Reinforcements

Yesterday was my appointment with therapists Inge Wingbermuhle and Engel Vrouwe in Groningen. Thanks to Jan driving me to and from there I was only underway for about 3 hours total. Thanks for the ride, Jan :)

Anyway, during the morning I was feeling a tad nervous, even had to ward off a case of hyperventilating. The journey to Groningen was fairly uneventful and we arrived on time, where we were greeted by Wingbermuhle and Vrouwe. Jan stayed in the waiting room while I went with both therapists to another room.

We discussed pretty much everything there was to be discussed, both on medical and emotional levels. Wingbermuhle suggested a treatment for my emotional issues and such which I will start with during our next appointment on August 26th. In the mean time Vrouwe will work on the medical side of the case, getting the chimera test requested via my insurance company, figure out the many irregularities which have occurred so far (Vrouwe called it 'fraud') and possibly get some progress on the official name and gender change as well.

The appointment lasted two hours. I explained and answered many questions I was asked, further mentioned changes in the treatment from specialists after they had contacted the VUMC and expressed my fears that the same would happen with the UMCG. One result of this is that the chimera test will most likely be performed multiple times at different, independent institutes outside the Netherlands, such as in the Intersex clinic in London, UK.

In general both therapists seemed to understand the core of the issue perfectly well. It was the most productive and useful talk I have had with anyone with the power to actually help me. To actually feel a sense of sympathy and a true desire to help from such people is a most welcome change.

Of course, it doesn't come without repercussions; by the time I had arrived home I felt incredibly dizzy and nearly fainted on the spot. Even though I hadn't eaten since that morning, I nevertheless didn't feel very hungry and ended up having to nearly force down the rest of my plate of food. After that I felt so incredibly tired that I went to bed before 8 PM, reading and sleeping a bit until 10.30 PM. When I tried to sleep again after annoying Pieter for a bit, I found that I couldn't fall asleep at all, with so many thoughts churning through my head, refusing to leave me alone. It wasn't until after 1 AM that I finally managed to fall asleep.

Right now I'm feeling absolutely drained. My throat hurts, my head feels like it's stuffed with down with my emotional side lying smashed up in a puddle of blood in a dark corner of my mind. When I noticed that I began to develop a feeling of hope, and how it was destabilizing me, I quickly put an end to it. I don't want to feel hope, I don't want to feel anything. I just want to do useful work, to finish projects and games and such which will actually help me get a better life. Hope just makes one a prime target for disappointment and the pain and frustration connected to it.

I made an appointment with my GP for next Tuesday, as well as an appointment for a talk with my contact for the further handling of my Bbz welfare request later that day. I'll have to travel to Lelystad (next train stop from here :P ) for it. Hopefully it's close to the train station.

In other news, I'm currently looking at XUL, the user interface technology Mozilla developed and is using with its products including Firefox and Thunderbird. It's cross-platform, with a strong separation between application code and user interface, which I think is a really good thing. I never liked WxWidgets (based on GTK+) and Qt due to this. Both insist on invasively embedding the UI into your application, in the case of WxWidgets even completely determining the layout and flow of the application. With XUL the UI is just another module which can easily be swapped out, translated and upgraded via overlays (like class inheritance) without affecting the application code base. Very convenient.


Maya