Title says it all. The results after surgery came out and I've achieved pCR (pathological complete response). Meaning they found only isolated cancer cells in one of the lymph nodes they took out to test. Chemo killed it off! For now I'm in remission!

Surgery went well. The recovery was going great until I got the drains out 5 days ago and immediately ran 38.9 that is still going. Got sent to urgent care, got a horse's dose of antibiotic on Sunday but it's not better. So I wonder if I actually picked up some COVID? Normally I always have tests at home, but I used my last one the day before surgery itself. So I'll have to wait until tomorrow my partner can pick up some.

It's a double mastectomy, but I have so much fluid build up (the suspected infected seromas), that I basically have an entire new set of tits. I'm at least a B cup now 😂 Not getting too worked up about it, in terms of dysphoria. Mostly I just want to have normal temperature again and my chest not to sound like a half-empty water bottle every time I move (it's the fucking weirdest feeling). Everything else will resolve itself one way or the other. Read More »

Still alive. Chemo finished 5 weeks ago - needed a blood transfusion in order to make the last two infusions (and to uhh keep conscious, because I kept fainting) but didn't have to postpone a round or be hospitalized, so that's a win!

While I still have a palpable hard lump, the scans are pretty good and show much less metabolic activity. Out of 12+ metabolically active lymph nodes in September, now only two remain. Out of 3 tumour lessions, only one is visible on the scans. So that's all pretty good news, after all.

Surgery is scheduled for Tuesday. I had a small cold over the weekend, so I hope that's not a reason to cancel. I'll call in the morning. Fingers crossed! Read More »

The transition from being able-bodied to chronically ill and basically partially disabled has been frustrating, even though I have seen it with my mother and grandmother, so I thought I was prepared for it. No I wasn't. I wasn't prepared how every day all my little energy goes into micromanaging everything, just to keep me functioning. I have to:

- be mindful that I have only about 3 hours of energy around mid-day, so if anything needs doing, that has to happen by 1 pm;

- make sure I eat at precise interval, because when I miss it by an hour, I start feeling shaky and sick;

- micromanage what I eat to be the most nutritionally dense thing in the smallest physical quantity so that I don't get shaky and sick, but also don't get gastrointestinal issues; Read More »

I'm finally starting chemo on Tuersday! \o/ It's going to be rude, ngl. We're going for 4 medications. The first two every two weeks for two months. Then the other two, every single bloody week for three months. If that doesn't kill it off, there is one more we can do as targeted therapy. Side effect of at least half of them is leukemia and other cancers, so yay, I guess.

The oncologist wore a Pride pin (my gaydar was screaming already when I saw her photo on the hospital website) and was deliberate that she would do her best not to misgender me or use my deadname.

CW: cancer

Month and a half in post-diagnosis, I haven't started treatment, because the hospital forgot me and I fell off the planning. :/ Now it looks like I'll start treatment in November. Meanwhile I'm chillin' with a tumor that a month ago was 12 cm at the smallest part and it keeps growing. More than 12 lymph nodes affected. Stage 3c. I don't know what is going to happen with me. Every bruise makes me fear it has spread to the bone marrow. Every lightheadedness makes me fear it's moved to the brain. And I've lost all hope for ever starting medical transition.

Things happening right now.

I started university again (still working, but trying to study for fun next to it).

Got covid for the first time (Hopefully nearly at the end, but it still takes so much energy. so being awake late feels like a win).

Started antidepressants and feel like I've missed out on life so much the last years. Bc omg this is such a different experience right now!

I WANT to do things with family and friends and for myself. Not just bc I know it would be good (doing all the things therapy tought me to do) but bc I actually look foreward to it and enjoy doing it.

And I don't panic anymore - even if I don't do things right away. I can deal with having to do stuff and I don't hate myself if I mess things up. It's not "all too much" and "will it ever end" as soon as Read More »

Roses are red,
I'm a bad dancer,
which is all irrelevant,
because I have cancer.

Something I just realised: while I normally speak or think of myself, I use he and masculine grammatical structures. However, whenever I am criticising myself, I switch to she, feminine words/grammar, call myself fem-coded slurs, I use my deadname. Basically, my inner voice not only bullies me most of the time, but also misgenders me routinely. Rude! lol

But there is a positive. I've always had trouble realizing when I'm being unreasonably critical of myself and shutting down that irrational voice. Now I have a pretty clear cue to tell me that my self-criticism has gone beyond what is proportionate to the situation and has gone into beating-myself-up territory. Read More »

CW for mention of suicide and grief.

I've said often that I'm a clamshell, that I never open up to anyone. Not IRL anyway; journaling is different. After nearly two years of therapy, I finally opened up about a huge trauma that I've never discussed with anyone. About the suicide of my best friend after years of enduring abuse, and the guilt I've felt for that. Something I've carried unprocessed for nearly 25 years, and which directly related to two attempts to take my own life.

I had been building up to tell that story for months, but I always got so scared, that I always found an excuse not to. Finally this week I did it. I packed all my feelings, put them in a locked box in my brain, and forced myself to at least get the facts and chronology out. It still took more than an hour and I barely got the minimum out. At the end of the session the therapist aked me how it felt telling this, and my truthful answer was that I wasn't feeling anything yet. That I had intentionally put up a wall in front of my feelings, so that I can tell the story. Because I couldn't cope with both telling the facts and feeling the emotions. So I shoved them away for another time. Read More »

I want the girl, I want the girl, I want the girl!
*dramatically throws himself face down on the bed*

It's been a while since I've had a crush. It's an interesting feeling. It will go away in a week or two, just have to let it run its course. I guess I'll enjoy it in the meanwhile.

