Time With Samuel

113

Seeing Samuel was a huge ego boost for me. After years of no support and harassment at the hands of medical doctors and other psychology professionals, he was completely supportive of my 'situation' and my desire to look into and resolve it.

During our first sessions, he asked about my previous experiences with psychological professionals and I told him of the psychologist who'd I first seen during my four day hospital stay in Nineteen Eighty-Seven, which was a good experience, and then the times with the mental health social worker 'Stella Hernandez' who had spent the sessions telling me about her life and problems rather than the other way around, my experiences with the Vocational Rehabilitation psychologist and his bizarre technique & findings, and my brief time with the counselor whose office was at the other hospital in town who denied I had even had a sister and who desperately wanted to find records of a nonexistent time I was in a mental institution. Samuel noted that often times people go into the psychological field to learn about their own issues rather than with the goal of helping others in mind and as a result they will often spend their time using patients as blank slates for their own use.

In my case Samuel felt I made the perfect blank slate given my ambiguous racial background as well as my biologically ambiguous sex and tendency to be initially quiet when meeting people given my stuttering. He could see many people filling in that initial question mark of who and what I was with what was going on in their own minds rather than taking me as I truly was. I noted the many times I had people see me and blow up about things I knew nothing about but they thought I was guilty of; and also of the times when people would see me and suddenly feel I was the right person to unburden themselves about dark matters in their lives.

Samuel agreed that these occurrences fit into his 'blank slate' theory. Some people saw me as a way to externalize their own neuroses, in the case of things people didn't like about themselves they would paint them onto me. In the case of people who needed to unburden themselves, they could imagine me as the person they needed to confess to as there was nothing definitive about me to dissuade them and also, seeming to appear outside of the social norm, I wasn't perceived as a threat that would, or socially could, judge them for their confession. He noted that often times people of any particular majority would often feel more comfortable telling secret things to people of a perceived minority as 'if it ever got out' they could use the person's minority status as a reason why that information shouldn't be given credence.

I mentioned a time when someone said they believed I could 'read peoples souls', Samuel returned that it was people's reactions to me that gave me the insight into other peoples' souls. In many ways I was like a walking-taking Rorschach Test for some people.

As part of coming up to speed about me, Samuel requested to get the records of my neuropsychological evaluation from 'Dr. Maverick'. I agreed though pointed out my past experiences that doctors would use those contacts to verbally pass on B.S. about me to other professionals. He said we could give it a try and see what happens. I signed the paperwork and he sent off for the records. When they arrived he told me that while she might have told me verbally that my pain in the left side of my head and subsequent permanent deficit in February of Nineteen Eighty-Nine 'might have been a stroke' she had noted it affirmatively in her records, so the diagnosis stood. He then told me a few sessions later that 'Dr. Maverick' was having to move her practice out of town and she was now disavowing that diagnosis in order to avoid further trouble with the Colorado Medical community.

Still, from her records Samuel confirmed my genius I.Q. level and explained to me that my score meant I was 'at or above the doctorate level in most subject areas'. He clarified that it was 'at or above' as the tests were standardized to the doctorate level and since I had maxed out in so many areas, for all we knew I was above the doctorate level and they simply couldn't detect that with the test. I joking asked him if that was why I had so many problems with medical doctors, since the saying was 'doctors make the worst patients' and I was 'at the doctorate level'. We laughed at that and then he confirmed it might be the case as I was sharp enough to sometimes see through the doctors' actions and realize they weren't making logical sense in what they were doing or saying.

He asked if I wouldn't mind taking one of his own favored psychological tests and I agreed. When the results came back, it found me to be normal BUT that it flagged that I seemed to be hiding negative information about myself. When we discussed what that might mean I noted the handful of questions it had asked about presumed past sexual partners and resulting problems with them. As I had never had any sexual partners I therefore reported never having problems with them. Just to see, we picked one of those questions and changed the answer to 'have had a problem with' and reran the results. The following meeting he affirmed that the test now found me to be normal without any reservations. We concluded the test should be updated not to assume everyone taking it had been sexually active beforehand.

When the topic reached to my mixed-sex 'situation' it ultimately came down to first making sure I was fully aware of the social pluses & minuses of each gender role, and helping me deal with other people who were uncomfortable with me given my ambiguity and possible future choices. In the case of gender roles he felt I had a pretty good handle on them as I had started to observe and consider the differences since my surprise puberty at age thirteen. In the case of helping people it was more of the same sort of 'unofficial psychological counseling pointers' that Jude had given me for dealing with medical doctors, to first calm any situation down as much as possible and then spend time asking questions to bring into the open the source of the other person's discomfort and discuss it.

When it came to what choice I would make, as Dr. 'Czarniecki' concluded that I couldn't be biologically any more 'a man' than I already was, and the trial estrogen injections had made the sudden fevers I had been experiencing during the previous decade of my life go away, it seemed a simple choice to me to consider normalizing as female. That decision would have been much harder for me if we had still been in nineteen fifties America with its strict and confining life choices women had in that day and age, but by the nineteen nineties women had made huge strides toward equality in America. What level of discrimination that was left seemed little different to what I had already faced with my mixed-race background and life long stuttering. When it came to seeing medical doctors, I couldn't imagine things being worse than what I had already experienced with them while being intersexed. On that point, Samuel agreed.

As women more often than not had longer hair than men, Samuel recommended I grow out my hair and see if I liked having it that way...

