Where have I been?

To say I have not posted much recently would probably be an severe understatement. I was going along so great with my blog. I was posting on a regular basis, keeping things going, really feeling into it. Then, I went full time, work went super busy, and life just plain got in the way. It was like I no longer had anything significant to say anymore. I was too bust living life to stop and write about it. I also think I began to feel that sitting here writing about what I was doing and what was going through my mind was almost like an exercise in narcissism. I began writing a few posts, and, after rereading, lost interest in them.

They were just too mundane and boring. Boring to me at least. It’s not that I lost interest in writing, it’s just that I lost interest in writing about every little thing that I did. It became clear to me that I no longer cared to write about the details of my transition, my feelings in certain situations, or what the next steps are for me. I just plain lost interest in that.

So, I sit here tonight trying to figure out where I am going with this. Is this a worthwhile endeavor for me? I feel that it is, but what is it I want to say here. I have always felt that my most satisfying posts were those that focused on issues. My all time favorite being the post I wrote about medical benefits for trans people. That was a post and a topic that are still near and dear to my heart.

This was brought home even more by the fact that I have three friends who just underwent GRS, and used three different methods to finance their surgeries. One cashed out retirement funds, another took equity out of her home, and a third will be covered by insurance. What these three stories show is that we are finding any way that we can to pay for transition related expenses. How many of us have maxed out our credit cards for hormones, hair removal, or surgeries. How many still are struggling to figure out how to pay for all of this. The person who is covered by insurance likely would not have been able to get GRS if it were not for coverage recently added by her employer. In fact, she was a scheduled for an orchi when the benefits were announced. She was pretty much resigned to the fact that surgery was just a pipe dream.

So many of us are in that boat. We reach a point in transition where we just cannot afford any more. Where does this leave us? What of the broken dreams of fully aligning our bodies with our minds? The fight needs to continue. We need to continue to expand health coverage for transition related medical expenses. Of course it is a hard sell right now. Not only are we hurting in this economy, but so are many of the employers we work for.

So many times, trans health benefits are carried only by companies that self insure. What exactly does that mean? Well, it means that if an employee takes advantage of let’s say GRS, the surgery is not paid by the insurance company. Rather the employer pays for it through the insurance company. In other words, the insurance company acts merely as a middle man in the transaction, accepting the claims, evaluating them, ensuring they meet the guidelines, and then making payments.

Unfortunately, so many times that benefits are also not paid until after the procedure. What does this mean for us? Well, if we don’t have $20K to pay for surgery, we likely do not have $20K to pay up front and wait for reimbursement from the insurance company. There needs to be better benefits coordination when those benefits do exist. The whole purpose of medical transition benefits is to remove financial barriers to transition. In many instances, these benefits do not remove the barrier, but rather jut changes the barrier.

I would also say that the surgeons need to become more flexible when it comes to insurance coverage. There operate on a cash up front basis, and often are not willing to wait for an insurance company to pay after the surgery has been performed. Essentially, we are forced to pay for the goods before we receive them. And, what choice do we have? There are so few doctors that perform the surgery, so they set the rules. No cash up front, no GRS. In many ways, they help maintain the financial barriers to surgery.

There is a long way to go to fully remove the economic barriers to transition. Medical benefits for transition should be universal, plus there needs to be ENDA in place to help ensure we can keep our jobs so that we can have benefits to help pay for transition related medical expenses. There is a lot of work to be done in both of those areas.

Now, as for my blog, where is it going. I’m not sure right now. It may become more issue focused, exploring the many issues that we all face, with brief glimpses of what is actually going on in my life. I really don’t think it will be the diary/journal it was before. I have move past that in many ways. But, I will forge on, trying to keep this going.

