I never openly stated anything about my feelings as the slightest hints of that early on lead to very negative reactions making it clear I had to toe the line or lose access to any and all parts of transition.
Unfortunately, I was in an area where there weren't other options. When I moved to the region in 2008 there were two known gender therapists, both of whom used the same endo, and two known endos who would prescribe. I decided against trying the other gender therapist when a friend had even worse experiences - she was transitioned at work for more than a year and in therapy for far longer with that one before she was able to get her HRT letter (the prescribing endos in the area then strictly required the HRT letter - they wanted RLE in addition, but they would not prescribe even if one had been FT for years without the letter.)
I saw both endos in the course of my transition and had serious problems with each. The first tried to convince me that the lack of physical results from an extremely low dose of Estradiol (less than the minimum of the guideline suggests) and no anti-androgen proved that I was one of the people for whom HRT would never be effective. The second was constantly worried that I'd have a DVT and looked for results that supported her bias (she dismissed two lab results as "defective" in favor of the one that fit her view that the dose was too high for me, seriously reduced my dose, and then, when the subsequent labs showed that my levels were extremely low, became critical of me, asserting that I wasn't taking the doses before the labs, etc.)
I began seeing a Nurse Practitioner at Planned Parenthood after that (and the above represents nearly 4 years of navigating transition.) She did Informed Consent and I was able to get on reasonable doses at long last. The only negative experience I had with her was after SRS when she required that my E dose be reduced by 25-50% in addition to ending Spiro, and refused to consider ever adjusting it higher than that. After months of feeling miserable I made the 800 mile round trip to a provider in another state who was willing to work with me on dose and, when they ran my labs to determine where I was already, found that my serum Estradiol was lower than the lab was capable of detecting (less than 11.8 pg/mL.)
After SRS I learned of another provider, a GP, in my area who would prescribe HRT. I also learned that my gender therapist had referred people to him for years. However, when I had trouble with the endo to whom she referred me and I requested that she refer me to someone else she directly refused, stating that only that endo was capable of supervising HRT. The way I got to the other endo was to use my GP to get a referral and not let my therapist know that I had changed doctors (that was also the only lie I directly told for my surgery letter - if she knew that my HRT was not being prescribed by the first endo she would have refused to write my letter.) There were a few other options I learned about in the region after I had SRS - suddenly, a lot of people I'd known for years in the local trans community were saying "why didn't you just go to X" but they had not responded when I directly asked for other providers before I had SRS.
At the point that I was asking for letters and scheduling with Dr. Brassard I had so deeply and for so long buried those doubts in my psyche that I no longer realized I had them. I really don't feel there is any blame that Dr. Brassard does or should shoulder - by the time I saw him I was so shell-shocked from dealing with a horrible system that there wasn't anything he could have done to make me trust him with discussing it, and there certainly wasn't anything about the situation where I lived that he was capable of changing.
I have not talked to any of them since SRS. I truly don't believe it would be productive; I don't believe they'd be willing to change their bias that SRS is a mandatory part of transition and all it would accomplish is making transition even more difficult for others in my area.