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Politics

108

Since the truck had crashed through my previous apartment the last night I had stayed at Pat's house, I had since talked to him on the phone a few times and even visited him one weekend when Daina went to Denver to see her mother and she dropped me off at his house for the afternoon. It had been eight years of being friends since we'd met at the software start-up firm we had both briefly worked at. Given my recent experience at RMT, I had to call him and let him know of the news and he, working for AT&T at the time, told me that corporations were often like that, short-sighted & thoughtless.

But there were other things going on in my life as well.

It was time to find myself a new primary care physician NOT related to the community health clinic. The young physician who had been seeing me, since my original doctor there had been run out of the state, had recently come under pressure for continuing to treat me. I understood the position he was in and returned to the doctor referral phone numbers with little effect. Despite not being Gay, I figured that a doctor willing to have Gay patients might also be more tolerant of having an intersexed patient and called their local helpline asking if they had any medical doctors they would recommend. The helpline officially had none, but the woman who answered the phone did note who her own doctor was and said she had been having good experiences with her. I took down the name and number and called to see if her office accepted my insurance coverage. They did and I made an initial appointment.

To cut the line of harassment that followed me in the medical community, I decided not to have my records from the community health clinic sent to her thus, as they wouldn't have her name or address, other people in the medical community wouldn't be able to get it as well. My hope was to have a firewall that would keep this new doctor safe from bullying if she took me on as a patient. The first appointment went well and I asked her right up front if she was comfortable having a patient who was intersexed. She laughed, but said she was and so I accepted her as my new primary doctor.

Given this recent luck with the local Gay helpline, I decided to find out more about them and what other professionals they might recommend working with in town. As part of visiting them I became aware of the new state initiative on the upcoming November ballot. Sponsored by a church group, it was called 'Amendment 2' and it purportedly was to insure Gays, Bisexuals & Transsexuals didn't end up with 'Special Rights' in the state that would 'exceed the normals rights everyone else had'. I decided to join a meeting about the proposed amendment and they went through it line for line. After a page and three quarters of preamble, we finally reached the substantive clauses which ordered that Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transgendered people couldn't be protected under the laws of Colorado, be they state, county or local. The first obvious question was: ''Did it mean protected by any law?'' If so, then it would include laws against assault, robbery, fraud and even murder. If it wasn't to be so broad, why didn't they say so in the substantive language? It seemed the actual legal text at the end of the amendment was very different in action to what the generous preamble had been saying. It looked like the intent of the amendment was very different than what most people had been publicly told.

Next, the meeting host introduced us to some 'interesting text' in the Americans With Disabilities Act of Nineteen Ninety. Senators Edward Kennedy and Jesse Helms had co-sponsored an amendment to it which added legal protection to intersexed people as well as any mixed sex individuals. The host's intention was to point out that the definition of 'mixed sexed individuals' hadn't been legally defined and wondered if it could be interpreted broadly enough to include people with interests that could be deemed as a mixture of the sexes, such as men liking men as women liked men, etc. In my case I paid little attention to the rest of the point as I realized I didn't need it to be more broadly interpreted to include me. Even if I wasn't covered because of my stuttering, or recent past with an intestinal infection, I was covered simply for being intersexed. With further research I found that it assured I would no longer have to face losing a job for not being able to pass a physical given my mixed-sex background: Disqualifications stemming from a 'physical' had to be directly related to one's ability to perform a job. For the first time since puberty one of the biggest employment clouds over my head had disappeared.

Still, there were concerns about my friends. Many of them had bought into the preamble of Amendment 2 and had become supporters. Given my training with Samuel, my psychologist, I knew not to directly disagree on matters but to prompt research desires in those friends. I'd ask them if they had read the whole amendment or just the preamble? If they weren't willing to read the whole text, I'd come back to them with it and tell them I was confused by the final paragraphs and asked what it meant to them? While I wasn't wholly successful at swaying all of my friends away from their support, I guessed I had convinced almost half of them to back away from it.

Then came the Fall phone call with Pat as we chatted about RMT, life and the coming political election and we finally got around to the topic of Amendment 2. Given his religious background he was definitely for it as 'those people' didn't need 'special rights'. When I asked if he had read the entire amendment or just the preamble he noted that he didn't have to do either as his church had let him know of the amendment and how to vote was obvious. Being on a phone line, I couldn't show the full text to Pat and ask him what the last few paragraphs meant so I brain stormed another way of opening his mind on the topic. I asked him if he was concerned that it might impact people who weren't Gay, but who people simply assumed they were. He didn't know what I meant. So I drew from examples in my own life during the previous decade where people noticed I wasn't actively dating a string of girls and asked me if I was Gay as a result. Then I told him of others who had simply assumed it to be the case. What if someone assumed someone else was Gay, would that assumption be enough legal grounds to conclude they weren't protected under the laws of Colorado?

Pat slammed the handset of the phone against a table three times and I pulled away my handset from my ear to protect it from the loud noise. ''Are you still there?'' I heard him ask. I said I was and he slammed down the receiver again, this time hanging it up. Stunned, I took a moment to let this filter in and then decided to call back. There was no answer. I paced around my apartment for a bit while I debated what this meant and after a few more minutes I called back. This time his wife answered and informed me that Pat was gathering up any belongings of mine he had borrowed over the years and I was to stop by their house tomorrow and pick it up. Pat wasn't going to talk to me again. The call was over.

