The doctor says my fracture isn’t healing. In fact, it looks almost exactly the same as when I broke it originally. I’m super bummed about it, I have to keep wearing this boot for now. I’ve got a referral to the fracture clinic now. Hoping they can give me some better advice than I have gotten so far. Apparently this is a common fracture to have trouble knitting back together. I might have to have a pin in there. What a drag. I hope whatever happens we can resolve this by the time I go to Australia, because I’m not into going on a long overseas flight with a boot.

I kind of felt it wasn’t there though, sometimes I can feel it move around in a way it shouldn’t. I dunno.

I’m making tacos right now. I’m trying to console myself.

LATER (ha ha ok the next day actually. I forgot I was writing this)

I had my fertility appointment this morning where the doctor did the ultrasound this time. For the first time I could actually see what was going on with my right ovary and it has A LOT of follicles. Like, I kind of lost count, it was moving around anyway so I don’t think I could have counted accurately. But the doctor was pretty pleased and said we had a lot of eggs. The left ovary is sad tho and only has one follicle. ONE! But the right one has so many, the doctor said it was compensating. I don’t know how many eggs we are gonna get but I have a good feeling again.

Last night I got all depressed and weepy and wrote a bunch of sad things in my diary. It’s been 11 days of shots now, the mood swings are intense. I don’t like them. I’m looking forward to being off these drugs. And I have weird feelings in my ovaries, more pain in my left one than anything, not all the time just on occasion. The right one just did that interesting thing a few days ago where it felt like a fairy wand touched it or something. It was interesting. I read a paper that right ovary ovulations have a higher chance of resulting in pregnancy. It’s not like a HUGE difference, but they do notice a higher number. So that’s promising.

My situation is so complicated though because I can’t carry a pregnancy myself. For multiple reasons even if I could have, it wouldn’t have been a great idea anyway. So I still have to figure out the surrogate thing. But at least I have bought myself some time by freezing some eggs.

Stats for IVF are really like, contradictory. Some people only get four eggs and still end up with a baby, while others can get 20+ and still have trouble. I really wish I could do one more cycle just to improve my odds. On the other hand, I also went into this thinking I would only get a couple of eggs and still wanting to try just the one cycle to have SOME chance.

The other thing is under “normal” circumstances, I really don’t know about my fertility. I never had any semen in my vagina to even accidentally make a baby, and for sure never really TRIED on my own at any point to have a baby that way before getting my endometrial ablation. So I might have been perfectly fertile in normal circumstances anyway and I wouldn’t have known. Although I did have a higher level of prolactin, which probably affected my fertility. So who knows! My point is, maybe I am going to respond favourably, I seem to be anyway on the right ovary. And I won’t know about my egg quality until it’s time to fertilize them and try to get them to become healthy embryos.

My butt hurts. I’ve been getting intramuscular shots in it every day for eleven days. It’s sore. I hate laying on my sides where it is. When the dogs wiggle around by an injection site it really hurts. I’m so used to doing the injections and it looks like I just get to do my trigger shot in the middle of the night tomorrow and that will be my last injection. I’m almost disappointed ha ha. Like it was kind of a nice routine, mixing my shots every other morning when the nurse couldn’t do it. I feel way more confident when I do them now. When I first gave myself a shot my hand was so shaky and I was so nervous. Now it’s not bad at all.

I dunno, life is going, it’s going! That weird line between being hopeful and being realistic is still there and I’m still on it. I know I’m 40 and the fertility timeline gets pretty bad around now. But also seeing how many eggs I seem to have today has made me more hopeful again. I’m looking forward to hearing how many eggs we manage to get.

And I’m still talking about this fertility thing using the word “We” instead of “me” or “I” which is funny. I don’t know if that is because I am already thinking about a future with an unknown partner, or what. Maybe I just like feeling not so alone.

Today I was trying to talk to Mom about boring stuff I did today but she was watching a Harry Potter marathon and kept telling me plot details I already knew. I was like “I’ve seen it like 20 times and read the books 4 times!” and then she was like “Well it’s more interesting than the minutia of your life!” OMG! And yeah I had a boring day, I woke up and did injections, ordered groceries, did some laundry. Like that was basically it. Cuddled the dogs a lot. BUT STILL I don’t want to hear the same old Harry Potter plot points. Ha ha ha!

It’s six weeks tonight since I broke my 5th metatarsal. I’m getting an Xray on Tuesday and I’ll get to find out if I can take the boot off. I’m nervous because it still sometimes hurts when I walk on it, even in the boot. I walked without the boot to the bathroom the other day and it hurt when I got there and I was worried I would be trapped and hurt without my boot. But I got it. I’m worried I’ll have to wear it two more weeks, god I hope not. I’m really wanting to just wear stiff shoes or something.

