TransVentures

You should see my drafts folder. I have started so many entries and never finished them. Much like so many other things in my life.. I’m actually the worst at follow through and project completion.

Full Disclosure:  Between this paragraph and the last, I cleaned the fish tank, shaved my legs, picked out jamberry wraps with Megan and had a couple drinks.

Motivation is something that has been a recurring discussion with my therapist. That it.. I have none. I don’t know if there’s an answer to that, a solution to that problem? I’ve been doing it for all my life.

That said, there’s been a lot going on in my life in the last couple weeks. The largest and most important was the birth of my second child, Hunter. He was born on Tuesday the 19th of May at 13:37. Weighing in at 7lbs, 7oz with a height of 19 inches. He was born 3 weeks premature, but suffered no ill effects from this. Mom is doing well and is on the mend. Both are home, after a extended stay in the hospital.

Through the joy, I’ve also been wallowing in self-despair, self-loathing and general depression. The thought of how much I’m going to fuck these kids up over the years. The consideration that I will never be a real woman. Even in discussion with Megan, I referred to myself by the dirtiest of slurs in the transgender world.  Basically that I might never pass, I might always be the awkward shemale tranny weirdo.

I’ve cried more in the last 2 weeks than I have in the last 2 years and I think I can attribute most of that to the hormones. I’ve read about this side effect and I had sort of dismissed it because 2 months in, I had seen nothing of the sort. Of course, my first month was at a dosage so low, I could have gotten more estrogen drinking the tap water around these parts.. so I might just be seeing a slightly delayed reaction.

In any event, after that discussion with Megan, I slumped on the floor of Hunter’s bedroom and cried. Just worried that my children will be forever screwed up because their father is a woman. I really don’t want to admit this to anyone, but I think it’s important to put it out there. For a (very) brief moment, I thought being dead might be the better option. Suicidal ideation is not something foreign to me, I used to think about it all the time when I was a teenager. It’s something that crosses my mind from time to time over the years between puberty and now. I’ve never attempted suicide, nor have I ever planned any sort of elaborate plans. It typically goes something like this… “Hrmm, I’d probably be happier/better off dead. The world would be better without you” which is quickly followed by “You’re a god damned fucking idiot.”  So, I just sat on the floor, crying….

“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.” — Dr. Johnson

Depression and everything else aside, I continue to push forward with my transition. I sent in my check for the deposit on my surgery with Dr. Marci Bowers. This should occur sometime summer or fall of 2016. We are hoping to get a summer date, so Megan can go with me to California for the procedure. It’s about a three and a half hour surgery, which will have me in the bay area for about 2 weeks. The recovery is something like 6-8 weeks beyond that. Having never had major surgery before, it’s kinda scary to think about. It’s also kinda weird to consider the changes… but something I’ve been researching and thinking about for over 20 years now.

I also changed providers for laser hair removal. My previous place wasn’t actually laser, but IPL which is short for “Intense Pulsed Light”. It’s supposed to work all the same, but it also assumes that the vendor is on the up and up and aren’t playing games with the power output in order to sell you more sessions. I came in so cheap on the initial place that I think I should have known better.  The new place is 10 times the cost, but they guarantee success and give a 2 year warranty on hair not growing back. I start Wednesday. They said a 20% reduction is typical within 2 weeks of the first treatment. We’ll see. I would love to not have to shave my face every day. If I could get away from that, I could probably go without makeup more often.

I guess there’s more to say, but it’s late and tomorrow is my first day back to work since Hunter was born. More later.

It’s been a minute since I’ve take the time to update here. I think about it, but as I’ve been explaining to my therapist… I have a real motivation problem. She says I’m not depressed anymore, she’s pulled the diagnosis. However, I’m not so sure. It’s not an all encompassing depression, but I certainly think it still lingers. With that, I look at so many things and think, “I should be doing that.” I should be cleaning the house, I should be trimming the bushes, I should have Hunter’s room finished. It is what it is.