OK, a few quick updates. Work is still going fabulously well. The fact that I am trans is a non-issue, almost never comes up, and nobody treat me any differently. I’m working my butt of in my manager training program so I can get my own branch next month, which is very exciting, and a hell of a lot of work. I am actually managing two branches this month, and doing it well. Oh yeah, speaking of surgery, I am scheduled for my GRS next July in Trinidad. Hoping insurance coverage at my company will be worked out more by then, I cannot exactly put up the money up front and wait for reimbursement, but we shall see. Other than that, I am just enjoying life, though I am really trying to figure out a few things, ad figure out more about who I am. I neglected myself for so long, that I need to get out and finally enjoy being me. It’s time to relax, let down my hair(now that I have hair to let down), and have some fun!

I’ll try and check back in more regularly, but no promises here!

Pondering each step

I’m coming up on a milestone of sorts, tomorrow will be four weeks since I started on full HRT. It’s been an interesting four weeks, filled with excitement, emotional ups and downs, and the beginnings of changes. I have to admit, I went into HRT hoping for the best, but not really having any set expectations. Getting accurate data on the effects of HRT is pretty much impossible. There are many sites that will talk about the common regimens, the possible effects, the possible side effects, and the fact that results will vary. No two sites or papers seem to give the same perspective on HRT, and, I guess, I can’t blame them for this ambiguity.

    The fact of the matter is, HRT is one of the biggest unknowns in the transition process. He know that the hormones will do something to our body, but we don’t know what or to what extent. In my case, I was expecting emotional changes for a few months and then to start noticing physical changes in 3 months or so. My nipples started swelling and hurting after two weeks, and palpable breast buds were present after three weeks. This was a bit surprising to me for a couple of reasons. The first reason being that my doctor starts patients off at a lower dose of estrogen, and the send being that almost everything I read says that these changes start between 3-6 months. 

   Now, I must be honest, I am not at all disappointed in these rapid changes, I am rather trilled by the fact that my body is responding so quickly to the HRT. I am pleased that my body hair does not grow back to quickly when I shave it. I did no have a lot of chest hair, but what I had seemed to be visible again in less than 24 hours. It was dark in spots, and it grew quickly. I also never felt that I could get a close shave when I removed it. There were always bumps and stubble. Now I shave it, and my chest actually feels smooth, and it was four days or so before I could really notice the re-growth. 

   These little advances, these victories, really help to bolster my confidence and make me feel like I am making progress. It helps me see that full time is something achievable, and possibly something that will happen sooner than I initially planned. Not that I set hard a fast dates. You could say that my transition schedule is flexible. I thought I would be starting HRT at the end of July, but that happened about three or four weeks sooner. Right now, my plan is to go full time in July of next year, but I think it will happen sooner. My therapist even dropped the suggestion that I probably will not wait that long. I think that she sees my confidence and the fact that I am kind of charging comfortably forward into each step of transition.

   The way I like to frame my transition is in terms of how what I am doing feels to me. For so long, things I did in life either did not feel right or I was just completely apathetic about what I was doing. Now each thing I do to move myself towards transition feels right. There are days I look at the transition schedules of others and wonder,”Am I going too fast?” I stop and I think that I am going at the pace that is right for me. We each have out own time line, we cannot judge ourselves or others based on our unique timelines. We have to be comfortable with what we are doing, and sometimes , depending on our family situation, others have to be comfortable and ready for the next step.

  I am fortunate to have a spouse who realizes that I need to transition in order to be comfortable and at peace with myself. She realizes that this is something that is part of my core being, and something that I have carried with my for as long as I can remember. For her, it is easier because of our personal situation. We were headed towards divorce. My repression of my gender identity got in the way of our love, and drove us apart. In the end, my coming out saved our friendship and our joint commitment to our children, but the love that was there was lost in many ways. The love that comes with a deep bond of friendship is still there, and it is that friendship that gives her the strength to support and encourage me. 

  Each step in this journey takes me closer towards living my life in a way that is more genuine, and in a manner that will not only bring happiness to my life, but allow me to give to those who are important to me, bringing more joy into their lives.