My Reward

60

So with February came a thick packet in the mail for me from Social Security. As I would typically get the mail for the mobile home from the park's box during the middle of the day while mother was working, I was able to open it up and scan through it in the living room. Many pages of dense text which talked about the decision of the hearing but nowhere in it was ''You Won!'' Looking it over a second time I did see a line on the front page that said 'Notice Of Favorable Decision' though it didn't say for who. I collected up all the pages and went to my bedroom for a detailed read, making sure I didn't leave anything behind that my mother might find and take.

Reading it word for word, when I reached the section noting that I would be hearing from Social Security soon about my benefit level and back benefit payment it started to sink in that I had actually won the appeal. Now I had two wins to Legal Aid's zero. Fifteen years later Social Security accidentally sent me the detailed judge's determination notes and I learned from them that, since the judge decided there was truly something wrong with me but there wasn't enough medical information to support a claim, he looked to the original psychologist's report from my hospital stay where he noted that I, at most, suffered from an 'adjustment disorder'. Not knowing how serious an 'adjustment disorder' was, the judge found that to be my debilitating condition and granted my Disability claim... For those not familiar, an 'adjustment disorder' is a response to an actual stress in your life that you haven't overcome. When I told a psychologist friend about it those fifteen years later, he burst out laughing as it ''was deemed to be one of the least significant psychological disorders'' and ''in fact was likely to be removed from the list.''

Reflecting on it now, though, I've come to find the label very apt for me at that time. As I was having emotional stress from the fact that I couldn't get a doctor to treat my intestinal problems. And further, I was unsure about my strange puberty which I didn't know how to address. So, in retrospect, I think it was an accurate diagnosis which helped to get me out of a terrible situation and into only a bad one. What? You thought winning disability benefits would put everything to rights?

I subsequently found there would be a two to three month period while Social Security sorted everything out, paid the state a refund for any aid they had given me in the meantime, and then retroactively cover any unpaid medical expenses with Medicaid.

For the first time in a long time I saw a short term future for myself. With luck I could get my first apartment with the assured monthly income and be out of my mother's mobile home for the first time in six years. When I moved in, in Nineteen Eighty-Three, she had been longing for company and was happy to have me there, but it was only after the first few months that it started to sour and since being out of work due to my health problems, it had become downright unpleasant. Yet now with the monthly check and Medicaid coverage I would be able to once again try to find a doctor to review and address my health problems and possibly, one day, cure them and I could go back to work.

Thrilled by my coming escape, I avidly delved into my writing projects. After the first few comic serial scripts I had made for The Doctor Who Report, I had finally gotten the hang of it and came up with a block buster two-parter that I was sure was going to knock our reader's socks off. I wrote the first part and the writer in me wanted to write the second part, but I fought off the urge as I wanted to pace myself and instead wrote my first speculative script for 'the other show' I was interested in on television. Once done and happy with it, I decided to provide it to the writer's group for review and input. It was the first thing I submitted to them that didn't get good reviews. Digging into why, it simply stemmed from them not understanding or being familiar with television script format and not knowing what to make of it. Ultimately, I decided for myself I should have done better with that script after reviewing it merely a year later.

But part one of my new two-part comic serial story went over well with the artist as he delivered the next issue's drawings. Then he really got excited when I told him how the second part would go and he took the new script with him to get to work on the next issue's installment. With all other content ready for TDWR I was off to Jeff's to assemble it in the desktop publishing software and print up the masters. I then took the masters to the copy shop the next day to produce all of the reduced pages and get them home to assemble into the booklet issues. They were mailed off by the end of the week.

Toward the end of February, while I had been keeping late night hours of going to bed around seven in the morning and getting up by two in the afternoon over the previous years as part of avoiding my mother. I found myself feeling very wobbly and ended up going to bed barely more than eight hours later. I would later wake up feeling very strange and would later have this experience diagnosed as my first stroke...

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Dead Of Winter

59

By the turn of the year into Nineteen Eighty-Nine I again saw no future for myself as a person. I was having buoyant success with the science fiction club and The Doctor Who Report, and if not for those I would have had nothing in my life to keep me going. But as for my 'person': My health was trapped fluctuating between thirty-five and forty pounds underweight, I couldn't conceive of ever finding a doctor to help with my health problems, nor could I imagine remaining as a squatter in my mother's mobile home for the rest of my life, however long that might be. Painful drawn out stints in the bathroom had become a twice to three times weekly event and all I could do was beg to God to please let me die so I would never have to face another experience like it again. Then a few days later I was right back there, begging.