I next called Daina and told her of the call to Pat and asked if I could borrow her car for the next day. She agreed. When I got to his house in Denver, his wife answered the door. As it was a weekday, I already guessed Pat wouldn't be home, but I asked his wife what the problem was. She wore a smirk, but wouldn't tell me, simply handing me a box with a couple of my science fiction books and record albums. I was never told why, but it was clear my friendship with Pat was abruptly over.

I guess I had gotten the answer to my question. Not only if someone assumed someone was Gay could they be gotten rid of in Pat's eyes, even if they had ever been falsely assumed to be Gay, that was good enough for him.

The amendment passed and went to the Supreme Court. They confirmed that the final language in the law was too broad to pass constitutional muster and threw it out. As the rest of Amendment 2 was just the glossy preamble, that decision effectively left the Amendment null and void.

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The Brass Ring

105

After losing a year in the hands of my first vocational rehabilitation counselor, I was very impressed with my new counselor, 'Greg'. Using his partnership with the University Of Colorado group, they had scheduled an appointment for me and a few other clients to be presented at 'Rocky Mountain Telecom'. RMT was one of the big winners with the break up of the national Bell Telephone company. They went from being a small regional telecommunications carrier to a full-on national long distance competitor. With their explosive growth they had recently taken over an abandoned IBM complex and not only made it their own, but were actively expanding it to house many more employees. Of the computer related jobs in Colorado, I saw this as the Brass Ring of success. If I got a job there, it would surely put the across the hayfield grocery store owner's wife's curse to rest: That I would end up as nothing more than a hot dog vendor.

The meeting set, we were to arrive at the VocRehab building a half hour before hand to be confirmed as being present and then taken to the facility in a van. Oddly enough I had been to the complex a year before as one of my old writers' group cohorts had landed the job of managing the building drawings as part of the takeover by RMT; he had given me and Jeff a tour of the then empty complex explaining the changes that were going to be made and the estimated number of people who would eventually work here. Pulling up in the van I could now see the front parking lot full of cars and the previously empty foyer now tight with security desks and electronic gates. We signed-in and then waited for our host to come and greet us and lead us to the conference room where we would meet with a selection of managers. To my surprise, the room wasn't more than a few hundred feet from the foyer and we were sat as a line behind a row of tables with the various RMT managers and lead employees scattered at the individual tables before us.

With no formal choreography to the proceeding, the University Of Colorado adviser introduced the representative of Vocation Rehabilitation who gave a quick speech of 'helping to find jobs for capable, if physically challenged, people and thus bringing success to us both'. Then he decided to have us introduce ourselves, briefly describing our physical challenges, and note our job goals and relevant experience. When it came to me, it turned out I didn't have to describe my physical challenges all that much as my stuttering was on full display. Normally in unusual circumstances I forget to stutter but perhaps sitting at a table rather than standing at a podium made me too comfortable and therefore the back of my mind was in full control of my attempts to talk. Still, I eventually got out my safety line, ''I'm sorry, I stutter occasionally,'' with a sheepish face and then talked briefly of my intestinal problems and of having recently recovered and looking for a computer programming job with near a decade of experience under my belt. I neglected to note that most of that experience had been unpaid volunteer work.

Once the rest of us had given their introduction we were asked a few questions... very few questions, and then the meeting was formally over and we could mill about with the employees in the room. Very few had questions for me, I hoped it was more a case of they were put off by my stuttering rather than concluding I wouldn't be a capable addition 'to the team'. Finally, on the way out of the conference room, one of the lead employees pulled me aside in the hallway and told me of her battle with Multiple Sclerosis and how supportive the company had been for her and it would make a great place for me to work at as well. Acknowledging this I got around to the question of if she had any jobs that might be a good fit for me. It turned out she had no role in the hiring process and had just attended the meeting based on her identifying with the topic given her own health issues. She was actually interested in talking to me more but they were loading the van and I was the last one to be rounded up. In retrospect I should have asked if I could stay and have her give me a tour of the building and, possibly, bump into coworkers who were involved in hiring. I could have taken the bus home on my own once done. But I didn't think of that idea and just did what I was told and returned to the van.

On the drive back, the University representative and VocRehab counselor thought it went well and expected callbacks for many, if not all of us, for job interviews...

As the subsequent weeks went by, no calls came.

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Dumped

102

I would be restarting College in a week and was getting ready for the significant change in my life having a daily task would bring. I already had my schedule and purchased my books and was starting to page through them in anticipation. When I was out, either visiting Daina, the downtown area, or across the street for my daily soda, I received a phone call from my sister living at the Wyoming/Montana border. She left a message that she was on the road driving my mother back to town and I was to take care of her as she had a broken pelvis. She gave me a time when she and her daughter expected to be at my mother's mobile home that evening.

I was dumbfounded. Our mother annually made road trips to visit my sister for a few days and this year she was going up for my niece's high school graduation just after Memorial Day. Beyond that I didn't have a clue what might have happened and checking the time and bus schedule realized I'd have to leave immediately if I was going to be to her mobile home to meet them when they arrived. At the time, Daina was busy and not at home so I wouldn't be able to reach her about the news until later. Getting to mother's place, it had been two years since I had last been there during the science fiction group's art auction and in the intervening time they had installed lengths of asphalt curbing to act as speed bumps. I guess they decided to save money on having actual speed bumps put in place and had these four inch tall, abrupt rise and decline strips put across the roads instead. As I was on foot, it wasn't an issue for me at the time, just more of a jaw dropping curiosity. Getting in the mobile home itself, I found little had changed other than the water bed in my old bedroom, which I had already heard about, otherwise everything else was as I remembered it including my mother's old bed still in place in the master bedroom. Apparently she slept on the waterbed then walked to her old bedroom for everything else.

