#plasticbrains

[transbionic-shieldmaiden]

a really long post about my stupid HRT adventure

cw medical stuff, tumors.

context: there was a post about getting on HRT that I read but I decided this was too personal to go in a reblog. donut rebagel, but feel free to reply.

ohhhh man, so like obviously i’m glad other people have had a better time than I when it comes to getting on hrt but i really gotta rant about the issues i had, because I had a hell of a time getting it DESPITE NOT ACTUALLY RUNNING INTO GATEKEEPING. so, story time:

this got long, so have a read more.

So I have executive dysfunction, which I cannot recommend. For me at least it comes in a package deal with a bunch of plasticbrains things I’m very much a fan of (stims! hyperfocus! being trans!), but I’d still very much like to not deal with it. And I also have social anxiety. Which overall is not a great combination of issues for dealing with the medical system.

Case in point: figuring out I’m trans was the catalyst for getting me to actually seek therapy (at MIT medical, which -- sidenote -- is free for students and I can’t recommend them highly enough), but what this actually meant was I took basically an entire semester to make the phone call to get an appointment, which was scheduled for a month after the call*. So far so great.

Anyway, as my therapy continued I kept coming in and complaining about dysphoria and being like “man i wish i could start hrt! but i won’t, because that involves talking to strangers :(” and eventually my therapist was like “so like. regular medical, which can prescribe hrt, is literally one floor below us. i can walk you down and schedule an appointment right now.”

and i was like “uhhhh wait i didn’t actually want my problem solved that means i have to talk to strangers!!!” but like obviously this was the social anxiety talking because i did actually want hrt. so my therapist walked me down to medical and i scheduled an appointment with the one Trans Doctor (tee-em) at MIT medical (like seriously this woman is as far as I can tell the PCP for like half of MIT’s trans population, we stan).

so the way this worked out is I needed three appointments: one intake appointment which was largely informational, one appointment with a physical checkup and a blood draw, and finally an appointment once the blood draw results came in. So I went in to the firs appointment, scheduled the second once it was done, and then MIT medical stole my blood.

And when that appointment was done I...didn’t schedule the third.

Cue several months passing due to executive dysfunction and social anxiety.

So I finally get myself together enough to schedule the last appointment, and I go in...and it turns out I have abnormally low testosterone. And I was all ready to be like “Oh no...isn’t that a shame...how terrible...” but the problem is, low testosterone in conjunction with my other blood metrics...was possibly a sign of a brain tumor.

That sounds worse than it actually is -- the brain tumor in question would’ve been benign, so it wouldn’t have been cancer. It does occasionally lead to blindness however, and low testosterone from said tumor would obviously not be very visible once I was taking spironolactone. So we needed to make sure I didn’t have a tumor before we could proceed with HRT. I was sent to take another blood test, optimized for the time of day when testosterone levels peak, and was therefore in the strange situation of being a trans woman hoping for high testosterone levels on a blood test.

Alas, it seems I was truly too trans for my own good, for it turns out the second test was even lower than the first.

This meant I had to go in for another blood test, and I had to get an MRI. And of course remember that every appointment I make here means 3-5 weeks depending on scheduling, all while I’m engaging in the standard MIT pastime of drowning in psets. Which is not fun when you’re depressed from dysphoria, let me tell you.

The MRI rolls around and it’s in this area of the Boston metro area Where The T Dares Not Go. There’s a bus stop near the clinic, but I have only been on an MBTA bus once and I really didn’t want to miss my appointment. So I hop in a lyft and soon it’s time for me to go in the Big Science Tube.

So here’s the thing about the Big Science Tube. It’s loud, it’s cramped, and in my case at least you get pumped with Contrast Juice which like goes in your brain or something? idk i’m not an MRI tech. I actually found it to be a not entirely unpleasant experience, because it sort of feels like you’re in a cryosleep chamber or something and I’m a huge nerd. But it’s also...massively disorienting. You can’t move, your vision is limited to the inside surface of a white cylinder, the whole thing is making Noise and vibrating, there’s the Contrast Juice sloshing in your brain...Oh, and at least in my case they let me listen to satellite radio while i was vibing in the science tube. Thing is, I don’t generally like radio music, since I tend to like individual songs more than genres, so I picked the jazz station. I figured this would ensure fairly enjoyable music the whole time, instead of a weird roller-coaster of songs I like, songs I hate, and songs I haven’t heard (the vast majority).

While I stand by this analysis in general, I do not recommend jazz as the soundtrack to the big science tube.

All this is to say that by the time I got out, I was extremely out of it and loopy. Oh, I also forgot to mention: I did not sleep well the night before. My sleep schedule is a mess at the best of times, and I was very nervous. So I am...completely off the shits by this point, not to mention extremely hungry and thirsty. They tell you to drink a lot to flush the Contrast Juice from your system, so that works out OK. In theory.

