Hi everyone,
Just thought I would introduce myself. I have been a long time lurker around here but I have finally got around to joining up. My name is Grace and I am a *just* 30 year old trans woman from Tasmania, Australia. I started my transition a bit over a year ago – I'm not sure where I would place the starting point but that was when I came out and started making my moves. I guess my story of a lifelong sense that I was female is pretty familiar to a lot of people – I am always interested in hearing other people's experiences of the same thing as although the main ideas are usually similar– how we deal with them can be unique and fascinating.
Either way, my first real move on my transition was a hair transplant surgery which I had done with Dr Hasson in Vancouver. It wasn't cheap and I was very fortunate that I received a large payout (redundancy) last year when I lost my job (not transition related) as a land surveyor. The surgery was very important for me as I had suffered considerable loss due to MPB and I am happy to say that at almost 11 months post-op the 6300 grafts I had seem to be all growing well with little to no sign of the prior thinning. As part of that op – I had a lower, more feminine hairline created which I am very happy with.
I didn't start HRT until February this year owing to the various hoops I had to jump through and the waiting times for the gender clinic and specialists such as endocrinologist and psychiatrist etc. everything on that front seems to be going ok, although I did have to change from Spiro to Cyproterone at 6 months as Spiro failed to lower my testosterone at all despite increasing the dosage. I have been living full time around 7 months.
Since I lost my job last year due to cutbacks, I have been back at university studying history, classical lit and journalism but I recently started doing some contract work back with my old company, so I think I might focus on that from now on as I am looking forward to the next stage of my transition - surgery. I have spent a bit of time lately researching GRS and ideally I would like to do it in Australia, although there is pretty much only one real option in that regards and I am interested on hearing feedback on people's experiences here. That said, I am not completely against going overseas as I was willing to travel to the best when I got my hair done – From what I have gathered there are ways and means of getting the surgery at a somewhat reduced price here if you play the game right between medicare and your private health fund.
Anyway, apologies for the rambling first post! I look forward to contributing on here in any way I can.
Grace xx
