Lazarus

82

Returning to the community health clinic the following month, Betsey asked me how I was doing. I told her that my intestinal issues were far improved if not completely better, but that my headache still persisted. My vitals showed that my body temperature was now normal. She asked if I'd like to continue with the antibiotics and I readily agreed though wondered if perhaps my headache, itself, might be caused by something else. She noted that if it was, then we wouldn't have a reason to continue the antibiotics. Message received, I decided not to question it. The persistent headache was vastly less painful than the three times a week bathroom bouts.

After eight months of being on the fat enzymes, I had just barely gained over five pounds, leaving me just under thirty-five pounds below my ideal weight, two and a half months on the antibiotics I had gained another five pounds and felt ready to run a marathon. When I returned to Betsey for my second follow up, given my progress we decided to continue the antibiotics and schedule me with a neurologist to look into my leg pain of the previous ten months. As they didn't have a neurologist on staff, she found one newly in town and made an appointment for me with her. While we were at it, I noted that the fat enzyme prescription would run out soon and asked for the refill script while I was there. As we weren't exactly sure why I was gaining weight so rapidly, it made sense to continue it for now.

Dr. 'Robins' was the neurologist I was sent to see and based on my description of the leg pain she suspected it was a pinched nerve after doing a wide range of physical mobility and reflex tests in her office. She ordered an MRI and found I had a bulging spinal disc that was pinching the nerves in my lower back. I was given a prescription for ibuprofen and physical therapy plan at our subsequent appointment. While I was there, and since the headache still persisted, I asked her if perhaps that might also be caused by a pinched nerve? I was soon scheduled for an MRI of the neck.

The ibuprofen was a huge improvement to the over the counter pain pills I'd been taking and I was feeling even better by the time I was to take my next two-day trip to Denver to get my next three months of fat enzymes. When the Premier Medical Center doctor saw me to renew the script, he was surprised by how great I looked. I was thrilled to tell him how much better I'd been in the past two months since I'd been put on antibiotics and they'd even found the long term leg pain I'd had during the past year was from a bulging spinal disc. Two months of antibiotics? He asked. Yep, I replied, and I was just starting my third month.

When I next saw Betsey, she was a bit sullen and felt we should either stop the antibiotics, or at least change me to a different kind. I was fearful of stopping them completely given how much I'd gained in the previous three months, I didn't want to return to how I had been. We agreed on a month of a different antibiotic while she also made an appointment for me with an off site gastroenterologist to look into why the antibiotics had made me so much better and find a diagnosis to support my continued treatment.

The MRI of the neck showed another bulging disc and so when I started physical therapy for my back, we also addressed my neck as well. The physical therapist played with the motion of my neck and also concluded I had a vertebrae out of place and wanted to 'adjust it'. I agreed and she asked me to loosen my head and let it flop in her hands as she wriggled it back and forth and then – snap! -- the headache on the side of my head for the previous three months was suddenly gone. She scheduled me for three months of return visits to perform physical exercises using their equipment. Suddenly headache free, I was more than happy to come back!

The gastroenterologist, after hearing my story of years of weight loss and emaciation, followed by the sudden improvement since being on antibiotics, scheduled me for an endoscopy to take a camera into my stomach and upper intestine for a look. As part of it, he took a small sample of my intestine for examination as well. All looked good and showed no signs of any problem. The question though: Was that because there wasn't any original problem to find or had the antibiotics addressed the problem that had been there but overlooked for all these years? There was no way of telling now.

When I returned to Betsey for my third follow-up since starting the antibiotics, I reported to her that the alternative antibiotics hadn't been as effective and asked to go back to the original kind. She agreed, though at a reduced dosage of three five hundred milligrams of Cephalexin each day.

With all of my health issues addressed and much improved with this whirlwind of treatment after so many years of being ignored, I was ready to get back into the work force and concluded it would be best to do so through the state's Vocational Rehabilitation office, if possible. I made an appointment with them.

In the meantime, Betsey decided I should be evaluated by a neuro-psychologist. Seeing Dr. 'Maverick' we in part discussed the time I woke up with the terrible pain in the side of my head two years prior and my subsequent problems typing the wrong words. It was at that time she concluded it had been a stroke and was shocked by the way the emergency room had 'streeted' me without a significant workup at that time. As she checked me for everything else in her field, she concluded that the stroke was the only thing of note along with the significantly improved I.Q. score versus the Vocational Rehabilitation score I had received three years earlier. That result again indicated that I had been suffering from a cognitive impairment due to my health issues at the time.

