Intersex Surgery Soon...

I was born with ambiguous genitalia. They (the doctors) gender assigned me as a male. I was born a 46 XY or male (the official diagnosis is 46 XY DSD gonadal dysgenesis complete with a uterus, streaked gonads, chordee and hypospadias). This confirms my earlier hypothesis that I was an intersex child. This certainly explains the 7 surgeries I can recall, and the scars where I don’t recall having surgery.

For 47 of my 55 years I was deceived, lied to, and basically ignored by all the primary care doctors I’ve had throughout my life. They told me that their reasoning for all the surgeries was to get my testicles to descend. This was simply not true. There are no testicles to descend. There are streaked gonads imbedded in the uterus. They never mentioned the uterus. Unfortunately, I am now experiencing complications that require surgery to remove some of the female parts and the streaked gonads.

On Monday March 24th, I will undergo what very few men will ever go through, a radical hysterectomy. They will remove the uterus, ovarian tissue, testicular tissue, and any associated plumbing connecting these organs. They will remove my bullet fragment I collected while living in California in the ‘80’s. They will locate and repair any hernias or issues that are causing me a great deal of pain. As a bonus they plan to remove my gallbladder too. What makes this surgery interesting is the Da Vinci robotic procedure that will be used for most of the surgery. I’m sure it will be a fun-filled day at Summerlin Hospital. Maybe they will give me an ice cream cone if I’m a good boy.

 http://www.valleyhealthsystemlv.com/hospital-services/robotic-surgery

Is Google making us stupid?

As I began reading this article I became distracted by shiny objects and <SQUIRREL> long worded sentences. The article “Is Google Making Us Stupid” by Nicolas Carr is rather lengthy. During my perusal of this I checked my email 3 times, updated Facebook twice, and re-posted several meme’s. While all this was going on, Fox News was spewing tabloid news as if it was real, or important. Twitter was afire over Arizona’s lack of common sense concerning recent hate sponsored legislation and Honey Booboo was proclaiming her mom’s current honeymoon the best ever. One wonders how many she’s been to. Meanwhile, CNN sent a Breaking news text letting me know that there was no breaking news at the moment. I had to stop what I was doing and SKYPE my wife the good news. Fortunately I was only driving to the grocery store so there wasn’t a lot of traffic to distract me from texting.

The moral to my last paragraph is that in this day-and-age, we are bombarded with information. We are forced to “skim” information simply to filter the information presented to us. When I find an article or paper that requires my deeper attention, I read the abstract to make sure that it is relevant and then I check the source for validity. Personally, I will print the article that I need to read so that I can highlight portions of the article. It also makes it easier to make notes in the margins when it’s a hard copy. The Internet lends itself to a fast pace “instant” gratification society such as ours. Everything designed for the web is abbreviated, abridged, or shortened. A special abbreviated language is used in text and chat rooms to make communication easier and certainly faster. By design, that’s how the Internet works, and for the most part this is a good thing.

So the question posed by the title of this article has no easy all-encompassing answer. For me, Google is merely a tool similar to all the other data bases I use to achieve my quest for information. So the answer in my case is NO!

References

Carr, N. (2008). Is Google making us stupid? Atlantic Monthly 302(1), 56-63. Retrieved February 18, 2014 from EBSCOhost Religion and Philosophy Collection.

Intersex Update:

UPDATE: Well, what a week. I fought the lab for 3 weeks to get my karyotype results. They came back 46 XY DSD. The ultrasound indicates a smaller than normal prostate which means I and a true hermaphrodite. I have a uterus with suspected streak gonads (or ovaries). Testosterone levels are below 35 NG/DL while estrogen levels are over 142 ng/mL. I have 3 surgeons, gynecologist, urologist, and a general ready to do battle on March 14th. The will be removing the uterus, all gonad tissue, and my gall bladder. They also suspect a hernia is hiding in there somewhere. Once this is complete HRT will need to start assuming I can find an Endocrinologist that have enough balls (no pun intended) to take on the case.