Hi all. Health update again. First post in a good while too. If you've been with us on discord, you probably already know a lot of the stuff I'm about to say. If not, buckle up.
About that neck procedure
I talked about this in the last one, but we needed a neck procedure to reseat herniated discs in our neck. Well, it happened. On August 13th, we had the procedure. Due to me having pain with the IV, Sunny was the one who actually went in to the operating room. There was no generalized anesthesia for the operation, just local (instead of being put to sleep, we were made "loopy" and numb). When the doctor came in, he called us by our deadname, which is wrong, because his nurse already had our real name written on our chart from when we saw him before, so he should've known. Sunny corrected him, and he handwaved it in this kind of "yeah, sure" way, before Sunny felt something bump into their left elbow, where we'd had a previous surgery. It hurt, so Sunny complained, to which the doctor leaned into their ear and said sharply, "I need you to be quiet." Sunny almost lost their cool, but held it in, and the procedure was over very fast, they barely felt a thing.
What's really important is what happened after the procedure. It started the very next day. We suddenly had increased pain in both shoulders, elbows, and wrists, putting us back to where we were before. It seriously set us back. We had been doing fantastic functioning without our wrist braces, but suddenly, we were back in both wrist braces, every day, and couldn't take them off for more than a minute or so. It's been almost two weeks since then, and our functionality's just been so bad, we can barely do anything we want to anymore, and I'm fighting my body more than I was before the procedure.
I went back to the doctor who did that procedure ASAP and told him what happened. It took over an hour after the appointment time before he showed up (same as before, too), and he was only there for about two minutes. As he entered the room, he said, "Alright Aaron," which is very wrong, it's neither Eir, nor is it our deadname, so I really got a taste of how much he actually cares. I said I think there's been a complication, to which he interrupted, and said, "I did everything right, there's no way there was a complication, except for maybe because you were talking and moving during the procedure," pinning the blame on Sunny for something that was his fault to begin with and he ignored at the time. I told him about the increased pain and symptoms ever since the procedure, to which he said "I wouldn't worry about it" and promptly pivoted to talking about what we'll do now, which, thankfully, he seemed at least somewhat interested in. He's referring us to another spine surgeon to get a second opinion, because, in his words, we're back to square one and he doesn't know what to do.
He also highlighted that, according to the MRI we saw him with initially (the MRI is from last year), we have pinched nerves in our neck. It's not just the herniated discs, it really is pinched nerves. I was shocked, because I never heard it spelled out so plainly before. He seemed to imply that when we get this second opinion, we'll know what to do, which might be surgery, but also might not be. This might be the real root cause of our suffering. I don't know if getting our herniated discs un-herniated actually helped in any way, although the fact the big lump on the back of our neck has shrunken says otherwise. Maybe it did some kind of good thing, but our body is still adapting to the change? I don't know.
Finalizing name change shenanigans
The day after the procedure, I went to the social security office for an appointment. I got our name change finalized with social security! I did the form online, and explicitly marked that we don't have a middle name anymore, and it seemed like everything went through. Most of the appointment was just waiting to be called, and once I was called, I brought my documents to a lady in a booth, who asked if I did it online, I said yes, she looked them over, and it was done. Yay!
Since then, I tried to get our name change applied in other ways. Because we're on our abusive mother's public healthcare plan, we had to call the healthcare marketplace to "report a life change" and share the new name and gender change, which did seem to go through, and I told the lady that we don't have a middle name. She made me answer a bunch of unnecessary questions about, like, paying for policies, taxes, deaths and marriages in the family, etc. that clearly don't apply, but she was required to share them, so I just agreed to all.
I also needed to get our name change processed with our psychiatry place, because when I asked them to release medical records, they released them under "Mr. [Deadname]", which is completely wrong. They wouldn't just take my word for it on the name change, and the person who mailed me those records ignored my reply asking to update the name. Well, I suddenly got a call the other day asking to take my name and gender change papers in person, to an office I hadn't been to before, and so I did. The receptionist didn't seem to understand the importance of the forms, so she just took my word for it and updated our name in the system, but thankfully we met our actual psychiatrist who was running around in the halls, noticed me, and made a photocopy of the whole form to attach to our chart, so, when I call them to request medical documents again in a few days, hopefully they'll release them under "Ms. Eir Sunny".
