Doctor Doctor, give me the news...

I had a doctor's appointment this morning.  Why I made it for 7am I'll never know.  It seemed like a good idea at the time because his office is clear over on the other side of town and getting out of here by 6 means that I'll avoid the worst part of the morning traffic crush.  But still - leaving by 6 means getting up at some time during the 5am hour and that's early.  My body doesn't like that.

One thing I found ironic was that my blood pressure was the lowest I can remember when I haven't actually been a patient in a hospital.  When they take it and you're in a bed it's often pretty low - I think they keep it that way on purpose.  But this morning it was 104/68.  No wonder I was feeling lethargic.  And that's after two cups of coffee, too.

Compare that with a year ago when my BP was 150+ over 95.  I was stress city at the time and it was NOT a good time.  Don't get me wrong - I've got a number of significant stressors in my life at the moment as well.  Apparently, tho, my body is just handling them better.

I don't really want to go into detail about my health - it's generally good I think.  But there are some "quirks"....

As part of our conversation I asked him how his trans program is going.  When I first started seeing him back in 1996 or 1997 there were only two doctors in the Valley that my therapist recommended to me.  He's been working with us for a long time and take an active interest in our progress.  He said today that he's amazed that (a) he's got people in his program who are so much younger than they used to be and (b) that there are so many FTM's. Things are indeed changing.

One of my ongoing efforts is that I've been going through my website page by page rebuilding it.  I'll be getting rid of pieces of it that have outlived their usefulness and tightening things up - it's not as easy as you'd think because there's quite a bit there, some of which is buried and I don't even know if people could still get there even if they wanted.  I can't believe how big it got!

I come across pages like this one and I'll admit that I'm not quite sure what to do with them.  I don't know what relevance they have any more, although I'll admit that it's actually kind of fun to see how things change over the years.  I look at those photos at the top and can't help but smile.  Lower on the page there's a cornucopia of friends in there: Andrea James, Calpernia, Elizabeth, Amanda Simpson, Jenny Boylan, Marci Bowers, Jamison Green, Joanne Herman, Leslie Townsend, some of my HRC buddies (who are no longer there), and others.  I'm usually noting that time seems to go by quickly.  In this case most of that was 4 or more years ago, but it feels like so much more time has passed than that.

Later on I gave myself my estrogen shot.  That's one thing I still hate doing.  It's not that it really hurts all that much because it really doesn't  It's just the entire concept on sticking myself with that long needle that creeps me out.  In fact, something happened today that hasn't happened before.  I can't tell you how much of an effort it takes to muster enough gumption to stab myself in the hip with that monster intra-muscular needle sometimes (that's the sucker in the photo, next to my toothbrush).  It's like punching yourself in the face.  Anyway, today I gave myself my shot, took the darn syringe out, and noticed that there was still a significant amount of estrogen that hadn't been injected.  So, I had to do it a second time!  My a$$ felt like a pin cushion when I was done.  There's all kinds of discussion about injections vs. tabs.  All I know is that there's a difference I can "feel" so I'm willing to go through the hassle of it all.  (I do the tablets, too, but that's a longer discussion).

I went to dinner down by ASU with a friend tonight.  There have been impressive thunderstorms in the area today and it was actually kind of nice to drive on wet roads, smelling the sweet scent of the desert after a warm afternoon downpour.  It was very pleasant....