*huggles* Welcome Bayarea. There are indeed some scary stories related to people who have transitioned either or way, however what I try to keep in mind is that doing anything carries some inherit risk and that it's possible to just get murdered randomly on the street, so while you do everything you can to be safe, you just keep in mind that if you don't do something becasue of things that have happened to other people that you'd never do anything. Also, I keep in mind that a majority of people who transition, while they may not have a perfect ride, don't become prostitutes and end up dead.
But it is a real worry that you may not have as many options or be taken as serious professionally, and that was one reason why I didn't choose to transition until recently (Thinking that no one would take me seriously or that I could look anything half way close to how I always wished). It's not so much that I became successful, but that I realized that I'd rather be happy as a girl as oppose to "successful" and still confused about myself. Not that I gave up being successful, but that successful to me is also being happy with my life, and that I couldn't really be happy if I didn't.
