Tag Archive | GCS

An Unexpected But Perfect Gift

Jan6

Two years ago in December, my mother passed away unexpectedly. She was in her late 70s but had COPD issues due to a lifetime of heavy smoking but otherwise members of our family tend to live well into our 80s and 90s. So mom’s passing was unexpected and I can honestly say that even at my age, I miss her greatly every single day.

Mom never had much. Abandoned by my father when we were still small children, plus health issues she had mid-life made life tough on our family but Mom kept us together. She raised us, loved us, and was thrilled as each of us grew to adulthood. But for herself she never had a lot. One thing she did have was free and clear ownership of her home from her early 50s onward.

It was a small home in a small town in eastern Ohio. It wasn’t worth a lot. She had little savings. Plus it took us two years to sell that house. Because of her financial situation, my guess at the value of the house, legal fees, funeral expenses, house maintenance while we waited for it to sell, etc., I didn’t expect to get much from my mother’s estate.

Anything would have helped, of course, but I expected a few thousand dollars total.

Before I go further, I’ve budgeted out about $15,000 for my trip to Thailand for my gender confirmation surgery. I’ve waited a lifetime for this and could wait a few more years as I saved the money.

So imagine my surprise when I was informed that I and my siblings would each be receiving approximately $16000 as our last gift from mom.

I’m sitting here with tears in my eyes today, looking heavenward, and repeating “Thank you, mom”. For even in death, her last gift to me turned out to be perfect.

The Myth of Post-Op Regret And Suicidality

Jan2

There is a popular myth going around that attempts to quote from this 2003 Swedish study:

Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden

People using this study do so selectively. Let me explain the statistical manipulation going on with gender surgery detractors and the myth they try to construct.

First they note that general population rates for suicidality are around 1.6% in the United States. Then they note that suicidality rates for post-op transsexual people are about 4.1%. They then claim that since this is “hundreds of percent higher” that surgery does not work.

But let’s talk about the reality. What is that reality? It is that the pre-op suicidality rate for transsexuals is 41%!!!

Yep, that’s right. Pre-op rates of suicidality for transsexuals are 1000% higher than post-op rates. How do we know this? From the UCLA Williams Institute study Suicide Attempts among Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Adults. (Warning! PDF!)

And the Swedish study actually supports gender surgery. Their conclusion?

This study found substantially higher rates of overall mortality, death from cardiovascular disease and suicide, suicide attempts, and psychiatric hospitalisations in sex-reassigned transsexual individuals compared to a healthy control population. This highlights that post surgical transsexuals are a risk group that need long-term psychiatric and somatic follow-up. Even though surgery and hormonal therapy alleviates gender dysphoria, it is apparently not sufficient to remedy the high rates of morbidity and mortality found among transsexual persons. Improved care for the transsexual group after the sex reassignment should therefore be considered.

Note what is said very, very gently and in careful scientific language: “This highlights that post surgical transsexuals are a risk group that need long-term psychiatric and somatic follow-up.”

So what detractors are doing is selective statistical selection to “prove” their biased point. When we take the entire picture, we see that gender surgery actually reduces suicide rates to 1/10th of what they were pre-op. And, as the Swedish study concludes, what trans people need is more support, not because they are trans, but because too many people in society today are just ignorant assholes.

A Belated Birthday Dinner

Sep17

My daughter took me to dinner Monday night as a slightly belated birthday celebration. We chatted for a good two hours enjoying good food at Cheesecake Factory then taking our cheesecake desserts home. Discussions ranged from how bra manufacturers seem to each have their own way to measure sizes to how her kids are doing in school.

I discussed an unexpected email I got from someone, an email I never expected to get yet did. I won’t say more here since I know a certain someone stalks my blog and I’d rather she and her husband not know what this is. But I’ll mention that it pleased me to no end. Perhaps that little tweak of the nose will aggravate her further. And my daughter concurred that such an email was a very good thing.

I also saw my lawyer on Tuesday. Things are going to move faster than I expected but this is rewarding to have happen this way. The last legal vestiges of “him” are about to vanish forever in a few weeks time. During the small talk early in the consultation, my lawyer asked me if I had any children. I replied yes, all adults, and gave their ages. She stared at me and then asked in an incredulous voice, “How old are you?” I replied with my age and she shook her head, saying she thought I was almost 20 years younger. I thanked her, and just smiled.

I also have a photo, taken by my daughter, the night she took me out. I got a surprising number of nice comments about that photo, something that I’m still trying to wrap my brain around. This relates to something I don’t think I’ve covered in this blog. Not too many sessions ago, with my therapist, I was put on the hotseat by a random question from her – what are you going to do when guys start hitting on you? I guess it was a deer-in-the-headlights moment because she laughed and further asked, “You don’t realize how attractive you are, do you?” More frozen non-response… More laughter from her and “I see we have something new to discuss.” She’s aware that I am absolutely uninterested in any sort of relationship until after GCS but as she pointed out, people won’t know that just by looking so I’ll have to come up with some other way of waving off the charging bulls until that day comes that I am ready to consider it.