This week things are very much up in the air and I can’t make advance plans about anything really. My ovaries are getting huge and I’m going to get my eggs retrieved sometime this week, between Tuesday and Thursday. I can’t imagine it going on to Friday, the timeline for this cycle stops on the 6th. I’m nervous as hell about it but like, so far things have been fine. I’m gonna be consciously sedated and that phrase kind of scares me because I don’t really know what it means and I was sedated for my ablation and it still hurt like hell. But that was in Saskatoon, and the Saskatoon Health Region doesn’t do good pain management for Indigenous people. I’m nervous! I hate being in pain, yeah I know blah blah insert joke about masochists. BUT NO I don’t really find medical things sexy and having a needle go through my vagina to aspirate follicles isn’t really my kink. Like fuck that would be a weirdly specific kink anyway.

Some trans friends last night asked how I felt about being on the hormones. It’s funny because I assumed I would be like, SUPER emotional, or moody, or dramatic and crying everywhere or something. But actually I feel pretty good. Like I feel very clear, and peaceful, and happy most of the time. Like sure I still get irked by things and have some shitty feelings from time to time. But overall I have a sense of wellbeing. My sex drive has improved a bit, I think that’s because of those cabergoline side effects. I feel a bit more mature or something too which is interesting. Maybe mature is the wrong word. I just have less time for bullshit and I feel my ability to let go of negative experiences and relationships is getting better. Like maybe stuff still bothers me, but I don’t have time for it anymore.

I’m kind of letting go of a couple of friendships right now. They were never in person friendships really anyway. One of them hasn’t been initiating messaging me lately and I think it’s a sign that I just need to give it up, I think it kind of got fucked up a long time ago and I didn’t really address it, and maybe I didn’t need to. Maybe we just should have stopped pretending to be friends at that point and just been colleagues or whatever. Another friendship is like, more on hold than over. I just really am in this space in my life where I need to have some support and be listened to and for whatever reason I’m not feeling like I am getting that from this person.

I think maybe also all of this stems from just wanting to get to the next chapter of my life with like, a real partner and a kid or two and a more professional career. Like yeah people get upset about experimental filmmakers wanting to work in The Industry, but also there’s more money there than in experimental film. And I think I can do both. I dunno, it seems like I don’t want to dick around so much anymore with friends who aren’t there for me. Maybe I’ll be able to have more shallow conversations about nothing with people again after these eggs are retrieved and I can take a break from thinking about this for a moment.

But at the same time it’s going to be ongoing, trying to figure out how to have babies. And then raising those babies to be kind people. Maybe it will just make me be one of those shitty moms who suddenly only hangs out with other moms. That sounds kind of boring and shitty tho, and a lot of my friends aren’t gonna have babies. I think I understand why parents do that though, it’s like you’re going through the same thing and can relate to each other. I sort of felt that way when I first got diagnosed with bipolar disorder in my mid twenties. I started hanging out mostly with other people who had mental health issues. Especially other people who had been in psych wards. Cause they GOT IT.

There’s supposedly people going through the same thing as me at the fertility clinic, but I haven’t made any fertility friends. Ha ha that sounds like a club. There is a support group for single people having babies though, I might check it out. I like support groups generally. I’ve been to queer youth ones, trans ones, concurrent disorders ones. OH but there’s always that one person who shows up and takes up all the time. Ugh I hate that person.

So I went in for my ultrasound/bloodtests/shots today. Same shots, except now there is an additional shot I need to do in my stomach to keep my eggs from releasing. So that’s interesting. The nurse did it for me today, it’s such a thin needle I barely felt it at all. The intramuscular butt shot is more painful. So that’s good.

I finished my script and sent it in, for now, there is still more I want to do with it. It’s in process.

Today the ultrasound tech said “You’re doing it!” because my right ovary is being a champ at using it’s follicles. But my left ovary is slower, she called it lazy. And the doctor said my right ovary was dominant. And I did peek at my ultrasound of my right ovary on Wednesday and it looked VERY BUSY with follicles. I can’t read ultrasounds tho. Sometimes I’ll be sitting in the waiting room and I’ll start googling things like whatever med they are putting me on or what stimulated ovaries should look like on an ultrasound. Anyway, I need to take this shot in the stomach every day until they do the trigger shot I guess. I’m hopeful. The doctor said it was looking good.

