#im so sorry alistair i know you really dont want the job but apparently i cant save you from being spider chow

[toadkisses]

alistairs years in review part three

alistair is continuing his public journaling; the gist is i am writing down a summary of the life events that have gone on in the past two years or so, since i used to lifepost a lot more on here. its been nice reflecting especially since i can see a bend up ahead where my life will change again somehow.

this entry will be about the medical adventures ive been on including misdiagnosed diabetes and hrt stories.

part one about dog grooming school / part two about meeting my wife

this will contain discussion of eating disorders, suicide, and medical stuff! be warned :K oh and me coming out to my family

i dont have a clear "where we left off" point like i did last time! the beginning of this saga is in july or august of 2021. rose and i had been dating for a few months but already called each other our wife. i begin working in a corporate dog grooming salon, and i like it well enough; my manager can be taxing at times but i get along well with my coworkers.

i came out to my parents as trans right before starting the job, and it didnt go as badly as it does for some people but didnt go as well as i dreamed?

it was impulsive. i told my mom i was trans, and i thought things were maybe okay? rose was there, my mom and i cried a lot, and my mom told me i had to be in charge of my dad.

i felt sick to my stomach because coming out was the first thing i could remember doing entirely for myself and my comfort without prioritizing other people. rose and i went and got food so i could collect myself some.

after getting home, i was asked to come talk to both my parents. it felt more standoffish? like i was in trouble? i told my dad and said i would answer any questions they had. and my mom was kind of weird like "thats a big thing to just toss out here" and i was like "well i feel really really really bad making problems like this" and she said that i wasnt making problems but i also didnt get like "you have trusted us with this information we love you"

i actually had an appointment with my shrink the next day and my mom came with, where doctor confirmed gender stuff is something ive been talking about for years and its not just out of nowhere. and i cried a lot about how bad i felt for having to come out and how i was worried about disappointing my parents etc etc

and i think for a little bit it helped, like i was able to be in the same room as my parents without wanting to run but we had a meeting all three of us that i dont remember a lot of besides my dad accidentally saying im not a boy and my therapist exclusively using she and birthname for me. i didnt feel like i had anyone on my side and i remember thinking about trying to find somewhere to crash until i could get an apartment because i was so upset. which i didnt do because it wasnt economically feasible haha. but yeah it went really poorly and i refused to tell them my preferred name because i was so hurt. i actually never told them! they know it from like mail i got but we have not had the conversation.

i actually went back to my shrink a while later and she lead with the amazing blunder of "yeah, when we finished up last time i was worried 'i wonder if shes never coming back'. oh, oops, ali im so sorry" like GIRL you REALLY fumbled this one right out the gate

anyway i did tell my mom i was going to look into getting hrt but besides that we have had very few conversations about Alistair Gender. things are normal, im able to be around them which is good because i live here, they try not to call me overtly feminine things? we still do activities like we did before. it was sweet that apparently they had a conversation about shutting down any possible trans jokes their friends might make when we went to visit them (to clarify NOT jokes at my expense, they dont know and would be very abashed if they did happen to make one at my expense, they were preparing in case the topic came up in abstract and someone cracked a joke, that they would make clear they dont approve of being a jackass about it. end clarification)

a year later uhhhhh coming out is still defined by regret but different than it used to be? like instead of my previous "why did i do this i feel so bad for making a fuss about myself", now i wish i hadnt come out because i was and am happy with the family dynamics we have, and realized that like its not disingenuous for me to be different people for different people? like of course my mom interacts with and experiences and perceives me differently than my brother or my girlfriend does, but the person they all know is still me? and i feel bad because i put my mom in a difficult position because she didnt want to out me by talking to her friends about this big emotional event, so she was left to deal with it on her own. and maybe ill feel differently someday but its how i feel now which i guess is why its good to journal it. in summation i feel like suffering for everyone could have been avoided if i had realized coming out isnt mandatory.

i need to tell them all this still and who knows when that will happen haha. especially since, after taking testosterone for 9 months, i feel like WAY more comfortable in my skin and have no desire to tell any other family members or coworkers about gender stuff, because it doesnt make me uncomfortable to be seen as a woman. ive actually been wondering if 14 year old alistair was right all along and im just a transmasc lesbian? food for thought. not what this post is about.

anyway. BACKGROUND INFORMATION DONE GOD THIS IS GONNA BE SO LONG.

i went to an informed consent clinic and the doctor is super cool, like him a lot. they took bloods from me. my blood glucose was high but i had eaten like right before.

next appointment. i get the prescription for testosterone but they took another non fasting glucose and it was still higher than normal, so they draw blood to check my A1C. i also didnt really uh get taught how to do my injections? because my doctor told a nurse "he needs his flu shot and instructions on how to do his injections", and she uh. just assumed that i could not be the aforementioned "he". so i was checking out and said like "nobody told me how to do injections", the receptionist calls my doctor over like "nobody told her how to do her injections", he tracks down a different nurse who spends 60 seconds with me and tells me to watch a youtube video. it is worth noting that this IS specifically a pride clinic that advertises itself as such? spoiler alert i did wind up filing a formal complaint like "i understand why im getting misgendered, but im worried about how it might impact the wrong patient and it DID impact my quality of care" after i had a prescription issue and they were like "she needs her testosterone filled"

i got my A1C results back and it was a 7, which put me past prediabetes and in the diabetic range. i was leaving on a trip to visit friends in texas in like two days, and the only medical person who could see me to tell me what everything meant was a nurse practitioner.