My neocortex knows that she was only hitting on me, because she was curious what it's like to do it with a trans guy, but my limbic system is all but lying on the floor, paws up, licking her palms and begging for metaphorical belly rubs.

*sighs* At least the whole experience has made me even more secure in my bisexuality.

I've been going to a dance workshop for a few weeks now. And the hardest thing for me is allowing myself to feel my body.

I have had a bad history with myself and ignoring my body to some extend seemed to be the best way to live a normal life. I'm still not sure what part is trans body disphoria, what part is eating dissorder and if they are even separated. I only know that it took me to some dark places in my life that I don't want to visit again.

As someone who overcompensated with sports and such, I have missed the connection to my body, so I am slowly trying to reconnect.

But it is highly triggering and I have to constantly remind myself that I am allowed to eat. That my body is okay the way it is (not good, not bad. Just existing and doing a good job in keeping me alive). Read More »

Ugh, the week of physical dysphoria continues into this one. Definitely beginning to avoid mirrors now. What I don't understand is what triggered it. Normally it's a one-off thing and within a few days it subsides enough that I can go on with my life.

I have to admire how efficient my brain is in compacting issues to work though during R.E.M sleep. It managed to roll into one very exhausting dream: the trauma of academia, the trauma of transition, relationship insecurity, current job distress, the discomfort of being disliked, the fear of loss of control over my life, and general shame for being shit at fencing 👍

Typically I can ignore my body. That's basically how I've survived adolescence and adulthood. I am so completely divorced from it that it just doesn't register as a thing that's a part of me. That's why I never really had problem with mirrors, like many other trans people do - I just never recognized what I saw as me, so I also didn't care what that other person looked like. Just made sure that the image in the mirror is combed and clean and that's where my responsibility ended. My real life and my real body is in my head.

But there are days when the physical dysphoria crashes in. It starts with something stupid, such as seeing my feet while showering and getting a panic attack because they are too small and delicate. And then over the following days it grows and it grows. This week I've been struggling. It started again with stupid shit. This time it was my ears. Suddenly I saw them and panic set in. In the following days it grew. One day it was the ears and my jawline. Then it was the ears, jawline and cheeckbones making me feel sick when I saw them or even just touched them. The next day my chest started bothering me and startling me. Like it's saying, "Hey! Hey! How long do you think you can ignore me? HEY!" Read More »

Oh fuck yeah!

I had been second-guessing myself again for leaving one of the fencing clubs I was in, because what if I'm just an arrogant prick who sucks at sports but thinks too highly of himself? Well, with the prospect of suddenly having one evening free, I shifted my schedule around and took up a boxing class. Not that I was that much into it, but I figured it would help me fix my shoddy footwork and body mechanics.

Well! I just finished my second class and the instructor told me to go directly to the advanced group, because there's nothing for me to learn in the beginner group! Footwork's good, coordination's good, pairwork is good. And I'm not even winded after an hour. Fuck yeah! Read More »

Okay, but the cishet culture in my corner of Eastern Europe is wild (I say, having participated in it while I lived here, closeted) and it's hurting everyone! That ex who screamed at me for being trans... We talked things out, but so much came up. This is going to be a long read...

We were talking about my marriage and I mentioned that if I do end up divorced, I'd either not date at all again, or go full t4t, because I would just want to be with someone who has had a similar relationship to their body and gender as me and is aware of possible trouble. That prompted a new volley of outrage as my ex tried to convince me that if a cis guy came to me and told me I have a juicy ass and he wanted a piece of it (his wording, not mine), I should agree to do him. Right...  Read More »

After coming out to family (fear of rejection) and coming out at work (feat of discrimination), I think my personal worst is coming out to exes, because I never know how threatened they'd feel in their sexuality and how that would manifest. Specifically, if they'd become violent.

Case in point, the guy from yesterday felt so insecure that he found it necessary to show up at my mom's place at 11 pm last night to call me outside, and then to proceed to shout for the whole neighborhood to hear that I'm a woman, I'm nothing but a woman and that my transition might *feel* like it's important to me but actually *he's* the one who's truly affected by it, because it makes him gay and he's totally not gay and how dare I undermine his masculinity like that...  Which are totally valid feelings but there's a good way to process them and a shitty way to process them, and this was the latter. And I love this dude to death, he's still a really good friend, but he also has abusive tendencies, which both me and other of his previous partners have been subjected to... If he reacts in such a volatile way, then I don't know just how violent others might get. Read More »

Coming out to so many people this past week has been so weird. I keep getting surprised at how people see me. For instance, I came out to two friends from 25+years ago. The three of us have been very close. One of them was stunned and said that she didn't see it coming at all. The other basically broke out in smiles the moment I uttered the words "I have something to share" and said that she'd been waiting for me to come out since high school.

Also came out to an ex of mine, who reminded me that he used to call me Mikhail (the long version of Misha) whenever he got frustrated that I was more masculine than him. I had conveniently forgotten that, together with most of our relationship, that was pretty toxic 😅 We broke up probably 13-14 years ago. Read More »