This jerkface kind of made me mad last weekend because she found out I was doing fertility stuff and freezing eggs and she went off about how fertility declines after 37 and blah blah blah and like making it out like I have no hope in hell and am wasting money. And I thought it was an asshole move. I didn’t really know how to respond because it’s been a while since I’ve seen someone be that much of an asshole to me. Like I did a lot of research before coming to the conclusion of doing this to see if I can make a baby with my genes, and there are other options if this doesn’t work. But I didn’t like being treated like an infertile dumbass. Ugh. Worst ever.

Plus I’m in this weird situation, I don’t know, it’s like this weird feeling of wanting to be hopeful because positive vibes blah blah you never know and if you go into this thinking bad thoughts then maybe it won’t happen. And then it’s like balanced with this trying to be realistic and prepared for any outcome. It’s kind of like standing in the middle of a teetertotter. Like hopeful but not too hopeful, optimistic but realistic. It’s very strange. I’d like to just be hopeful and think the best thoughts about this. But I’ve had just enough of a shitty life to know things don’t always work out.

There’s sort of this weird magical thing going on with fertility and it seems to be like a combination of luck and destiny. And I know I am constrained by my finances. I can’t do this over and over like some people. They do give discounts on a second cycle. But the drugs would be the same amount of money. And I’m just not sure, like maybe I’ll get lucky and the odds will be in my favour and I’ll get one good egg that surpasses the others and completes all the hurdles to become a human. Maybe not. Sometimes I have a good feeling about it. Other times I’m really nervous and unsure. I want to know if it’s gonna work, but really I won’t know until next year when we try fertilizing them and implanting. And I gotta figure out cash for a surrogate. Which is a pretty steep amount of money. Like you never really know, things could work out. Or I could fall in love with someone who likes being pregnant. I mean anything could happen.

I wish my left ovary was being more useful. It was the one that had a cyst removed from it. So it’s probably been knocked back by that. It hurts when they do the ultrasound and check that side. I’m not sure if that’s because of my fibroid, or because it’s just a whiny baby ovary. Could be anything. I mean the good thing is my right side is doing awesome. I have a good feeling about that side. The right side doesn’t hurt when they ultrasound it.

Both my ovaries are getting bigger though and I can feel my abdomen getting more sensitive. I was bending over sideways (on poor Lefty) and I was in pain. I have to be more careful. I hope we get some good eggs out of my ovaries. They don’t tell me the stats, like they don’t say “You have five follicles on your right side and two tiny ones on the left” or anything. And I’ve never been able to look at my ultrasound long enough to count them myself. I did see one that seemed to have a number of follicles, but they were all way smaller than the ones I had seen on the right side on Wednesday. I don’t know if they shrink or if those are the lazy lefties.

Last night my friend Riki and I watched Hereditary. I think the funniest part of it was how she was trying to work to a deadline for an art show and all these awful things kept happening in her life. Like deaths and possessions and all kinds of fucked up shit. And she kept writing post it notes to herself that seemed kind of ridiculous to me, like one was “Ask for extension?” and it’s like yeah if you are working to a deadline on a major show I’m pretty sure you don’t need to write a pitiful post it note to remind yourself you might need more time. Anyway, it reminded me of life. Like trying to be an artist/filmmaker and my life is happening at the same time and all kinds of random things can happen like my foot busting and trying to make a baby and I’m still trying to complete projects on time. At least I haven’t written myself post it notes being like “Keep working!”

Oh man. I’m having some work troubles. Not script troubles thank god, OTHER work troubles. I’m not gonna talk about it here, it’s just weird being in a position where I need to ask permission to advance myself. ANYWAY no one needs to hear me bitching about that…

I did work on my script today! It felt really good, I felt like I was in the zone! I think there’s some big changes this time around, not MAJOR plot point changes, but like, other things. I cut about 17 pages this whole time I’ve been rewriting, so I have to build it up again after I finish dealing with specific notes tomorrow. I’m starting to get the hang of what is totally useless dialogue. Like repetition, or expository things, etc. I’m feeling more connected to the world I’ve created. I also think the main character is gonna be more active this time. At least I hope so, it’s been an ongoing problem that she doesn’t take her future into her own hands and make things happen. And no one really wants to watch a film where things just HAPPEN to a character. So yeah, it’s been a lot to think about and figure out. This is really my only work this week, so I am hoping to finish by Friday. Actually not HOPING, like I AM gonna finish by Friday. And I can see that being a goal that is finally within reach. And then I can get paid yay!