It was around an hour before the little convoy arrived, my sister driving her SUV and her daughter driving my mother's compact car. My mother was laying down in the back seat of my sister's car and we had a chunk of time for my sister to tell me the gist as my mother tried to get out. My sister rented a split level house with a half flight of stairs from the bedroom section to the main floor. As the story went, after being there for less than a day, my mother had tried to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and misjudged the length of the hallway in the darkness, falling down the stairs. Her cries of pain had woken up my sister and when it was clear it was more than a bruise from the fall they had taken her to the only hospital for evaluation. With X-rays they found she had a 'broken pelvis' and had to be isolated in bed for the next few weeks as it healed up.

At this point my mother had gotten herself out of the SUV, but couldn't stand and collapsed to the driveway where she began crawling to the steps of the mobile home. My sister and niece just watched this while I felt we should be doing something but my sister said this was the best way for mother to get around. Stunned, it eventually dawned on me to open the front door of the mobile home for her and make sure the rest of the path was clear. As my mother crawled up the steps to the front door with grunts of pain, pausing for a moment to rest and have a cry, she finally got herself to the floor of the mobile home and began crawling to her bedroom. My sister and her daughter seemed to take this situation as more of an annoyance, describing how mother had been 'moaning & groaning' the whole nine hour drive back to Colorado and 'put on a show' trying to use a restroom at one of their gas stops along the way.

As 'it wouldn't be fair' for her daughter to miss her graduation the day after Memorial Day, they would be staying that night in the mobile home and then heading back toward Montana the following day at which point mother would be my responsibility thereafter. When I noted I didn't have a car of my own to visit mother each day, they noted that mother wasn't going to be using her car anytime soon.

Mother had finally reached the master bedroom and was crawling up into her old, traditional, bed. With her cries of pain as she did this, I left my sister in the living room area and went to see if I could help. While she had gotten her chest onto the surface of the bed, she wasn't able to lift her legs up, over the edge. She said she had to keep her legs together because of the break and I eventually figured that meant I should grasp both of her calves and lift up her legs and pivot her onto the full bed while she used her arms to turn her chest, keeping her body as straight as possible so as to not inflame the injury. Once she was lying face down on the bed, she next wanted my help rolling her over onto her back, then helping to remove her dirty clothes which had become stained and tattered during her crawls. This was my first time seeing my mother undressed down to her undies as I undid her pants and pulled them off, then unbuttoned her blouse and scootched it up behind her back and past her head while she continued to lay, then holding each sleeve taut as she pulled out her arms. She asked for me to straighten the pillow under her head and then get her a glass of water for her bed stand and get the bottle of prescription pain pills out of her purse. I did and she had me take out a pill and put it to her lips and then she tried to lean upward to drink a sip of the water and cried in pain but fought through it until she was able to get that sip and swallow the pill. She settled back down and asked me to pull the blankets over her and move the bed stand phone within her reach. With her now resting, I returned to the living area.

My sister said that they would take care of mother for the night and that I should move back in the following morning for the next few weeks, if not months, until mother was better. As she couldn't leave the bed, the hospital had given them a bed pan for mother to use when she needed to go to the bathroom. It was at this point that I learned mother shouldn't be moving or traveling until she was better. I didn't point out the obvious contradiction of this given the trip bringing mother back to Colorado and then having to crawl out of the SUV and to her bedroom. While they couldn't stay to help as they had to get back in time for my niece's graduation, I mentioned that I was entering full-time college classes after the following week. My sister thought I should then probably cancel my college classes for the Summer so I would be at the mobile home all the time to take care mother...

Given that they weren't willing to skip a graduation ceremony to care for my mother for a handful of days, and reflecting on mother being the person who had repeatedly abused me as a preteen and then harassed me during my years of health problems in late nineteen eighties, I considered the idea of canceling my return to College to take care of her and thought: LIKE HELL!

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Returning To College

101

Toward the turn of the year, from Nineteen Ninety-One to Two, Cindy of VocRehab contacted me and told me of a job skills class at the local 'Manpower' office. Given the date & time, I arrived and it turned out to be more of a slide show on Manpower and their involvement in the physical job contracting community. That might sound a little nebulous, but I was afraid I'd get in trouble if I said they seemed to have only jobs in the construction, plumbing, and electrician fields. That's what it seemed to me at the time and I decided to leave without signing up. One of their people noticed this and intercepted me asking if I was going to sign up. I noted that I was focused on the computer programming field and they didn't seem to be involved in that. She agreed and asked if I had a degree, I noted that while I had over a decade of hands-on experience, I only had a few years of College and wished to complete my degree but my Vocational Rehabilitation counselor was against that. While she agreed Manpower was probably not the place for me, she did know of another community resources group who might be able to help.