I get out, stand by the bus station for a bit, and conclude the bus isn’t coming. I walk across the street to a McDonalds, figuring I could really use some food and liquid. Which was correct.

...Except the bus came and went while I was in there, and looking at the schedule on my phone revealed I’d have to wait another half an hour for another.

This is where I make a terrible mistake. I look at my map, see that Harvard...isn’t too far from where I am, and Harvard has a T station! Perfect! So I, completely loopy from the MRI, still dehydrated because I haven’t gotten nearly enough liquids from McDonalds, decide to WALK TO HARVARD. It was a 30 minute walk, through unfamiliar territory, and I cannot stress this enough: I. Was. Off. The. Shits.

So I walk to Harvard using my phone’s GPS and whatever brain cells were not full of Contrast Juice, somehow managing to navigate through this random neighborhood and over the bridge without getting too lost or getting hit by a car. As I reach Harvard, I realize that this is a bad place for me to be in my current mental state: it’s bustling, full of standard college craziness; i think there was a guy in a chocolate bar costume which I could not process at the time. Oh, and I’ve never been to the Harvard T station so in my condition I struggle to find it. And when I do get there...well, here’s the thing about the Harvard T station: It’s huge. There’s several floors of underground bus terminals and an absolute warren of tunnels. Perfectly navigable, if you’re sober or know the area.

I am of course none of these things.

Still, somehow I find my way to the train, but that wasn’t even the end of my problems! Because, you see, my dorm is twenty minutes from the nearest T stop! So even once I get back to MIT I still have lots of walking to do. I don’t remember how I got back at that point; I think it involved a lot of drinking fountains.

Anyway, I guess this was supposed to be about me getting HRT? So it takes a while for the MRI results to get back, but it turns out I don’t have a tumor. However, in the meantime my parents have been pushing for me to freeze some sperm cells, so that I can have kids someday. Here’s the thing: I do not want kids. I do not expect to ever want kids. And if that changes, I’d be quite happy to adopt kids. But my parents are offering to pay for it, and the risk-averse part of my brain is like “oh...maybe i should do it...just in case???”

It takes me a month to actually call a fertility clinic. In the meantime, I am struggling in my classes; dysphoria is not conducive to educational success. It was not a good time to be me, let’s just put it that way. Finally, I make the call, and uhhhh it turns out sperm freezing is really expensive? And you have to go in for an intake appointment...then do some tests...and then...

So at this point I say, fuck it! And I get on HRT the next week. In total it took me like...a year to get on HRT, depending on how you count it? And all this without anyone actually gatekeeping me on being an Invalid Trans or whatever. But it’s all good, because now I’m far happier and more together than I ever thought I can be. The moral of this story is: HRT good, executive dysfunction bad, and don’t wander through Harvard while completely off the shits from MRI aftereffects.

*this is the one issue with MIT medical; their services are great but also in high demand. the system is a bit better once you actually get into it though.

[sophia-epistemia]

yeah, it’s that you’re autistic enough to believe that people mean what they say and smart enough to reason consequentially (which they’re not so they don’t, and even those who are, are forbidden to act on consequentialist grounds).

@everexcitable I live in the Bible Belt and as far as I've seen mostly they believe that, because the only purpose of sex is for procreation, you're sinning by having sex recreationally and you're double sinning for trying to dodge responsibility for taking care of the baby that resulted regardless of whether you have the means to or not. Because by having sex you already basically agreed to having the baby in the first place.

Oh okay, so “wanting to control women” is like… wanting to make it harder for them to go around sinning? That makes more sense. When I used to think abortion was wrong, people would ask me why I “wanted to control women” or “wanted to help men control women” and I would picture, like, a supervillain’s lair with women unable to move or brainwashed or something.

And I could never figure out why people assumed I would want that or want to help with that.

Got one thing I also have a uterus. But for another it’s not that I thought wanting sex for pleasure was bad, it’s that I thought if you take a risk and it goes in ways you don’t want, you don’t get to take your frustration out on a vulnerable being who wasn’t the one taking the risk. Like… my mom had me and probably didn’t want me to be disabled, but had reason to know I might be. Then I was. So she doesn’t get to like, kill me and try again. I thought of it like that.

I now think it’s a lot more complicated than that and realize that I am VERY risk aware and VERY not-impulsive compared to a lot of other humans (as well as better educated about health issues/had sex Ed without shaming that gave info about many different ways to have sex) so I didn’t have the full picture.

But in ever could figure out that framing ad am now curious. Is it just that I’m neurodivergent and too’k “desire to control women” too literally and missed what it meant, or is there particular nefarious intent I don’t recognize because it’s not what motivated me personally?

