#i have early onset dimentia

[roitaminnah]

WHAT BRUSH ... was that ............... asking for a Friend

It’s called ‘fruitloops’ I think! for procreate :) very fitting name :3

[flamewear]

card me three times, i have early onset dimentia

card me once, shame on you

card me twice, shame on me

[freeforaugust]

I used to be a grammar cop and I won my school spelling bees and advanced to county twice (took fifth place in the county the second time) but the last year or so I've started mixing up they're and their and your and you're

Obviously my immediate conclusion is that I'm having very early onset dimentia

[fox-steward]

hi, not sure if this blog is active bc im on mobile but you seem v knowledgeable so i hope you are. i have a question if thats ok. ive been id'ing as ftm trans/nb for about 6 years now but havent rlly been able to come out to many ppl or transition at all so im still largely presenting as female. i wouldnt rlly call myself gender critical or anything like that, but i know transitioning is a long & difficult process and im wondering if there is a way to alleviate my dysphoria without going (1/2)

“thru all that. i dont want to transition only to realize that i dont feel better and there was an easier way. in other words, id like to rule out any possibility that im not trans before medically investing in being trans. any chance you have any advice for me? (2/2)”

hey there—still active, if sporadic.

when it comes to healing from dysphoria, there’s no cure-all, no hidden path to healing that you’ve simply yet to uncover. just as there’s no way to guarantee transition will make you happy, there’s no opposite guarantee either. i can only share some of the stuff that has worked for me and some of the hardships i uncovered about living as trans, which i hope you find helpful.

what helps me?

get clear with yourself about what you believe about gender, ideologically. i personally feel, if my beliefs do not stand up to critical thought, if they cannot be supported by rational arguments, then those beliefs are not worth holding on to and i need to let them go. this is what happened to me WRT transness, gender, and all that.

start small—what is gender? is gender innate? do we have gendered souls? how could we have gendered souls if gender is a social construct? okay, so we can’t have gendered souls, so what is gender, if not innate? is gender the social expectations and norms attached to the two sexes? is it possible to break those roles and expectations? does breaking those roles and expectations change anyone’s sex? no—males can behave in typically feminine ways and females in typically masculine ways and that does nothing to change their sex. so what would conceivably make someone (or myself) trans? inhabiting the social roles and expectations of the gender associated with the opposite sex. since we already established that gender isn’t innate and we don’t have gendered souls, there’s no merit in the “born in the wrong body” narrative; it is not possible to be born in the wrong body. we each get one body, no matter how we change it. but if i wasn’t born in the wrong body, why do i feel so uncomfortable with mine, especially with the sexed aspects of it? if you’re female, the likely culprit is misogyny. you don’t actually have to hate women on a conscious level to be suffering from internalized misogyny. we live in a misogynistic world, it saturates everything. if you’re female, it affects almost every factor of how you move through this world—how people treat you, what opportunities you’re given, which behaviors are encouraged for you and which are discouraged, etc. if you are inclined to prefer masculinity—for whatever reason—society will encourage this in males and discourage it in females. having your way of being subtly discouraged all the time can easily lead to feeling disconnected from your body, perhaps even hating it, especially since you know that your way of being would be ENCOURAGED if only your body were male. and that’s when many of us encounter trans ideology that tells us we CAN be male—in fact, we actually were all along! all we have to do is change our bodies drastically with lifelong medication and surgery, all we have to do is trade money and time and health to convincingly imitate the opposite sex—THEN society will finally recognize that our way of being is okay—because we were actually masculine MEN all along, it was simply our female bodies obscuring that. does this feel like a good or healthy trade to you? it doesn’t to me, but i can’t make these decisions for you.

there IS an important caveat, a shortcut that bypasses this bad trade entirely—and that’s realizing that your way of being is ALREADY okay. masculine females and feminine males are healthy and good. it’s not always easy to comfortably BE that way in a society that does not embrace masculinity in women and femininity in men, but the solution is not to change your self, it’s to change the society. and the only way you can do that is by carving out that path—BE a masculine female/woman and you’ll show little girls today that there’s a place for them in this world.

i did try out the trade for myself, however, and i learned a few things you might find useful—maybe these lessons i learned can save you the time and money and pain i’ve already spent.