With the new name and address in hand I went there a couple days later and signed up on the general intake wait-list and spent time in the waiting area until I was eventually called. I talked with the intake counselor and mentioned my past employment history, years of health problems that were now behind me, and desire to finish my degree and get a computer programming job. She thought that was a great idea and asked if VocRehab had told me about the 'PASS Plan'? As they hadn't, she explained Social Security's Plan for Achieving Self Support option: It would allow me to target some of my disability income toward a work related goal, such as completing a college degree, and that portion of my disability check would be reserved for that purpose. With the reserved amount taken out of my monthly income, I would qualify for alternative welfare payments to keep my monthly income above a minimum level. Checking the numbers, it would only put me back to the same income level I had when I moved into my first apartment and as my current apartment had a lower rent, I could effectively use my entire disability check of over five hundred dollars toward college tuition and still be ahead in my monthly budget! This seemed like a great idea and I said I wanted to sign-up. She was willing to help, but I needed to first research the exact numbers I needed for the classes.

I found I couldn't face the thought of returning to my former Business College given the loss of five years and instead decided to enroll at the local Community College. As we had our final science fiction club meetings there I was familiar with the campus and the idea tickled me to now go there to complete my education. Providing my information they ordered a copy of my Business College transcript and they would review it to see how many of my credits could be transferred. Then they would know how many more classes I would need to take with them to complete my degree. The following week when I returned to discuss the results, the adviser was very dour as she asked me to take a seat. As the Business College and the Community College were not under the same accreditation system, they would only accept about one percent of my credits toward a degree at the Community College. I was slack jawed and couldn't accept that I would essentially have to pursue a degree from scratch. But she assured me that was how the system worked. I asked her what other options I had and she simply said I should see if I could complete my degree at the Business College.

Having to put pride aside, I withdrew from the Community College and checked for the bus routes that went to the business college section of town. As fate would have it, there wasn't a bus that went directly to it, leaving me with the closest bus stop being just shy of a half mile away from their building. Still, as Spring was coming and soon after Summer, I could imagine making that walk on a daily basis as part of attending classes there. To test my theory, I took the bus and then made the walk. While an uphill trek to the school, it was only a modest rise and I would be making it fresh at the start of the school day, and then have the gradual downhill walk on the way back to ease me to the bus stop. Arriving at the school building and walking into the familiar main entrance I found I hadn't needed to worry about returning here. As five years had passed since I had withdrawn due to my health issues, there weren't any remaining students who would recognize me, which would have placed me in the awkward position of explaining where I had been for the past half decade. Further, most all of the office staff had changed over as well. While the headmaster and his assistant where the same, they had since seen a sea of other faces and mine had been lost in the waves.

Walking the halls to the office, I was surprised by how fewer students there were. In the intervening years other Business Colleges had opened in our town and the once jam packed halls here were now half empty. At the office, they had since built a reception desk to filter the incoming people and I greeted the receptionist. A night student herself of both American and German parents, she worked days at the College to make ends meet. When I told her I was a former student looking to return after a few years, I was allowed into the inner portion of the office to see their adviser. Talking to her, it turned out their course curriculum hadn't changed much which meant that, likely, all of my credits would still be good. She wouldn't know for sure until she received a copy of my transcript from the main office out of state and I filled out and signed the required paperwork. When I returned two weeks later, all was good and their financial adviser found that I could just afford three classes a semester using my PASS Plan budget combined with Pell Grants which I would easily qualify for given my low income level. While I could take four classes a semester, I'd have to sign up for a student loan to bridge the gap and as I'd already, unintentionally, been released from my past student loans due to my health problems, I didn't want to test my luck by letting them know I was now better enough to return to school. Plans set and budget figured, I returned to the community resource group to let my counselor know and she helped me complete the forms to begin the Social Security PASS Plan and make sure it was in place so I could return to College with the summer semester.

When I next saw Cindy of VocRehab and excitedly told her about this news, she was very angry with me as she had told me the previous year NOT TO RETURN TO COLLEGE. She would have to check with her supervisors to see if they should drop me as a client for disregarding her advice. Leaving the appointment I felt it wouldn't be any great loss given how little she had helped me in the preceding year. Then I realized I would lose the free monthly bus pass they had been giving me during that time. Yet with a little research at the bus hub downtown I found that, as a student, I could qualify for a discounted monthly bus pass of only ten dollars if I needed to. I figured I could swing that.

I was soon called back to the Vocational Rehabilitation office. They had decided to keep me but, as I had gone against my assigned counselor's advice, they were transferring me to a new counselor, 'Greg', who would be advising me from now on. It turned out Greg was a huge fan of the idea of my completing College and using the PASS Plan system to do it. Not only that, but VocRehab had recently joined in a partnership with The University of Colorado and their job placement people would be helping to find job opportunities for me in the background while I was attending my classes at College...

It turned out losing Cindy as my adviser was a huge stroke of luck!

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End Of The Line

95

After the disappointment of my first four speculative scripts sent into 'The Other Show' not gaining their acceptance, I decided my problem was 'pushing the envelope' too far with each one I had written. When the show had first started it had some issues and needed to have its envelope pushed in my humble opinion. But by the third season they had finally come into their own and I decided to craft a script that would be completely common place and unthreatening. After typing it up I passed it around to some friends as my test readers and I got back less enthusiastic responses than I normally did: Just as I had hoped. I mailed it off to the agent feeling this was the one that was going to sell!

