Today I decided to buy a new medical textbook. A big thick one with all of medicine in, nice and large and inaccessible. When you’re a student you prefer the accessible textbooks that summarise it with pictures. When you’re doing Part 1 and 2 people tell you to do lots of questions and not just read text books.

But I’ve decided it’s time I read a textbook cover to cover. I a big one that covers most of my workload at the moment.

My current ‘big textbook’ is Kumar and Clark from 1999, out of date, fallen apart and smell of cat wee. I remember buying it because it was £30 which was a whole weeks money – once I’d paid my rent and bills I had £30 left for anything else at Uni. Most of it went on booze and about £5 went on food!

Now of course I have been using other sources besides an out of date text book. In fact I haven’t opened it for about a year – mainly the smell of cat wee to be honest.

So I took the train to the big city to the academic waterstones to buy a new textbook. There was a choice between the Mereck Manual, Davidsons, Kumar and Clark and Harrissons. I’d also been considering the Oxford Text book, which at £150 for the paperback edition is the most expensive  – but they didn’t have that one.

In the end I went for Harrissions’ it’s a new edition and it’s very good – it comes with a DVD as well, and it’s very detailed but also accessible.

When I was in Waterstones I noticed a poster for an ‘LGBT Book Group’. It’s far to far away for me to consider attending but if I did live in the city I wonder if I would go?

And to be honest I don’t think I would. I don’t think I’m Queer any more, I’m getting straighter. I’m more uncomfortable talking about being trans than I used to be. My housemate wanted to ask me about something related to it, and I just said ‘I don’t like to talk about it’. Around a year ago I was happy to answer that sort of question. Now I regard it as a shameful secret.

Since I’ve moved to the new town I’ve never been to a gay club or bar, I just socialise straight now.  I would have no interest in getting into that scene any more. I don’t feel I’ve got anything more in common with gay people any more. Other than that I used to be one of them. I pass, I don’t get discriminated against.

I also wouldn’t really want to go to a transsexual support group or get to know other transsexuals. Why would I want to talk about trans things? That was a painful mess that I want to forget about.

Mind you I’ve always been crap at transsexual dos. I transitioned alone, before the Internet, and never met other transsexuals. I’ve only ever been to two, one where we didn’t mention trans issues at all which was ok, but a bit pointless, and one where everyone went on about how awful life was and how they were victims. I wanted to  say ‘hey my life’s quite good and if you got off your arse and got a job you could afford to go private and stop whinging about how  long the waiting list is’. 

The thing is we live in a county where it is illegal to discriminate against transsexuals, where most big companies have a equal oppertunities policy that includes transsexuals. Most people, if they have a decent credit history and are in work can get a loan to pay for surgery – it costs about the same as a car.

Anyway I’m now reading Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine from cover to cover. Well I’ve started anyway. I’m currently revising sensitivity and specficity of clinical tests.