Summer of Love - Part 7

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While Rain was agonizing over which path to take, I discovered I was becoming some sort of celebrity lab rabbit at the clinic. When I returned the next week to see if my 'results' came back, Dr O'Brien asked me if I minded meeting a few of her colleagues. I nodded and told her to send them in. She sheepishly said that they didn't work at the clinic and wanted to meet me at their campus offices or if I preferred at their offices at the UCLA medical center. I quickly realized that whatever was happening was anything but routine. I nodded... “wherever....” I said, and Dr O'Brien caught the anxiety in my voice.

“Don't worry Olive. It's nothing awful. Just kind of a repeat of the exam we did here.... and your explanation of how you ended up.....” she looked me up and down and gestured at me “....here.”

“OK. That wasn't awful.... just really really ….awkward.... But you're really easy to talk to Doctor O'Brien... I'm not usually so..... No. I'm not ever so ….forthcoming. I don't know if I could be so candid with strangers.”

She nodded. “OK Olive, let me be frank too. Doctors Kendrick and Lantigua are researchers.... they're professors of mine. I work at the clinic here for school credit, but I'm a grad student. I hope to someday be a researcher into genetic effects of environmental changes. We've changed the world more since the end of World War 2 than we have in all of history up to 1945. And we're only beginning to see the effects. It will take us years to understand them. Did you ever read Rachel Carson?” I shook my head. I'd never heard of her. Dr O'Brien was not surprised. “I read 'Silent Spring' over a summer during highschool...” She smiled awkwardly “You may not know it to gaze on my suave elegance... but I was a serious bookwoorm in school.” She made a mock curtsey and a reflexive self conscious laugh at her embarrassing revelation. “I'd read her methodical case for ways we were playing recklessly with nature, with little regard for the possible consequences. At dusk, I'd see neighborhood kids chasing the DDT spray truck like it was the ice cream man... I really began to wonder what we were doing to ourselves. ….And when we finally began to wake up and realize what we had done, who was going to help us get out of the mess we got ourselves in. That's about the time I decided what I wanted to be when I grew up.”

I nodded reflexively, not really understanding.

“Doctor Kendrick is a clinical endocrinologist, and Doctor Lantigua is doing research into genetics.”

“Genetics?” I had heard the word, but didn't really understand what it was.

“Inherited traits... how you got your black hair... and your green eyes...”

“My mother's eyes” I interjected.

“Exactly. How you got some traits from your father's side, and some from your mother's side....nature's recipe for.... YOU.”

I nodded. I was beginning to get it. “And endo... what was it?”

“Ah. Endocrinology. Yes. Studying the soup.”

OK. She lost me.

“The mix of hormones and blood chemistry that make the body work the way it does.”

“Hormones. Oh. You mean why I'm a boy that looks like a girl?”

“Not really. Yes. That's a part of it, but just a part. There are all sorts of hormones. They regulate metabolism, whether you're lean or heavy... Growth... State of mind.... fight or flight.... that primal instinct comes from the adrenal gland.....”

“More hormones...”

“Exactly. They effect us throughout our lives, but especially around puberty.” Suddenly, she looked a little embarrassed.

“What? OK. So I didn't have a normal puberty. That's pretty obvious. No need to get awkward.”

“Well, I think it's more than that. I don't think you've had any puberty. Your voice hasn't changed. You don't look like you ever had a growth spurt. What are you 5'2” tops?”

“Hey! I'm 5-4 if I'm an inch!” Then I realized she tricked me into admitting that I was still as tall as I'd been at 10. I blushed.

“Sorry. It's just pretty clear that no growth hormone has kicked into overdrive. What body hair you have is still a light down and your skin is uncharacteristically clear for someone your age.... and let's face it... soft...”

“Soft as a baby's butt” I mocked.

Dr O'Brien smiled sadly. “Well put. Your blood chemistry seems closer to a babys than a teenagers. That has Dr Kendrick intrigued. And Dr Lantigua too for similar reasons. So will you meet with them?”

I nodded my uncertain assent, and things took off quickly from there.

Doctor O'Brien didn't mean 'in a few weeks' or even 'a few days'. It seems that her two professors were so intrigued by what they saw in my lab samples, that they wanted to meet with me soon. Like - 'Donna, reschedule my day, Ms Bracco and I are leaving for the med center' ...and 20 minutes later I was on an exam table chatting with Doctors Kendrick and Lantigua - soon. They took a lot of blood. And more samples of my hair and scraped a bunch of skin. I told my story again, which I had managed to condense to a coherent account with repetition. None of them treated me like a boy. None of them treated me like a freak. They didn't exactly treat me like a girl either.... I felt more like a ….specimen. Kind of like a lab rabbit. They would talk to each other as if I wasn't there, and I didn't catch most of the medical jargon. One thing I did catch were pronouns. Which were always feminine. So I didn't feel too uncomfortable.