I’m so excited to have this done, it’s been making me feel guilty all summer while I’ve been dealing with being out of town or having a broken foot and broken foot related mental health crisis and on and on. I wanted more time, like not to stretch this into the fall, more like just more hours in my month, a few more days, a little less work. BUT on the other hand all this work has helped me get to this place where I can afford a risky chance to see if I could pass my genes on to the next generation. It’s very strange. I think I feel like a grown up finally. It only took 40 years. I feel like my financial situation has improved, I feel like I have enough momentum that I can start getting more work for next year. I feel fucking relieved that my creative output only needs to make a performance this fall that I perform twice. OH WAIT Ha ha I have another video to do.

It’s weird to think summer is almost over. It went by so fast. I know September is technically still summer but no one really believes that. It will still be beautiful weather tho. And TIFF will be on so there will be movie people around.

I already know what the next feature script I want to work on will be after this. I have an idea for a tv show rumbling around in my head. I’ve been glad I am lucky enough to have so many ideas these last few years.

BUT MOSTLY I am looking forward to having a breather next week, when this script is in. Just chilling. Maybe I’ll find a beach. Ha ha oh man and my egg retrieval is next week sometime too so that’s gonna be happening.

Sunday is gonna be six weeks since I broke my foot, and then I can go get an Xray. I haven’t booked a doctor appointment yet because I don’t know what day Egg Retrieval happens. Next week could be a really great or really bummer week, depending on if I have to keep wearing the boot and how many/any eggs we get. The good thing is next Friday is my next therapist appointment, so I can let it all out then!

One side effect of one of my medications (not the FSH meds, the prolactin lowering Ergot derived med) is increased orgasm intensity. I was kind of like “Yah right!” cause that just sounds too good to be true.

But then last night I was exhausted and in bed early but kind of flipping and flopping so I decided to have an orgasm because that’s usually what I do when I can’t sleep. AND HOLY SHIT! Omg. First off, it was a fucking LONG orgasm. Like I’m usually a few seconds, but this went on for a while, not like crazy crazy long like an Annie Sprinkle half hour orgasm. But like, a noticeable increase, maybe 30 seconds. ALSO I swear I saw a colour when I came. I only saw a colour while I was having sex once before, and it was when I was fisting one of my favourite girlfriends. I remember I saw this light sweet pink. But this orgasm was not pink, it was like an electric blue shooting across the sky. It was kind of crazy! I was like woah.

Again tho I kind of wish I had a partner because these orgasms would be fun to share with someone else. I mean I’m fine taking things into my own hands. But you know.

My meeting yesterday went well, I felt like I was handling my hormones pretty well. But then when I got home I got SO TIRED. Like I just crashed, a crazy amount of crashing. I should have just gone to bed at 9:30, but I wanted to make my spaghetti before I slept. Ugh. I’m glad that’s done.

Anyway, I have writing all this week, and I’m going to try concentrating on that. I usually write after 1pm. I don’t know why that’s my schedule but it is. I’m going to be finishing this draft of my script. I did a lot already, but I’m making another couple of passes over it this week to change some of the dialogue to make it more individual, and resolving some other problems, making it more visual. It helped doing programming this weekend because we’ve been watching films and I’m like, noticing so much how important the beginning is to hooking people, especially to get into festivals. Like there were so many films that really needed to get to the good shit right away and were kind of lingering on extraneous things that weren’t helping their case. It’s interesting to be a filmmaker and also a curator/programmer because it really shows you what works and what doesn’t.

Anyway, that’s gonna be my week! Also obviously doing some mornings at the fertility clinic. They open at 7am, and to be honest it’s better to get there early, especially since my blood tests always take so long. I’m glad I get someone else to do the shot tomorrow. I mean I assume, maybe they’ll just send me home with my new prescription and instructions tho. Its not so hard doing the shots. I learned that you need to inject air into the saline vial to get the fluid out. It was driving me crazy the first time because it was like, creating a vacuum, and then sucking the saline back into the vial over and over. Anyway, THAT’s fixed. So it should be fine now. I realized I wasn’t alcohol wiping the vials tho so I have to remember to do that. I do have the video she let me take of how to mix. I was worried for a while it needed to be a subcutaneous injection and not an intramuscular, but then I saw a couple other videos and realized they would have given me a shorter needle and a different place to inject if it wasn’t intramuscular. The needle this morning was fine. Yesterday I was nervous and my hands shook. It hurt more today than yesterday though. Anyway, I’m sure it’s the reason I get so sleepy later in the day.

So today I basically spent all morning at the fertility clinic. I got there just after 8am and did blood right away, ultrasound also right away, saw the doctor around 9:30 and he hadn’t gotten my blood results back. Waited around for an hour and a half when it was supposed to be 20 minutes, but as it happened today WAS the day we started IVF injections. So the doctor said I was not a very big egg producer, and we might not get many at all. He said we could get donor eggs tho and those would be funded by the government. I’m really not sure about that, then again I read some adoption requirements and they are maybe too strict for me, which I’ll explain in a second.

