Three medical visits in (little over) 49 hours
I had a few things to do in town before I got the bus up to Ninewells, and followed for what seemed like a very familiar pattern! I headed to Speech & Language Therapy (to give them their full title), and explain the little bit of progress that I seemed proud of. I did slip back a couple of times when we were talking, but not as often as I did before. I then read out a few of the passages we've done before, and some bits were still better than others - but once again, it seemed a marked improvement on just the day before. We also did some new stuff - when I say new, I mean in this context - like reading out my address and stuff, and trying to get it right. To try and get it high enough to start on the "Flat…" (number), I said "It's Flat…"! I then explained about this "cheating", and she pointed out it's whatever helps you (as in me). No sign of the promised student(s), but I take it they were behind the one-way glass.
Finished in plenty time to make it around to work before the start time of 1300. Yesterday, my team coach "booked" 15 minutes of time with the agency downstairs, under the heading of something fairly nondescript. As soon as she saw me for the first time, she thought it was us to go down at 1300 - until I reminded her! Last night I filled in my Six Month Review - apparently we are getting monthly, and six monthly reviews now. The form dated back to my last monthly review, although I was supposed to score myself on the last six months - apparently. To cut a long story short, the last six month review was the one I did some time ago where I got 9/30, and got rather upset afterwards… but that was then, and I've since had a 13/30 on a monthly review a few weeks ago. We did this just before we headed down to see the agency, and I compared the total scores. I'd just ticked myself more or less down the middle two, whilst Nikki went further in both directions - including making me up on a few items where she though I'd done well, I gave myself 15/30, and in the end, Nikki awarded me 14/30 - which wasn't too bad. Oh, and my new Team Coach from Monday will be Duncan - who is fairly new upstairs, but had been downstairs for quite some time. Seemed to be a good call.
So, now, the time had come to tell all… and that included a brief run-down on the neuro & speech therapy over the last few weeks, before proceeding to the issues raised by my visit to Sandyford on Tuesday. I explained what will happen - that I know of so far - and explained that short-term changes will be minimal i.e. time for doctors appointments to my own doc for the blood pressure monitoring. Medium term will include a visit to either Glasgow or Brighton on at least one occasion, and these may not be on Tuesdays, and if the latter is the case then I may need an extra day off afterwards. Longer term (summer-autumn-ish), I will need quite a bit of time off. Of course, we will talk about all the specifics many times between now and getting my date letter in months to come.
I once again thanked them for everything so far, and reminded them of a few of the specifics (i.e. today marks 31 months of me being out as the person I'd always believed I was). Even my team coach was surprised when I'd mentioned this - time has flown by, but I have been very lucky in many respects, and we talked about this, and other things. They did seem genuinely interested, rather than just being "forced" into listening.
I didn't do too much voice practice today on the floor, but I did put into practice what I'd learned yesterday - and for most of the day, it continued to be good. Still a long way to go, but I'm pleased with the changes I've achieved in a few days. My new team coach (Duncan) stopped by to say hello, and welcome me to the team etc. before he'd left. He said "You've been here for donkey's years… should be fairly low-maintenance…" At that point, I thought about what I'd just told the other two, and burst out laughing loudly - in a nice way. "I can manage most of the things myself" I said - referring to things like how to apply for medical appointment leave, who to phone if one of my appointments runs late and makes me late for work etc. - oh yeah, plenty practice at work etc. But as my earlier review showed, I do have quite a few good points in regards to my performance at work.
Lots of people have said nice things to me this week - even before Tuesday's announcements, or Wednesday/Thursday's progress - so I thank you all once again! This is probably going to go down as one of the most monumentally important weeks in regards to my transitioning - and I had fun all the way through. As I hinted at above, yes, today does mark 31 months since I told the world what I already knew, and that my body did not match my mind. There is still a long way to go, it is not a race, and I've had lots of fun. When I say I've been lucky, yes I have - a quiet enough place to live, lots of people to support me, solid work who support and accept me. I've whinged about all of these recently, but "everyone does that" - or so I was told earlier on. I could have had a lot worse, as I found out when I got home, continued searched further on what I'd found last night… this continued into Friday morning, so is described in my next post.
posted by Suzy Scott @ 23:59
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