First blog post
7 years ago
An epic shopping list.
Well, here we are again, and I have some gigantic updates that I need to do for you all. This post will be quite different from the others in that you'll be subjected to far less story-telling and more of a 'shopping list' of events just due to the sheer volume of things that have been happening. :)
So, where to start?
Firstly, I've been taking a bit of break from this to try and sort out my issues with the accident. It's now sufficiently been manhandled into the foggy part of my brain so that it's not a debilitating level of stress any longer and I'm ready to deal with whatever happens on the insurance front.
To take you right back, I did end up remembering to call Dr Jayadev on the Wednesday (2 days after the smash) who confirmed that my bloodwork had delivered a 'surprisingly excellent' result for beginning my hormone therapy. Turns out that I'm nicely geared to accept Testosterone into my system, my liver is in brilliant condition (thank you Ngaire for never drinking!) and that my blood count is great.
All blazing green lights for me to get needles stuck into my bum.
With that news I quickly made an appointment for the 5th of April to do just that and then fell back into trying to make it through the week.
Coming home to Mel was a Godsend.. having a major negative event happen to you when you have no friends/family/partner physically around to comfort you can be very draining. Especially when you can't sleep. Or eat. Or anything kinda life-giving like that.
By Saturday I'd sorted out enough stuff that I could make a conscious decision to just focus on organising my transition by getting everything locked down and paid for - which helped me enormously. It also put me into 'Project Management' mode which is always helpful when it comes to dealing with emotional issues, and restored some confidence as each result was achieved.
I'd been dealing with a lovely woman at Dr Brownstein's office called 'Katrina' via e-mail about getting my chest surgery locked down. We'd been going back and forth trying to get things to fit and registered for some point at the back end of the year, and were down to around 6 dates that could possibly work in for me.
The accident somewhat crystalised things for me and without hesitation I fired an e-mail to her that booked in the earliest one available within the date range - the 20th of October. Katrina quite efficiently shot back payment details for the scheduling surgery fee ($500 US), which I paid, and now there is 'Patient Confirmation' package winging it's way across the oceans to my snail-mail box.
My surgery will be performed on the 20th of October, with a pre-operative appointment on the 19th of October in which they will biopsy my breast tissue and take me through exactly what is going to happen during the 3 hours I'll be chemically disconnected from the world.
The second cab off the rank was sorting out flights to actually get us there (in once piece) for a semi-decent price.
Now that the surgery was booked in we had some timeframes to work with. By previous experiences I wanted to allow for at least 48 hours of jetlag-recovery-time so I wasn't dealing with both an exhausted body and a fairly serious procedure simultaneously.
We decide that ideally this would see us leaving Sydney on the 17th of October, which is a Sunday.
Over the preceding weeks Mel had been doing some fairly serious legwork researching flights and had come up with the best case option of around $995 one way per person with a transferral flight in the middle of it from LAX to San Fran.
Having taken a few international flights with work I knew this wasn't too bad, but I seriously couldn't stand the concept of having to deal with LAX, trying to sort out luggage and then having to get on another plane to San Fran AFTER a 10 hour delay in said shitty airport.
Blarg.
I decided to engage the services of Gavin, a friend of mine who has seen and been through quite a few ups and downs with me during our time together. Gav has spent more time on a plane than many others on the planet can lay claim to, and most of this has been international.
He can recite the steward's safety procedure word for word pretty much regardless of the airline and rattles off specifications of planes like they were a make of car.
Seemed like a good plan to have a chat with him before booking anything in, particularly when money has become such an important resource right now.
So off to Gavin I went, credit card in hand, and asked him to wave his magic wand of 'Galileo'. And wave it he did - securing us flights with United Airlines on a Boeing 787-400, direct from Sydney to San Francisco, for $1385 AU each.
... return.
(And there was much rejoicing.)
This particular initial flight from Sydney to San Fran, amusingly enough, will see us set down 6 hours before we take off. Gotta love racing before the dawn.
Mel finds a particularly nifty site that tells us about the feedback on each particular seat, including the best volume of space and where to sit in an ideal world. We make a selection based on the quietest and largest areas to stretch out so we're well taken care of each way.
Flights: done and dusted.
The next item on the list is our accommodation. Mel again had put quite a lot of time into searching the web to try and find us optimal lodgings.
We needed somewhere that had 2 beds because I essentially will need to sleep alone until the drains come out from the operation. (Approx 9 nights.) We also needed somewhere quite 'homey' in that it was fully self contained, had laundry facilities and was also pleasant for me to spend a lot of time staring at the walls.