So anyway, the nurse showed me how to do my injections. I have to mix my medications, which seems simple enough, then swap the big mixing needle with a smaller injection needle and put it in my butt, kind of like the upper side of my buttock, and like switch sides everyday. I can see why, because after she gave the shot today it was kind of like, sore. I hope I don’t put it in too far or too shallow. I’m just gonna do my best really. I do this every morning until the egg retrieval, which will be sometime between September 3rd and September 6th. I go back on Monday morning for some monitoring and to see how I am doing, get more medications, and they will adjust the dosage. I paid for my medications in advance today too, and got to see the bill for the procedure. It’s about what I expected. Not cheap that’s for sure, but around what I had anticipated and budgeted for.

I think I am probably only going to do this one cycle. I know a lot of women go through multiple cycles to get eggs, but I’m really feeling discouraged that we might not get many anyway. I think I’m going to leave it up to the hands of fate. In many ways I’m glad I’m at least trying this, like the doctor said it’s better than zero eggs. And I really don’t know, something might happen to tip this in my favour. There might be one magic egg that is destined to be a human. There might be none that work out. And even if we did manage to get ten eggs (probably the top number if I was SUPER lucky) the odds of those working out is still low.

ALSO I keep saying WE when I talk about this fertility thing, even tho it’s just me, on my own, ALONE. So dramatic. Lots of women at the fertility clinic are there alone, I’m not sure if they are single or if their partners are just somewhere else. Probably a mix honestly. For the most part I am fine doing this on my own. Other times I admit I feel super jealous of women with their partners there. Like, there was a couple I saw this week and the guy had brought her some coffee from downstairs and they were talking about the next appointment they had with their doctor in September and I was like “Aww I wish I had someone to bring me coffee.” Today I just went and found the coffeeshop on my own and brought my own coffee up to the clinic. But then when she was showing me how to do injections in my butt I was like “Aww, I wish I had someone to do this injection on me.” And not even because I’m afraid of putting a needle in myself, more because it’s an awkward position to inject yourself. Today they gave me a sheet that had my IVF Cycle Plan on it, and my medical info sticker was at the top with my name, gender, age, birthday, address, phone number, and then at the bottom it said “Partner: XXXX.” Like ummmm okay thanks. I know that means I don’t have a partner. I don’t know why they didn’t write “N/A” in it, or “TBD.” Or even just “Single.”

Anyway it’s a slim chance, and I knew that going into it. Like they are 40 year old eggs. And there aren’t many left. I really do want a baby, and ideally I would like a baby that is genetically related to me and my ancestors so I can tell that child where they come from and have a good idea what sorts of medical things could happen in their life. But yeah, I am also open to adopting. I went on an adoption website for Native children and I feel like I meet most of the qualifications they ask for. What worried me was asking for sound mental health. I’ve been fairly stable for over a decade and haven’t been to the hospital in a really long ass time. But I do have a disability, and I’m worried they are just gonna look at that and make a snap judgement about my parenting capabilities. It doesn’t seem fair, when so many people just have accidental pregnancies and end up with kids they don’t want or they treat badly and no one is stopping them from being abusive or neglectful. And I want a kid and there’s all these hoops to jump through if I go that route. So yeah, it’s been a bit of a discouraging day, which is funny because I’m honestly in a really good space and I have been waiting for this to happen since the spring.

The other option of course is that through some kind of fluke I manage to fall massively in love with a woman who is fertile and wants to bear children. I’m really not sure, it takes me back to what I was frustrated about when I was seeking out fertility clinics in the spring, not wanting to wait for a partner anymore to have a baby. Because if that’s what it takes then I definitely DO still have to wait for a partner. It’s a big circle that leads back to the beginning of this whole journey.

There’s more I could write about my situation as it stands. Like the consent forms are a whole other ethical quandary I need to consider this weekend of what happens to my eggs if I die and they haven’t been used yet.

But I have other things I need to do right now, because life still goes on, I still have a script due, I still have a programming meeting tomorrow, I still have a doc rough cut to look at this weekend. I’m nervous about all these follicle stimulating hormones and if they are gonna make me moody. So far so good. If I cry in my meeting tomorrow I’ll know something is up. BUT ALSO this IVF cycle is so short, it won’t be forever, and after this hopefully I can just go on until I’m ready to see if these eggs work.

Hopefully we get eggs.

We ha ha ha.

