One giant leap for her recovery
Quite the title huh? You like it? OK, before I get into it I have to give the disclaimer that Fae still isn’t out of the woods yet. Far from it. She’s still being fed by NG tube, and the hospital are keeping her on their High Dependency Unit for the foreseeable future while they treat her latest infection. This is something she picked up at the hospital. Vancomycin Resistant Enterococcus. That is, a stomach bug that’s resistant to one of the majors antibiotics. It’s a pretty strong bug, but it’s also just one of the hazards of spending five weeks in Intensive Care.
Hospitals really are no place for sick people.
This is her sixth infection in as many weeks, but the amazing thing right this minute is that I’ve just given you all the bad news there is pretty much. Well, almost ‘all’ but let’s leave those flies in the ointment for now.
Fae is today completing her third day breathing room air, unaided – no ventilator.
This is fantastic news for which I’m understandably, and understatedly, grateful. In fact, Fae’s done so well that today they removed her tracheostomy tube, and have dressed the resultant wound. It’s a somewhat bigger hole than it was last time, but I’m sure it’ll heal just as thoroughly as the last did – her last Trach entry point is only really noticeable if you’re searching for it, or it’s deliberately pointed out to you. In any case her new wound has hardly disfigured her.
Hmm, I wonder… Yeah, I’m pretty certain I’d still love her if she’d suddenly became the Phantom of the Opera. Just as long as she doesn’t sing any of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s insipid ditties (‘insipiditities’?).
Back to the minor miracles, Fae is already talking, and I don’t mean with either effort or pain. Or hesitation for that matter. On the contrary, getting her to shut up for two minutes is the hard part right now. She’s got her full, beautiful voice back, and she’s not afraid to use it. This is great, all the more so because, as trans women, our voices are frequently one of the strongest triggers for our Gender Dysphoria.
Indeed, some of you will have heard (though may shudder to recall) from recorded performances that I attached to some of my poems a few years ago. My own voice might charitably be called ‘whale-like’. It’s deep, yes, but also very resonant, which is actually worse than the pitch. It’s probably the single most glaring feature that gives away that I’m trans, even before people have set eyes on me.
I don’t ‘pass’ even if people can’t even see me. Fae, however, is blessed with a much lighter voice. It lacks as much resonance as mine, and in pitch she’s around the top end of ‘androgynous’ and the low to mid range of female voices. Yep, she’s blessed with a lovely feminine voice, and it’s a minor miracle she still has it, three separate stints of intubation, five weeks of being fed by NG tube (not entirely pleasant of course but far better than the wide oxygen tubes), and a wracking cough, that seemed lodged deep and hard enough I thought she’d never be free of it, yet they have all left her voice unscathed. I’m thrilled for her, and for my eardrums.