Mother had lost some of her will to pound on my bedroom door to harass me and was now down to doing it only once or twice a day. So I guess some things were getting better. Since her summertime stunt of claiming that she had spoken to my siblings about me, we once again had little if any interaction. Once in a great while I might see her when I'd come out of my bedroom to get a drink in the kitchen or to use the bathroom. If she was up and moving at the time I would make sure to lock my bedroom door behind me. If not, I might be daring and leave it unlocked if I knew I was going to be quick. If for some reason I forgot my key, I did have a second one hidden elsewhere in the mobile home, but had rarely needed to use it.

At the turn of the year, my COBRA health insurance coverage period had come to an end. The good news was that I no longer had to worry about making that monthly payment, of course the bad news was I no longer had any health insurance. But as I couldn't image ever again seeing a doctor, it didn't seem like much of a loss.

I would continue my late night walks once mother was to bed just to give me some exercise and a change of environment. From locked in my eight foot by eight foot bedroom with everything I had crammed inside, it was a great relief to roam the neighborhood streets or undeveloped fields. Sometimes I'd take my portable and headphones with me and listen to music, but most of the time I just liked the ambient sounds of a world at rest.

While I would still dabble with computer programming, on the whole I didn't have any purpose for it except to once in a great while write a piece of code for Jeff's online site. He had finally changed the host computer for it from his old TRS-80 to an IBM PC clone machine. Having multiple hard drives allowed the site to host not only multiple forums but networked ones as well. One of these I was avid for was the International Doctor Who Forum and Jeff finally found a reliable network link to it and soon not only did I have more people to discuss Doctor Who with, but I could use that discussion to create a 'Rumors' page in TDWR as well as gain additional subscribers and some new minor contributors, to boot. TDWR had finally gone national, though it was still pretty obscure, and within a few months, when the existing forum moderator decided to leave and they were searching for someone to take over, I volunteered and received the most votes, adding 'Moderator Of The International Doctor Who Forum' to my quiver of 'job' titles. And just like my work for TDWR and the local science fiction club, all of it was unpaid.

Early in January I found myself with the most bizarre problem. It snuck up on me at first as I could just swallow more often, but by the end of one day I realized that my mouth was producing a constant and unyielding supply of saliva. It reached the point that I found I could no longer drink anything simply because my stomach was already overflowing with the liquid. As it became clear it wasn't going to get better any time soon, and I didn't want to find out what would happen if I tried to go to sleep for the night with it, I finally decided to go to the emergency room.

Arriving by the turn of midnight, I checked in and had to admit I didn't have any health insurance. This resulted in rolling eyes by the admitting nurse, but my having to constantly swallow while trying to talk lead her to believe there was something that needed to be looked at. When asked who my primary care physician was, I said I didn't have one. Checked in and taken to an examination bed, I explained what was going on and after jotting down all of the details, the nurse returned with a large cup that I could... drool into. Hadn't there been a Saturday Night Live sketch like this? I wondered as I sat there waiting for the E.R. doctor to arrive and make his own examination.

A cup and a half later he did and quickly looked in my mouth and had me say 'awh' with a tongue depressor performing its task. He diagnosed me with an infected saliva gland and ordered a prescription of antibiotics that I could get filled at the twenty-four hour pharmacy on the way home. I did and when I heard the price, I left for my credit union's Automatic Teller Machine to pull the needed money out of my savings while the bottle was filled. Since leaving the hospital, I was back to the constant swallowing as I accepted the prescription bottle and thanked the pharmacist and then went home. Mother was still in bed and for all I knew hadn't even noticed I had gone. I took my first pill and returned to my bedroom to work on the computer, now with a glass from the kitchen in hand as my at home drool cup. Still, the flow hadn't subsided enough by the time I wanted to go to bed and I had to resort to getting a bath towel and folding it up into multiple layers to tuck under my chin as I lay on my side to fall asleep. The hope was that it would absorb the never ending stream while I slept.

It was surprising successful and by the end of the next day the flow was down to a rate I could comfortably swallow again... By the third day things were back to normal.

Aren't you glad I share these things with you?

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Wight Knight

58

As Fall reached to Winter and the end of the year, I got a surprise phone call. It was from a doctor's office I hadn't heard of before. The scheduler told me that the doctor had become aware of my health issues and wanted to help me. Could we make an appointment for next week?

