It can be absolutely devastating if SRS is not right for you. All I can say is proceed with caution. If it is right for you, it is the greatest moment of your life and the years following will be awesome. I will do my best to describe what it is like to physically go from one sex to another. I have always felt that I was female, but I was not sure to what degree until I let myself experience my feelings freely. It was interesting what happened physiologically as well as physically during the transition. There is a lot more to being a woman than just putting on a dress and some lipstick.
In an earlier chapter, I describe the pink fog. You need to let the pink fog clear or stabilize before you can go through this process. There are a lot of exciting times during the transition process that will increase the thickness of the fog but that will not last. After you have had SRS, you have the rest of your life to live in your new gender. The reality of SRS sinks in the moment you begin dilating three times a day for six months and then twice a day for an entire year. You will be dilating for the rest of your life—you will need to accept that fact going into it.
Transitioning:
The Expectations, the Reality, and the Unexpected
The first thing I had to keep in perspective was that this was a one way street. Once I completed this journey, it was not the end but the beginning of a whole new reality. I had been wearing female clothing for most of my life to some degree or another. However, only when you live full time do you get the total understanding of what it is like. Shaving my legs had been something I chose to do for some time prior to transitioning, but during transition, it changed from something I did to something I had to do.
Surgery, hair removal, hormones, and voice training were all the physical things I had to do, and it was more or less logistics and money to make that part happen. Completing the physical was painful but fairly easy for me. Transition mentally took a lot longer because it time to gain personal acceptance and confident building. The Catch-22 was that before you had some of the irreversible surgery, you needed to make sure you could handle the transition. However, before you have those surgeries, you are not all that passable.
I was incredibly hairy. The only part of my body that showed much skin was the top of my head. I could easily shave twice a day, and there was not much that would hide the five o’clock shadow. Before I would go out, I would shave as close as I could until my face was raw. It was easier to hide razor burn than stubble. My facial hair was dark and was still visible beneath the skin, even with a smooth shave.
The high volume of hair on my body limited my wardrobe. Turtlenecks work great for hiding hair, but during the summer they are not practical. I could shave but the amount of blood I would lose from several hundred nicks eliminated that option. I was not a masochist, so I ruled out waxing. This left Nair. It would take two full bottles to cover my entire body. I used Nair because I could use it on my feet and knuckles without a single nick or cut. For a few short days I would be hair-free, but this was no solution, just a temporary reprieve from being an ape.
There are different ways to remove body hair, ranging from electrolysis to waxing. However, there are only two types that are permanent: electrolysis and Laser. Electrolysis is a very slow and costly procedure. It can take up to 400 hours to completely remove a thick beard, let alone chest, back, and arm hair. Electrolysis uses a thin wire which the technician will insert into a follicle and apply a short burst of electricity, killing the follicle. The laser is not cheap, but it can remove larger areas at a time. The laser can pass through the skin and vaporize a dark hair at its roots, killing the follicle. Each pulse of the laser clears the area the size of a nickel.
It was not much of a choice; I had to go with the laser treatment. There is no treat in laser treatment—it hurts. I was all excited when I went to the laser center. They could do my face and torso for a mere $8,100.00. It was explained to me that at any one time only 20 percent of your hair is in a state where laser would be effective. So I was thinking that makes sense, only five treatments and I would be hair free. Not exactly: it takes about 17-20 treatments for your face, and then it gets most of the hair but not all of it. I needed electrolysis to get the rest.
Laser probably would have gotten more, but because I started taking hormones and testosterone blockers, my body hair got lighter in color and much finer. This makes laser less effective. They used a newer laser towards the end of my treatments and that did better with lighter hairs. Laser works very well for anyone interested in not having to shave their legs anymore.
Laser centers like to ask for the money up front. It was not until I had my first treatment that I realized why. If you wanted to pay as you go, you may decide not to go again after the first treatment. Each pulse of the laser will burn all the hairs in an area about the size of a nickel to a quarter depending on where you are in your treatment. You can hear the hair follicles pop, and you can smell the burning of the hairs. It is like getting a tattoo all over you body, but a tattoo you only get once, while this treatment you get to experience over and over.
You lie on the table with your eyes closed as they begin to burn the hairs away on your face, under your nose and then on the front of you neck and under your chin. You do feel every hair, but the hard part is that you anticipate every pulse. There is a beep as the technician pulls the trigger, and by the time you hear it, you feel it. They cover your skin with a cooling gel, but when you are done, especially the first few times you can see red little specs all over your face where the hair follicle exploded. It is a great test of your resolve. If you can not handle this, then moving forward with transition is probably not right for you. If there is a saving grace, it is that the first time is the hardest and it gets easier after that. Not much, but it does. After about ten treatments, it still hurts, but not nearly as bad as the first couple of times.