Jude's and my relationship seemed to be coming to an end. While he had been a great help to me during my time having issues with medical doctors not performing their jobs, he since had little he wanted to do other than find me that 'perfect doctor' to handle my long term needs. Yet when I said I was interested in a doctor who could address my mixed-sex issues, he didn't like that idea at all and I ended up starting to see a different psychologist on the side for those questions. It turned out he knew my new psychologist, 'Samuel', and had good things to say about him and even had a nice supportive chat with him about me. In the meantime Jude and my appointments had gone from being twice monthly to once every few months and I was thinking we would end as I focused on working with Samuel. But at what I assumed would be that final appointment where we would discuss parting, he had some news for me that he was thrilled about. He had found that perfect doctor to serve as my long term primary care physician, 'Dr. Klasper'. The wrinkle was Dr. Klasper was in Florida, but he would be willing to work on my needs over the phone, Jude was certain! I expressed misgivings about this but Jude assured me that he knew this would be just the doctor for me. He gave me the phone number and told me I could call him that evening and check for myself.

When I got home, I decided to give it a try as Jude had been a big help and supporter of mine over these past two & a half years I had seen him. But when I called, I was very surprised. I asked Klasper what specialty he was in, he admitted that technically he didn't have a medical degree, but was just called 'Dr. Klasper' as an honorary title by his patients. In reality he was a personal trainer who worked at a health club in Florida but also did phone consultations. How much was a phone consultation? I asked. He said it was two hundred dollars an hour, no insurance accepted, and his price was firm. As my entire non-rent money supply was about seventy-five dollars a month at that time, it was impossible for me to afford his fee. Thankfully, this gave me a conclusive reason not to take him as my 'doctor' and when I next saw Jude I told him of the phone call and what I'd learned.

Having expected that Jude and I would part amicably at the previous appointment, now Jude became enraged by what I told him of my call and said it wasn't possible and I was lying. I told him he could call and check for himself if he didn't believe me. But he assured me he didn't have to call as he had already seen the 'video tape'. Video tape? Yes, he had been passed a video tape noting Dr. Klasper's skills and extensive knowledge of health problems.

In the early Nineteen Nineties many 'businesses' and 'professionals', whose claims couldn't be legally validated well enough to be touted in broadcast advertisements, had taken up making 'informational videos' of themselves and their claims and then distributed these tapes through a network of supporters. It turned out Jude had been passed one of these video tapes by ''someone he trusted.'' And as he'd seen that tape for himself, Jude didn't feel the need to question anything he had gleaned from it.

When I again assured Jude of what Klasper had told me directly on the phone, Jude told me I didn't know what I was talking about and I should give 'Dr. Klasper' a try. I assured him with the two hundred dollar price tag for each consultation, I couldn't afford him even if I wanted to. Jude felt that surely 'Dr. Klasper' would bring down his price if I told him of my circumstances. I noted that I had and Klasper was very firm on his price. Jude told me it couldn't possibly be true.

Our time was up and neither he nor I saw any reason for a subsequent visit. As our last appointment, it had been very acrimonious and the first time that we had exchanged any cross words to each other. I thought it was a shame, but he felt he didn't need to check the facts himself, I just needed to get different answers.

With this disappointment already in my mind, I soon after received a letter from my agent lambasting me for how disappointing my most recent script had been. She stated I needed to learn ''the basic tenets of good writing'' before I sent her any more scripts. She then concluded her letter by noting that, if I really wanted to, I could of course always submit the script myself. When I called to assure her that I had specifically designed the script to make it as comfortable for the show readers as I could and was sure it would sell, she told me that clearly that wasn't the case as why would they want to buy something so poor? When I asked her what she had meant by ''the basic tenets of good writing'' she scoffed as she thought this meant I didn't know of the 'Man versus Man', 'Man versus Society', 'Man versus Nature' and 'Man versus Himself'' underpinnings of narrative story structure. When I noted that my story fit 'Man versus Society' she assured me it didn't as my story focused on an 'Android' and not a 'Man'. When I told her that the 'Android' in question was one of the major characters of the show and they routinely featured stories centered around him, she assured me I didn't know what I was talking about and it didn't matter as she wasn't going to represent me as my agent with that script. She then echoed in a sarcastic tone what she had written at the end of her letter, that I could always send it in on my own if I wanted to, but she assured me they wouldn't look at it. The call was done. It didn't occur to me until afterwards that given her strict interpretation of what qualified as 'Man versus...' for a valid story, then all stories about women and children would be deemed invalid by her logic as well.

Not only had my relationship with Jude ended, it seemed like my relationship with my agent was over as well.

The next time I saw Samuel and discussed these two occurrences he told me that Jude had gone even further than just having a bad last appointment with me, he had now joined the old chorus of medical doctors disparaging me on the grapevine and claiming I never had any 'real' medical problems... Samuel quipped that it might be nearing the time when Jude would have to renew his medical license and wanted to ensure a conflict-free process with his peers.

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New Choices

91

Working with Jude had been very helpful for the first six months as he confirmed the machinations going on about me in the medical community, and provided me pointers in how to approach wary medical doctors I would later see and help them be more comfortable working on my health issues. But once my health was addressed and restored, we were at a bit of a loss as to what we should do with our appointments. He decided to comb through the remaining medical community and find the perfect primary care doctor to help me with my future needs, unfortunately all he could find where doctors willing to meet me, as the one they had heard about on the medical grape vine, but not willing to assure ongoing medical care.

I felt my visits with the new doctor at the community health clinic were productive enough and I'd abandoned the fat enzymes and associated visits to Premier Medical Center after they admitted their role in getting my previous doctor run out of the state. If I didn't see them any more, then they couldn't ask me who my new doctor was and begin to threaten him. Also as I was easily gaining weight again, I didn't need the minor additional benefit the fat enzymes had given me.