So it’s been a big week for trans people everywhere. Bruce Jenner finally comes out and says it on national TV. He still wants to be referred to with male pronouns for now. That’s fine, it’s his own decision. I feel weird referring to anyone who says they are a woman as “HE.” I get upset when people refer to me as he, him, sir, etc. Pronouns and being misgendered is my biggest peeve currently. I totally understand where it comes from, I mean I certainly look like a man most or part of the time. Unless I slather on about 2 lbs of foundation, my beard shadow is a dead giveaway. My voice hasn’t changed. So I sound like a man. That’s another thing that falls under the “I should be doing X” category. It’s just very hard, progress doesn’t come instantly, and I’m embarrassed to do it anywhere someone else might hear me.

On the positive side, I did finally get my name change back. I have a new updated drivers license, social security card, and I’ve even managed to get one credit card re-issued. Yay! I started writing down everyone that I need to call and or write, and it’s a staggering list. Especially for someone with motivation issues.

Another item for the positive category, I had my follow-up with my new Endocrinologist. New Endo is SO MUCH better than the old endo. After rechecking my blood with about 8-9 vials drawn, he’s upped my Estradiol. He’s also added in Medroxyprogesterone (Provera) and Spironolactone. The Provera is supposed to help with breast development. Preliminary anecdotal evidence says that it’s working. I say that because while I haven’t noticed much in the way of growth, they are very tender. That’s a good sign. The Spiro is actually a blood pressure med, but it’s used off-label as an Androgen Antagonist. That is, it helps reduce testosterone.  The doctor said that even after a month on Estradiol alone, my T levels were still pretty high.

This morning, I had my fifth session of laser on my face. After the 4th session, I’m certainly seeing some serious slow down on the re-growth. I’m hoping to see more progress on this session. I have one more pre-paid session left. After that, I’m not sure if I will continue this course of treatment or switch over to electrolysis. I’m kind of scared of electro, because it seems pretty painful. I’m so tired of shaving my face, and even more tired of the beard shadow that doesn’t go away with shaving that I can justify the pain though. We’ll see.

I’m trying to think if there’s anything else exciting going on that’s transition related. Not coming up with anything..  I’ll write more later, maybe. HA.

I also forgot to add that I got my ears pierced on Saturday. Something that Megan and I have been sort of at odds with for a while, I’ve been wanting to do it for sometime. In any event, once we were done with pictures, I paid some lady at the mall to push little rods of metal through my flesh.  All in the name of femininity!

So in the last week, let’s see.. what’s happened?

Most of the week was pretty standard. On Thursday, I went to visit Focus and get my hair and eyebrows done. These folks are awesome, and I’m in love with them. Let’s just be honest.  Hair and Brow game on lock.

 

Friday night, I went out with Lee, Dustin and Jesse to Rubbie’s in full fem. This is the first time that I’ve been out with them as Addison. It was nice to be out as myself. Nothing special to report in terms of that. I used the women’s restroom without incident. Sadly, this is seems to be news worthy to me. My ability to pee in peace seems to be the most important part of an outing to me these days. Seems silly, but sadly true.

Saturday we had family pictures in Elizabethtown. These pictures were at the buttcrack of dawn. Well, 9am. Which means we left the house at 8am. Which means… yeah, we got up too early. I had basically promised Megan one last time in boy mode. For her own sake, for her memories. So, I put on my costume…

Pictures were fine, I love our photographer. She’s really great. However, it felt really weird for me to jump back to being Sean after being Addison. It’s hard for me, kind of sends me back in to a place of dysphoria.

After that, I dropped Megan and Grayson at church for the yearly easter egg hunt. After I dropped them off, I went to Best Buy and picked up a very expensive electric shaver. My mom suggested I might have better luck with electric. I bought the Braun 7 Series, which is the highest rated per Google and Amazon. It’s terrible. If this is the pinnacle of electric shaving, we’re all doomed.

 

That’s about an hour after I shaved. Mind you, this after 4 laser treatments. My regrowth is pretty slow. So… I think that shaver is going back.

So, that’s Saturday. Aside from Kentucky losing.. not much to say. Oh, wait. I changed my name on Facebook from Sean to Addison. I’m facebook official!

