Renee

For ten years I had sought professional help for my

situation. The first doctor I even managed to tell didn't

know what to do, though he seemed sympathetic. He

referred me to an endocrinologist to do some blood work.

The endocrinologist did, found nothing out of the ordinary

and said that to him nothing else mattered and he sent me to a psychiatrist, after all, aren't we just crazy people? Anyway, I went to him, and he asked me some very odd, personal and sexual questions, what my fantasies were, etcetera. His conclusion was that I was just screwed up, I really didn't know anything, after all I was only 18, what does an eighteen year old know. So he told me to go get a girlfriend spend a year having some sex, and then come back to him after that if I still felt the way I did. I was crushed, to say the least and for the first time in my life, I contemplated suicide. I held on to the hope that in a year he'd help me, so I waited and waited. A year came around and he said that he was sorry, but he couldn't treat me. Period.

I took me five years to get out of the depression that threw me into. Five years. But this time I did my homework. I knew about HBIGDA now, the SOC, and major centers and doctors who deal with this. I also knew exactly how and where to get hormones from if I had to. Dr Sanders happened to be the closest one, and was the head of the Gender Clinic in Calgary for many years, even as far back as when they still did SRS at the Foot Hills in the 1970's. I phoned him and spoke with his secretary, who informed me of his eighteen month waiting list to even initially see patients. This bothered me, so I asked if there was anyone else. She told me that I could go right away and see someone called Dr Miles who would be able to help, and that I would stay on the waiting list in the meantime. But that Dr Miles could do much of the prescreening that Dr Sanders would have to do. So I agreed and went to see Dr Miles.

At first things went slow as would be expected. I took a battery of tests, including the dreaded MMPI which proved that I could either lie well, or that I had a normal psychological profile of a woman in her early 20's. But for some reason, that was unsatisfactory for him. You see, many psychologists are behavioralists, and believe that sexual roles are simply acquired habits. To him, I was no more female than he was, and for the record he was quite the male chauvinist. In his mind transsexualism did not exist as anything beyond a desire or wish to best imitate the opposite gender, and that for all intents and purposes we could never be, nor ever were really people of the opposite sex with simply mistaken genitals. After a year of no hormones, and appointment after wasted appointment of hearing his life story, I gave up. I had lost my job, and for being a transsexual was also getting kicked out of my apartment unless I could magically come up with TWO months rent, the rent having just jumped up by over $100 because of "rising rental costs". With no job I had to move back home, which would prove my undoing.

Now looking back, I can agree that I wasn't dressed right, the makeup was tacky, etc. But no one ever told me or really helped me at the time, they just made me feel like crap because of it. My mom would sit on the couch and cry all day, saying that I've stolen her son away. My dad would leave snacks lying around to fatten me back up, and my brother and sister basically ignored me completely. After a year of that, I said to hell with it all, went on Welfare and moved in with a married couple in the city, far away from my parents. We never really spoke for the next two and a half years. I spent time developing new relationships and working on my self-image and worth. I eventually got a job at 7-Eleven, and started to have some money. One day, I remembered about the hormones I could order from over seas, so I did, and I waited. In the meantime, I got an even better job in a Library at a college for computer help. Also, for some inane reason, I went back to Dr Miles to demand that I get some real help, and that he put me on hormones. He said Okay.

I received the hormones from over seas on the first Monday of January.

Now, these hormones were different than most you'd find around here. They were birth control pills, but had 2mg of estradiol valerate instead of the normal amount of ethynil estradiol. Also, they had 10mg of medroxyprogesterone (Provera) in ten of the twenty-one packaged. So I went on 6mg/day and roughly 15mg of provera a day (10 then 20 then 10 then 20, etc). In three weeks I had tiny boobs that were already getting hard to hide. Winter was still here, so a heavy sweater could pretty much hide everything for a while, but the greatest change was in my mind. The cloud had vanished, the war was over. In the span of a month I had laughed and cried, and released all that was bottled up for all these years. I felt amazing, simply amazing. I was a woman, in one fell swoop everything felt right. I spent a few nights crying myself to sleep, and thinking about my whole life, and all there is a head of me, and for some odd reason, all the obstacles didn't seem important anymore. It was like I could see the coastline now, even over all the mountains. All my male vices and walls melted away like an ice cream cone on a hot summers day.

