Calling all Doctors

 Seemingly this week, all my doctors have ganged up on me. 

On a tour of an Underground 
Railway house. 

Monday I actually had to go to an in person appointment with the person who is called my primary provider in the Veterans Administration. Similar to a civilian's family doctor. Our visit was a fun filled half hour as she went over my blood work, examined me and set up two future feminine related exams. The first is my yearly mammogram which I don't particularly like but I consider a rite of passage. The second turned out to be a bone density scan. Bless her heart, my primary said all women my age should have one. Ironically both have been scheduled within days of each other in a couple of weeks. 

Tuesday was my video visit with my therapist. This session seemed to go a little better overall but I can't truthfully say I went into any very deep issues. I'm working on bringing more up to her but it is difficult for a person like me. 

Also yesterday was one non doctor related meeting, a Dayton Ohio Elderly Rainbow Alliance Board Meeting. It was very short as there was little  to go over. However coming up in September there is a presentation coming up down here in Cincinnati which I am going to volunteer to help with. 

Today is my video appointment with my new hematologist. It should be interesting to see her ideas on my iron levels. I have a tendency to run higher levels of iron which can hurt me. If the levels are too high, I have to have a phlebotomy (blood draw) to bring it down. The results of my latest labs were within range so I expect the appointment to go well.

Also today, sometime we have to squeeze in an appointment to the grocery store. 

All of this leads me back to the idea I had when I first came out as a transgender woman. How would life be once I couldn't go back to hiding in a man's world. Definitely material for another blog post. 
 

What Have we Learned?

 As I made the final gender transition from male to female, hormone replacement therapy was one of the keys to living more comfortably as a transgender woman. I have mentioned many times the wondrous effects as my skin softened, my hair grew on my head (and stopped growing on my body) and my breasts grew.

None of that came even close to the largest changes I was destined to experience on the other side of the gender frontier as a transgender woman. 

As I learned to perfect my outward feminine appearance, my life began to change. Perhaps the first example I encountered was when my car broke down and I had to call a tow truck as well as deal with a well meaning sheriff. I found out very quickly I didn't really know the best route home to my own house. Later that month was the first time I was actively shunned from a group of guys mansplaining to each other guy stuff. I knew then my life was changing forever and yet it felt natural. I should have been dealing with it for years.

I'm on the Bottom Left. My first Girl's Night Out.

All along, before she passed away, my wife was telling me I didn't really know what being a woman was all about. Until I seriously went down the path to learn, I found she was right.   

What else did I learn? Mainly how important communication is (or isn't) is between the two main binary genders. I also learned how important it was to learn to understand the unspoken communication between women and of course how much effort should be put into blending. In other words, walking the walk and talking the talk. 

I don't know if I couldn't have accomplished this gender trip on my own. I was able to form close friendships with several cis-woman. Even though they didn't outwardly teach me anything, I was observing and learning how they dealt with life.

Jumping genders is not for the faint of heart. It is a mostly error of trial and error until you get it right. Plus, I am not so sure I ever got it right. 

As an old transgender girlfriend told me years ago, I didn't pass as a woman easily. I passed out of sheer effort.

Nearly daily I learn I still do.

Conquering Dysphoria

 As I was previously writing about, my post Army years became an alcoholic blur along with a mad dash to attempt to out run my gender issues. As my authentic feminine self continued to push for acceptance, my male self took the usual way out. Act as macho as I could and keep changing jobs and places to live. I was trying desperately to outrun the truth. Along the way, I lived in such diverse places as the metro NYC area all the way to rural Southeastern Ohio along the Ohio River and West Virginia. 

All in all I managed to be successful in my career as a restaurant manager and salvage my marriage with more than a couple close calls as I was not telling the truth concerning where I was supposed to be and what I was supposed to be doing. It all started innocently enough when I started to volunteer to do the family grocery shopping. In fact, one of my best days occurred when a bagger in the grocery store was blatantly flirting with me.  It could have been because of the fashionable mini skirt I was wearing. By fashionable I mean many women during that era wore their mini with oversize sweaters and flats. However, the end result was just to embolden me do do more cross-dressed. 

Time moved on until I got caught by my wife and agreed to seek counseling from one of the only therapists who dealt with transvestites back in those days and she was far away in Columbus, Ohio. This was all before the transgender terminology or lifestyle became prevalent.

When the transgender terminology made it's way to me, it didn't take me long to suspect I indeed was trans. What took me longer was to do anything about it.

In the meantime, I was desperately still hanging on to the idea I could keep my feminine self in the closet. I ended up trying to live part time in both genders and it nearly killed me. After I failed active suicide attempt I shoved my girl self back into the closet for the final time. It wasn't so long after I did it, my wife of 25 years passed away. Which opened the door for me to transition.

Even though this seems like a blur to me and it is impossible to write about all the learning experiences I went through as I decided to cross the gender frontier, it was actually thirty years of my life. I am counting post military until I started hormone replacement therapy. 

HRT was an entire other story. 

One final question, did I finally conquer my gender dysphoria? Probably not. I will probably die with it even though I have been fortunate enough to live fulltime as a transgender woman for nearly a decade now.