After all this work on my condition, it was once again time to renew my fat enzyme prescription and make my quarterly two day trip to Denver to pick it up. When seeing the Premier Medical Center's resident doctor for my fourth time ever, he had this sheepish smile on his face as he came in and told me how his attending doctor had reacted when he told him the news of my dramatic improvement after my last visit. The attending doctor was outraged that the community health clinic had been treating me, he called up Betsey and screamed at her about it on the phone and threatened to have her medical license pulled, so I was told. The attending doctor had further informed her that if she continued treating me he would make sure she would never be able to practice medicine in the state of Colorado ever again! At the time he told me this story, it had already been over two months since that call to Betsey had taken place...

''So, is she still treating you?'' He asked me.

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Headache

81

Screwed! That's how I felt one day in early November Nineteen Ninety when I woke up with my first serious headache since I had given up drinking corn syrup based sodas. And this headache wasn't like those, this headache was like a point of fire at the lower back of my head that stretched like fingers of pain from there, across my temple on one side, to touch my forehead. The reason why I felt screwed was because the off the shelf pain pills I'd been taking for my left leg line of pain hadn't successfully masked that, nor were they addressing this new pain. Going to the community health clinic would be a waste of time as going there for most of my past issues had simply resulted in the doctor, Betsey, just benignly smiling at me and sending me home without examination or treatment.

And yet what else could I do?

So I made myself another appointment with her for a few days later and hoped the pain would go away by then so I could cancel. It didn't. And so I took the bus from my apartment, then the connecting bus to the clinic and stood in line so I could be checked in and sent to the doctors' wing of the building so I could be checked in again and told to sit. Sometimes the line to be checked in would be very long and I feared I would miss my appointments, but when I asked, I was told that checking in at the front desk WAS REQUIRED before checking in at the appointment waiting area.

When I was called in back, I had come to know the nurse well as I had been there nearly once a month this year and we visited for a bit and she took my vitals. Given my past review of my records and finding out about my surprisingly low body temperature, I had developed the habit of asking what my vitals were. She told me and my blood pressure was good as always, but my temperature was still ninety-four degrees Fahrenheit. I was left alone for a bit before Betsey came in. She seemed nervous for some reason as she settled down to ask what brought me in this time. I noted the new headache that was unwilling to go away. This seemed to help her unease as she said rapidly, ''It might be a sinus infection. How about if I put you on some oral antibiotics for a month?''

I sat there wondering if I had just lost my mind. After the past year of her politely smiling and doing next to nothing for my health concerns, now she was offering antibiotics without even a moment's debate? ''Ah, okay,'' I said after my pause and she wrote the script and I was on my way to their pharmacy. It was Cephalexin, five hundred milligram capsule, four times a day. As the pharmacy worked on the same sliding income scale as the doctor visits, this was only a couple of dollars for the whole month's supply.

On the bus ride back to my apartment, I wondered about it as I had originally thought that antibiotics made my health issues better back in Nineteen Eighty-Five when I was briefly on them, but when I had mentioned that to the clinic's Nurse Practitioner Michael, a year and a half ago, he had decided to try it out and given me an injection of Penicillin that did nothing for me. Having spent the intervening year wondering why, I had concluded that my problem might be in my intestines alone and only oral antibiotics would help it, explaining why the injection hadn't helped. But it was just a theory by me and knowing doctors thought very little of what I had to say about my health issues, I had never considered the idea of asking for oral antibiotics to test out my theory... And now here was a month's worth in my hands.

As the day was already half over, I only had two: One with dinner and one before I went to bed.

This would be the part where I write that the antibiotics cured the intestinal problem that had been plaguing me for the past six years. That I was once again able to gain weight while on a normal diet. That I no longer suffered from any of the horrifically painful bathroom bouts that had left me begging to God to ''Please let me die'' given the level of pain. That with this miraculous result Betsey decided that my reports of the burning line of pain down the back of my left leg wasn't a psychological issue but perhaps a neurological one, sending me to a neurologist who discovered a bulging spinal disc in my lower back and successfully treated me for it. That in just a few shorts months after this prescription my health was fully restored and I was back to being able to work as well as it curing the sinus infection causing my headache.