I’ve been to the fertility clinic twice now? Wait…YES twice. Last week and this week. I need to get blood tests and ultrasounds to find out where in my cycle I am, and today the doctor said I was post-ovulation so I am going back on Friday to have more blood tests and ultrasounds and talk about next steps. But he thinks this week we can start injections for my IVF cycle. And then in 9-11 days, egg retrieval. I ASSUME! I guess I’ll find out. I have to leave in mid September so I’m nervous, but if all goes as planned I should have enough time. He said it really depended on my body. I don’t know how much I am Post Ovulation, I hope it’s enough that we get this cycle in time.

Anyway, he gave me a prescription for cabergoline to bring my prolactin levels down. He said take it at night because it might make me dizzy and nauseous. So I can sleep through that part. I only take it twice a week. Of course being someone INTIMATELY ACQUAINTED with adding new medications to my life, I went and researched the side effects. Some of the worse ones were psychosis, hallucinations, farting, and euphoria. Euphoria sounds nice, but to me it sounds like hypomania. And people in Toronto haven’t seen that fairly unfortunate side of me, and I really hope they don’t ever. I’m terrified I will get manic and start behaving strangely and scaring people and wasting these fairly expensive medications. Some of the good side effects are increased orgasm intensity and… maybe that was the only good side effect? I might get super horny or start gambling too. AND think I am being controlled or have other delusions.

So of course I did MORE research because I’m like what is this medication? Turns out it’s a derivative of ergot. Ergot is a fungus that grows on rye. It’s thought to be responsible for the strange behaviour of people in Salem that precipitated the witch hunts and trials. It was also developed into another derivative we know as LSD. It also poisoned people during the Middle Ages to the point that people’s limbs would FALL OFF! It grows best in warm damp conditions. It was also used for centuries as an abortion drug and to speed up labour. Like any wacky natural drug it’s got a lot of potential and also a lot of things have gone wrong for people who unknowingly consumed it, mostly for the fact that they KEPT consuming it not knowing what it was. I mean any medicine can become a poison when used enough.

It’s a dopamine agonist, which is why it helps reduce prolactin levels. I don’t understand the mechanism, but I’ll believe that I guess. I already take two indirect dopamine agonists, my Vyvanse and also my Wellbutrin. So theoretically this should be fine, it’s just more of the same I am already on. And I am on a lower dose of the Vyvanse. It’s also supposed to be good at reducing instances of Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome. Not reducing severity if it DOES happen, but reducing chances it will happen at all. Also since I take Risperidone, I should be fine. I’ve tried both magic mushrooms and LSD since I got on Risperidone, and neither does diddly squat for me. So I am hoping that means it will knock out any potential hallucinations before they happen.

Dogs are really good for hallucinations. They let you know if something is really there, so if there isn’t something there they won’t be reacting. I’ve never actually had visual hallucinations, except for maybe tracers when I used to do psychedelics. So I’m hoping that is just something I won’t get. There’s other kinds of hallucinations though, like tactile ones and auditory ones. Which I HAVE had in really altered states. But I haven’t had those in ages either. Knock on wood!

Anyway, I’ll find out how I do when I take this tonight. I’m nervous as hell. Most medications act slowly. Except that’s not true, Vyvanse works the same day, like in an hour. So we’ll see how it goes. I saw my testosterone levels on my chart today. They aren’t really high at all, on the low end for female testosterone levels. I don’t know what I expected, maybe the boy part of me wanted to have high testosterone levels. But nope. It really doesn’t matter what my oestrogen/testosterone levels are tho, my gender is still non-binary, and beyond doing fertility treatments for the next couple of months or so, I don’t really want to dick around with my hormones on a daily basis.

Sometimes I think about how weird it is to be a non-binary person doing this, it isn’t really tho. This is just the body I have and this is the best way for me to make a baby with the situation I have going on. And there’s a lot of politics swirling around the whole thing, like having money to go to a fertility clinic, being Indigenous and trying to make someone for the next generation after centuries of surviving genocide, and then all the gendered stuff.

I can see in many ways how this would be pretty inaccessible for people, besides how expensive it is, there is also the fact that you have an ultrasound wand up your vagina almost every visit (actually yeah, it’s been four visits almost and every visit has had an ultrasound!), and I imagine people who have different pronouns would probably be triggered at getting misgendered. I don’t actually know that this clinic misgenders people, I’ve been using she/her again and so it’s hard for them to fuck that up when it’s seen as so normative.

ANYWAY I just took this new pill. No nausea yet. No hallucinations. I’m not sure if I am dizzy yet, but probably I should head to bed sooner than later.

