So yeah, that was uh.. nerve wracking.
I sat down and said to her "I'd like a referral to the gender identity clinic" and she stared at me like i'd sprouted a second head all "huh?"
and so I had to explain "I think I might be trans, I would like a referral to the GIC to discuss that please"
She said she'd never had to do that before, i'm her first trans patient but she took it fairly well? I think? mostly?
she was confused and I was kinda flustered and awkward and just kept babbling.
Anyway she said she'd make the referral and then I asked about the Mirena coil to keep my pms at bay till I get that gic appointment and she got a bit odd at me saying that me wanting female hormones was contradictory and I was like "no no it's to help with the pms which makes me dysphoric!" but I don't think she really could wrap her head around the whole "yes I want male hormones but for now please give me progesterone so I don't have to handle pms please" thing.
Also because I flat out told her it wasn't for contraception and she KNOWS this as my husband has had the "snip" (vasectomy) which is on my notes she said she couldn't do it. She usually runs the family planning clinic but as it's not "family planning" she didn't want to do it.
She also wasn't totally comfortable about doing it knowing as she does how badly I take internal exams anyway. She's DONE internals on me, she KNOWS I scream and cry and struggle.
I mean they're horrific.
So she suggested I go to the external family planning clinics, claim it's for contraception but also take advantage of their better facilities having access to things like numbing gels and such.
Which isn't a bad idea only... it put another road block in the way and gave me time to think about the whole thing which is a terrible idea.
As I was searching for a clinic nearby that would do the procedure I ended up on the NHS page about IUS/Mirena coils and had a bit of a panic attack and nearly burst into tears in the bathroom in costa.
Ahh damn. How very unmasculine of me.
Still, the terror I feel regarding this procedure has me wondering if maybe it's a bad idea and there's a less invasive, less tortuorous alternative because ultimately, subjecting myself to something that won't just cause me massive pain but leave me feeling violated and horrible for ages afterwards really isn't ideal.
the only reason I wanted this dang thing done is because when we had previously discussed my options for stopping my cycles and easing my pms my gp herself suggested the IUS or the implant but then had a problem with the implant supplier changing and the ones she was getting being iffy and causing a lot of side effects.
I can't take oral contraceptives, estrogen makes me tachicardic and causes my blood pressure to spike (I actually asked about this again and my doctor nodded and said "yes it makes you tachy, you can't have it" so yeah. I'm BANNED from estrogen!)
Oral progesterone often makes me nauseated and unfortunately if I stop taking it I bleed and bleed and bleed so heavily that last time I was on the stuff my flatmates forced me to go to hospital because apparently I turned "a funny grey colour". So yeaaaaah...
that's concerning.
so a lower dose is generally speaking going to be better for me and implant and mirena are a much lower dose than the standard oral dosage.
But the Mirena involves a procedure that makes me want to throw up, scream and punch anyone who comes near me to do it in the face. The more I think about it the less certain I am I can actually go through with it, or that my mental health can really take it anyway. I don't think it's worth it.
so.. maybe the implant?
Because unlike Depo Provera the implant can be taken OUT immediately if I get bad side effects, rather than having to wait for it to wear off.
But it's a larger dose than the mirena so potentially more of a negative reaction to the hormonal component which mybody seems hyper extra super sensitive to.
I swear i'm actually freaking allergic to feminine hormones, it's ridiculous how badly I react to them.
Anyway, I didn't manage to figure out a clinic yet. I got myself worked up instead.
Then I got a phonecall at about 4:30 from my doctor saying she'd been doing admin and the form for the GIC was really long and could I come in and help fill it out.
it was a rather painful process because it involved a few questions I didn't much want to discuss with my gp (like WHY I wanted the referral in depth, which I honestly wasn't expecting to have to do) and my doctor is the slowest bloody typist on the planet. Seriously I wanted to shove her aside and write the dang thing myself!
She barely wrote anything I said because she could only type like one word for every two sentences. *sigh*
I just hope the "reason for referral" section is good enough for the GIC to accept.
And then I had to come out a second time to the doctor because she asked about my sexuality. Lol.
So I have come out twice today to one person.
One nice thing though was that in the section that said "patient mental health and appearance" which is basically the section where the doctor says if you're a wreck or not, she'd written "very well dressed" and I was all "Heck yeah!"
My Marks and Spencer's dress shirt I got on sale because i'm totally too cheap to pay £35 for a freaking shirt is NICE, thanks for noticing.
Also i've lost some weight since I was weighed last year! WHOOO! I'm down from 76kg to 73kg. And okay okay, a lot of that is the whole nearly dying of sepsis in August thing but still! (though this does rather prove it IS fluid and not fat becuase the reason I lost so much is due to them pumping 5 litres of water into my veins to get my blood pressure back up to a safe level and save my life. My body then worked extra hard to get all that water OUT and seems to have also shed a little more while it was at it. )
buuut my blood pressure is back up. *sigh* because estrogen is a jerk and I hate it and it hates me and I swear it's actually trying to freaking kill me.
122/101 is NOT a good blood pressure to have in your early 30s so it's likely i'll need to go back onto my beta blockers. I need to monitor it from home for the next two weeks and report back.
Usually I have the opposite of white coat hypertension, being in a doctor's office makes me feel safer so my blood pressure drops but to be fair, I was filling out a GIC form so i'm HOPING it was just stress from that.
I was taken off the beta blockers last august because the hospital didn't believe me that I had hypertension. Though I suppose from their perspective, I had a blood pressure of 77/40 when I came into the hospital so... yeaaaah. Also i'm in my 30s and am not in any of the risk groups, I shouldn't HAVE hypertension.
It had recovered to "normal range" by the time I was discharged but as i've healed and recovered I think it's started to creep up again.
Which sucks.
So i gotta keep a blood pressure diary. *sigh* Great.
But yeah... the referral should have gone off to the GIC today so.. now I guess the 2 year bloody wait gets to start argh.
