I find it surprising that T would not be possible for you, but not surprising a doctor says so. It seems like they think cis and trans people are made of different fiber and somehow T is okay for a cis male but not for a trans male, all evidence to the contrary!
But maybe in a few years you will find a doctor will to treat you, maybe in less than ten years. I'm hopeful.
In the meantime, I coped by promising myself that I would get the top surgery eventually, just not now, and by focusing on ways to accept my body so that dysphoria wasn't eating me up constantly. Those efforts weren't totally successful but they did effectively lower my day to day dysphoria. I was also out to those closest to me and that helped. Our society dismisses pre-everything trans people but hopefully your real friends and any partner you might have won't. (And if they won't accept you as you, they shouldn't be taking up that much space in your life.)
I stayed in touch with the gay community and kept on top of legal developments. The activists are trying to craft laws so they help trans people at any stage of transition, which is important for people who can't transition right now. Online is another place for support but I avoided it because I didn't want to read lots of "how to pass" tips that I figured wouldn't work for me since I'd already tried and failed. In person queer spaces are good especially ones with lots of genderqueer folk because not-passing is more the norm there and asking pronouns up front is just considered good manners.
Find something that makes you passionate and pursue that. It takes your mind off of worrying about your body. I was into stuff initially that was all mental so my body "didn't matter" but eventually I found out I could do gendered stuff while passing "as a woman" so even though I felt like a fake, I am the person who did those things, I got out safely. Go undercover. Be Tiresias. It's okay to mimic women's styles of navigating the world if that's what you have to do to be effective. (Reading MTF diaries it seems like many MTFs try to be macho man and some even succeed, so it's not weird to do this.) I actually imitated Barack Obama a lot. Now, he's a dude, but his political persona is not super alpha male all the time*. It's more of a blended political style. He's not out there hot-dogging, he likes to "lead from behind". This notion made some of the more insecure-about-their-masculinity personalities in the media (including religious leaders) have a mental meltdown. Obama is one of the most clever and effective political operators this nation has ever seen. Clearly he must be onto something.
*on a more personal note, Obama is more typically masculine. He likes to challenge other guys to basketball one-on-one and enjoys bro-y trash talk. He also likes to taunt people and goad them into responding, and he also pulls out "Dad mode" when he's really angry. So he is a guy's guy but he gets more androgynous when he's being a politician--because he must have figured out that it works!
I think I did okay because I went into a field I loved, I had hobbies and friends in those hobbies, I had a supportive partner who knew about my gender, and I made sure that I was doing what I wanted to do in my life without being held back by gender, whether it was job, clothing, or personal style of interacting. And I still felt down about being misgendered--still do, to this day. But I try to forgive people. Others were not so forgiving to me when I was in retail and I've never forgotten it. So I aim not to bite people's heads off for innocently misgendering me.