Mel had come up with some awesome places, some of which had truly scary pricetags. ($3700 US a week? Urk.) We needed something around the $1K mark, preferably under, and so we glumly went back to the drawing board to try and see what things we could do without rather than with.
By sheer chance I stumbled onto a website called HomeAway.com and herein we found our jewel.
A fully renovated 1940's style condo-apartment with more features than you can poke a stick at for $900 US a week. We were stunned. Not only two fullsize queen beds, it had two actual bedrooms flooded with air and light. A fireplace, completely decked out kitchen, laundry facilities, bath AND shower (bath very important for a chopped up man), all linen etc etc etc.
We booked it straight away for the 3 weeks we need. ($2700 US) I don't just want to rent it, I want to live there!
Accommodation: Check!
What remains to be done now is to physically pay for the surgery itself ($5,500 US) and work out additional funds for living expenses while in the US and the facility/anesthesiologist fee. ($2,300 US.)
While I'm still slightly short of the funding required, but there's time to sort that out.
The most important thing is that many balls are now rolling, and that this thing I've been researching for 8 years is finally going to happen.
So, where to start?
Firstly, I've been taking a bit of break from this to try and sort out my issues with the accident. It's now sufficiently been manhandled into the foggy part of my brain so that it's not a debilitating level of stress any longer and I'm ready to deal with whatever happens on the insurance front.
To take you right back, I did end up remembering to call Dr Jayadev on the Wednesday (2 days after the smash) who confirmed that my bloodwork had delivered a 'surprisingly excellent' result for beginning my hormone therapy. Turns out that I'm nicely geared to accept Testosterone into my system, my liver is in brilliant condition (thank you Ngaire for never drinking!) and that my blood count is great.
All blazing green lights for me to get needles stuck into my bum.
With that news I quickly made an appointment for the 5th of April to do just that and then fell back into trying to make it through the week.
Coming home to Mel was a Godsend.. having a major negative event happen to you when you have no friends/family/partner physically around to comfort you can be very draining. Especially when you can't sleep. Or eat. Or anything kinda life-giving like that.
By Saturday I'd sorted out enough stuff that I could make a conscious decision to just focus on organising my transition by getting everything locked down and paid for - which helped me enormously. It also put me into 'Project Management' mode which is always helpful when it comes to dealing with emotional issues, and restored some confidence as each result was achieved.
I'd been dealing with a lovely woman at Dr Brownstein's office called 'Katrina' via e-mail about getting my chest surgery locked down. We'd been going back and forth trying to get things to fit and registered for some point at the back end of the year, and were down to around 6 dates that could possibly work in for me.
The accident somewhat crystalised things for me and without hesitation I fired an e-mail to her that booked in the earliest one available within the date range - the 20th of October. Katrina quite efficiently shot back payment details for the scheduling surgery fee ($500 US), which I paid, and now there is 'Patient Confirmation' package winging it's way across the oceans to my snail-mail box.
My surgery will be performed on the 20th of October, with a pre-operative appointment on the 19th of October in which they will biopsy my breast tissue and take me through exactly what is going to happen during the 3 hours I'll be chemically disconnected from the world.
The second cab off the rank was sorting out flights to actually get us there (in once piece) for a semi-decent price.
Now that the surgery was booked in we had some timeframes to work with. By previous experiences I wanted to allow for at least 48 hours of jetlag-recovery-time so I wasn't dealing with both an exhausted body and a fairly serious procedure simultaneously.
We decide that ideally this would see us leaving Sydney on the 17th of October, which is a Sunday.
Over the preceding weeks Mel had been doing some fairly serious legwork researching flights and had come up with the best case option of around $995 one way per person with a transferral flight in the middle of it from LAX to San Fran.
Having taken a few international flights with work I knew this wasn't too bad, but I seriously couldn't stand the concept of having to deal with LAX, trying to sort out luggage and then having to get on another plane to San Fran AFTER a 10 hour delay in said shitty airport.
Blarg.
I decided to engage the services of Gavin, a friend of mine who has seen and been through quite a few ups and downs with me during our time together. Gav has spent more time on a plane than many others on the planet can lay claim to, and most of this has been international.
He can recite the steward's safety procedure word for word pretty much regardless of the airline and rattles off specifications of planes like they were a make of car.
Seemed like a good plan to have a chat with him before booking anything in, particularly when money has become such an important resource right now.
