Can’t You Wait Until I’m Dead? ~ Chapter 12: Mountains Out of Molehills
My testosterone levels quickly plummeted into the female range due to spironolactone, and my estradiol levels rose gradually with the low-dose patches. Dr. Melnyk prescribed twenty-five micrograms, when one hundred to three hundred micrograms was standard, so I made the most of them by wearing two at the same time for a week. Ever the spreadsheet nerd, I’d graphed the estradiol levels listed in the dosing studies and avoided possible emotional peaks and valleys by swapping patches a few days apart.
The effect on my mental health was miraculous. My flashbulb memory places me on the living room sofa with Sarah, six days after I put my first patches on, noticing my anxiety and dysphoria draining away. In a mirror, I didn’t look any different, but my sense of self was aligning as the woman inside developed. Estradiol hit the receptors in my brain and activated the networks that were longing for it all my life. I told Sarah about the seismic shift and wondered if she noticed it too. “You’re less anxious and snippy,” she said.
About two months after working with Dr. Melnyk to get on hormones, I got a request from Dr. Weber’s clinic to register and book a first appointment. Before the appointment with her on August 9, I had my next appointment with Dr. Melnyk, and a tough conversation about what we’d do next. Dr. Weber had the experience, connections, and confidence to take me through the next steps, but Dr. Melnyk knew my medical history and had been practicing longer. Dr. Melnyk and I parted, hoping we could see each other for all of my other medical issues, but as weeks turned to years, my only medical concerns were transition-related.
Her office sent me a form letter three years later with a printout of my chart label at the top, addressed to my deadname, listing my sex as male and explaining that they were cleaning out the files of patients who hadn’t visited recently. For a fee, they could either copy the files and send them to my new doctor or summarize my past medical history. Instead, I thanked her for her care over the years, offered to meet for coffee, and left my male medical history behind.
Within a month, I noticed my breasts had grown. It began as a tickling sensation in my areolas when I sat still. On the sofa one evening, as Sarah was knitting and I was grading papers, it happened again, and I asked Sarah whether it was something she noticed in her early teens. “Too long ago, but I don’t remember feeling anything.” A week later came another breast surprise—I nearly flew off the couch in pain when our cat stepped on my chest. Who knew a cat’s paws were so bony?
Socially, nothing changed, and we vacationed and dined with friends on our regular schedule, but I realized there were subtle changes in my appearance and behaviour. During a camping trip at the end of August to Lightning Lake, in E.C. Manning Provincial Park, we were tying our kayaks to the top of our car when I heard a man say to his female partner, “Can’t tell sometimes whether it’s a man or a woman.” I pretended I hadn’t heard him and kept working with the straps, and when I moved to work on the other side of the car, I could see that the couple was sitting on the curb and he was eyeing me suspiciously. He was wearing a Calgary Flames hockey jersey, his hair shaved, sipping on a beer, and I couldn’t help but think, Typical! Alberta redneck.
Classes started up again after Labour Day, and when Sarah was out of town for her father’s eighty-eighth birthday, I saw my face in the mirror, and dysphoria took hold. My first thought was, I need makeup! I remembered the MAC kiosk at the Bay in Metrotown Mall, where we bought my first tube of lipstick. I pulled on the pink sport shirt from Sarah, baggy capri cargo pants from Walmart, floppy Keen sandals, a patterned blue scarf to hide my Adam’s apple, a wide floral elastic headband over my hairline, and Sarah’s straw garden hat to cover the rest of my balding head. The look needed something else, so I slung one of Sarah’s spare purses over my shoulder.
I jumped in the car and stared straight ahead as I drove. I was afraid to catch anyone’s eye, feeling like such a freak, with nowhere to hide from the late September sun blasting down. At the mall, sweating, I cut through Sears to reach the Bay and caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror. I stopped in my tracks at the sight of the face underneath the straw hat. My eyes looked dark and sunken, and I couldn’t go any further into the mall. Panicked, I hid behind a sunglass stand and spent a nervous thirty-five minutes trying on sunglasses until I found a pair with rounded lenses that made me look feminine enough to move again.
