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The one thing I hadn't expected when I told Daina of my mixed-sex
background was enthusiasm. I guessed it was more a
case of she was thrilled to finally have someone she could share dark
family secrets with, rather than her being happy about my
'situation'. But I was happy to accept it versus the many other
unhappy results I had imagined. From her classical studies, she told
me of two examples of similar people she knew of who seemed to have
the same physical issues as I did: Akhenaten, and Siddhartha Gautama.
Both had become religious reformers, and one of them didn't end up
so successfully at it. I didn't know what to make of her
comparisons, but it already left me feeling more like
an underachiever.
Akhenaten was an Egyptian pharaoh circa 1352 BCE who was
revolutionary in that he insisted on Egypt leaving behind its
polytheistic history and become a monotheistic society with the Aten,
also known as Ra-Horus, as its god. While he pushed the movement as
he lived, once he died it was abandoned and Egypt returned to its
polytheistic beliefs. Having reigned seventeen years he was
distinguished by his feminine-like appearance and is over shadowed by
his better known son, Tutankhamun. Though, if he and I truly
shared the same 'situation', I'd be hard pressed to see how he could
have been a biological
father.
Siddhartha Gautama was a spiritual teacher from the ancient Shakya
republic of the continent of India. More of a personal enlightenment
philosophy than a deity based religion, his teachings are roughly
that suffering is a part of existence and that suffering is in part
caused by one's own desires. One of his tenets, that teachings
should not be accepted unless borne out by one's own experience,
seemed to echo my own life's lessons. His teachings eventually
coalesced into Buddhism and has been a more enduring belief system.
While some depictions of him reveal a feminine styled body, these
depictions may just be culturally based as I wasn't able to find any
notes about a possible mixed-sexed background.
Soon after I told Daina of my 'situation' she wanted to go to the
library and look up all the information she could. She invited me
along and I forewarned her that the few times I had tried over the
years I had found very little, if any information. Still, I was game
to try again and she picked me up at my apartment.
When we arrived at the largest branch of the library we combed the
catalog for books without luck, then she checked for recent magazines
and found an article on 'pseudo-hermaphrodites'. The magazine
article focused on how Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome
'X/Y' genetic women were often deemed to make the most desirable
looking women and noted that some of them had often found jobs as
models or even as Hollywood actresses. While the article as a whole
didn't go into as much medical detail as I would have liked, it did
give me a new term to keep in mind: Androgen Insensitivity
Syndrome. Also finding the article seemed to make Daina
satisfied, joking that perhaps my mixed-sex background was why I had
been so interested in selling television scripts to Hollywood.
My sessions with my new psychologist, Samuel, had reached the point
that it was time to hunt for a doctor which could medically
evaluate my 'situation' and make suggestions and give me advice on
it. Too often being intersexed was deemed to be a plumbing issue and
many urological surgeons touted themselves as the doctors to see
about it. But ultimately all they did was perform surgery to
'clarify' the plumbing but otherwise seemed to have little interest
or knowledge of the total, lifelong, ramifications. We did finally
find a general practitioner who was not wholly specialized in the
intersexed field, as those doctors were very few and far between,
but had become aware of it and come up to speed on the various issues
over time while helping an initial patient he already knew. He had
since gained a positive reputation when handling such issues and with
his name I was able to find his contact information. I gave his
office a call to discover the steep 'initial evaluation fee' and the
lack of insurance coverage for it. While my latest apartment had a
significantly lower rent than my previous apartment, allowing me
greater flexibility in my finances, I realized I would still have to
save for at least the whole year before I'd have enough money for the
visit, assuming I didn't have any drop in my income in the meantime.
Yet what else could I do on this other than save that money, bit
by bit, over the months or years to come?
I let Samuel know that my telling Daina of my 'situation' had gone
well and he asked if I was going to tell anyone else. I decided I
wasn't until I had the medical consultation and thus gained a better
idea of how I would address my 'situation' before telling more of my
friends. He thought that made sense and we reduced our appointments
to once every month or two to keep in touch until I could go forward
and make the evaluation appointment...
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