[plasticbraincompany]

Rumination. . . . . . . . . . #plasticbraincompany #plasticbrain #psychology #psychotherapy #motivation #psychotherapy #inspirationalquotes #mindsetcoach #inspirational #mindsetshift #mindsetiseverything #mentalwellbeing #therapy #coachingtips #brainfacts #brainmyths #neuroscience #neuropsychology #neurobiology #psychologyfacts #psychologytoday #anxiety #rumination #depressionawareness https://www.instagram.com/p/CD7AMTMjFoW/?igshid=kk4mn7kmym1n

[di--es---can-ic-ul-ar--es]

“Uh, I’m not sure I got that. Let me get this straight, you claim to be some kind of AI, working for KGB dot RU, and you’re afraid of a copyright infringement lawsuit over your translator semiotics?” “Am have been badly burned by viral end-user license agreements. Have no desire to experiment with patent shell companies held by Chechen infoterrorists. You are human, you must not worry cereal company repossess your small intestine because digest unlicensed food with it, right? Manfred, you must help me-we. Am wishing to defect.” … He’s dealt with old-time commie weak-AIs before, minds raised on Marxist dialectic and Austrian School economics: They’re so thoroughly hypnotized by the short-term victory of global capitalism that they can’t surf the new paradigm, look to the longer term.

charles stross - accelerando — woah lol just glanced at the first few pages of this, had heard he’s super legit at compsci but wasn’t anticipating really angular bipolar & pynchonesque prose & politics.

[subterraneanhq]

Can I request some more ice dancers around here? Maybe Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje. Anyone really would be cool!

We demand more ice dancers!!!

[earlgraytay]

i’m deeply uncomfortable with the way people talk about elon musk

i’m fucking disgusted with the way people talk about grimes

she’s a woman who dares to have a relationship with a man who acts Off/neurodivergent/plasticbrains in public 

so of course she’s insane, her baby is “...something”/a hellspawn/the dunwich horror 

(yes, I actually saw someone post that)

and she deserves to be mocked and scorned even more than musk himself

of course 

god. this is why we (autistic folks) can’t have nice things (like relationships with people who aren’t autistic) 

[moralitybog]

I think that there should be plasticbrains safe spaces, but I also don’t want “effective altruism” or “rationality” to be isomorphic to “plasticbrains safe space”

[reidio-silence]

i just learned the term plasticbrains today and wow it would’ve described me perfectly back when i was right out of college. not so much now though

[tropylium]

I don’t think I’ve stated it before, but: the endocrine disruptor thing, as rebloggd yesterday, is why I find the “plasticbrains” thing, going on on a few nearby tumblrs… let’s leave it at “tacky”. Yes, I know it‘s etymologically from neuroplasticity, but it still comes off with a same kind of feeling as e.g. a group of people with ADHD starting to call themselves “leadheads”

[himextime]

@ultrafroth Food definitely counts and that's one of my favorite parts too!

@plasticbrain That's so awesome! Maybe I need to start that tradition too.

[skatingdowncountryroads-blog]

Perfect day in this great town with my best girl. Thank you, Ilderton. Thank you @plasticbrain.

[azdoine]

Okay, just because Venus is a trans woman, that doesn’t mean she’s also plasticbrains-

He's good at knots, and he's good at switch boxes, and if he's good at anything else, he's never shown us.

What? I-

Jupiter: Maybe. A little. He's weird. Not in a bad way, necessarily? But maybe in a bad way, possibly. Sometimes I don't even know what he is. Do you think he notices how much of a jerk he is sometimes?

oh come on-

Venus: It must be such a good feeling. To get things right, and not have to screw up. Not just pretending you understand. Jupiter: You get diodes pretty well? Venus: But Neptune knows what everyone means right away. I can't tell when anyone is lying so I just. Believe everything on purpose I guess?

I! This could mean a lot of things that have nothing to do with neurodivergence! You’re taking Venus out of context-!

Timeskip Venus: *literally wears a Soylent tank top*

OKAY FINE YOU WIN, VENUS IS PLASTICBRAINS

[plasticbraincompany]

Our self concept holds beliefs and values of ourselves and the world around us. It's incredibly useful, it allows you to collect and collate a whole range of ideas and build on what you have learned and grow. The danger comes when you start distorting the world to suit what's in the container. - Follow @plasticbraincompany - . . . #plasticbraincompany #plasticbrain #carlrogers #personcentredtherapy #personcentredapproach #personcentred #pct #onlinetherapy #onlinecounselling #positivethinking #positivepsychology #humanistic #growth #therapymemes #therapysession #growthmindset #psychotherapy #psychology #psychologytoday #bacp #ukcp #selfcareeveryday #growthmindset https://www.instagram.com/p/CHxHk76DaSb/?igshid=11upqc1w8ldjv

[cherryemojitwitter]

@plasticbrain I'm normally never jealous of people but I'm jealous of Scott and how fast he can fall asleep.

[e5b409]

@plasticbrain i thought that too until i recently discovered i’m bit of an idiot who thought it was faith hill featured on p diddy’s i’ll be missing you and nobody’s allowing me to forget that 

[rapadverbs-blog]

@plasticbrain currently deciding if I deserve a nap