I had given up on seeing any more doctors about my health issues after my last Premiere Medical Center experience. And also it seemed strange that a doctor 'hearing about me', apparently through the medical grapevine where no one had any releases to be talking about me to anyone, could be a positive thing. Still, my COBRA health insurance coverage period was down to its last few weeks and I decided to accept the appointment in yet another tenuous hope of finding someone who could help me with my weight loss and intestinal issues.

As I was told the doctor's schedule was full, he had decided to put aside one of his lunch hours so he could see me as soon as possible. His office was in one of the well to do sections of town where the average income level was five to ten times anything I had ever made in a year, if not more. Perhaps with a doctor used to treating well-off clientele with respect, he would have that respect when treating me, I hoped. I arrived at his office a half hour earlier than asked to give me the extra time it took to do the initial intake paperwork at a new doctor's office. But when I identified myself, there was no paperwork handed to me. Assuming it had been forgotten, I asked the receptionist about it and she called back to the doctor and sure enough no past medical history paperwork was needed. Didn't they even need my insurance card, at least? Not now, I was told.

So I instead got to take a seat in the otherwise empty waiting room. Sure enough, rather than the usual pile of outdated 'Time' and 'People' magazines to chose from, all the magazines in his office were about financial success and high life styles, unquestionably an office focused on well-off patients and here I was without any income and little prospects. I was called into the back area and the nurse told me to undress and get into a gown; the doctor was going to start off with a physical examination. Already my stomach twisted as these never turned out well. Still, I set aside my nerves and did what I was told and waited. When the doctor came in, oddly with a mask covering his mouth and nose, he asked about my health problems as he went to put on some gloves. I noted my years of weight loss despite my recorded three thousand calorie a day diet. That I had been in the hospital for a few days to have my intake and output monitored and it was confirmed that on a diet of sufficient calories, I had bouts of diarrhea and ended up leaving the hospital two and a half pounds lighter.

He 'uhhumphed' as I said all this and then started his exam. First with my emaciated breasts, then down to my private areas where he was very thorough, hunting down the testicles, noting the amount of excess tissue in my groin area that served no apparent purpose and he went digging to see if I had a prostate which, after several minutes of trying to find it, he did and told me of it and how small it was and easy to over look. He was done. He never listened to or percussed my abdomen which was the sort of thing I had been expecting. He just said, ''I know another doctor who'll want to see you,'' as he pulled off his gloves and left the room without another word. A little bit later the nurse came in and told me I could get dressed, then see the receptionist at the front desk on my way out.

The receptionist was on the phone as I came back into the waiting area and waved me over asking what days I'd have free the following week. I told her and she consulted with the person at the other end of the phone and my next doctor appointment was set. I was given a slip of paper with his address, phone number, and a reminder of the date and time. This next doctor had been kind enough to schedule this new appointment during one of his own lunch hours the following week so I wouldn't have to wait for a regular appointment time. I got my check book to write out the co-pay and confirmed the amount with the receptionist, but I was told there was no charge and I didn't have to worry about it. Leaving the office and getting into my car, I realized that no paperwork and no charge meant there was no record that I had ever seen him. Not even a regular slot taken in his appointment book, if I had even been recorded in it at all. But I pushed my paranoia aside.

On the drive home I realized the next doctor's office was along the way. I decided to stop by and get the initial paperwork packet so I could complete it on my own time at home and thus save myself the race to get it done in the minutes before the appointment. When I got there and I identified myself, asking if I could get the paperwork early, the receptionist couldn't find any record of me in the appointment book. I noted that the previous doctor's office had just called to set it up and now she knew who I was and found my appointment noted on a separate piece of paper. She asked the other girl next to her to go in the back area and ask what initial paperwork I would need to fill out. As we waited, the receptionist told me what a great idea it was to get the paperwork early as there were always so many pages to get through.

When the other girl returned, she said I didn't need to fill out any paperwork and that the doctor would just be doing an exam...

I left the office, now feeling my stomach somersaulting in horror. There seemed something deeply wrong about this. On the drive home I decided that I would call and cancel the appointment and I did. I never heard back from the first doctor, nor did I ever get another phone call from another doctor who had 'heard about me and wanted to have me come in'. I was pretty sure I had made the right decision.

Pretty sure... But for the next few years I was haunted by the doubt that maybe that next doctor really was the right doctor I had needed to see. Maybe.

