FtM Doctor

Being a transsexual isn’t the most important thing in my life. It’s not really important at all to be honest. But word press can see what you’re searching for when you reach this page, and a lot of people do come here when they’re looking for information about Transsexuals. I felt I should post my story in a bit more detail, so you can find it without having to read a whole load of stuff about Medicine. 

I think I decided I should have been a boy when I was about 7 or 8. I read the Famous Five books and realised that I wanted to be George. When my Mum told me that you could have an operation to change sex I told her I was going to have one. No one minded at Primary School. 

At secondary school things were a lot more complicated, people thought it was funny that I tried to be a boy, they wouldn’t  let me play proper sports and tried to get my to play pathetic girly games like Netball. I decided to try and be a girl because I would be a freak if I was a transsexual. I did try. I really did. I tried to do all the stupid make up and silly clothes, I tried to say I found boys attractive, I tried to pretend I liked Take That. I remember looking at myself in a mirror one day and saying ‘Hey you’re passing that well, no one would know you weren’t a girl’. 

When I was 16 I realised that I couldn’t ever have a relationship with a boy because the thought of touching a penis made me vomit. So I was a lesbian for a while. That was ok. But didn’t seem right to be honest. When I was 17 I went to a doctor and asked for a sex change. He referred me to a psychiatrist. He was nice and said he would refer me to a Specialist but as I was about to go to University and the waiting list for the psychiatrist was 18 months there wasn’t much point. 

When I went to University I didn’t want to change I  knew I’d be thought of as weird and might ruin my career. So tried not to. I tried really hard not to want to change sex. I got a girlfriend. I asked the counsellor at the university to talk me out of it. But she wouldn’t, she said she wasn’t qualified. I asked my GP and he found someone to refer me to. But she said that the NHS wouldn’t fund the surgery – but offered me some counselling. 

She counselled me for a bit. We mainly talked about how on earth to go about doing it. I then saw an issue of Marie Claire with the headline ‘I has a bilateral mastectomy to become a man’. I brought it and found that he had seen Russell Reid. I asked for a referral to him. And he sorted me out, so that was good. 

The Medical School were quite clear that they didn’t want a partially transitioned transsexual around patients. They said I could come back if I could present an acceptable appearance to patients and if a psychiatrist said I was sane. So I took a year out and worked in a call centre – a great job when your voice is breaking and took out a loan to pay for surgery. In that year I had a mastectomy and took some hormones. 

After a year they said I was sane enough, and male enough to come back, and I did and it was fine. I had a hysterectomy right after the end of fifth year. And then I just got on with life. I never felt discriminated against. Whilst I worked in the city I qualified in I was aware it was gossip, but people moved on and life moved on, and I moved away, and now no one knows. Yes the people I was at medical school with know, but in my little word people don’t really know at the moment.