 

Birthday-2014-1

Thoughts in Mid-August

Aug13

Today’s entry is a little more mundane. On Monday, August 11th, I came out at work to my co-workers. HR and my boss have been with me for this ride for a few months now as things have slowly moved forward. With that milestone now achieved, the next step is to see a lawyer and get the legal name and gender change done via the courts. I’ve waited this long for various reasons but now the reasons to wait are gone and over. All that remains is saving up the fees necessary for court and the lawyer and off we go, hopefully in late September or early October. Once that is done, update driver’s license, social security, then update work records at which point I will be allowed to present female full time at work.

Of course it won’t end there. There will be bank accounts, credit cards, bills, and other accounts that all need changed. I half wonder how people will take it when I change my name and gender on LinkedIn. There are a lot of former co-workers who I’ve not informed who are connected to me on LinkedIn these days. And then there’s the old Facebook account. Do I close it entirely? Keep it to keep an eye open towards old school friends from years ago when I was younger? I’ve only come out to a handful of those with whom I grew up, aside from my siblings. I’ll probably let that account sit quietly but I reserve the right to change my mind.

Progesterone continues to apparently work its magic slowly. I doubt I’ll ever have a big bust line but I’m very much filling an A cup now. I’d be really happy with a B cup and ecstatic with a C but I don’t think C is a reasonable expectation. After being lazy most of the summer, I’ve begun a dedicated walking program on the treadmill in the evenings. My goal is to get back to 170 (I was 173 recently) then begin losing weight down to about 155. If I can lose 1-2 pounds per month I can be there by next summer. I just need to keep working out. Once I’ve been walking again for a few weeks, I’ll begin adding some P-90 workouts to my regimen as well.

After the legal work comes looking for the stem cell treatment for my scalp to help further with hair regrowth, then all my savings will be either towards finishing facial hair removal or towards GRS. It now looks very unlikely that I will be able to get this done via insurance so now Thailand becomes a very attractive alternative destination.

I sort of have a dream and I don’t know if I can achieve it, but that dream is a B cup or C cup, lose enough waist to get down to about 28 inches there, enough of my own hair back that I don’t need to wear a wig (though I’d still likely do so in certain situations), after GRS to find the perfect grape colored one piece swimsuit. I’ve often dreamed of walking up to people I used to know on a beach somewhere and just saying hi, then watching the confusion. I’ve had even more wicked thoughts that amuse me to no end but I won’t post them here. My closest friends know about them.

I was recently asked a question, when did I know I couldn’t go back to “him”? Honestly, it was when I told my spouse, I knew where I was going. I had already looked over the precipice and almost ended it all before and I didn’t want to go back down that road. I knew where that road ended. But if I had ever had second thoughts, those second thoughts were destroyed forever by those who once said they loved me. When they were done, there was no “him” to return to, as they had turned their backs on me, spoke about me behind my back, and taken my grandchildren from me as well. You might say that their hatred, bigotry, and cruelty sealed the deal, nailed the door shut, and built a brick wall to hide the door. My happiness is with other people now. My happiness is forward.

As for everyone else, it’s been reassuring to experience so many supportive people in my life – friends, siblings, co-workers. That one disappointment remains my own children, and wondering what I did that they turned out like this.

Gender is not strictly a social construct

Jul10

I just had cause to have to type this yet again for someone else, so I thought I’d place this answer here, where it can be easily referenced and seen. I’ve used the image in this reference before but it’s good to have the full reference too.

Gender is not solely a social construct. It is, in fact, partly biological. If I can show you just one image that demonstrates this (and there are dozens of scientific studies about this now), will you believe me?

This link contains pictures of actual brain scan results done during autopsies. Please note the image partway down the page. That image is a stained cross sectional slice of the central section of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis in the hypothalamus (BSTc) in the brain.

Please note that the upper left image is the BSTc of a heterosexual adult male. Then lower left image is the BSTc of a homosexual adult male. They are almost identical, aren’t they?

The upper right image is the BSTc of an adult heterosexual female. It is very different from that of the males, isn’t it? And the lower right image is the BSTc of a male-to-female transsexual. Her BSTc is very similar to the adult heterosexual female BSTc. It is also nothing like the male BSTc, is it?

This is just one of nearly a dozen different physical brain differences between transsexual individuals and the rest of the population. I, we as transsexual women, literally have a female brain inside a male body.

Most people do not realize that there is this duality inside them. They don’t realize it because their brain and their bodies match. So to them it seems like one uniform whole.

But to those of us born this way, it is a constant clawing pain inside. It’s horror as your body becomes something that your brain isn’t intended to work with.

And we don’t know how to fix the brain. These brain structures form and set between the 8th and 16th week of pregnancy. Once set, they can never be changed. No amount of testosterone will change my brain into male. In fact, more testosterone usually makes us more depressed.

So no, gender is not solely a social construct. That is a myth promulgated by Dr. Money and Dr. McHugh (who recently wrote a pile of crap in the Wall Street Journal) back in the 1960s at Johns Hopkins. And their assumptions have all been disproved. Gender really does have a partial biological component and when that component is mismatched to person’s body, significant psychological trauma can occur. This is why we take hormones and undergo surgery – to align our body with our brains, because we have no idea how to do the reverse.

For more information on how hormonal levels in the womb impact individuals, please review this 2011 AMA Webcast. It is about an hour long but contains important medical information that relates to how transsexual brains come to be the way they are.

http://media01.commpartners.com/AMA/sexual_identity_jan_2011/index.html