0xEmmy.me

Haaaai :)

I'm Emmeryn, but y'all can call me Emmy. I'll write a proper introduction when I have a better sense of the voice I wanna use for this blog, but for now I have something to talk about.

Background: what did we already know

I'm transfeminine, and currently on hormone replacement therapy. The fundamental purpose of today's visit was to make sure my HRT was going well. In my last appointment, I had switched from oral to transdermal estradiol.

I also have some weird longstanding symptoms. I'd been told my entire life that they are either normal, or not worth looking too far into, but since recently gaining independence from my abusive parents (whose effects on me will likely be the repeated topic of discussion here), I've realized that it's probably worth figuring out what's going on. Specifically:

• Most of my joints get subluxed (misaligned) and irritated really easily, either doing routine tasks or for no apparent reason.
• Standing around for too long hurts. (It's also exhausting, due to the next item on the list.)
• My heartrate goes from about 70 lying down to about 120 standing, which turns out to be a very effective way to waste energy that I'd much rather use ... just living my life.
• My hand strength is a joke. Packages routinely require tools to open (most recently, a bottle of MTN Dew that required pliers), and I get painfully tired after not even a page of writing.

I already had a hypothesis for exactly what it is, but I decided to let my doctor come to his own conclusions.

Getting there

Getting there was a simple matter of a couple buses – thankfully, my city has quality mass transit. Nothing remarkable happened.

Outcome

We discussed my most recent labs, which were weird but not imminently alarming. Our conclusion was that we need more data, and we can safely wait until my next labs (likely in about 3 months).

We also discussed the list above. My primary care doctor and I both suspect a genetic connective tissue disorder called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (we came to the same conclusion independently), and now I have a rheumatology referral to hopefully get a proper diagnosis. I'm surprised that getting on the same page was this easy, but hey, something in my life finally went right, so I'll take it. At the very least, I finally have actual validation that my symptoms aren't normal.

Hopefully I'll have something more optimistic to talk about sometime soon.

Later!

-Emmy