So off to Gavin I went, credit card in hand, and asked him to wave his magic wand of 'Galileo'. And wave it he did - securing us flights with United Airlines on a Boeing 787-400, direct from Sydney to San Francisco, for $1385 AU each.
... return.
(And there was much rejoicing.)
This particular initial flight from Sydney to San Fran, amusingly enough, will see us set down 6 hours before we take off. Gotta love racing before the dawn.
Mel finds a particularly nifty site that tells us about the feedback on each particular seat, including the best volume of space and where to sit in an ideal world. We make a selection based on the quietest and largest areas to stretch out so we're well taken care of each way.
Flights: done and dusted.
The next item on the list is our accommodation. Mel again had put quite a lot of time into searching the web to try and find us optimal lodgings.
We needed somewhere that had 2 beds because I essentially will need to sleep alone until the drains come out from the operation. (Approx 9 nights.) We also needed somewhere quite 'homey' in that it was fully self contained, had laundry facilities and was also pleasant for me to spend a lot of time staring at the walls.
Mel had come up with some awesome places, some of which had truly scary pricetags. ($3700 US a week? Urk.) We needed something around the $1K mark, preferably under, and so we glumly went back to the drawing board to try and see what things we could do without rather than with.
By sheer chance I stumbled onto a website called HomeAway.com and herein we found our jewel.
A fully renovated 1940's style condo-apartment with more features than you can poke a stick at for $900 US a week. We were stunned. Not only two fullsize queen beds, it had two actual bedrooms flooded with air and light. A fireplace, completely decked out kitchen, laundry facilities, bath AND shower (bath very important for a chopped up man), all linen etc etc etc.
We booked it straight away for the 3 weeks we need. ($2700 US) I don't just want to rent it, I want to live there!
Accommodation: Check!
What remains to be done now is to physically pay for the surgery itself ($5,500 US) and work out additional funds for living expenses while in the US and the facility/anesthesiologist fee. ($2,300 US.)
While I'm still slightly short of the funding required, but there's time to sort that out.
The most important thing is that many balls are now rolling, and that this thing I've been researching for 8 years is finally going to happen.
High impact.
It's raining, the cold is the kind of cold you retreat into a warm snuggly bed from but for some reason I'm sitting on a couch next to an open sliding glass door absorbing it all in. It's been a hell of a week and I find myself struggling to approach an entry, even though I know I need to do one.
Snippets of conversations, shattering glass and the sickening crunch of tortured metal being bent into directions it was never meant to go fill my head. I'm trying so hard to forget that I don't know where I can possibly begin.
"God dammit it all to hell.. I'm sick of this shit!"
I fling my bag down onto my bed, fuming. I've arrived to my hotel in Brisbane from my 8:30pm Sunday flight to a room without should've-been-there-car-keys. It's happened again, irrespective of the fact that the workcar was prearranged to be dropped here on Friday, and by now I'm getting pretty sure it's a deliberate insult that's being played by a store manager who is supposed to know better.
After a few deep breaths I decide to hire a car because I have an early meeting first up tomorrow morning and I won't have time to collect the work car. I'll charge it to the store and hopefully deal with the 2 squarking birds confronting me with 1 stone.
I have a pre-existing account with an existing car rental agency and I use this to hire a car, feeling considerably better once I've done so. I'm still angry and the darkness curls tightly around me, but I've got a solution now and the rest will be a battle for tomorrow.
After unpacking I get into bed and quickly kill the lights, I'm tired from the flight and Monday looms large.
Waking the next morning I iron and then shrug into my work suit, adjusting a few things here and there as the first meeting is a key one. A small, subconscious sigh, one of thousands, escapes my lungs as I smooth the shirt down over my chest.
A tie, soon I'll be able to properly wear a tie without these.. things.. getting in the way.
I call for a taxi, shoot across town and pick up my rental car. The day goes smoothly, the meetings go particularly well and aside from some further unpleasantness with the aforementioned manager, it's a successful day.
It's my last week in Brisbane for a while and I'm loading up my calendar to moosh as many people into face to face discussions about my impending transition as I can. Some already know, most don't, so it's going to be an interesting next few days for me.
David and Jenna - check.
Salvie - check.
Christian and Kat - can't make it, previous commitments.
Gavin - check.
Nimer - check.
The work day is over and I'm on the way to Lonestar for dinner with David and Jenna - the first metaphorical cabs off the "Nye's fun transition talks" rank.
"Don't forget that you have to call Dr Jayadev Wednesday.."
