still alive

[pauraque_bk]

Thank you for the kind thoughts and comments. I'm hurting and bleeding from places you don't normally bleed from, but I'm actually very alert and didn't get nauseated from the anesthesia at all, which was what I thought would happen. I also thought I might die, but that didn't happen either.

Some curious details.

When I was getting ready to leave I realized I didn't have any clean socks, so I went up to my brother's room to borrow a pair. He was not there so I had to peek in all the drawers of the dresser, a dresser which belonged originally to our mom. One of the drawers was completely empty except for a few random non-clothing items which clearly had been hers. I was surprised because I thought I had dealt with all her possessions.

Among other things were a handwritten note from a priest thanking her for her kind donation to the church (dated 4/3/04, four months before her death), and a set of rosary beads.

My mom was a professed -- even an obnoxious, Dawkins-like -- atheist all my life. She was a very private person, but from what I could piece together, she had been raised Christian, but disavowed it when she got older because she felt the other people in the church were hypocritical, prayed for selfish things, did not truly believe, etc. By the time I was self-aware, she was vehemently opposed to all organized religions, and even to personal spirituality. (I distinctly remember when my older cousin was having his Bar Mitzvah, she would not let me go, even though my dad and a lot of his secular Jewish relatives were going. Even supporting a friend in his religious rites wasn't acceptable.)

I guess my conclusion is that it was never really that she stopped believing or wanting to believe, but that her early experiences made her so angry that she didn't just reject her church, but God in general. But when she perceived (correctly) that she was dying of cancer, facing her mortality led her back. I hope she got some peace from it, though she may just have been feeling fear and desperation.

I have no idea how to pray using a rosary and would probably not attempt it, but I took it with me to the hospital.

Got the socks too.

*

My dad picked me up from the hospital because he is the only person I know in the Bay Area I know who has a car and doesn't do anything during the day. (He teaches evening classes.) They won't let you go home by yourself, even in a taxi.

I had given his number to _hannelore to call if she wanted to check the status, and when she did, he managed in the span of a conversation that probably lasted less than minute, to say one of the most offensive things he possibly could, which was to call me by the wrong gendered pronoun.

When I found out about this it simply confirmed what I already suspected, which is that he normally only uses the correct pronoun for me when I, or someone who will tell me, is in earshot. Since he had never talked to _hannelore before, he forgot. I've been presenting as a guy for um... eight years? That is a long time to keep a charade like that going.

I wasn't even really upset. I just feel sorry for people like that. I mean, the entire medical staff I dealt with in the hospital? No problems calling me "Mr. [My Name]", even in medical-type situations where they could hardly ignore that I am trans.

My little hospital bracelet has an M on it! The nurse gave me the usual rigamarole about how I should not take it off because it speaks for me when I can't. Maybe I should leave it on for a while.

Don't make me tap the bracelet.

*

I won't know if the procedure "worked" for a couple of weeks. Also this mood icon is a bit ironic because peeing REALLY hurts. Wait maybe that part should have been under a cut.

Comments

[florahart]

I imagine you know your dad well enough to have some idea whether it might have just been that he was concerned and failed to apply a filter to a long-standing way or referring to someone. I mean, still offensive, but like, I still have to deliberately change in my head the pronoun for the person in my workforce who is now female (who has been presenting as female for maybe 3 years and had surgical changes made a year and a half ago, I think), and I suppose if I were particularly frazzled, I might not only fail to do so, but fail to realize I had. I hope not, though, and I think were the person my child, I might have spent some considerable time trying to make the right pronoun reflexive.

Am glad you didn't die. Also, am glad you did not have my usual response to anesthesia, which involves regaining the capacity to control my limbs considerably sooner than regaining the capacity to consider whether I should, and apparently being Quite Averse to remaining horizontal. I try to get up and leave, over and over. At the time, I have no sense that this is a Bad Idea, though afterward, I remember and am all, SELF. WTF. Heh.

[pauraque]

I'm sure the ability to internalize the right pronoun is very dependent on context. If you've known a lot of trans people or are one, it's going to be easier. If you knew the person for a long time before transition, it'd be harder. If you rarely see them or have to think about it, it'd be harder. Probably! I'm sure people have different experiences.

I didn't try to get up out of bed, but I did ask the nurses a few times whether I was awake or dreaming. The anesthesiologist had told me I would have dreams, but I didn't! Unless the thing about talking to the nurses really was a dream.