still alive

[pamela7]

I’ve been away a few months, primarily because I didn’t feel safe on the forum with a narcissist allowed to probe and ridicule my path, as if theirs is the only one possible. I could give a complete analysis of the particular miss muffet sitting on her tuffet, but I wont. I did my own processing.

I’ve made my own breast forms and a “hip and lower-belly pad set fixed to an elasticated belt”. The latter gives the proper below-belly-button protrusion seen in non-anorexic women. My hair is now long enough to have been cut into a good shape. When I look in the mirror now I see my “who I really am” looking back. The body shape is right, and affirmed right by the women in my life.

I’ve been focussed on life. All my work is as Pam now, including an engineering project. Transness seems to be a non-problem for everyone around me, including some quite staid old ladies. I’ll suggest it’s a non-problem because I lead my local world in making it so, even in London.

I did have an experience of being out alone in the dark, on the receiving end of a car-full of drunk young males giving me cat-calls. I just ignored them and walked on. Insights into life as a woman continue to abound.

Paint dries a lot faster than the NHS makes appointments, so life goes on until ops can happen.

[WandaRae2009]

I am glad you are still alive and have come back. In life I have found you can't make everyone happy. So I focus on myself and those close to me that I chose to attempt to please. The rest, they will do what they want no matter what they feel they are right and are best ignored.

[jentay1367]

Hi Pam.....good to hear you're good. I'd like to suggest that you find a therapist that will fast track you and allow you to start hormones. The experience will blow your mind and probably not in the way you would expect. You will actually face "yourself" in the mirror....or perhaps more unfortunately for some...you'll find, "a complete stranger". It will most assuredly answer a myriad of questions...some you may not even know you had.
Once you get the testing done, the HRT is actually quite affordable and IMHO...worth every damned penny. Waiting for the National Health seems kind of ludicrous unless it's your only option. Anyways...welcome back and be well! Lisa

[HelenR2]

In Britain these things are much more difficult and much slower than in the States. In the UK the NHS is the only option for most transgender treatments and you need this official approval before you can do the simplest things, like buy hormones. Waiting times for and between the necessary appointments can be as long as a year. The time between seeing your doctor for the first time and being recommended for hormones alone might be two or three years and surgery might not happen for another two to four years after that.

[jentay1367]

That's interesting Helen. Does that apply if you'd like to self-fund your transition, as well? Or is only if you choose the use of the NHS Services?

[HelenR2]

Sorry Jentay, that is a good question but I don't have a reliable answer. Everybody I have heard of has gone through the NHS to some extent at least. I believe there are at least some things you can't just pay for and have done. I wonder if Pamela7 might know more than I can tell you.

[Dana44]

Pam, good to hear from you. Yeah on being alone at night. I can see why they don't want to go out after dark. It happened to me too as I walked down to get the mail at night at our community Center. So yeah I now understand some of those things. Good to hear from you though.

[Barbara Ella]

Glad you are choosing to be active again. I have not been active recently, but we all have life's travails to work through. So glad your living as your true self is going well. Best of luck in the future as you continue to progress.

Hugs

Barbara

[pamela7]

HelenR2, If one has the money, then a flight to Prague and a couple of nights in a hotel, plus a drop-in op and all could be sorted. My dr even said to me that he'd not be surprised if i visited the black market for hrt. They know the system is slow. Otherwise, one waits. and waits. and waits. and waits. get the picture?

[Emily Ann Brown]

We are tuff old birds..good for you dear!!! Em

[HelenR2]

I do understand Pamela.I have just had my second GIC appointment, fourteen months after the first, and my next is scheduled for August 2017. The good news is the doctor is recommending my GP prescribe hormones and at a decent dosage too. About two weeks from now I expect to be bent over the nurses table, M&S big girls drawers round my knees, and feeling a small prick (I do hope that gets past the moderators).

[Rianna Humble]

Helen, I'm afraid you are talking of the NHS here. Their language uses words similar to English but with totally different meanings.

For example, after my second GIC appointment, I was told that my GP would be sent a letter "straight away" instructing her about the HRT régime I was to follow and that I would be reviewed after 13 weeks on the hormones. What I forgot was that "straight away" does not mean the same in NHS as in English - in my case it meant "after 9 weeks". I also forgot that "after 13 weeks on the hormones" in NHS meant "3 months from today" in English (i.e. after less than 4 weeks on the hormones).

So, I will rejoice with you that the recommendation has been announced and will hope that you get your first dose this year.

BTW, if you offer to take a cancellation, you could find that the August appointment happens before Easter with a bit of luck and a trailing wind.

[HelenR2]

Rianna makes an important point. ALWAYS ask if there is something that can be done to speed things up eg. a cancellation. ALWAYS push for a little more, a little sooner. Last year I got an important letter about treatment that had on it a draft date of six months earlier. When I asked the specialist about this he said that under their old system most letters took six months to be sent out. They had only recently changed this and now the doctors wrote and sent their own letters, usually within three weeks.
Another point to be aware of is that even after a letter has been sent between agencies it is often up to YOU to follow it up. It is no use waiting for them to contact you, they are waiting for you to get in touch or maybe just give up and fade away.

[pamela7]

sounds good advice, seeing as the laurels state they're on 10-11 months waiting for first appointment, and my dr referred me in january i think, and it took until july to even get a letter confirming in queue.

i visited them in the summer but really just got fobbed-off by a post-op assistant there who regaled me of their own story and was not a bit interested in my questions or needs. If they hadn't been a transwoman i'd have thought they were a man from the behaviour.

So, i'll get chasing them down for cancellations/appointments.

I still feel the system is wrong. the literature i find says that for example, one gets best breast growth by having the orchie BEFORE the hormones rather than after. The official way of hormones first is battling the androgens and results in a lesser female puberty. Apparently. As probably almost no-one gets the orchie first, how does one really find out if this is true?

xx

[HelenR2]

At the GIC they told me they are reluctant to recommend any treatment that is permanent and non-reversible to 'new' transgender patients. I fully understand their reasons for this but not their apparent obsession with it. Speaking just for myself this is not a whim and, at 60, is unlikely to be followed with a lifetime of regret. On the plus side, despite all the stories I have read about orchies being pretty much impossible to get through the NHS or otherwise, the GIC did dangle an elusive promise of the consideration of surgeries in front of me including the very much desired removal of two quite unnecessary objects. Alas, I won't know any more about this until my next appointment in August 2017 when I get to meet the surgical guy.