I smile as Mel's voice echoes in my head, privately basking in the warm glory of the knowledge that, everything going well, I could be booked in for my 'T' shot sooner rather than later.
I arrive at Lonestar for the dinner with Dave and Jenna, which goes well as I stumble my way through an incredibly well cooked and tasty steak AND explaining GID/Transition/Next Steps/etc etc.
The steak is only a little cold by the time I'm finished.
They both respond brilliantly well and we retire from the steakhouse for custom Icecream from Cold Rock. The night ends and we retire to our cars for the trip home.
Only.. I don't go back to the hotel.
It's one of those nights.. y'know? One of those nights where the skies are a rich, crisp velvet tapestry of glittering shards of star-streaked magic. One of those nights where the air stings your nose with the oncoming whisper of Autumn. One of those nights that hands-and-knees BEGS you to hit the open highway and blast away the rigors of the day.. and the mundanity of life in general in the muted glow of the dashboard lights.
My rental car happened to be an Audi A4 turbo. Glistening. Powerful. Full of pride.
And it was one of those nights.
It happened when I decided to turn back around to head back to Brisbane, roughly half an hour after setting out from the dinner. A judgement in which I believed oncoming traffic to be a correctly safe distance away saw me T-boned at roughly 60kms an hour at an intersection locally famed for accidents and scattered with debris of previous impacts.
I write the above with as much emotional distance I can muster. It took me 3 sleepless nights and countless second/minutes of ridiculous stress levels smashing through the ceiling of what I believed to be my endurance threshold to get where I am now.
It's not the sound of the twisting metal and exploding airbags railing around me I can't get away from. It's not the smell of road-stripped tires and chalky white-powdered stiffling cling of the airbag inflators. Not the feeling of being flung sideways at speed and crunching back off a lightpole after the initial impact.
It's the fact that if the insurance assessors from the rental company find any way to pin this accident on me as careless, reckless or deliberate they will force me to pay for the FULL REPAIRS of the Audi.
Not the excess of their insurance. Not even the $330 damage liability reduction that I took out and additional protection package I paid extra dollars for.
The. Whole. Cost. Of. Repairs. To. The. Audi.
It could wipe out the money set aside for my chest operation. And that is what is causing the sleepless nights and stomach-churning stress.
Everyone around me who knows has been as comforting as they know how in their own unique ways. Peter has sledged me (while offering solid advice), the owner of the company I work for has offered to try and find 'some way to work it out', people who work in my team have called relatives who are insurance lawyers.
The problem I face is that I won't know either way for at least two weeks while they sort this out.
And that's absolutely killing me.
Snippets of conversations, shattering glass and the sickening crunch of tortured metal being bent into directions it was never meant to go fill my head. I'm trying so hard to forget that I don't know where I can possibly begin.
"God dammit it all to hell.. I'm sick of this shit!"
I fling my bag down onto my bed, fuming. I've arrived to my hotel in Brisbane from my 8:30pm Sunday flight to a room without should've-been-there-car-keys. It's happened again, irrespective of the fact that the workcar was prearranged to be dropped here on Friday, and by now I'm getting pretty sure it's a deliberate insult that's being played by a store manager who is supposed to know better.
After a few deep breaths I decide to hire a car because I have an early meeting first up tomorrow morning and I won't have time to collect the work car. I'll charge it to the store and hopefully deal with the 2 squarking birds confronting me with 1 stone.
I have a pre-existing account with an existing car rental agency and I use this to hire a car, feeling considerably better once I've done so. I'm still angry and the darkness curls tightly around me, but I've got a solution now and the rest will be a battle for tomorrow.
After unpacking I get into bed and quickly kill the lights, I'm tired from the flight and Monday looms large.
Waking the next morning I iron and then shrug into my work suit, adjusting a few things here and there as the first meeting is a key one. A small, subconscious sigh, one of thousands, escapes my lungs as I smooth the shirt down over my chest.
A tie, soon I'll be able to properly wear a tie without these.. things.. getting in the way.
I call for a taxi, shoot across town and pick up my rental car. The day goes smoothly, the meetings go particularly well and aside from some further unpleasantness with the aforementioned manager, it's a successful day.
It's my last week in Brisbane for a while and I'm loading up my calendar to moosh as many people into face to face discussions about my impending transition as I can. Some already know, most don't, so it's going to be an interesting next few days for me.
David and Jenna - check.
Salvie - check.
Christian and Kat - can't make it, previous commitments.
Gavin - check.
Nimer - check.