Long story short, it was determined that I had something called “Androgen Insensitivity”... Dr Lantigua claimed it was some anomally in my DNA. Dr Kendrick explained that it meant my body just ignored testosterone. Not that my body was making any to speak of. Apparently the 'boy bits' didn't really do much of anything. They figured out that even in the womb I was mostly ignoring the signals to make me a boy, so the job was done poorly and ineffectually. The plumbing I had wasn't textbook boy or girl, but it leaned ever so slightly to boy that they figured that's why the doctors assigned me “M” at birth. Doctor Kendrick joked that he'd seen many an enlarged clitoris that was more impressive than my so-called penis. My scowl got a perfunctory apology from him, and for a few moments they acknowledged that their 'specimen' was paying attention to what they were saying. I guessed that as clinical researchers they didn't usually have to give any thought to 'bedside manners'.

I was more than a little shocked to find that Dr Kendrick had given me a MASSIVE dose of testosterone, and had felt smug when over time my body failed to respond and validated his hypothesis.

I don't know whether it was testosterone or adrenaline or just plain bile, but I was FURIOUS when I found out what he had done to me to 'test his theory'. I ripped him a new one, and to my surprise, Drs Lantigua and O'Brien backed me up. I completely flipped out, and he shouted at me 'not to get hysterical'.

“How the hell CAN I, when 'hysterical' refers to the female organs and endocrine system, and I don't seem to have THAT either????”

Suddenly everything got quiet and Dr O'Brien shot me a look. She called her colleagues aside and they huddled. There was lots of gesticulating and some furtive glances my way, and finally three nods.

“You're right Olive.” Dr O'Brien said. Then she broke into a grin “...as usual! OK, after Dr Kendrick's ill-conceieved …experiment” she almost spat the word “...it's clear that you are unresponsive to male hormones and will never develop into an adult.... man. However the small amount of testosterone your body is making is being converted to estrogen...”

I shot her a startled look. She just waved her hand dismissively.

“No, no. It happens all the time. Both ways. It's perfectly normal.... which I guess for you means it's the exception.....” she smiled awkwardly. “Well, anyway it's trace amounts anyway. Insignificant really. But we DO know that your estrogen receptors work. So, the question for you is this....” She scrunched up her face. “Puberty. For it or agin' it?”

I looked her in the eyes. “You just told me my body ignores male hormones.” She nodded. “And you're offering me ...puberty?” She nodded again. We both knew where this was going but it had to play out this way. “So what you're asking, really is do I want to live as a boy or a girl?” She shook her head.

“Boy.... or WOMAN. Because you're incapable of developing into a man.... and you're already living as a girl.... a pre-pubescent girl.”

“So, you're asking me if I want to grow up?”

“In a manner of speaking. Do you want to remain an aging, ostensibly male child, or develop into an adult woman... with hips and curves and breasts....”

“But no ovaries or even a vagina?”

“Well, there's only so much we can do chemically. But there are places where they can do surgeries like Christine Jorgensen....”

I waved my hand dismissively. “That's a subject for another time. What you're saying to me now is that I can develop breasts and hips and become more like a woman”

“Physically, and emotionally. You're still pre-pubescent, so sex really isn't on your radar is it?”

I shook my head. “I guess not”

She smiled. “Well, that may change... and you better be prepared for that, because with puberty may come urges and desires that you're not physically able to act on.”

“And that makes me different from a small percentage of other women ….how?” I smiled.

Doctor O'Brien laughed out loud. “God! So wise.... I know you still look to be a teenager, but something tells me you're more like.... a thousand....” she smiled. “Has anyone ever told you that you have an old soul?”

I nodded contentedly. “In fact, they have.”

So it was decided. While Doctor Lantigua still used me as a lab rabbit to try and determine what in my DNA made me 'immune' to testosterone, Dr Kendrick documented how eager my body was to process estrogen and progesterone. I got curvy quickly. And people noticed. I also got really moody. And that they also noticed.

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Good for her to come down

Good for her to come down hard on the unfeeling "doctor". I used quotes, because he seems to have about as much bedside manner as a step stool. I am also happy that the two women doctors came down him as well. Who knows exactly what harm his use of a massive dose of testosterone could have done to Olive? If her body is not producing it, perhaps that simply means she cannot tolerate it in any form; so do not use it period. I feel that if the introduction of estrogen and progesterone into Olive is done, then the doctors, all three) should work with others who can physically change her body to her proper sex. Right now, they are just setting her up for some real serious issues down the road.