But it wasn't going to be that easy. On Feb 14th, Valentines day, I told everyone of my decision, and got some very negative remarks, including from my family. My brother phoned my dad in tears, begging him to talk me out of this. Oddly though, my dad, being intuitive as he was, knew, and told me he loved me and would support me. My mom phoned later and said the same thing.

My friends stopped talking to me, except for Courtenay and a couple of others. Trevor went so far as to say that I'm just like every other girl now, and I'm not interesting anymore. That wasn't the hard part. The married couple also broke up, with the husband blaming me for it all, and of course, everyone going their separate ways. So I had to move back home. Everyone liked the new me a lot. "He" had died, and I was now more like I used to be a long time ago. But in reality he had not died, and was just waiting...

By the end of March, Dr Miles had still not come around for me. The doctor he gets to prescribe for him has a six month waiting list now, and the local doctor I found wouldn't touch me with a ten foot pole. So in a fell swoop I was without any medication, not thinking in advance, and believing the rantings of a lunatic. I crashed really hard. He came back with such intensity I could never have foreseen. All the walls and coping mechanisms I had had were gone, so I had no control anymore. The rage was too much. Combined with the sense of loss and depression, I was doomed. I tried some more with Dr Miles and other avenues, but there was nothing. The company, the only company that could ship to Canada, was backordered by a "few months", so that had dried up as well. I had nothing, no recourse. I was now basically insane... there were no rational thoughts running through my head, just a million uncontrollable emotions. I spent day after day shaking and crying on the living room couch, stuck.

So I made plans. Plans to never have this happen again. And I found this

Gary fellow, and I met him in a small hotel room in Fort Qu'Apelle to have him give me an orchidectomy. Now I wasn't stupid. He had given me every indication he was competent. After half an hour of lying there without anesthesia to numb the pain, sitting in a shallow of my own blood he was done, cleaned up and left. I waited for my mom to come back and then we talked for a while. She and I cried a little but when I rolled over something broke and I started to hemorrhage. I grabbed a towel and held it down there and rand for the bathroom. In seconds the large white bathroom towel had turned dark red. I was going into shock fast, and my mom and I just froze in time not knowing what to do. And if anything else could have gone wrong, the power went out right there. Under the dim glow of the flashlight I asked my mom to call the ambulance, I was dying.

She left. I could feel, sitting there on the toilet, my consciousness ebbing, so I took to the floor and elevated my feet against the wall.

Considering what was happening, I was remarkably calm. I wasn't cold or scared, but I knew at one moment, I had a choice. I don't know who asked me, but I knew I had the choice. Would I live or die. To come to that level of realization was profound, but I would contemplate that much later. For now all I could think of was that I had done so much to my mom, dragging her out here, that I couldn't let her down. I could not hurt her so much by taking away something she loves so much. So I lay there for a short eternity until the paramedics came. It would be a long night to remember. And I spent the next three days in the ICU, under the surveillance of a resident psychiatrist, who asked me why I did this. I had a lot of emotional breakdowns over the next couple of days, but by day three, I could already tell I had made it, and that he was gone forever.

From there everything turned around. I managed to scrape up a few thousand and got facial work done. Found Dr Warneke up in Edmonton who was far more supportive to transsexuals, and has really helped me since. And saw Dr Corenblum, a local endocrinologist for my hormones. And to top it all off, I also managed to get a date for my SRS that was reasonably soon. Since then, I've not looked back. Sometimes, when my hormones are low, and I'm in the darkest of moods I can still see him lurking in the shadows of my subconscious. And every month he's smaller and smaller. But I have never felt like I did that January ago. Somewhere on the journey I lost that blind courage, and solid sense of self and the powerful feminine emotion. Sometimes I believe that it's simply the dose of the hormones, that I'm taking too little, but I suspect that it's something else. Something I will never have again. Like childhood, I suppose.

So here I am, on a Sunday morning. A few months away from being complete. Spending the meantime at school, as my history is gone forever. And learning to love myself again. The wound isn't fully healed yet...

Renee

www.kindredspiritlakeside.homestead.com

dalelynnsims@hotmail.com