Hello everyone,
I searched and searched the web for a site which has an active post-op and pre-surgery site and this was the winning website.
My name is Jasmine. I'm 36 years old and will turning 37 in a couple of days. I'm a graduate student and I currently do not work although I do have a job. I work on assignments and tell them when I want to work and which jobs I like to work on, project work. It doesn't pay much, but, it's a good job for college students. I'm not working now because I lost my car. My job requires that you have one unless you wait until they get projects on bus routes. It all works out ok.
I will be having vaginoplasty in July 2009. I'm excited about this. I do not like to call it SRS or GRS or any of the other terms because I consider it to be vaginoplasty more so than me changing my gender, genitals or sex. I'm intersexed diagnosed with pais (partial androgen insensitivity syndrome). I'm a grade 1 which is the lowest level and what that means is that my body was sensitive enough to masculinize my genitalia during development, but, as I became older, my body became less sensitive to androgens. So, I have very little body hair all over my body and my secondary sex characteristics are more female than male. I do have some internal organs which are not present or so small that they cannot be detected on a CT scan.
Anyways, I've had a bilateral orchidectomy and it's been at least 7 years. I've been on hormones on and off for about 10 years, never consistant. My HRT consist of mainly Estradiol every other day. I suffer from headache if I take them everyday and this has been the case since I began HRT. I could never really take higher dosage. I did take spirinolactone for about 3 months, but my doctor told me that he didn't see the need for me to take it. That was before I was diagnosed with partial AIS.
As an intersexed person, I was forced to socialize as a boy. It was very difficult to be forced to grow up a gender that mentally and physically, I didn't fit into. Yeah, I had boy genitalia. But I also looked like a girl. I was often mistaken for girl throughout my childhood. Once puberty hit, it became worse than my early childhood because now I wasn't developing like all the other boys. They were growing their facial hair, their vocies deepened, their bodies developed much different than mines. I looked like I was still a little boy. When I went to the doctors they kept telling me that I needed to give it time. I'll develop just like the other boys. By the time I was 18 years old, I had very little body hair at all. I kept saying to my doctors, this isn't normal. But they refused or simply ignored me. "Your ok," they would say.
By the time I was 21 years of age, I couldn't live my life being forced to be boy but looking like a girl. I couldn't take being teased and rejected anymore. I didn't know if I was gay, bisexual or transexual. I just knew I needed to live my life as a woman. That is exactly what I have been doing since then.
Thanks for reading my long intro.
JasmineG