1) you never actually change sex. you’re always chasing the aesthetic imitation of the opposite sex with transition, but never becoming the opposite sex. in this and so many other ways, transition never ends.

2) passing is conditional. when your sense of self is predicated upon others seeing you a certain way, it can be taken from you in a second. i could be treated like one of the guys for a year, until one of them finds out i was born female. now that he knows, he cannot unknow. now my experience is tied to how he sees me—does he see me as a woman now that he knows? is he comfortable with me in the locker room? it was stressful and uncomfortable for others to have this level of control over my experience of the world and of myself. it’s also out of my control whether he decides to lend manhood to me now—will he use male pronouns with me? will he call me a woman? will he out me to the others? will he sexualize me or sexually assault me based on my female body?

3) as stated above, transition never ends. no matter how well you pass, transition always requires maintenance. you’ll need bloodwork as long as you’re on hormones—that’s time and money you wouldn’t have otherwise spent. you’ll need supplies for your hormone shots—time and money you wouldn’t have spent. there will be instances where you need to disclose your trans status, thus repeating the coming out process infinitely—doctors or EMTs, new intimate partners, friends. this process is exhausting and othering, it’s an ever-present reminder of the fact that you’re trans.

4) medical transition is expensive in terms of money and heath. taking hormones is always a risk. there’s potential for: cardiovascular risk associated with testosterone, vaginal atrophy and sexual side effects, changes to mood (some for the better, some worse), not liking how hormones change your body. then there’s the financial aspect. in the USA at least, this costs money—money for doctor’s visits, money for the hormones themselves, money for the supplies to administer them. there’s risk in any surgery—risk of death or serious complication, loss of function and sensation, improper healing, chronic pain. and of course, the monetary cost associated with surgery. removing the uterus can have lifelong consequences—early onset dimentia, lifelong need for synthetic hormones, osteoporosis.

5) there is no “actually trans.” there’s no meaningful distinction between “true trans” people and others. trans people transition and identify as trans. their dysphoria isn’t any different than mine was. there’s no method for parsing “real dysphoria” from something else. transness is an ideology. i liken it to religion. there are no “real christians” and fake christians, there are only people who believe and those who don’t. that’s the salient difference between myself (detransitioner) and trans people—belief. and if something requires me to believe in it to be real...well that’s a good indication it probably isn’t.

good luck out there. these are heavy questions and weighty struggles. there’s no harm in focusing on other aspects of your life when you’re having trouble answering Big Gender Questions. rooting for you.

[celosiaa]

TW Potential trigger warnig for abuse and mentions of dimentia for people with family w/ dementia. (Partially based on personal experience with a person with dementia.)

Okay so it’s pretty much cannon that Martin and Jon experienced abuse from their families at this point.

I feel like Jon’s abuse from his grandmother stemmed more from neglect and verbal abuse which is why he really doesn’t like yelling. Also the nagging fear of dissapearing without anyone knowing or remembering comes from his neglect but didn’t start until his incident with Mr. Spider and no one really looking for the bully. I don’t think she ever physically abused him though.

While I think Martin was neglected as well as verbally abused, but I think as time went on she started physically abusing him.

Martin’s mom has always been sick, so sick that Martin had to drop out of school to take care of her.

Everyone always seems to think that it’s chronic illness but I think she had early onset dementia that progressively worst as time went on so bad that she couldn’t be left alone.

As the disease progressed and Martin got older and started to look more like his father, his mother started confusing Martin with his dad (even calling him his dad’s name sometimes). This is where the physical abuse started because she’d get really agitated and sometimes aggressive because she sometimes thinks Martin is her husband.