A year after I had first started seeing Jude, I broached the subject of looking into my intersexed situation and discovering what options I had. He noted that we had already looked into it to his level of expertise and didn't know what else there was to do about it. I noted that perhaps I should look into being legally female rather than as I currently was, legally male. He felt that was a terrible idea as women had a lower place in society and I would face discrimination if I pursued that. I pointed out the years of discrimination I had already faced for being legally male while not very biologically male. I also noted I was willing to look into being more physically male as well. It was just a case that I wanted to look into my 'situation' further and find out my options.

I had spent my first decade since puberty hiding and ignoring my 'situation', functionally in denial about it even though I was consciously aware of it and wondered about it as the decade passed. Then I spent the past few years focusing on my health problems and putting those issues aside. At the time, there was no need to worry about my 'situation' then as I concluded I'd likely die before I'd have to face it. But now as it was clear I was going to live a full life, unless I was unexpected killed in a car accident, I felt I should look into my mixed-sex situation and address it now, before I entered a life long profession.

But Jude was generally freaked out by the concept and said he wouldn't help me with it, that I should just continue my life as I had been during my first decade since it had cropped up: Keeping my breasts bound, perhaps putting on a fake, more masculine sounding voice, continue to shave only once every few days to let the little bit of stubble make me appear more manly. But I found, after the experiences I had gone through, the last thing I had wanted to do was just return to living a life of denial when it came to the issue.

But he was clear, he would not help me consider and look into my options in that respect, but I could continue with him on my health issues and counseling on doctor interaction issues.

Thinking it over on my own for the next few months, I concluded to find myself a second counselor who would be willing to help me with this desire to explore my options. I was once again to the phone book & physician referral helplines and was back to leaving messages on answering machines, just giving my first name and the area of counseling I was interested in. There were no professionals in town trained to address it so I wasn't surprised that I got back even fewer return calls than when trying to find a counselor for my medical doctor issues. This time I didn't even get return calls from people polite enough to let me know they weren't interested. Then one psychologist called me back and was willing to mutually look into my options as he came up to speed on them himself.

We agreed on a date & time for an initial visit and when I got to the address I discovered it was the same small Victorian house where I had seen the psychiatric nurse four years earlier! I suddenly felt my stomach twisting and debated not staying for the appointment as I wasn't comfortable with the thought of being involved with anyone even indirectly associated with the physician who had originally defrauded me, even if they had later told me they regretted that association. Yet, she was merely someone who worked in the office next to the one I was going to go to so was it really an issue? I concluded to go into the building and walk to the waiting area next to her office door. It turned out there was a new name on the plaque outside and I wondered if she, too, had been run out of town for her barely supportive role in my health issues. Either way, with her gone, my fears of this new counselor and her gossiping about me after each appointment vanished and I settled into a chair as I awaited to be called into the new counselor's office.

I'll call him 'Samuel'.

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Hardened

90

I realized I was a changed person after all of what had happened to me. It wasn't simply a case of cognitive changes where I used to have near photographic memories of many of my childhood experiences, and remembering word for word many of the key conversations I had with friends and family members at the time. With my years of emaciation these had now faded to impressions and gist. But my personality had changed as well.

I used to be the tag along kid always willing to help and try something new. While I was still willing to tag along, help and try new things, I now did so with caution & measure. Whereas I used to always trust adults and 'my betters', I now realized I often had a greater grip on the facts and trusted my own judgment on things rather than blindly taking theirs. If something didn't agree with the way I saw things, I was willing to change my mind if they were willing to provide the evidence, but I no longer assumed they were right and I must be mistaken. Where I used to not care for metal rock, with shrieky lyrics of betrayal & rebellion, I now found I identified with it all too well.

I had hardened.

Not as an impervious rock, but more like tempered steel. If the need arose, I was willing to smash and cut my way through a situation if I had to, metaphorically speaking. I never again trusted a doctor to tell me a test result, I would always get my own copy of the result ahead of time to review and research for myself. Then when I'd see the doctor about it I would discuss the results from a position of knowledge, rather than as a trusting, mute, empty-eyed recipient. Many doctors don't like knowledgeable patients, I have no tolerance for those doctors either.

While in the past I would often take a seat and watch what was going on around me as an observer, now I watched more as a cat willing to have my curiosity filled with the observation, but also willing to leap, attack and kill if I felt the need to get involved. Again, metaphorically speaking. Some friends have been surprised by this as they take me as the same 'go along to get along' person. At least Ninety percent of the time I would just seem like 'me' yet, if needed, I let them know where I stood. They would be flustered for a moment and then have to accept it. I don't now if it was the right lesson to have taken from the first twenty-seven years of my life, but it was the lesson I took just the same, and I've never regretted it.

From this point forward in my life, I've striven to tag everything I've heard. No longer do I hear things and then pass them on without thought. Now, if I've not verified it for myself, I'll note that 'Bob told me...', 'Jill said this...', always trying to keep the source of the information associated with the information itself in case... Just in case it turns out to have problems. And yet, once I've checked into something myself, all tags are discarded and I present the information as fact, no equivocation, no supporting sources cited. If you don't believe me, then look it up for yourself. I already have, likely.