I’m back home! Vancouver trip ended really well, my retrospective was well attended, I got the VQFF Media Artist Award which they have only given out twice now, and the last time was ten years ago. And then I lead a workshop for QTBIPOC people and that went really well, and then I went to The Root and read out my diary entries from when I was 7 and 14. I got to see my ex Amber Dawn and reminisce about our histories in Vancouver as queers and when we dated. Talk about life now in our 40’s. My cousin Deanna and I saw each other a bunch which was really nice. I saw my friend Lynn too and that was sweet. People were mostly really busy tho, and there were a couple days where people kept cancelling on me. There were about three people I thought I might have a chance at fooling around with but either our schedules didn’t work out or I was too damned slow to pick up what they were putting down. It’s okay! I’ll live.

Anyway, I am trying not to do long distance things, even tho I have definitely flown further than Toronto to Vancouver to have sex before. But NO I am done with that kind of thing. I want a monogamous local long term thing. Anyway ha ha yeah….

I had a nice hotel room. I drank all the coffee and they kept bringing me more, but they brought more decaf all the time too, so by the time my stay ended there was like, way too much decaf I was never gonna drink.

It was super smokey there the last couple days I was there. Like you couldn’t see the mountains. And most of the beaches were closed because of e.coli. It’s smokey all across Western Canada.

Now that I’m back I gotta get back into working, and order some groceries because I am out, and scroll through my email and try to find messages I couldn’t get to because I was away and busy. Someone said I should do an auto reply thing, but last time I did that I started getting emails bouncing back and forth from noreply emails. What a pain!

I did a lot of thinking about some personal things while I was out there which will remain unwritten here. They really aren’t interesting for anyone but me anyway, and for me it’s really only personal growth stuff now because it’s not going to turn into anything but me confronting parts of myself and the way I approach the world. AHHH ha ha I do have other secret places I write about this stuff. I tried talking about it with friends out there but I could kind of see their eyes glaze and felt super sheepish about needing to process it when it seemed like the most boring banal thing to them. I mean maybe it is boring and banal to everyone but me, it’s not like it’s ever going to be something that will impact their lives.

At the same time I am feeling myself starting to withdraw from friends who can’t do give and take in conversations and let me have space to talk about my stuff before they launch into their stuff. I’m getting tired of having things I say be ignored or disregarded. I think this got especially noticeable with the broken foot, like some people just did not give a shit about my broken foot or what I was going through, and to be perfectly honest I was pretty suicidal the first week I was recovering from it. Like to the point I was scaring myself. So not having my mental health treated with any kind of care was super upsetting, and mostly people who didn’t ask how my foot was doing made me just kind of like, avoid carrying on conversations with them. It is still impacting my life, like I can’t go grocery shopping on my own yet, I still need to order groceries. I still don’t ttc because I’m terrified of not getting a seat and being pretty sad. And sometimes, especially on my trip, when I was trying to do things I got really frustrated and upset because my mobility is limited. There were three friends who did a lot of carework for me though, things that don’t get celebrated but are so necessary like taking out my garbage and recycling. So for that I am grateful. I’m way more independent now, thank god, but I still take cabs. And mostly I probably will still want to stick close to home.

I guess I’m fine overall though. Like, my foot is way better, and my insurance claim went through for my broken bone and now I have $3000 I hadn’t been expecting. So that’s super nice. I also have a big cheque from the festival to deposit tomorrow of about $2500. And then another big $3500 artist fee is coming from my distributor. So fucking relieved. Of course, tomorrow morning I am gonna start going to the fertility clinic for cycle monitoring. So that’s gonna start wiping out some of my cash. But that’s ok, I’ve been planning this. And Amber Dawn told me a hopeful story about a couple she knows who also made science babies and they had four fertilized eggs and used two and they both became humans, and then donated the other two to another couple and both those eggs also became humans. I really hope I can get a human out of one of my eggs. I think I would make a cute smart funny baby.

OMG. So I am out of town right now, in Vancouver, and my foot is broken still obviously. Like it HAS gotten a lot better, but it still hurts if I stand on it for a longer period of time. I’m pretty much negotiating my way from chair to chair. I walked a couple of blocks the other day with my cousin to Union Market to visit a friend and get snacks, which was fine. But anyway, I’ve really noticed some good and bad things about being temporarily disabled. I mean, none of it is really good, sometimes people make accommodations that are helpful. I got to go into the Special Needs and Family line at the airport in Toronto to get through security. But some random guy noticed it was a shorter line and went under the barrier to get in our line and then he and his friend fucking jumped in front of me. It was really disrespectful. The plane was mostly ok, I only went to the bathroom twice, and my crutches fit in the overhead bin. I got on the plane first which was nice.