I walked as fast as I could, eyes straight ahead again, doing my best to blend in. I must have looked like a squirrel running across a busy street, narrowly avoiding death by an accidental encounter. When I arrived at the MAC kiosk, a nervous wreck, the assistant tried to put me at ease enough to get my sunglasses and hat off, and asked what I was looking for. I didn’t know what I needed but said, “I need to cover up the shadow,” waving at my beard, “and do something with my eyes.” She applied foundation and powder thickly, and over fifteen minutes, evened out my complexion. Other customers started lining up, and she asked if I wanted to buy the foundation and powder. As I tapped my credit card, she said, “You know, the main MAC stores offer makeup lessons. The one here in Metrotown might be OK, but the one on Robson Street has more room, stock, and makeup artists.”
I thanked her and reassembled my ensemble with new confidence. The walk back through the mall was more relaxed, and I was just another woman in the crowd. Back home, I had a few minutes to spare before Sarah’s flight landed, so I snapped a few selfies and returned her hat to the closet, hoping she’d never know. It was so dark in the car that she didn’t notice my makeup when I picked her up at the airport, but I couldn’t stop myself from telling her about my ordeal and breakthrough. She was exhausted from her travels, took it in, and said she’d like to go with me next time.
When the day of my appointment at MAC on Robson arrived two weeks later, Sarah showed me how to tie a pink bandana over my hairline, took my hand, and rode transit with me downtown. She left me at MAC for the forty-five-minute appointment and headed off to do her own shopping. The artist, Kerry, came out of the back with an apron full of brushes and sponges, and I knew I was in excellent hands. My lesson covered mascara, hiding shadow with orange powder and concealer, and learning to add some minor flaws to the foundation to make a natural look. I was so grateful that I bought everything she used, adding up to over four hundred dollars. Most of it is unused to this day, but the memory, and knowing I had a drawer full of makeup was priceless.
Afterwards, we walked the twelve blocks to Coal Harbour to see fall colours and inhale briny sea air. As we walked down a flight of stairs holding hands, a group of teenage girls noticed us and one yelled, “Know any good sushi restaurants downtown?” They laughed nervously and let us pass. After we walked out of earshot, I said, “I think she was trying to taunt us for being lesbians.” Sarah got the crude innuendo, but wasn’t convinced it amounted to harassment. Immature and annoying certainly. I thought, This whole transition thing is going just fine. Thanks, annoying teenager, wherever you are.
The next week, I found a Groupon deal on laser hair removal at a local “MediSpa” to continue working on my dark facial hair. Each treatment was so excruciating that it made my eyes water enough to ruin my waterproof mascara. The technician told me not to shave between treatments, believing the myth that shaving causes hair to thicken. It was a myth I debunked in my anatomy classroom every term, and I rolled my eyes. Perpetuating the myth brought customers back sooner than necessary, increasing revenue. As much as I wanted to use it as a teachable moment, she wasn’t my student. Delivering a lesson to someone with so much power to cause pain felt like a bad idea.
I booked my final discount appointment on the last possible day, and by then, there weren’t many dark hairs left to treat. After I noticed a bit of fuzz growing back, I purchased a handheld laser from a Greek woman in nearby Coquitlam, who found the zaps too painful to use on her own face.
With my face slowly looking more feminine and breast tissue growing, I took my first “side boob” photos in late October. My next task that month was to come out to my family in Minnesota. I didn’t have any plans to see them, but was sharing photos off and on, was never good at keeping secrets, and thought they might notice the changes in me. I talked to Mom on the phone every Saturday for an hour, and was tense every time I had to censor myself from mentioning significant medical or social moments.
While discussing a cousin’s newborn, I mentioned a story I heard at the ethics conference about an Australian mother who retracted her seventeen-year-old child’s birth announcement in the newspaper. The mother posted, “Oops! Our bad. We would like to present, our wonderful son…” I also shared that I had bought bright pink running shoes and a turquoise rain jacket, explaining it as a way to improve my visibility on the darkening roads.
Over the next two weeks, I drafted and revised a letter, not because it had to be perfect, but because it was so hard to send. On November 1, I was ready with a two-page, single-spaced letter to send as an attachment. The body of the email read, “Hello, Mom. I hope you can print out this letter and spend some time, when you have a quiet moment, to read it over and think about it. My fantasy is that you will read it and say, ‘What’s the big deal?’ but realize that this fantasy is rarely reality for those of us born before the turn of the millennium. Let me know if you’d like to talk any evening this week or any time this weekend.”
I clicked “send” and hoped for the best.