srs09progress

[srs09progress]

update - 29th August 2024

i have been away a while. i have few updates to give.

What happened since January 2023?

the GP i called my "good GP" told me she was unable to get any further information from the clinical group on whether she could authorise shared care or bridging prescriptions.

"good GP" stopped practicing medicine in February 2023 due to a personal situation. for her privacy i will not discuss the situation in detail, but it developed over time, was not related to a dispute in her level of care, and she had previously suggested she may have to stop working. i now only have access to another GP (who i have never had good experiences with). i will still call him "bad GP" for the sake of clarity, unless he gives me a reason to define him as something else.

i lost my job in April 2023. i was made redundant. the company tried to get me to quit (and thus not be eligible for redundancy pay).

i started university in September 2023. it's going well.

a few days into January 2024 i contacted Tavistock since i should've been hearing from them soon. they said they never got my referral. my surgery said they had "administrative issues" with it. the referral wasn't present on my medical record. i had to be referred again.

1st February 2024, i officially asked to be re-referred. bad GP seemed unaware of the process to refer transgender patients (he asked me what he needed to do then mis-heard, misspelled, and mispronounced "Tavistock" despite me spelling it out to him). he filled in the self referral form while asking me the questions on the patient-side referral form (which i have looked at before, and i was starting to wonder if i should've just gone that route instead) instead of the clinician's form.

during the month of February, i received three letters confirming i was on the list. after the third letter, i checked my NHS record and see a note from admin staff claiming that i was (partially) responsible for the referral form being incorrect and they had filled the correct form and re-submitted.

in March, i received a welcome pack email from Tavistock.

no progress on anything since. i considered asking for a bridging prescription again, but given bad GP's handling of other medical concerns of mine (and his general misunderstanding of how to handle transgender patients) i didn't think it would go well.

throughout 2024, i became far more comfortable with the idea of going for private transition.

What's your plan going forward?

unfortunately, i do not think i can last the 5+ years it is likely to take for me to see the NHS clinic. i have made the tough decision to go private while i wait, for which i am fundraising. see this post on my main blog for more information.

What happened to your old posts?

i deleted many of my original posts around November 2022-January 2023 as i was planning to re-launch my blog around that time and become more active. obviously, that re-launch didn't happen. i don't remember what was there, i think a lot of it was negative. i'll be making a new pinned post soon.

[srs09progress]

diary, monday 13th January 2023

had another gp appointment on friday. uneventful in terms of transition. gp said she had not heard back from london tavistock when requesting information about shared care agreements (she said she wasn't sure if it was the same process as for other shared care agreements?). i dont remember now what she said she was going to do - raise some kind of enquiry another way, i think.

[srs09progress]

Diary, November 21st 2022

I remembered this weekend that since i restarted this blog, i cleared my queued posts and i never replaced them. sucks but hey.

My gp the other week said she's having issues finding out the process and getting in touch with the right people. she said she spoke to "a rather grumpy assistant to a top [some reproductive health, i forgot which] surgeon" on a chance encounter at a hospital, and said assistant said that the south east "might not have the funding for something like that. but my gp said she dismissed that immediately and decided she was going to contact tavistock herself to get some guidance. it's been a while since then so she hasnt had the chance to do that, but i saw her last week and gave her a link to transactual, knowing that they outright document the process and such. she took it on and said i'd hear back some time this week. it's only monday so i'm still waiting on that.

i've decided i have a few personal things i want to get sorted before i start T. ceremonial more than anything else. it's small, but i want to get a voicebank recorded. partly to use in my music, but also to keep a record of what this voice used to sound like. i'm not afraid of losing this voice so to speak, but i dont want my new voice to fuck with songs i'm still writing. i dunno. its a weirdly small and specific thing. and i know my voice wont drop the second i start T. like i said; its ceremonial.

[srs09progress]

Commentary, October 8th 2022

One of the primary things that's allowed me to be happy is just... Not giving a fuck.

I stopped giving a fuck about trying to find a specific multigender term that encapsulates my experience. I stopped giving a fuck about trying to find a specific orientation label that encapsulated my experience. I stopped giving a fuck about trying to find the exact pronouns which give me the most euphoria. I stopped giving a fuck about how others perceived me based on whether I presented masculine or feminine or not or both. I stopped giving a fuck about being seen as trans or being under the radar.

But it extended beyond that.

I stopped giving a fuck about being seen as weird or scene or a "freaky queer". I stopped giving a fuck about other people using highly specific (good faith) terms that describe their experience. I stopped giving a fuck about how I was never going to achieve the look of the "perfect trans man" (because I'm not the perfect trans man). I stopped giving a fuck about being pretty, I stopped giving a fuck about being ugly. I stopped giving a fuck about taking up my rightful space as a human being in every aspect. I stopped giving a fuck about being loud, being queer, being disabled, being proud and happy in a society full of boxes and expectations. I stopped giving a fuck about being happy with myself, I stopped giving a fuck about being unhappy with myself.

I found my place. I found my happy. I don't care if anyone else thinks my happy is ugly or dumb or contradictory. I don't care if anyone else thinks my happy is inspiring or special or good. I found myself. And my true self is either everyone else's problem, or everyone else's goal. I don't care. I'm happy, even when I'm unhappy. I'm living.

(reposted)