I had an alright night when I got to the hotel, my cousin came over and we visited, and the next day I took a cab to her place and visited some more. But then I went to the festival and it was like, really hard. People sort of didn’t know what to do with me at first, like I came in and kind of wanted to just go find a chair to sit down and they kind of stood there not knowing what to do with me, I had to ask to sit down a couple of times, at one point some white media bros were sitting on a couch I had been sitting on and there was nowhere else to sit and they were clearly able bodied and looking at me and saw me in crutches and my aircast and still didn’t get up or make room so I could sit down, so I had to ask staff for a chair. And they did bring me a chair, which was nice. Like the staff was trying to be accommodating. A few times I went to the accessible toilets and the rest of the toilets were downstairs so I couldn’t go use them, I can do stairs but I didn’t feel safe doing it there. Anyway, every time I went to the accessible toilets there was an able bodied person in there taking a long time. I was getting kind of frustrated. They never apologized when they came out and saw me standing there waiting in my sad crutches and boot. And then at the party there was like, a line to get in that I ended up cutting, and then long lines for drink tickets and drinks. And the festival person got me a drink which was nice. But I was feeling super bummed out and sitting in a chair alone and I ended up leaving and waiting a really long time for a cab to take me back to the hotel. I did talk to a few people, but mostly people were doing other things talking to other people and I couldn’t really do that networking thing or go find friends or anything. So it was very frustrating. I think people don’t think about this stuff. Sometimes I’m appalled people don’t get it that I have a broken foot and need to sit down. Like people just are really careless about their fellow humans, and don’t really give a shit. And I’m supposed to be the artist in residence and some kind of special guest and it like just feels like I’m invisible because I’m sitting in a corner somewhere.

Anyway, blahhhhh.

I’m seeing my other cousin tonight for dinner and staying in my hotel doing scriptwriting this afternoon. I am behind and really need to get my script to a better state. I cut a whole bunch of stuff and read all the notes and it’s starting to take shape in a more interesting direction, but I also need to get the characters voices more distinct and make it more visual. I wish I had more time. I also came to this point where I was like “OMFG I’m never writing a horror/thriller again” and then fuck wouldn’t you know it I heard a story from a friend that started making me see this whole movie that was also another fucking horror film. And it could be damned good and I’m like I guess this is my life now!

Anyway…

I’m tired of feeling shitty about my broken foot. Like it’s getting better, I can take short walks like ten feet from the bed to the bathroom without a cast. It’s probably not a good idea yet. BUT ALSO I’m feeling encouraged that I can go that far without collapsing in pain. Like it is GETTING BETTER! And just now I managed to go to the 711 and get some pop, so my morale is improving. Sometimes it’s so damned hard, and sometimes I feel like I’m mentally okay, and sometimes I’m just like fuck put me in stasis until this foot is healed. But also I have a lot of work to do like programming and this scriptwriting and attending this festival and I have a performance coming up in September. AND obviously also editing my doc. Like there’s a ton of work and I don’t know why it piles up every summer. Also I need to write a grant, which is like, important, and I can do it with assistance. But I almost wish I could extend my time, like if I had a time turner like Hermione in Harry Potter so I could do each day three times to get all this work done or something. And I know on some level that the broken foot really kicked the shit out of my productivity, it sucks tho, because I also don’t want to believe my worth is contingent on my productivity. I guess I got really accustomed to working super hard on lots of stuff, and it’s a bit of a kick to the self esteem to know my capacity is not as great as it was. And all of this is going on and I don’t want to complain about work because I really love what I do. I just feel so shitty and sad and it’s hard to do those things right now. It’s only going to be 6 to 8 weeks altogether until I can take this boot off. And already it’s been 19 days. Like it might still hurt for 6 months, BUT the main healing is happening now and this is the roughest part and then it’s gonna get easier. It just sucks that it had to happen near the end of summer, when I have all these projects and this work trip.

I wonder if I will end up getting a cane? If I do I want to make it witchy or cool or something. These mobility aids feel so utilitarian. I mean there’s only so much you can do with them tho. Anyway …. I’m seeing my other cousin Shar today, which will be nice. We are having dinner together. I’m excited to see her. Other people seem to want to see me too, but it’s hard because like, I can’t hop on the bus right now and drop by to say hello. Like it’s all cabs right now, or the driver the festival is giving me.

When my cousin Shar broke something, I think it was her arm or something like that, her boyfriend at the time started calling her Giblet. Ha ha ha omg. Anyway, I was whining to my other cousin Deanna about being worried that I’d be like, broken forever, she said I could start calling myself Giblet 4Lyfe! Ha ha ha omg. It sucks being a Giblet. At least there’s a cute name for this situation.