I could say all of that, but it wouldn't be completely true...

It turned out the headache was caused by another pinched nerve... In my neck.

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Tricks Of The Trade

80

When you've gone through years of emaciation and withered away losing your stamina and strength, you need to learn some tricks to get through the day, or give up being out and about entirely. In my case, having a history of figuring things out, the die was cast.

You don't have the energy to stand in a room when there are no seats available? Rather than complain about it and making others annoyed at you, or settle to the floor and not be able to easily get back up in front of others, try this: I learned to stand a foot or two from a wall and lean back against it to support my weight and keep me upright. To stop the knees from folding forward and dropping me to the floor, I used one leg to rest on top of the knee cap of the other leg to keep it straight and supportive. It looks like you're just casually leaning against the wall, but in reality you're wedged there with gravity holding you in place. All you now have to do is expend energy keeping your head held up, much easier than the whole body. If you don't like your arms dangling at your side, fold them and let the friction of your sleeves and interlocking of your bones keep them in place there. After a while your supporting leg might begin to hurt and then you carefully lift the crossed leg off from on top and make that your supporting leg and now cross your old supporting leg over the knee cap of your new supporting leg.

Having problems with your inner ear as you stand or walk? When I first started having balance problems I had to find a new way of 'feeling' that I was in a vertical position. I began to realize the sensation at the ankle joint when bent forward or leaned back; there's a compression of the tissues in front of the ankle and a stretch from behind and vice versa. Focus in on that sensation when standing upright and feel the difference as you lean forward with something to support you and lean back against a wall. There's a difference of sensation in your ankles between those three positions, get used to paying attention to them and then, as you walk, focus on how the tissues around the ankles feel as you are upright, standing and even as you are walking on a level surface. I found by focusing on this, I was able to get by without my inner ear to help me for years at a time. The problem with this technique is that it only works well on level surfaces and, with some practice, slightly tilted surfaces, but walking up steeper paths or ramps can still be a problem. In the case of a ramp, there should be a hand rail to help. When just a steep path, I would find myself an alternate route even if it mean walking significantly further.

Wobbling too much as you walk down a hallway, leaving people to wonder if you're drunk? Use your fingertip and run it along the wall as you walk. It looks like you're casually keeping your finger busy in a playful way, but in reality it gives you feedback as you move letting you know if you're getting closer to the wall or further as you go. By stiffening your finger, wrist and arm, it becomes a steadying pole as all you need to now worry about is just placing one foot in front of the other and keeping an eye out for your destination.

Not confident of climbing or descending a wide staircase, but don't want to visibly cling to the hand railing at the side either? Still walk up and down those stairs at the side with the handrail, but simply don't grasp it if you can. Just keep you hand out and ready to grab it should you feel a sudden unsteadiness. But if you need to touch it for psychological comfort, use the tip of the finger trick, running it along the railing as you go, giving you that playful 'not a care in the world' look while still giving you a physical sense of support.

The other tricks will come pretty naturally to you as you need them. Having problems standing up from a chair? Always make sure to sit at chairs with arms and then use your hands as well as your legs as you stand. Having problems talking? Use more nodding or shaking of the head to communicate simple answers. Having problems writing by hand? You know this trick: Type instead, if you can. As I said, these are the more common tricks and you might just fall into using them when you need to without even realizing it.

I found I could do others tricks as well, though I didn't mean to. Suzi of the writer's group: Her young daughter had a phase where she liked to startle people just to see them jump. But I was a mystery to her, no matter how many times she tried to startle me, I'd just turn to her and just say, ''Oh, Hi.'' It took me a bit to realize that my ability to get that adrenal kick of being surprised had long since gone and nothing could startle me or make me jump anymore, but I didn't tell her that was how I did the trick, she just assumed I somehow always knew she was there.

Gone too, was my stuttering. Being a habitual stutterer where it's a learned habit maintained by the back of the brain, by Nineteen Ninety, my brain was no longer up to par and one of the side effects was the back of my mind no longer had the resources to ensure I stuttered when I talked. Again, people mistook my lack of stuttering as ''a good sign'', that I was ''finally growing out of it.''