That’s why she’s nice to him sometimes but cruel to him other times. (Part of me likes to believe that the part of her genuinely cared about Martin and that’s why she asked to go into a home.)

Also I feel Martin has a fear of inheriting his mother’s dementia.

Sorry this is so long!

This is really really interesting. I have actually thought about Martin’s mother’s illness being early onset dementia before as well. I do think it would fit in with the way that he talks about her, and never blames anything on her, really. I can’t think of a single time in the series where he’s really spoken ill of her--only to defend her, and say it’s not her fault.

It breaks my heart to think about him worrying about inheriting his mother’s condition. After he turns 30, I think he really gets worried about it--and as he gets older, it’s something he and Jon carefully watch out for. I think he worries every time he’s forgetful, or repeats a story by accident, etc. And his continual bouts with the Lonely don’t help ease this fear at all.

Oof. I’m upsetti spaghetti about this ouch

[mirclealignr]

hi uhhhhh

i’m getting slightly personal under the cut

you don’t have to read it or anything, i just wanted to get it out

k so my grandad is restricted to his bed now. They moved it into the sun room so he can see the garden and he has 24 hour care now with nurses and my gran. Anyway, we go to see him a lot but there’s always a good chance he won’t be lucid.

Anyway it’d been a couple weeks since i’d seen him and i went today and he was lying down in his bed and he opened his eyes and didn’t see me straight away and was like

“where’s Jordyn?” (that’s my first name and how most of my family know me)

and i turned around and smiled and he had this big cheesy grin on his face and went

“Ah hello Jordyn, such a good girl”

and i like choked back the sobs my dude. And then we had a chat, he was a little out of it but he was okay and then when we left he asked if i could give him a kiss even though ‘it’s a long way down’ to his bed as he said. And i kissed him on the forehead and left

anyway, my mum later said to me “grandpa was looking at you today like you were this golden child today. He was so happy you were there. It was like how my gran looked at me when she was like that. He really adores you” and again i choked on some feels

and my step dad went

“oh yeah, saw you kissed him on the forehead today, you don’t usually do that”

and i went “yeah he asked me to” and my step dad literally went

“awwww” in such a manly way and i’ve never heard him say that or anything before. And then he was like “that’s so sweet isn’t it? I think it’s more sweet knowing the context”

and anyway, the point of the story is that my grandad wasn’t a talker during his good days and now he’s just kinda saying what he wants and the whole family keeps coming up through the months to see him and he’s just been this little sort of angel in a way and probably saying all the things he wished he’d said when he was in better health. And today was as heart warming as it was heartbreaking because everyone knows he’s not got long left.

But like, it’s sad but at the same time not. He’s 80 and he’s got a lot of medical conditions (parkinson’s for 40 years, epilepsy since birth and just been diagnosed with early onset dimentia) but he lived a really full life and he’s getting a chance to say things he always wanted to say, even if he’s not completely lucid or aware he’s saying them at all.

i don’t know why i’m saying all this, i just wanted to write it down. I’ve not told anyone at school or anything but yeah, just really wanted to write it down and give people the option to ignore because if anything it was more for me.

i’m just glad that- idk? i’m glad that he was happy to see me i guess.

[spacecadette85]

I realized I was trans and saw first sign of early onset dimentia in my 3 months apart in 2018.

My friends put on a small con like gathering ever year in at big cabin to play board games for an extra long weekend. This year an acquaintance of mine that comes ever year had came out as transgender. It was quite frankly my first experience to hear another trans womens story and I was sort of left aww struck. I admired her for her courage and found myself inexplicably attach to her all weekend. Then it hit as we were leaving... I'm trans, I know am. But how do I tell my wife, especially after hearing about most marriages end badly.

I shoved that thought right back to where I had so many years ago. This time it was harder to put back because now I know it's possible to transition. Immediately when I got home and fell into some self destructive behaviors. This coupled with a job that put ot of stress on my shoulders put an immense pressure on me. The man I built as myself and my coping mechanism began to crack.