Sunday, we went to church. My first time as Addison. First time in church wearing a dress. I did not burst into flames. There were some glances, I’m sure a comment or two, but no incidents. A number of hugs and handshakes. I avoided the restroom on purpose. I had to pee, but I really just didn’t want to find out how “Barrier Free” they were.  When we left, I commented to Megan that I didn’t burst into flames. We’ll call that success.

Next came dinner at Grandma’s. Still in the same outfit. The ladies were more supportive than the men. A couple compliments from the ladies. At best, the men ignored me. At worse, use of male pronouns and my birth name. Being referred to as “big guy” really gets the estrogen flowing. Ya, know? Whatever. It’s a process… at least that’s what I keep telling myself.

So, that brings us to today..

Today I had my first appointment with Dr. Poorkay. I had been looking for a replacement doctor after being treated fairly unprofessionally by Dr. Winters at U of L Physicians. I was pretty impressed with Dr. Poorkay. He seemed to be genuinely more interested in helping me get to what I’m trying to achieve.

He pretty much confirmed that Dr. Winters is either ignorant of the proper protocol for treating male to female transsexual clients or he’s delaying our transition on purpose. I believe it to be the latter.

His comment was “Why would he do that?” when I explained that Dr. Winters refused to prescribe me Spironolactone. I couldn’t answer that question. I explained that Dr. Winters told me that he believed that if he gave me an androgen antagonist that the body would up the testosterone production and cancel out the effects of the medication,.

Pretty much all of the available literature suggests that just Estradiol (estrogen) by itself will not do much, unless prescribed at fairly high doses. At my 1mg twice daily current regimen, I’m not likely to see much in the way of female puberty.

Unfortunately, despite having all my records from Dr. Winters blood tests, Pookay still wanted to do some additional testing. Winters did not test my estrogen or progesterone levels, only my testosterone. So, we’re doing blood work again. Due to how busy this practice is, it’ll be a week before we get results back from the lab.

I have a follow-up appointment with Poorkay for the 21st, at which point, I’m expecting him to raise my dosage of Estradiol and add Spironolactone along with some sort of Progesterone.   He says I won’t get the breast development that I’m looking for without the progesterone.

Based on his interest on my own goals, I think I’m going to be happier with Dr. Poorkay than I have been with Dr. Winters. I’m unhappy with the 2 week delay on getting started with the correct regimen, but it’s better than the 7 weeks I had with Winters… only to get less than half of what I expected.  The two weeks is actually not that big of a deal, it’s more that I’ve been working on getting to this point since December.. which means that if I get scripts on the 21st, I will have invested nearly 5 months just to get HRT. So that’s what’s wrong with trans healthcare in the USA.

I guess there’s plenty to update, although some days it doesn’t feel like it.

I’ll start with work. So I made it exactly one week before someone said something about me using the women’s room. The person wasn’t even in the restroom. They yelled at me when I came out. The dialog went something like:

Her: “Did you just come out of the ladies room?

Me: Yeah?

I just kept walking, didn’t matter. I belong there, HR signed off. However, this marks why I thought everyone should be informed of what was going on. The person in question didn’t work on my floor. So I sent email to the director of that floor to let them know who I was, and explaining my situation and HR’s stance.

This generated HR calling me and then basically they went around and told everyone, small groups at a time, who I was and that I’m a transgender woman in the process of transitioning from presenting male to female.  That was on Thursday. All has been quiet since then. We’ll see how it goes.

Still waiting on my name change paperwork to come back from the state. Seems to be taking FOREVER. In an ideal world, it would show up tomorrow. This would allow me to go to the social security office on wednesday, update them. Once that’s done, I have to wait 24 hours to get a new license. Which would be be perfect because I have a hair appointment on Thursday. So I could go get a new picture taken while I’m fresh to death, kid.

I have my first appointment with my new endocrinologist on Monday. I’m excited for this, because I’m hoping he’ll give me the spironolactone so we can get this show on the road. I’m also going to ask him about Progesterone. I’ve read that I can help with breast development. I want to have the maximum safe effects as quickly as possible.

I think I had more to say, but I’m losing focus.. Maybe a more thoughtful post later.