When making my two-day trips to Denver to pickup my three month supply of fat enzymes, I'd have spare time to fill beyond my appointment with Premier Medical Center and visited my old start up software company friend and his family. As the national bus line terminal was in the heart of the city, I'd taken up visiting the downtown Denver area and learning its layout and little concrete parks to sit at for a bit and watch life go by. But for one of these journeys, I decided to play my old trick of seeing my hospital records; I was interested if there was anything behind the scenes I should know about. On this trip I went to my appointment to collect the fat enzymes on my first day in Denver, the next morning I returned to Premier Medical Center and went to their records department.

I had checked with my previous visit that they charged for a copy of your medical file, even for your first one -- meanies -- but they did allow you to review your file for free, if you wished. You just had to make an appointment ahead of time as they only had a few review desks available at any time during the day. After I made my appointment to see the doctor, I had then called and made the subsequent day's appointment to review my file. As I arrived on that second day, I checked in at the records office. They confirmed I had an appointment and then they went to get my file. It wasn't there. They told me it had been checked out and gave me the name of the doctor who had checked it out. I didn't recognize the name so they showed me the sign-out sheet of my file in case the attendant had mispronounced the name...

What caught my attention wasn't the fact that I didn't recognize the name of the current person with my file, but the fact that the multiple page ''sign-out sheet'' was filled with at least twenty-five names and dates of people who had signed-out my file. Only a handful of them were the dates I had been to the medical center and had the names of the few doctors I had ever seen there. The vast majority were of people I had never heard of and showed dates I had never been near the place. When I asked the attendant about all those people who had been checking out my file, she was surprised I didn't know those names either, Was I sure they weren't involved with my health care? Not that I knew of or had heard about. She said that was unusual as medical files should only be checked out by people working on someone's healthcare. Either way the upshot was, since my file was checked out, I couldn't see it that day.

I pointed out that I had a scheduled appointment to have seen it and asked why it hadn't been reserved for me. She returned that it was always deemed that if medical personnel wanted to see a file, they always had priority. Was I sure I didn't have an appointment to see the doctor who currently had it signed out today? I was. I asked if we could contact him and see why he had my file and when he might return it? She noted that the sign-out sheets didn't include contact information, but I could come back the following day and surely the file would be back by then. Was I sure this guy wasn't my doctor? She again asked, not being able to fathom that people not involved with my care would have my file.

I was sure, I told her, as well as the fact that I was from out of town and couldn't come back the next day. Oh well, she concluded, I could just make an appointment with them the next time I was back in town... And would my file be available for that appointment? I asked rhetorically.

On the national bus ride back, my mind raced with what it meant that so many people had been checking out my file at Premier Medical Center. Were they people behind the scenes who were looking into my health history and trying to help me? Or were they looky-loos who had heard about me via the medical grapevine and just had to have a look for themselves? Or could it simply be a case of medical students at the hospital checking out records at random to review as part of their studies?

I never found out, nor did I ever get a chance to see my file, there.

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Follow-Up

79

With a few visits to Jude under my belt about how to more effectively communicate my health issues to doctors so they might take them serious, the day had come: It was time for my next big bottle of fat enzymes. This was when I needed to request a prescription from my Community Health Clinic doctor, Betsy, so I could take it to Denver and have it discarded by the Premier Medical Center doctor as he replaced it with his own so I could pick the bottle up at their pharmacy.

Entering the examination room to wait for the doctor I sat down at the chair next to the wall-mounted desk. But this time, rather than sit either straight ahead facing forward or leaning forward at the edge with my arms collected in my lap or crossed, I made sure to sit so I would be interpreted as 'seeming relaxed'. I sat slightly angled to the left so I would be more facing the door than away from it when the doctor entered; had I been slightly turned away the doctor might see my left shoulder first and taken offense that I was giving her 'the cold shoulder'. Seating angle in place, it was time to position my arms. Both along the chair arms might be interpreted as too formal, confrontational, both in my lap might be seen as too pensive, untrusting. Both at angles might also seem to unlikely, as if I were putting on a pose, which I was but I didn't need to telegraph it. So I put the right arm straight along the arm rest with the left forearm balanced on the arm rest, hand facing toward the lap, elbow resting on the adjoining desk. Head held up straight, despite how fatigued I might feel, so I would look bright and engaged when the doctor came in. I placed a mild smile on my face as too much of a smile might be deemed suspicious and none at all, despite how my health might be making me feel, could be interpreted as 'not being open & welcoming' of the doctor as she came in.

I thus would now sit as I waited for the doctor.