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Tested

57

For three months, from July through September, Nineteen Eighty-Eight, the unemployment benefits were a welcomed relief that sustained me and kept me afloat but they were coming to an end and I was once again facing the financial void, though with a fresh lump of savings socked away. My final attempt to seek a doctor to address my weight loss had been yet another heart rending experience and I desired to no longer try.

As a well timed turn, I received notice that my Social Security Disability appeal hearing had been scheduled and while I was once again reminded that I could contact Legal Aid for a free attorney, after my experiences with them earlier in the year I didn't see the point. Further, appealing on my own for the unemployment benefits had been successful so I had a better track record, in my eyes, than Legal Aid did. I went to the defined hearing location at the county office's land use bureau, of all places, with copies of my medical tests and hospital records in hand. But after I figured out where to wait and who to check in with, I was told that the hearing judge couldn't make that day and would have to reschedule. So I was once again on my way home wondering when I'd hear about the rescheduled hearing.

And the wheels of life kept turning.

Despite the unpleasantness in my health and family life, I had been successfully burying myself in my writing for The Doctor Who Report as well as for the Quarterly and the local science fiction club's monthly two sheet newsletter. I had even been inspired by a new show on television earlier in the year to start writing for them... Though not necessarily as one might expect. Many of their early shows didn't quite succeed in stirring the blood and after a half season of this I realized, ''I could write better shows than these!'' As the years have gone on, I've found this to be my best motivator. Show me a show I like and I have nothing to give; show me a show that I don't like and I suddenly feel I can do it better! As a result the idea machine in my head started cranking out story ideas for this show and I started writing a Doctor Who crossover to make sure I had a feel for their characters and to also help increase my cushion of completed stories waiting for their turn in TDWR.

On one of the Saturdays my mother worked, I asked Daina to come over and we discussed and roughly planned out the coming Quarterly. Once that was done we discussed our lives... Well, actually, I should say I said very little about my life, but Daina was in a mood to talk about hers. She was a special education teacher and Fall was one of her crunch times as she had to establish course curricula for her existing students as well as review, evaluate and place newly arriving special education students who had moved into her school's boundaries. That included ordering & reviewing the student's previous school transcript, touching base with the previous school's special education point of contact to clarify any issues or questions that might have come up, do some minor testing checkpoints of her own to verify the student's level, if not order a whole new battery of tests if she was unsatisfied. Then she would digest all of this and find how to tuck each student into the existing programs at her Elementary School, seeking that balance of in class participation and more focused pull out sessions with herself.

When I asked her about what 'ordering a full battery' meant, she explained that she could do various subject matter tests and checks herself but when dealing with a special eduction student one might need a larger overview and thus she would ask one of the school district's psychologists to do a review including personality as well as I.Q. testing to gauge how much of a student's performance was due to self limiting versus cognitive capabilities. She'd review the I.Q. findings and use it as part of tailoring her individualized program for the student. In the case of personality issues the psychologist would conclude whether the student needed to join a social skills group or needed direct counseling.

''So you have experience reviewing I.Q. results?'' I confirmed. Yes, she did. So I asked her to wait a moment and went through my files in my bedroom until I found my own elementary school results and took them to her for her thoughts of what they meant.

She looked at the results page and was quiet for a long time and my stomach twisted as I realized I must have misinterpreted being above one hundred as a good sign and I had just handed Daina proof that I was an idiot. Finally, she broke her silence and looked up at me with wide eyes and said, ''You could be in Mensa!''

''What's men-sah?'' I asked back. It turned out it was an organization for the highest two percent of I.Q. scoring people in the world. According to Daina, I was in the highest one percent which meant I had a higher intelligence quotient than ninety-nine percent of everyone else in the world. I snorted disbelievingly as she continued that she had tried to get into Mensa herself but was just on the edge and hadn't qualified on their acceptance exam, yet.

This seemed all very farfetched to me and I gave her an incredulous smile back. ''No, really! Really!'' she repeated, trying to get me to believe. ''So they put you in Gifted & Talented programs in school?'' she asked.

''Gifted & Talented?''

She explained they were special programs that schools offered to their best and brightest to help them grow and keep them engaged beyond the typical school offerings. Was I sure I wasn't in any such programs?