it was a really dreadful experience ;_; she told me to cut out soda and desserts, watch what i eat, and theyd retest my A1C in three months to see if i was still elevated. and i told her i dont do soda or desserts, and that i was worried about really closely monitoring my food, (specifically checking nutritional labels and calorie counting), because of my history with restrictive eating and purging. and i asked if she had any advice on how to avoid a relapse like that and she honest to god told me "dont look at that part of the label"

i also asked if i should get my thyroid checked because i was already following all the diet rules they recommended, was active at my job, and had no family history of diabetes. BUT I DO HAVE A FAMILY HISTORY OF THYROID DISORDERS. and she was like "yeah sometimes it just happens. probably dont need to check those"

to add insult to injury the trip to texas was stupendously awful and i am not friends with them anymore!

i had my first testosterone shot on september 20th 2021. it was really cool.

when i got home from our trip, i stopped eating bread, pasta, rice, milk, and anything sweet, since i was told "carbs bad" but not given any guidance beyond that? so i stuck to a diet of like. salad with olive. chicken and beef. cheese sometimes. beans. maybe an apple BUT NOT TOO MUCH FRUIT THATS SUGAR.

i saw an endocrinologist in january, and my A1C had dropped into prediabetic range. she referred me to a dietician since i told her unfortunately she also said i should write down "i hate ice cream" whenever i craved it, which. wasnt great for my eating disorder brain. she also took me off my antidepressants because some of them can cause insulin resistance. this was really unfortunate because come to find out, mine is not one of those.

after three weeks of awful antidepressant withdrawal symptoms, i saw the dietician. and like i feel bad being like "these people didnt help me" because they were all really pleasant but God it was not helpful to be given a mass produced booklet about how to lose weight and fix your bloods, when i was already following a more restrictive diet than they recommended and at a bmi they liked. and i told her going in like "I HAVE AN EATING DISORDER, IM WORRIED THIS WILL MAKE ME RELAPSE" and she still gave me the calorie counts. ;_;

the next day at work i think i honestly had a mental breakdown? i still groomed all my dogs but i was openly crying while i was doing it, my coworkers were really worried. i was the most suicidal ive been in years. i didnt see why i should continue to live if i had to work at a very stressful job, get yelled at by customers every day (you know how retail is), not get paid enough to live independently, and track what i ate every day while fighting a relapse. i wasnt even ABLE to take a lunch most days because my manager had the habit of overbooking us.

i narrowly avoided being taken to the ER. my Big Manager was actually really cool about me taking a few days off until i could see my shrink for Emergency Appointment Alistair Is In Crisis. i was at home for a couple days.

then a very close friend attempted suicide and eventually passed. i dont feel comfortable giving more detail than that because he was a fairly private person.

i resigned from my job. i lost 20 pounds because i stopped eating. i stopped seeing my shrink. longtime alistair fans may remember that puberty really fucked up my mental health, so out of desperation, i stopped taking my testosterone in hopes that i might get ANY amount of relief. and it did take me from "lying in bed trying to figure out how to kill myself without destroying my girlfriend and family" to "hoping i get killed in a freak accident". i was also able to start eating a bit more regularly, and i wasnt restricting any specific foods.

three months post-breakdown i was finally able to see a nurse practitioner to see what antidepressant i could take without messing up my sugars. turns out the antidepressant i could take was the one i HAD BEEN ON. so started that back up. nurse was really great, she was interested in having my thyroid checked as well as my A1C. and it turned out my A1C was back in normal range, but my thyroid stuff was abnormal and likely causing the blood sugar issues! fuck me running! and i did confirm with hrt doc that testosterone wouldnt make those abnormal, if anything it would just make t less effective.

still figuring out what to do about thyroid stuff but cool to know we could have maybe avoided a lot of this food suffering if theyd agreed to test my thyroid when i asked.

i dont seriously consider killing myself anymore! which is great! and while i still monitor what im eating and my weight, i DO eat three meals a day again and have stopped losing weight.

ive regressed in a lot of ways though. like im a good driver, i drove 3000 miles to texas and back without incident, ive navigated chicago traffic, i know what im doing. but even driving to the store is paralyzing, i have anxiety attacks trying to drive through town. talking on the phone is hard again. i have a lot of difficulty being around strangers, and being in public drains me very quickly. im always expecting someone to yell at me. the nurse who prescribed me my stuff referred me to a therapist for ptsd, but he kind of told me to go see my old shrink since ive been seeing her since i was like 14 haha.

i did go see her last month and was able to reorient some goals, what i think has been working for me vs not, etc. and i actually feel optimistic that working with her will go well? she wants me to add an anti anxiety med which i am PRAYING will help

onto more positive things. testosterone was really cool. bottom growth happened like within the first few days, which i was pumped about. my voice dropped, its not super deep but its a noticeable change. i really liked the new body hair but a lot of it went away when i had to stop :-(

like its weird the only lasting changes have been voice and bottom growth, but i feel so much more confident and happy body wise (editors note that my eating disorder stuff has always been more linked to control than physical appearance, this isnt a contradiction)

ummmmmmmmm i feel like we're caught up on my major life events. going forward...

get anxiety drug

contact job counseling

biggest stressor these days is needing a job but still being fucked up brain. im looking for help there. lets see if i find it! life goes on forever and ever and ever though. eventually something will happen. hopefully it will be good! it could be bad. but bad things keep happening and i keep living through them to new things. so i guess it has to be okay because it will be given enough time. ta-da!