. And, if I couldn’t puncture through, I’d have to slowly carve through layers of muscle, veins, and tissue to get the entire needle in.

It’s not true - but the visual paralysed me enough that I just.couldn’t.do.it. I felt confused about how, after almost 3 years of self-injection, I’d suddenly hit a block. Wtf!?

Fortunately a friend poked me and all went well. But the same thing happened again this morning and I had to ask my dad to help. What’s a-goin’-on? I blame Statistics. May as well.

SO REFRESHING. After top surgery, recovery, and then a conveniently timed month-long coughing sickness, today I went to the gym with the most bad ass gym buddy ever - my mom. Back in the good ol’ days, my mom and I went to the gym together on a daily basis. Until I started the hormone shindig and the locker room progressively got a lot more uncomfortable than it already was. Eventually it got to the point where I no longer knew how to navigate gendered gym terrain and resolved to work out from home.

Which I did, for a minute. But with cats purring and video games within my reach, that didn’t last long.

Until today when my mom and I finally ventured to the gym again together. My first boob-less gym work out!

It was awesome.

I hopped on the elliptical and sweat simulated jogged for 30 minutes. No chest fat jigglage! Back in the day just feeling it there caused a lot of physiological distress that had me hating running-like motion. But now? Love it. I could’ve continued to run, but I couldn’t resist skipping off to experience other gym thangs - including the men’s locker room.

Since I was a wee bot until I stopped going to the gym a few years ago, locker rooms were all kinds of awkward. My mom went with me before primarily to help with this, so she could walk in with me and help make the experience less socially awkward. But, this was also the first time I walked in to a locker room without startled reactions. No one called security, no one stood up and darted out when I entered… nothin’. Just, walked in, did my thing, walked out.

Whoa.

On a related note, recovery has been going super well! Between classes (particularly stats - the most intimidating phobia triggering topic *coughmathcough* that I’ve avoided for about 13 years) and being sick, I’ve been negligent about updating my progress. Essentially, this past month has been my nipples morphing from little blackish mutants into pinkish little nipply nubs. Now that they’re scab-free and becoming more nipply with each new day, I slather them in a Vitamin E / Shea Butter concoction. They’re so cool. Pictures soon!