Very. While I didn't mention that the high school counselor had refused to help me determine my college options because of his belief of my having a low I.Q., I did mention how I was often aimed toward the less challenging courses, presumably because of my stuttering. Then I did recall the pull out sessions I had been assigned to in fourth grade, where we were to spend forty-five minutes twice a week playing the children's version of Scrabble with the words preprinted in the squares.

Daina was horrified and quickly brewing to livid. Asking me to repeat that, which I did with more detail, though ultimately there wasn't much more to it. Daina paced the living room, covering her gaping mouth with her hand. This was when I remembered the time when the head of the high school's math department, Zack Hatch, had asked me to stay after class left to tell me of how the school system had been screwing me over the years and that I needed to talk to my father and get a lawyer. At the time, as I was then nearing the end of my most successful year of school, I couldn't imagine screwing that up in the year to come by suing them. Further, I couldn't tell Zack that I had the type of father that wouldn't be interested, anyhow.

But now with Daina's reaction it was finally starting to sink in what it actually was Zack had meant and how badly mishandled I'd been by the school system. Daina was now effectively having the emotional reaction I should have been having, then and since.

Daina slumped back down into a living room chair and looked back at me with tears touching her eyes. She didn't have anything left to say and I couldn't imagine what I could say either. Then I decided to make a joke of it saying that I had probably scored that high by accident.

But it wasn't a joke to her as she explained that it was very hard to score highly by chance, if not impossible. If anything, one could score lower than their actual I.Q. if they were having a bad day during the test or were suffering from some temporary cognitive dysfunction or other health problems.

We sat quietly for a bit, then I realized I needed to get the Quarterly paperwork back into my bedroom and have Daina leave before my mother returned from her work day. Daina asked if I wanted to go out to dinner with her. I passed, saying I had other plans for the evening, but noted that we'd be out to eat together after the coming science fiction club meeting. I didn't want to tell her I couldn't afford it.

A few days later I received the letter rescheduling the Social Security Disability appeal hearing. It was for the following week and this time at the Special Events Center, of all places. When the day came I again left for the hearing with my medical paperwork in hand. Entering at the main doors to the foyer with the ticket windows, I guessed that the ticket girl was acting as the receptionist and went up to the window and asked her about it. She buzzed the door open and told me it was on the second floor. Entering the otherwise vacant facility I made my way up the closest stairs and saw the notice posted on one of the conference room's doors noting that the hearings were in there, but to take a seat out here and wait until called. I did but, unfortunately felt a gurgle, then two.

Oh dear God not now! I thought as I realized I was going to have another one of my painful bowel experiences and closed my eyes hoping for it to go away. There was a bathroom right next to the sitting area and as I had arrived early I hoped I had enough time to get in there and get it out of my system. Did I mention painful?

Exhausted and spent, glazed with perspiration and fighting off the typical post bad bowel movement shakes, I finally got out of the bathroom to find the conference room door had been propped open. Apparently the previous hearing had finished and the door left open for me. I checked the time and I actually had a few more minutes until my scheduled hearing. Grabbing my envelope of records from the sitting area, I peered in through the open door. The judge was sitting at one of the many tables with the recorder clerk in this otherwise empty conference room. He waved me in and I unsteadily traipsed to the table, unsure of which chair I should take. Normally after a bad time in the bathroom I would go to bed and lie down until I recovered my strength, but under the circumstances I didn't have that option. When I reached the table I noticed a chair was pulled out more than the rest and assumed that was where I should sit.

The hearing started without much pomp, just the judge confirming who I was and noting that, since I didn't have a lawyer with me, I could always get one from the local Legal Aid office and we could reschedule. I passed on that option saying I would represent myself. Thus the hearing was underway as he repeated the original Social Security Disability findings that I didn't qualify due to insufficient medical evidence. Did I have some new medical reports which would support my claim?

I didn't, but this was my first time I could finally tell my story of the primary care doctor who had defrauded me, leaving me without any medical conclusions beyond the direct test results and hospital records to support my claim. I pulled out the paperwork and showed how the doctor had systematically wrote one thing in his reports while the actual records showed the opposite. I told of the past year's worth of trying to find a new doctor to seriously address my health concerns, but that had been impossible in part because apparently said primary care doctor had been telling derogatory stories about me to others in the medical community. I noted the times I saw potential new doctors and their telling me they didn't need to look into my health issues because 'they already knew' I didn't have any without explaining how they knew that.

I did provide copies of my allergy records as they were the only thing I had gotten done since providing my first batch of medical records to Social Security. ''And these show that you suffer from debilitating allergies?'' the judge asked as he accepted the paperwork and put it aside to review later.