For years I could be embarrassed or flustered as anyone else. But after my many failed physical examinations with doctors, I find nothing embarrasses me any more. If I turn out not to be aware of something or have the facts wrong, I quickly admit it and have a little laugh at my own expense on the side. I like to think of all of this as gaining self confidence and applying it, some people see it as threatening and are wary of me. Sometimes it's just as well but very rarely it's not and I miss an opportunity I would have liked. But in the scheme of things, I find those lost moments an acceptable cost for what I've gained.

I've gained the person who I am today.

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The Simple Answer Is...

87

There is no simple answer. What had caused my weight loss? And why did antibiotics help it while I was taking them but I would begin to decline when they were stopped? I would like to say it was 'X' caused by 'Y', but the reality is all I have is a fist full of theories based on guesses. Before the doctor who helped me, Betsey, left the state, here's the theory we came up with...

When I had walking pneumonia in the Spring of Nineteen Eighty-Four, it was treated with a strong course of antibiotics. Now we know that when antibiotics are taken, they often damage the balance of intestinal flora that we all have. By 'flora' I mean the community of bacteria that live in our guts and help keep 'bad' bacteria from taking hold while helping us to digest and absorb the food that we eat. So as I experienced my first strange health symptoms in the Summer of that same year, the guess is that the course of antibiotics for my walking pneumonia had caused an imbalance with those little bacteria in my intestines. This resulted in issues impacting which nutrients I could absorb as the years continued.

Of this imbalance, I had likely become allergic to a strain of 'normal' intestinal bacteria that we otherwise all have. I say this based on the fact that what I had, and caused me so much trouble, didn't seem to spread to those around me. Otherwise many of my friends would have been suffering from unexplained weight loss as well and bathroom bouts. As it was only me, then the reason it affected me and not my friends was because there was something unique to me involved in the problem. Given my now known catalog of allergies and intolerances to other common things in peoples' lives, it seems most likely in retrospect that I had become allergic to one or more strains of benign intestinal flora.

Next, this strain I was allergic to loved simple sugars such as fructose, in the most common form of corn syrup, as when I had them I would have a worse reaction in my gut. Is it possible that when I drank a corn syrup soda within a few hours the bacteria I was allergic too soaked it up and multiplied in my intestines to the point that it was plentiful enough for me to have that allergic reaction to it? The first symptoms of it being an escalating blood pressure and a sudden headache? And when the level of that bacteria had grown too large for my body to handle, it would flush it out through those painful bathroom bouts? One thing I can confirm here is that, while on the antibiotics, I could eat all the fructose and corn syrup I wanted to without ill effect. So much so that I became a huge pie fan during the early nineteen nineties!

Yet, once I knew I needed to avoid corn syrup and other sources of fructose such as fruit in the late nineteen eighties, why was I still having bathroom bouts? As it turns out, even table sugar has some fructose in it, though it is mostly sucrose a more complex sugar that many if not most bacteria can't use. So over the course of a few days, the bacteria I was allergic to would still get a small bit of fructose and slowly grow until three or four days later there was enough in my gut to cause the allergic reaction and result in another one of my prolonged bathroom bouts. Further, while I had been avoiding food with corn syrup as one of its main ingredients, I hadn't realized that it could still be in processed foods as its tenth or fiftieth additive. Once my full brain power returned, I realized this and made sure to avoid even these minor amounts of corn syrup laced food less they feed my intestinal problems.

With this theory of 'an intestinal bacteria I was allergic to', it nicely explains why the initial dose of oral antibiotics I had gotten from the joint doctor seemed to help, while the injection of penicillin didn't. But then, why hadn't the two courses of oral antibiotics I had received from the emergency room in the first few months of Nineteen Eighty-Nine not helped me? Had they been of too low a dose to effect the flora I was allergic too? Or had they been prescribed for too short a period to effect it? Or had I actually felt a little bit better at the time, but assumed it was just a periodic fluctuation in my condition that soon dissipated once those few days of antibiotics were finished? I did experience that switching me from Cephalexin for one month to Anaprox had reduced my improvement for that month. Could it simply be a case of the Cephalexin worked against the particular strain of bacteria I was having the bad reaction to while the Anaprox had less of an impact on it? Could it also have been a case that the two short batches of antibiotics I had gotten in early Nineteen Eighty-Nine had also been of a type that didn't affect the bacteria?

It would have been nice to have had these questions answered so I could then spend the rest of my days letting medical professionals know I was allergic to flora 'X' and thus needed to make sure I kept it out of my gut. Instead I'm stuck with the story of how, after years of weight loss and suffering, taking a long course of antibiotics cured it. What was it? They'd ask. I dunno, the but theory is...

Now in this era, there is scientific evidence that an imbalance of intestinal flora between twins can cause one to lose weight & have intestinal problems while his or her sibling is doing fine on the same diet. Further, doctors now know to have their patients take a course of probiotics after a course of heavy oral antibiotics to insure their intestinal tract is quickly restored to an appropriate balance of flora.

In the past, it was easier for doctors to label someone as mentally ill rather than face the possibility that there was a medical condition that they didn't understand or know how to treat. Remember when impotence was a psychological problem? Not any more. Remember when stomach ulcers were a physical manifestation of too much psychological stress in someone's life? Now we know ulcers are caused by harmful bacteria and sometimes too much of a type of medication. But back then these conditions were simply labeled a 'psychological condition' and those patients discarded by the medical profession because those doctors didn't want to admit they hadn't a clue.

Actually, perhaps that tactic is still in use today...

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