110
My copy of the final television script, for 'The Other Show' I
watched and had sold my story to, arrived in the mail. With a snazzy
picture on the front of the script cover, I paged through it and was
disappointed. I had expected that if they wanted someone else to
rewrite it, it would be for the better. Instead there were beginner
scripting mistakes and a cliché
climax device that turned my stomach. On the other hand, this
revision did make the robots the android suspected of being sentient
more accessible and visible than my own script and that was an
improvement. Before the end of the year the show would be broadcast
and I would see it as it came to fruition and even glimpse my name in
the writing credits. I decided to see this as my first step
from which more success would come.
Returning to Dr. Czarnecki in Denver, after having considered the
options for my mixed-sexed condition, I reported to him that the
vitamin B12 shot didn't seem to have any noticeable effect on me. He
mentioned that it wasn't unusual. In retrospect I wondered if he
had actually just given me a shot of water to see if I had a
significant placebo effect response before trying out other things on
me? He asked me what path, if any, I had decided to try and I
told him I thought we might as well try an initial estrogen shot to
see how my body reacted to it. He went to have his nurse get the
shot ready and there seemed little else to talk about. When she
returned, the doctor noted that, given my likely greater number of
estrogen receptors versus testosterone receptors, he was going to
give me a very low dose as I might be over sensitive to it. That
made sense to me and I got this shot in the thigh.
Returning from Denver in Daina's car, I went to pick her up from the
school and told her of the decision. She didn't like the idea for
some reason which surprised me as she had been supportive of my
looking into my 'situation' for the preceding six months, to the
point of loaning me her car for these trips. We had a long talk
about it and she was concerned about me 'changing' and 'becoming a
different person', but I assured her I was going to be the same
person, regardless of what sex I decided to normalize as. She seemed
to accept this.
As the week approached where 'my show' was going to be broadcast,
Daina decided to organize a viewing party for me and invited many of
her school friends to join us at her apartment on that night. I
would have expected to watch it with my long time friend Jeff at his
house with a number of other science fiction friends we knew, but as
Daina had gone to all the trouble I decided not to disappoint her.
When the night came and the show began, I
was quickly disappointed that my name was not included in the writing
credits at the front of the show. In reflection, I realized that our
agreement to have my name included had been a verbal addendum over
the phone, so I guess I should have realized it would have been a
'buyer beware' moment. Still, I had gotten the pilot script &
writers' guide for the upcoming spin-off series as well as the cash
and official script, so I didn't think I could complain too much.
Especially if I wanted to stay in the show's good graces and pitch
more scripts and stories to them for their next series.
But then as I continued to see the show, I realized this was the
first time I couldn't 'watch the show', instead experiencing it as a
group of filmed moments which had been subsequently knitted together.
Yes that's what movies and television shows are, but
our minds then take this assemblage and use the spark of our own
imagination to see it as a continuous story and not as a collection
of moving pictures. But having been involved in the creation of the
show, I could only see the pieces, like the 'forest for the trees'
analogy. And even though I had read the final script and should have
become aware of it then, it was only while seeing the show that I
realized how scene for scene the same sort of things happened,
often with the exact same characters, as my script. It was just the
dialog and guest character names that were changed. It was a bit
creepy.
Once the show finished, Daina's friends gave me a smattering of
applause and I tried not to spoil their moment by noting my
discomfort and disappointment with the show. We visited for a bit
longer and Daina tried to solicit questions from her friends to ask
me but I was glad that there weren't many, if any, and they soon
filtered out. I think Daina and I played a card game to close up the
night before she gave me a ride back to my apartment.
Unlike after the B12 shot where nothing happened, I was caught off
guard by the effect of the estrogen. Since the age of sixteen,
for no apparent reason, I had been having sudden fevers that would
quickly go away. The first few times this happened, I went to the
school nurse about it and while she confirmed I 'felt hot' her only
recommendation was to see a doctor once I got home for the day. Yet,
by then the sudden fever had just a quickly disappeared and I came to
just not worry about them, even though they became more frequent and
annoying over the subsequent years. But now, for the first three
weeks after the estrogen shot, I didn't have any sudden fevers
until they came back during the fourth week. When I saw the Denver
doctor the following month and told him about it, he humorously told
me that my sudden fevers were called 'hot flashes'. He explained
that, as my testosterone level skyrocketed at the beginning of
puberty, so had the background estrogen level. But that after three
years of continuous effort, my hormones had naturally tapered down a
bit and likely the associated estrogen level had dipped below the
minimum point that my body needed. If this was the case, then my hot
flashes would most likely have been happening in the afternoon and
evening, which they had been, as the body builds up its
sex hormone level overnight and is at its highest during the morning.
He asked if I wanted to continue with the estrogen injections and my
question was: Could we increase the dosage to last through all
four weeks?
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