''Not if I avoid them. No'', I answered.

Was there anything else I had to say? He asked and I didn't beyond summarizing that I hadn't been able to get a doctor to fully look into my health issues and unexplained weight loss and that was why I didn't have any reports to back my claim for benefits. He asked if I was sure I didn't want to postpone this hearing until I found one and I replied that I didn't know how I could find one at this point.

And the hearing was concluded. Starting on my way out, I turned back to him and asked why the previous hearing had been scheduled at the land use office, but this one was at the events center. The Judge explained that he was based in Denver and since they didn't have any dedicated office in town, they just scheduled whatever city owned room was free at the time for the hearings. I thanked him for letting me know and finished leaving the room.

I would find out later that I had successfully convinced him at the hearing that I had no medical reports to support my claim for Social Security Disability...

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Unwelcomed

56

Despite the fact that it resulted in my food stamp allotment being suspended, the Unemployment compensation checks vastly exceeded the state aid stipend I had become used to living on. It was about three times as much, twice as often. My overdraft balance was promptly paid off and money began to again fill my savings account. Now having enough money to pay for gas in my car, I again set my sights on Denver trips.

Since receiving the flyer for the 'Gender Support Group' from the community mental health center at the end of the previous year, I had been toying with the idea of contacting them. But the problem was to call the GSG would have been a long distance charge and a line item on my mother's long distance bill. The last thing I needed in my life was her wondering what that phone number was about. So I had set my goal to one day drive there and visit their office in person and learn about what they had to offer. Also this drive would act like a tiny vacation day away from my usual daily activities and issues of the past nine months.

Driving to Denver then making my way to an older part of town, I found what I had imaged to be an office building was actually a small Victorian style house. Once finding one of the rare street-side parking spots, I made my way into the house occupied by just one person at a reception desk. The greeter was holding down the fort, but effectively the support group itself had its meetings in the evenings. Still, I was invited to look around the first floor where the small living and dining rooms had been merged into one large meeting area in a living room furnished style. The back room had been converted to a locker space for those wishing to store one set of clothes for times they wished to leave home looking one way and come here to redress for the evening. The floor ended with a turn to a small kitchen behind a bathroom, the stairs to an upper level and the reception foyer I had first entered. I never did find out what was in the upstairs rooms.

The greeter spent some time with me chatting, asking about my background and interests. Still a bit apprehensive, I kept everything vague. When asked if I was a transsexual or a transvestite I said I was exploring at the moment and wasn't sure. I was invited to browse the book collection in the bookcases built into the living room walls and then on the way out I was given more comprehensive flyers for the group, various topic based meeting times, and all that they offered beyond. When I got home I looked through the flyers more closely and discovered they offered a membership packet reputedly with details on all the gender roles and options and I thought this might be the perfect thing for me to get so I could bring myself up to speed on the whole area and get a handle on where I fit in.

As I pondered this, I went back to pursuing my health issues and called Premier Medical Center and made an appointment with the first available general care doctor they had. While my experience with the gastroenterologist there had ended bizarrely, my search for a primary care doctor in my own town had been a failure. I thought that, perhaps I could find myself the primary care doctor I needed at Premier Medical Center, outside of the local politics and 'old boys network' that seemed to control my home town's medical community. When I arrived for my appointment, I discovered that the next available doctor was a woman. Perhaps I had just gotten a bad apple the first time and my original hope that a female doctor would be more understanding of my strange puberty again emerged. She seemed nice and thoughtful as I discussed my history of weight loss, explained the tests I had including the diagnoses of a fructose intolerance and fat malabsorption issue and the level of weakness I endured from the weight loss and periodically painful bowel movements.

She took all this in and decided that I should have a neurological test performed first. While it was possible my sense of weakness was a result of the profound weight loss, it could also be the result of something else, I was told. The appointment ended very positively and I was directed to the scheduling desk to take the doctor's order and schedule my return date for the test as well as a follow-up with her for a physical examination. I left this appointment feeling it had gone well, but after the past year, this feeling was tempered by experience.