The work day is over and I'm on the way to Lonestar for dinner with David and Jenna - the first metaphorical cabs off the "Nye's fun transition talks" rank.
"Don't forget that you have to call Dr Jayadev Wednesday.."
I smile as Mel's voice echoes in my head, privately basking in the warm glory of the knowledge that, everything going well, I could be booked in for my 'T' shot sooner rather than later.
I arrive at Lonestar for the dinner with Dave and Jenna, which goes well as I stumble my way through an incredibly well cooked and tasty steak AND explaining GID/Transition/Next Steps/etc etc.
The steak is only a little cold by the time I'm finished.
They both respond brilliantly well and we retire from the steakhouse for custom Icecream from Cold Rock. The night ends and we retire to our cars for the trip home.
Only.. I don't go back to the hotel.
It's one of those nights.. y'know? One of those nights where the skies are a rich, crisp velvet tapestry of glittering shards of star-streaked magic. One of those nights where the air stings your nose with the oncoming whisper of Autumn. One of those nights that hands-and-knees BEGS you to hit the open highway and blast away the rigors of the day.. and the mundanity of life in general in the muted glow of the dashboard lights.
My rental car happened to be an Audi A4 turbo. Glistening. Powerful. Full of pride.
And it was one of those nights.
It happened when I decided to turn back around to head back to Brisbane, roughly half an hour after setting out from the dinner. A judgement in which I believed oncoming traffic to be a correctly safe distance away saw me T-boned at roughly 60kms an hour at an intersection locally famed for accidents and scattered with debris of previous impacts.
I write the above with as much emotional distance I can muster. It took me 3 sleepless nights and countless second/minutes of ridiculous stress levels smashing through the ceiling of what I believed to be my endurance threshold to get where I am now.
It's not the sound of the twisting metal and exploding airbags railing around me I can't get away from. It's not the smell of road-stripped tires and chalky white-powdered stiffling cling of the airbag inflators. Not the feeling of being flung sideways at speed and crunching back off a lightpole after the initial impact.
It's the fact that if the insurance assessors from the rental company find any way to pin this accident on me as careless, reckless or deliberate they will force me to pay for the FULL REPAIRS of the Audi.
Not the excess of their insurance. Not even the $330 damage liability reduction that I took out and additional protection package I paid extra dollars for.
The. Whole. Cost. Of. Repairs. To. The. Audi.
It could wipe out the money set aside for my chest operation. And that is what is causing the sleepless nights and stomach-churning stress.
Everyone around me who knows has been as comforting as they know how in their own unique ways. Peter has sledged me (while offering solid advice), the owner of the company I work for has offered to try and find 'some way to work it out', people who work in my team have called relatives who are insurance lawyers.
The problem I face is that I won't know either way for at least two weeks while they sort this out.
And that's absolutely killing me.
Tmates == Wewt!
Well, Mel got notified tonight that she made the cut and is now officially a TmateFTM presenter!
Needless to say there when I heard the screaming from the lounge room I thought that was my cue to doubletime it from the music room to collect and remove a spider. However, on hearing the news, I think I made more noise than she did.
It's going to be awesome and I've threatened to get a hot pink T-shirt that says "My girlfriend is a Tmate!" made up that I will follow her around with.
Congratulations beautiful!!
Also, to slightly hijack this post, a lot of you who know me personally are aware that I've had a particularly bad week straight from the ass-end of Hell so I apologise for breaking my regular posting habits.
Once I figure out how to write about it, rather than relive it, I will fill you in on as much detail as I can stand.
(We anticipate being able to return to our regularly scheduled programme shortly! In the meantime, here's a word from our sponsor..)
Needless to say there when I heard the screaming from the lounge room I thought that was my cue to doubletime it from the music room to collect and remove a spider. However, on hearing the news, I think I made more noise than she did.
It's going to be awesome and I've threatened to get a hot pink T-shirt that says "My girlfriend is a Tmate!" made up that I will follow her around with.
Congratulations beautiful!!
Also, to slightly hijack this post, a lot of you who know me personally are aware that I've had a particularly bad week straight from the ass-end of Hell so I apologise for breaking my regular posting habits.
Once I figure out how to write about it, rather than relive it, I will fill you in on as much detail as I can stand.
(We anticipate being able to return to our regularly scheduled programme shortly! In the meantime, here's a word from our sponsor..)
Transitional Fears.
I was surfing around YouTube again tonight and came across this video created by a Transguy called Tyler:
I think it says a lot very, very well.
I think it says a lot very, very well.
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