What was it like growing up sick?
Growing up with chronic illnesses was definitely not my favorite thing, especially living in poverty with no access to healthcare. I’ve written a lot about it. Nothing compares, though, to the isolation of being an adult with a rare childhood chronic illness. There are few resources for us past the college-age that don’t involve us having to extrapolate from experiences other have with similar but different illnesses. Resources currently exist for parents and families, thankfully, but still few for those of us in the middle of our lives.
There are also a lot of ways that being sick as a child has a negative impact. Aside from things like social isolation, kids tend to internalize things a lot. Sometimes, that means unintentionally explaining away diagnoses you’d get later in life that people didn’t realize you were dealing with. We get really good at hiding our pain and fear.
Now that I’m in my mid-30s, I think we’ve finally gotten the various health issues diagnosed – old and new:
- ADHD (hyperactive and inattentive combined)
- Allergies (food, chemicals, pollen)
- Anterior Basement Membrane Dystrophy
- Asthma
- Chronic Pain
- EDS/Hypermobility
- Major Depressive Disorder, Recurrent + Moderate
- Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS)
- Migraines
- Obstructive Sleep Apnea
- Orthostatic Hypertension
- Plaque Psoriasis
- Post Traumatic Stress, Chronic
- Raynaud’s Syndrome
- Seborrheic Keratosis
- Systemic Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (Still’s Disease)
What do you do outside of work?
Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t rest much. I’m writing this in the middle of my ‘relaxing’ Sunday as a part of multiple to-dos. That’s only going to get worse as my partner and I begin to improve our home.
We don’t need to touch the upstairs bathroom, though. I mean, look at this tub!
When I’m not filling my time with other work, though, I enjoy:
- Game night with friends
- Gluten-free cooking
- Hiking and exploring
- Hockey (playing and watching)
- Playing music
- Playing video games
- Queer media
- Spending time with family & friends
- Traveling the world
- Watching (some) paranormal shows
- Watching weird movies, especially B horror films
What does transmasculine mean? Is it actually a gender?
Yes! Transgender just means that I was observed to be a girl when I was born, that but doesn’t match how I feel. I often switch between the labels transmasculine and trans man. One label feels better some days, but not every day. In reality, I’m probably a nonbinary transmasculine demiboy. That’s just a lot of words to say sometimes I feel like a dude and other times I feel like something else. My gender expression or presentation is still masculine, though.
That’s a part of why I started using the first name Grayson instead of my previous legal first name, Kirsten. I don’t hate my birth name, but it’s like an itchy sweater regifted from an extended family member – it doesn’t fit and I’ve outgrown it. My legal name is always misspelled and mispronounced anyway. Now that my name is legally Grayson, things are pretty great.
I’ve been on testosterone since January 2020. You can read a write-up of my experience after six months and another at 21 months. I had masculinizing top surgery in July 2021 (twitter thread on my journey here). While I nearly died due to an MCAS reaction to anesthesia, everything else went really well.
I have finally written up more about this. Death isn’t exactly my favorite topic, so it took a while.