As I was back in Denver, I made another trip to the GSG and again visited with the greeter and pulled some of the magazines off the shelves and browsed them for a bit. While I was invited to stay for that evening's meeting, I wanted to get home and back into my locked bedroom before my mother got off of work so I wouldn't have to see her and face her verbal assault when I got home. But I did muster up the courage and handed over a check for the full membership amount, expecting that I could get my packet and go home. But it turned out memberships had to be processed and the packet would be mailed to me once that was done. They could mail it to my given home address, couldn't they? ''Yes... Sure,'' I said trying to convince myself as I thought over the possible problems with it. Since moving to Colorado, mother had given me the spare mobile home park's post box key for her lot, assigning me the task of collecting the mail each day and having it waiting for her when she got home. While she did get the mail herself, it was typically only once a week on one of her days off. So I should be able to receive the GSG packet in the mailbox before her... I concluded to tamp down the sudden burst of butterflies as I headed home.

To my surprise my mother had gotten home a bit early and so I had to see her as I came in. As I had avoided seeing her for many months, this was her first chance to say something to me eye-to-eye. From her living room chair she glared at me as I came in the door and closed it behind me ready to go straight to my bedroom. She called my name and I looked to her as she said, ''I've spoken with your sister and brothers and they all agree with me what a terrible person you are for faking your health problems and embarrassing me with my coworkers at the hospital.'' As I had never met any of her coworkers, I assumed she meant the rumors her primary doctor had been spreading about me. ''You are to leave my home immediately and never return or your siblings will hate you and never forgive you,'' she declared. I turned and continued on to my bedroom, ignoring her. She had made the mistake of claiming that she had spoken to my eldest brother: She hadn't spoken to him once since moving to Colorado and had often made it clear it was up to him to make the first call to her. It was obvious that she never would have called him, even to discuss the matter of me effectively squatting in her mobile home, thus I knew what she had said about all of my siblings was complete and utter bull pucky. Had she only mentioned my sister and not as older brother I would have thought it possible, but she probably felt that by invoking all of my siblings, I would be fearful enough of losing one of them that I would do what she said without thinking... Moving out of my bedroom in her mobile home and take up living on the streets instead.

Sure enough the packet came on a day my mother was at work and I opened it up and sorted through all that was included. Names and contact information for various counselors specializing in transsexuals and transvestites, and detailed definitions and descriptions of both. But it was one side note that caught my eye, noting that 'intersexed' people were not welcomed at the support group, defining them as people with biologically mixed issues that the club did not and would not deal with... Looking up the word intersex I discovered it covered people with physical mixed sex manifestations as well as possible chromosomal abnormalities.

Was this me?

As I had just paid a large chunk of money to become a member of the support group, the last thing I wanted to think about was my membership possibly being void, so I pushed that thought aside and went to my neurological testing appointment the following week.

The test was to have me take off my shoes & pants and lay down on a table while a series of wired needles were put in place. The technician said the needles were short and wouldn't actually penetrate the skin layer so I wouldn't have to worry about any bleeding or infection. The goal was to align the needles to nerves in my right arm and leg to then send current from one end to measure the resistance as the current passed through the length of nerves. In this way they could tell if my weakness was in part caused by a nerve conduction problem. She used a small tape measure to figure out the placement of the needles and marked off the locations with a black felt tip pen. Had I know this ahead of time I would have brought my fall jacket with me to cover up my arm after the test was done. Then she started inserting the needles one after another, me wincing with each one, until she reached the end leaving a web of wires from the needles reaching to the machine. Then she was going to attach the electrode with the power and lifted it off the machine and swept her arm up into the web of wires and pulled them up as well, causing each needle to be yanked free at an angle, tearing open my skin. Most of them started bleeding and the technician panicked, she handed me some tissues to dowse the trickling blood and frantically searched the room for bandages. But she had to leave the room to find them instead.

When she returned, most of the bleeding pinholes had come to a stop and she wiped down my wounds with alcohol, then placed a little circular bandage over each one. Wiping my arm with the alcohol had also blurred the felt tip markings, but she thought she could see them clearly enough, only having to remeasure and mark one of them. She apologized and noted that she would have to now offset the needles from the best placement points, but that it really shouldn't make a significant impact on the test results if they were all equally offset. Wiping the tips of each needle with the alcohol, she again quickly placed each and every one into my right arm & leg until the web of wires to the machine was restored. She was having to rush as the allotted time to do the test was quickly running out after the mistake. She reached for the electrode that would create the electrical pulse and swept her arm up, through all of the wires and ripping all of the needles out, again. She frantically poured alcohol onto a fresh swab and used it to wipe at all of the new bleeding spots running down my arm and leg. She was now a nervous wreck, her hands shaking as she tried to put new little bandages over the new holes torn in my skin. I had to take over and do it myself as she got the beep from the wall phone that served as the warning that the room would soon be needed for another patient's test. She fretted over if she should call the front desk and tell them that things were running late or if she should have me return to the waiting room until all of the other scheduled tests were complete, and then get back to me at the end of the day.