That just left the healthcare place itself. Sunny sent them a message when they didn't send a new card (or indication of one) after several days. They replied that they'd now start sending this new card. Well, they did, but I noticed they left our dead middle name on it, as if it was our new middle name, which is wrong! I replied in their message thread on their site that they made a mistake, but got no response. I replied again today, and nothing yet. If I still don't get a reply soon, I'm starting a new message "thread" where they can see it, and taking things further. I was told today that we can't use the new card yet if the name isn't accurate.
So overall, I'm left with a lot of 
as we've received very little for our efforts.
OT and the wrist surgeon
I visited our beloved wrist surgeon again yesterday, and I'm glad to say I received only good news for my time. First of all, the OT is working. He demonstrated with a certain test on our right wrist, that our wrist isn't dislocating as much anymore! I explained that it's still in a lot of pain, thanks to that neck operation, and he said that's to be expected, and, hopefully, the pain from our neck operation might still get better. I'm super glad to hear both of these things!! 
It gets better. When I told him about the malpractice from that pain management doctor (who did the neck procedure), he offered to refer us to a pain management specialist himself. Of course I accepted! And just like last time, he sent me off with warm wishes and the suggestion to try to wean off the wrist braces, which, while it will be harder this time, might just be doable if what he's saying is really true.
About OT... it's been great. I only talked about it once and then not again. Basically, the OT specialist we have is super nice, listens to me a lot, and even acts as emotional counsel. I vent to her a lot about what it's like living as a trans person in texas, and having to live with our abusive mother, and she's totally receptive and interested. She does a lot of the same exercises with me every time, but is mindful of our physical state, and holds back when it's clear it'd be too much. We meet for OT twice a week, with the occasional evaluation to see how well we're doing overall. Our last one showed our grip strength has improved 75% since we started attending!
I will say though, despite the good news in this section, I'm still worried about something. Maybe our grip strength has improved because of OT, and maybe our wrists are supposedly dislocating less than before, but our tendons are still snapping every two seconds, it feels like, and it really hurts. It makes it hard to do a lot of things.
Today's subject: Shoulders
So, we're going to need surgery. You might be saying, that's ridiculous, you've already had so much surgery! I know. But believe me, this isn't a bad thing. Surgery means it can be helped, it can be fixed. He explained to me that, during surgery, he'll fix the SLAP tear, and, while he's there, if he finds he can easily dislocate our shoulder while under anesthesia, he'll do something called a remplissage, a surgery that fastens several "anchors" into our shoulder bone, to keep the tendons, soft tissue, etc. held in place, to prevent dislocation. He went on to describe that he's done this procedure on patients with Ehlers-Danlos before, and they all had great success! Even though they're older than us!
Surgery was an option I picked, by the way, because its help would be definitive and permanent. The other options were injections (can't fix the root problem), physical therapy (same + I don't trust PT from past experience), and something called Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP), a new technique that uses the patient's own blood and body to repair itself, which sounds awesome, except for the part where, even with insurance, there's still a $1k buy-in (yiiikes...) So, I picked the surgery. I mean, we've already been through so much surgery before, so what's the harm in two more? (And yes, two more, one for each shoulder. And we'll have to wear a cast after each one.)
Again, you might be surprised why I'm so happy that we're going to need shoulder surgery. It's because, even though this utterly ridiculous saga continues, and yes, recovering from surgery fucking sucks and we're going to hate it... it's hope. It's hope for recovery, for relief of our pain and symptoms, it's hope to be able to use our fucking arms again. I'm hopeful, actually hopeful, and especially so because, like I said to the shoulder specialist today, whenever I do pop our shoulders, it also brings relief to the rest of the arm, which says to me the shoulder issues are the root cause (aside from the pinched nerves in our neck, of course).
That's where I'll leave y'all tonight. I promise I've got a lot of other things to share on this weblog that have been in the works lately... it's just been really hard to actually sit down and write a post, especially with 1. recovering from that neck procedure, and 2. some other, personal stuff going on with us, that could very well be the subject of their own post. Meow!
