Today was my first report on my 6 month post op CT scans. I will be having these every 6 months for the next 5 years and what we are looking for is metastasises, especially in the lung or liver.
I have three sets of specialists, radio-oncologist, chemo-oncologist and surgeons. Today was my radio-oncologist, he was the one who had slight problems with meeting a TG woman but he has warmed to me and is a great guy, very straight laced and serious. On reflection he probably sees more of his patients die than most, so his demeanour may well be needed to survive. He also tries to hide the computer screen from me so that I cannot read the reports. I move my chair so that I look over his shoulder. It irritates the doobie out of him. I love it.
My lungs and liver are both clean and healthy. I was amazed at the liver result after my pre-transition alcohol consumption. I think that I may have escaped a bullet there.
I also caught up with the nurse who looked after me during my radiotherapy, she had been transferred to another unit and I really missed her, she was lovely to me and helped a lot on some dark days. She saw me and then greeted me in the waiting room with "Cindy, you are alive!" No doubt this helped all the old codgers waiting for their zapping to feel very confident for their future
It was fun going back into work; I work in the same hospital that I was treated at but I am on long term sick leave. I had a meeting with students, which I love. I found out that I've had two papers accepted for publication and that another author had done the corrections - lovely!!
I've also been invited to be a consultant for the gender advisory LGBTI committee for a high profile research institute in Adelaide. I was quite touched by that. It is, in my opinion, acceptance of being transgender and acceptance of transgender people by my academic peers.
On that vein, during my hospital sojourn I met three other TG people in walking down public corridors. I knew them from previous times. We stopped and had a hello. No one noticed. No one pointed fingers. I can reasonably suggest that passer-byes thought 'Oh friends catching up' if they thought anything at all.
We are more common than people think and more public than people know and please stop worrying about passing. No one notices.