I interjected into her self debate and simply said, ''Let's not do this.'' What? I noted that now the needles would have to be even further from the ideal positions given the additional bandages covering me so I was starting to doubt the test would be any good. She said that the first spots might heal up enough by the end of the afternoon and she could put the needles back in those holes. This suggestion made me even more resolved, ''Yeah, let's not do this.'' and I pulled on my pants and put my shoes on from the side of the table and got ready to leave. Now she was positively frantic as she got the second beep from the wall mounted phone and I made my way out. Into the hallway, I slipped into the next bathroom I saw and fought off my own case of the shakes before I felt strong enough to leave the building.

As I was already in Denver I had planned to again stop at the GSG but now wondered if I should, given my arm speckled in little round bandages and black lines. I decided to go ahead, thinking it might make a good conversation piece with the greeter once I got there. But the person who served as the volunteer greeter must have had the day off or had gone out to get lunch and the house was locked shut and dark. I debated waiting outside on the sidewalk in case the greeter was going to be returning soon, but given how well the day had gone so far, I decided to just go on home.

When I returned to Premier Medical Center for my physical with the doctor, I expected part of our visit would be to discuss what had happened on test day and possibly reschedule it with a different technician. The nurse lead me to the room and had me get undressed, putting on the usual gown when waiting for the doctor. After a bit she entered the room seething and yelling at me that I had refused to complete the test because I knew it would show there was nothing wrong. When I tried to explain what had actually happened and show her the little scabs down my arm, she said she already knew that nothing had happened beyond my refusing to take the test. She wasn't going to hear anything else about it.

And so there I was sitting on the exam table in the gown and she was pacing the floor still very angry. We were in silence for a moment as she gathered herself then decided to proceed with the physical. As she came at me I quickly mentioned that I had some past issues with – and she pulled the gown open. She promptly turned heel and fled for the door. ''You freaks and your back alley hormones!'' she yelled at me. The door was slammed behind her and this time I didn't imagine she was going to return and just glumly removed the gown and put my clothes back on. I left the building not thinking I'd ever return to Premier Medical Center again. EVER.

I could at least return to the GSG house and see if they were open and end my time in Denver with a positive experience. When I got there, the building was again open and the familiar greeter was there and happy to see me again. Perhaps noticing the mood I was in, they asked what had happened. I dropped onto one of the couches in the meeting room while I debated whether or not to talk about it. But I realized that the whole point of the GSG was to be a support group for each other and concluded that this was the right place to bring it up. Not mentioning the testing issues or that part of the appointment with the doctor, I cut to the chase of the doctor's reaction to seeing me and what she had yelled at me. ''What the hell was that supposed to mean?'', I wondered, ''Back alley hormones?''

The greeter became quiet before responding, ''You don't know?'' No. ''You've never taken any?'' No. It was explained that back alley hormones are what transsexuals bought off the black market when they couldn't get a doctor's approval to start 'transitioning' into another sex. Oh, I realized that must have been what the doctor had imagined when seeing how I was after my strange puberty. But I kept that realization to myself as the greeter went and got a copy of the information packet. ''Are you sure you've never taken hormones?'' I was again asked and I again assured I hadn't. The greeter flipped to the page with the paragraph denoting 'interesexed' for me to review, and then pointed out the conclusion that the GSG was not the place for them.

The greeter then left me alone to sit there and returned to sit at the front desk. Apparently we weren't going to talk any longer. After a bit, I got the message and left without another word.

From that point forward I concluded I must be 'intersexed'. But now that I finally had a label, what could I do with it?

I actually did return a couple more times to visit some evening GSG meetings. The greeter wasn't there to 'out me' and I just listened. It soon became clear why it wasn't the place for intersexed people. Transsexuals and transvestites were unambiguously 'normal' members of one sex and felt the spirit of partially or completely being a member of the other sex. I didn't have any feelings of belonging to any sex and I would find out years later that this was common for intersexed people.

As transgendered people were all about one's inner gender identity, people without any such inner gender sense must have seemed creepy and unnatural...

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