So, This Transitioning Malarkey...

So I tried in Jersey to get some kind of medical help for literally years. I spoke to my doctor many times about wanting to transition. Once I was referred to a psychologist who admitted she had never even met another trans person and then proceeded to tell me that in her opinion I was only feeling  like this because I was unemployed at the time and I should just get a job... Thanx... The last time I saw my doctor I went presenting as female and asked them to refer to me as Sarah and to help me to find someone who would know what they were talking about. A week later I received a letter from my doctor;

Dear (Male name)

Unfortunately after contacting both the psychology and psychiatric department on the island there are no service (sic) available on the island with regards to gender change. The only was (sic) forward therefore would be a private referral to a unit in the UK.

Yours, Doctor.


I was blummin fuming!!! I gave this doctor bloke forty odd quid for a badly spelt letter telling me they were not going to help me at all! Grrrrr.

This was the final straw for me and Jersey. I had to get out. Not for the first time I had been slapped down by the medical profession in my island. I already wanted to move away to transition as I felt that the anonymity of a larger city or town would help me be more expressive and open than I could back home but this, this just made me even more determined to succeed with my plans to move.

I should add that the day after the boat dropped me off in England I received a call from my doctor and he said he had managed to sort a psychiatric appointment for me but not to hold out any hope of getting any more help than that. Too little, too late for me. I had made the leap and wasn't turning back.

The day I moved to Wales was the first day of the rest of my life. I have dressed as female everyday since. Within a couple of weeks I had an appointment at my local GP's office and met a new doctor. I went in for the appointment armed with the International Standards of Care for Transgendered people ready to assert my need to transition and fight for whatever rights I thought I had. She was actually really nice, she said that she'd never treated a trans person before but was willing to do some research and learn more about what it involved. I made another appointment to come back the next week.  

When I went back I couldn't believe how helpful my new GP was. She'd done a load of research and had come back with a more definite course of action. First a psychology meeting to make sure I'm not completely crazy then I've gotta see a kind of gatekeeper person to get the NHS Wales funding for a referral to the gender clinic in Charring Cross in London.

So I had my first psych appointment last Tuesday. That went really well too!! We talked about lots of things, memories of first being trans, family, friends, my past, my future... The upshot of all this is that I'm not mad!!! Yay!!! The Psychs assessment is that from her clinical point of view she won't need to see me again and she will write a letter to the next person up on the list to refer me. :)

So now I wait. one thought that has been playing on my mind a little bit is that this whole thing is going so well, I'm almost waiting for something bad to happen. Things have progressed so well and so quickly for me the last couple of months that I'm just waiting for things to slow up and for a setback to happen. I know it's the wrong thing to be thinking about but it's been in the back of my mind for ages now. I think I should just relax and enjoy the good times now and deal with whatever problems come, when they come.