At least one major hurtle had disappeared from my life, my stuttering. Apparently with the year's decline in my mental prowess, my mind no longer remembered that I was a stutter when I spoke, and therefore I didn't stutter. This was good as people would too often misinterpret the mid-word changes in pitch and moments of stammering & hesitations as signs of being deceitful rather than understand it for what it was. But now, without that monkey in my mouth, when I spoke to the doctor it would be with a 'normal', more intentionally composed, voice so my words would be taken as 'candor'.

Has anyone else noticed that to be deemed natural & honest I was to be posed & controlled...? I had noted this contradiction to Jude as he had recommended these steps to me, but he explained that to be deemed as being 'yourself' in society, you had to seem like 'just everyone else'.

And so the doctor came in and it was time for the next steps.

She would ask how I was doing, I was to say 'fine' regardless of how I was doing as saying anything else when first seeing the doctor could be interpreted as being 'a complainer' and get one tuned-out for the rest of the visit. It was only after affirming that one was fine, that one could then talk of problems without it being seen as only talking about one's problems. Now I was to lean forward as the doctor sat down into the chair next to me at the desk. While such a position would be deemed nervous & pensive as the doctor entered, now with her sitting, it would be seen as being close & trusting. Whereas if I remained sitting back as I had been positioned as she first came in, my continued position could be deemed as distant & aloof from her. In this way, I hoped to appear to the doctor as her equal, and thus trustworthy.

If my doctor, Betsy, was to make statements about my health, or steps to take, I was to repeat them back to her as if memorizing them for myself. In this way I would show that I cared about what she said and make her feel validated and more open to things I might have to say, afterward. If she was to arrive to the room frazzled and tired, I was to show empathy by noting 'it had been a long day, already, hadn't it?' Or if she expressed frustration that I was back, I was to reflect, 'it must seem like a waste of your time to see me again' without adding the judgmental phrase 'given how little progress we've made on my health issues' at the end.

I had been warned against defensiveness. A person who had been falsely accused of things would be defensive as a natural reaction, but that quick leap to one's own defense could be misconstrued as a guilty person trying to 'sell their story', not 'clarify the truth'. So if the doctor said anything about me 'making up' my health problems, or bringing up any of the other negative, bogus rumors that had been spread about me through the doctor grapevine, I was to simply ignore those comments and not break eye contact because even that brief turning away of the eyes could be interpreted as turning away from the truth of it. 'Yet facing the truth of it didn't confirm it?' I would ask Jude before hand and he'd say 'No, by not breaking eye contact, you are staring down the lie.'

Should I feel the need to respond to a judging statement made to me, the trick was not to tell the other person the truth of the matter, but to have them conclude it by making a rhetorical question of it. ''Why would I keep coming back to this clinic repeatedly? Do I have other options without income or private health insurance?'' ''Why would I come here 'because I was lonely' when I have friends I visit with and talk to on a daily basis?'' ''Why would I keep coming here, to the clinic, and bring up my health issues?''

And with all these thoroughly considered & prepared responses, the hope was I would be deemed spontaneous & casual and make this and future meetings with doctors successful!

But if it was successful this time, that wasn't clear to me as she just ended-up giving me my prescription to take to Denver. Nothing more.

Maybe her professional smile had been a touch more friendly by the end...?

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Fall Out

78

 

After my experiences in the Fall of Nineteen Eighty-Seven, with my mother's primary doctor having fabricated notes about me and subsequent doctors having openly disregarded their own test results concerning me, I had fantasized that I would one day find A Champion. This champion would discover that I had been mistreated by the medical community and stand up to the medical gossip mongers who were more interested in passing around imagined stories about me than doing their professional best to look into my health issues and resolve them. The champion would make them feel ashamed of what they had been doing for all these years and they would cower in response. And my new psychiatrist counselor, Jude, had made a phone call to one of these doctors and confirmed the sort of things I had been going through over the years. During that call, he had taken that first step as that champion...

And he decided it wasn't a road he wanted to take.

Still at our second appointment, and after that phone call, Jude was shaken as his plan of revealing to me my delusion of mistreatment had turned out to be his misimpression of professionalism on the part of medical doctors. Trying to salvage the appointment he said that going through medical school was an intense & grueling experience and that when budding doctors reached the chapter about mixed-sex people, they took it as the 'comic relief portion' of their education, at least that was what he had witnessed at the time in his own education. He now suspected that the emotional laughter response his colleagues had at that time permanently colored how they saw people suffering from an intersex condition and that was why doctors had not been taking my other medical issues seriously.

