Babies first appointment

After months of planning and thinking I finally had my first doctors appointment this week, I've had a few questions about what happened so instead of telling people individually I've decided to put it down here.

My appointment was on Tuesday (Feb 2nd) at 8:40am. The first hurdle I had to get over was finding a way to leave the house early in the morning without too many questions from family. I don't work on Tuesday's so I couldn't exactly pretend I was off. I do however have the uncanny ability to bullshit my way out of any situation. The night before I accidentally discovered I needed a pile of supplies for my work from town and that I wanted to go in early so I'd have the full day. This worked with minimal fuss and well, as much as I find my ability to dodge questions quite amazing it isn't really how things should be. I should be open and say what I'm doing, but for the time being let's just continue to evade a little longer.

Now here's a little fact about me. I've not been to the doctors in around a decade, I just don't visit for any reason. I could be falling apart and have 3 minutes to live and I'd still be afraid to make an appointment....mostly because the NHS wait times are longer than 3 minutes, but mostly I hate the thought that people don't believe me when I say something (Judging by my question evading superpower this makes things kind of weird). So it was a big thing going to talk about this to my GP, I felt like I had to in some way, even at this early stage convince them that I needed to transition.

The appointment itself went as expected, I was told by my friends that in a lot of cases GP's will know the basic terminology but are in no way remotely able to find the right path at that first appointment and this was the case with me. I'd gone through it in my head thousands of times in the days leading up, what I wanted to say and how I was going to say it. I didn't want to give my GP any chance to sway me or suggest alternative paths, I wanted to get referred and that's what I was going to do.

Well the best laid plans and all that, I kind of totally forgot what I wanted to say as soon as I sat down. Starting with a joke about "this ain't the kind of thing you hear at half 8 in the morning" perhaps wasn't the greatest start but after fortunately my GP put my at ease. She is actually super cool and was really open to what I was saying.

So what did I say? I told her (as best as I could) that I'd felt like this for years and I wanted to get referred to the GIC. That it was getting increasingly difficult to present as male and I wanted to get the ball rolling before I reached my 30's and settled down more. I was warned by a few trans folks not to go to deep into terms and keep it really simple. This worked really well as she wasn't totally up on different terms and the like. She asked questions about my sexual orientation and some physical things but other than that it was focused on getting me the support I needed. She asked if I wanted to see any physical changes and that if I needed to was I going to change my name etc. Now I'm sure we all have different experiences with GP's and I bet there's someone ready in the comments to talk about if she said the right or wrong things but all that matters is that she listened. For the first time I could speak to someone outside my friends or family about what I wanted and I feel that I was treated with respect.

She did ask if I had told any of my friends and how I was going to go about it. We chatted for a while about how I was going to do that and she came up with some suggestions which was super nice of her. Despite her lack of understanding about what to do in this situation she was at least open to listening to me. However because of the newness of this situation she wasn't totally able to help at this first meeting, I was told that I'd get a call in about 2 weeks to come back in once she read up on the process.

Now my current situation

Just 2 days later I've been given a second appointment for the 15th of Feb ! From the brief chat we had on the phone we are going to at this meeting get my application off for referral and to speak with someone who may have more experience with this sort of stuff. What I found kind of interesting was the apology she gave for using my current name after I mentioned in the previous meeting I was going to (eventually) change it. We may complain about our GP's but there's still so many who care, even if they don't have the answers straight away.

So where am I now with my transition? I've not really changed much since my last blog, I still feel like transitioning is right for me and that it was probably always an inevitable thing. But (and although I use the term a lot) I'm finding it super difficult to say "Look I'm trans". This may sound super odd to some of my readers I'm sure but I've always been able to hide behind my masculinity, even if that was sometimes a source of pain. The thought that I may actually be just a trans woman, is a scary and exciting thing to me. But aaaahhh shuuutttt it Charlotte that's going to be another blog next week :P.