Three months later we went back home to celebrate my Dad's 60th birthday. We had a big celebration at the local lodge with all of the family and friends. That night I learned the immediate family had concerns about his memory and he could remember my wife's name. Down the spiral of depression I go. What are the odds of early onset dimentia and me being trans? Cant all be true. Blame it on the alcohol!

Februbary if 2019 bore the diagnosis for my dad. Denile and self destruction followed. I couldn't just lie down and take it. I cant let my life sink this deep. I have to find the way back out. I need to survive! I tried job hunting. Put my talents to the test! I quickly found I couldn't compete at the level where the jobs where. My ceiling in the industry.

The summer and fall led to continued pain, heartbreak, and stress. I struggled to keep moving forward. Then my brilliant wife has the strategy to win them all. Move back home. Take care of my Dad. Build the relationship that I never had in the time we have left. Leave the stress of the job and change the pace.

2020 opened like a bright new beginning! A move to leave all our pain of 2019 and build! But what? My destructive behavior and my denile caused waves that were coming crashing back down on us. I have to brace for impact. How I am going to survive this next crisis wave? She says "Its ok if your trans."

...

I verbally acknowledge to myself and to my wife that "I think I might be trans."

...

Breath

...

Let's begin healing

[babyboybowen]

Poor Pearl is still at the vet all alone bc they aren’t letting people inside, so Adam is just waiting in his car for hours. It’s more serious than we thought. She has a couple punctures but one is a flap under her jaw so the ER vet is worried it won’t heal correctly. He wanted to sedate her to clean and shave it but we said no bc she’s so young. So they’re going to do their best to clean the bites, then give us antibiotics and pain medicine (the thought of her in pain makes me physically ill) , and a collar so she doesn’t scratch. We have to follow up with our vet and make sure it’s healing ok. The vet also said that Hastings, given his age and size and the out-of-character nature of this, could likely have early onset dimentia or a brain tumor. These were the vets words. He acknowledged he hasn’t ever seen Hastings but said in his medical opinion and experience the most common reason for unpredictable and bizarre aggression or lashing out from older dogs is those two things. He also said Hastings and pearl should be separated (oh that’s easy) and even that Hastings shouldn’t be around Bowen right now bc it’s possible he not be able to differentiate who he’s lashing out at. Absolutely crazy. 💔 for now we just hope Pearl is OK and she feels fine and the bites heal quickly and she isn’t adversely affected but how could she not be??????? And Hastings...we have to follow up with our vet to get him evaluated. I was assuming this was a dominance or behavioral thing since Hastings and pearl are new buddies and haven’t established a pecking order yet really, plus Hastings has always been a food-guarder. But the vet has me wondering if it’s something going on with his sweet dopey brain. I don’t even know whaat to say?!?! How this happened????

[fox-steward]

just reading this article about the role of the uterus in female health, cognition, etc. and having a moment of silent, retrospective horror remembering my consultation for possible hysterectomy (which i am thankful i didn’t get).

i remember feeling like a hysterectomy was an inevitability, but not such a big deal. the doc said some trans guys chose to keep one ovary to prevent osteoporosis, but i didn’t have to. up to me! yknow, me, the medical expert.

i remember asking, do i need this? and hearing that it was recommended after X time on testosterone.

but like, i can’t help but feel now, why wasn’t there at least a discussion of stopping testosterone? that wasn’t even presented to me as an option, which seems...negligent at best.

none of the functions discussed in the article (or risks like potential early onset dimentia or impacts to working memory) came up during this consultation.

i can’t fucking believe (and am frankly completely horrified) that my doctor would recommend cutting me open and removing an organ and system that does so much for regulating my body before suggesting i stop taking a fucking hormone that i don’t need!

trans healthcare is just...a gd mess. i don’t have the language to express how i feel about what is happening to dysphoric people. it’s a complete and total tragedy.

how did i get so lucky to escape with my health intact?

here is a link to another post goin around discussing the article more fully.