We ended the meeting with him suggesting that, even though the doctor's response had been unprofessional, I should probably not wear my ear studs to future doctor appointments and also take up wearing a three piece suit & tie when seeing them so they would more likely think of me 'professionally'. For the ear studs I noted that I couldn't take them out without them quickly closing up, but I had clear plastic spacers I could use instead. As for the three piece suit I thought that it would likely make me stand out more for suspicion given that I was going to the indigent focused community health clinic. He agreed with that last point and felt the plastic spacers would probably be good enough. We'd talk more about it at our next appointment.

Between appointments, I reflected how my pierced ears had never worked out as I had hoped given how they attracted household dust particles, which I was allergic to, and thus forced me to clean the studs and the ear holes a couple times each day just to keep the itching at bay. I concluded that, since I hadn't been enjoying having ear rings and medical people were using them as an excuse not to provide me treatment, that I would just give up on them. I removed my studs one night before going to bed and by the end of the week they had closed, just leaving a red dot where each hole had been.

At our next appointment we discussed my mother's primary doctor and his need to rewrite my test results in his records. Jude concluded that, as that doctor had laughed out loud upon seeing me at my first physical examination, he had his own issues with my intersexed condition but couldn't bring himself to admit it and thus when subsequently seeing me his mind read 'psychological issue' and he assumed it was a problem I had rather than his own. His need to discard my actual medical test records and to instead replace them with narrative notes showing the results he had wished to see was a defense mechanism which affirmed my health issues weren't 'his problem' but a problem in somebody else's field. The subsequent stories he had been creating about me and spreading around the medical community were just a way of defending his own ego and ensuring that others never reconsidered his own opinions about me and perhaps find him out.

With this information, I assumed we could do something about it, perhaps through the medical board, but Jude pointed out we couldn't as this was just his guess of someone who had never come to him for treatment. Effectively it was the medical community that needed psychological counseling to gain enough comfort to look beyond my intersexed issues and see my other medical needs. While I had hoped Jude could call other doctors who I suspected of disparaging me over the years just so I could directly hear more of the junk they had been spreading about me, he didn't want to do that sort of thing again as he didn't think there was anything constructive that could ultimately come of it.

The best he could do was teach me some techniques I could use, when seeing medical doctors to treat my health concerns, that would reduce any psychologically adverse reactions they might have when seeing me. Effectively, I was going to become their unofficial counselor during my appointments with them so that in return they might be better able to be my doctor during those and future appointments. In the meantime he was going to talk to various people in the medical community, I hadn't yet met, to see if he could find one that might be comfortable enough with the intersexed side issue that they would actually work on my weight loss and bathroom bout issues. With little other option, I agreed to this plan.

As we had now established 'a rapport' he asked if he could order some tests of his own to look into my biological background. Not my weight loss issues? I asked. No. As he didn't actively practice physical medicine he felt that was best left to those who worked that field every day. What he wanted was to order some test to address his own curiosity in my intersexed condition. As I had some curiosity there as well, I agreed. To keep news of these tests from the hospital my mother worked at, I went to 'the other hospital' in town to have my blood drawn for them.

The following visit there had been some curious findings from those tests. The first one was that the lab tests had me noted as being registered at the hospital as 'female'. Had I told them that when I registered? I told him I hadn't, nor had I ever been asked, they must have just looked at me and guessed or concluded it must be the case based on the tests that were ordered. Regardless, the genetic test he ordered showed me with the male 'X/Y' chromosome pair and the testosterone test he ordered had also surprised him. He had expected that to show me with an under performing level of testosterone to explain why I had never developed a meaningful beard, instead it showed that I had a surprisingly high testosterone level, more appropriate for a boy in early puberty rather than a male ten years after the fact. He had originally thought that perhaps he would prescribe me some testosterone to see if it would make my body 'more manly', but given the level I already had in me, that made no sense. He had exhausted his level of expertise when it came to mixed sex issues and we finished up with more discussion of how to handle medical doctors having issues with me.

While I felt we were still months away before we could make any progress with that goal, I left his office at least musing that I had a testosterone level in my body that would make Arnold Schwarzenegger blush!

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