It took an entire year before I could go all day as a female without having to have to take my makeup off, shave, and then put it back on, so I did not look like my grandma with those little black hairs under my nose. I wanted to have the bulk of my hair removed prior to taking hormones. I am glad I did because six months after taking hormones, the remaining hair became a fine peach fuss that was very difficult to see. With the exception of the center of my chest where hair was the thickest, I was hair free.
Going from being very hairy to hairless, I got cold. I was surprised how much the hair insulated me. Yes, at this point I had about 9 percent body fat and my metabolism was switching from male to female, but the hair made the biggest difference in my body temperature. I had never been cold before. Not like this: I was cold all the time. I never wore sweaters or long sleeve shirts. I would use just a sheet to keep warm while sleeping in the winter. I was now wearing sweaters and using electric blankets at night. This was unexpected; I did not think being a woman meant that I was going to be cold all the time. Surprise.
It became easier to go out as Stephanie as the hair thinned. Going out as much as possible before coming out was critical. I needed to practice living as a female. Sure, I was always mentally a female, but for years, I had never let my hair down and express myself freely. I had also acquired a lot of male habits that I needed to unlearn. Often it is not big things that give you away but smaller little things like the way you walk or how to handle a conversation with both men and women.
Personal definition is also part of transition. Women express themselves with clothing, and that is why it is so important to us. How I dress, carry myself, and respond define my personal image. I like the professional image. I like nice suits and dresses. The environments where I often work fit this style dress. If you wear heels to the beach and tennis shoes to a formal dinner, you are going to stick out. I am over six-foot tall with auburn hair; it is hard to hide. So I had to be very particular about dress to fit in and not attract attention. I wanted to get to the point where I could go through a full room of people without anyone remembering that I had been there.
I wanted to be forgettable a
nd not memorable. It is kind of a paranoia or a sixth sense you develop. You know when you have been made. I can’t see very well so seeing people’s expressions is possible, but I do have great hearing and can hear most of the whispers. I would sit at a bar, slowly sip my wine, and watch people come and go. At first I would get stares, then I started getting double-takes. Double-takes are when people see you and need a second look because they are not sure. I rarely get that anymore, and most of the time it is because they are interested in me.
It is difficult to be stealth because you have to pay attention to every detail from the top of your head, no matter how high it is, to your shoes. If you dress to fit in and your cloths are appropriate for the environment that you are in, it is easy to be stealth. The trick is act as if you belong there – that is the self confidence that take time to get, people will ignore you. It was probably easier for me to build self-confidence than most because I cant see if people are looking at me. Our subconscious has the ability to pick up on things that do not seem just right. If you lack self-confidence, people will quickly notice it. Luckily, most people are so self-focused that they don’t notice things around them unless it is really noticeable.
It takes time to go from nervously buying pantyhose and worrying about who is watching you do it, to using the dressing rooms in an upscale boutique. It is not easy: you have to repeatedly force yourself out of your comfort zone. Every trip out I would count the number of firsts I had. The first time I went through security or the first time I spilled a drink on a man. I found it much easier to go out with a friend. In my life, I am not always with friends, and I needed to be comfortable going out on my own.
Going out on your own when you are still worried everybody is going to out you is very scary. You feel so vulnerable when you are by yourself. During my transition, I traveled to Las Vegas about once a month and always stayed at the same hotel. The hotel staff got to know me very well. The casino was the best place for me to go out alone, to build my self-confidence. You can’t go anywhere in the casino without being watched, and since I was a good customer, they treated me very well.
The male sex of our species has what I call a scarlet letter of masculinity. It is in a spot where it is almost always visible. No amount of makeup can hide it, and it is something a transgender people have to look at when they see themselves in the mirror: an Adam’s apple. Many people go through life never noticing it, but they are not transgender. I was ecstatic when my Adam’s apple was gone.
Removing my Adam’s apple was an interesting surgery. My doctor did a good job of hiding the scar and told me to tell anyone who asked what the surgery was for, that it was a thyroid cyst. This surgery is also called a trachea shave. The surgeon makes a small incision in your throat and shaves off the hard cartilage that males develop during puberty. It is a more complex surgery than it sounds. The surgeon must be careful not to nick the vocal cords. Keynote addresses are a significant part of my work, and if I ended up with vocal cord damage, my career would be affected significantly.
Trachea shave is a quick surgery and pretty safe. They do keep you overnight because you are put under general anesthesia. I don’t recall much coming out of surgery, but they said I was grinning from ear to ear. It was my first surgery that set my final stages of transition in motion. My friend Linda stayed with me and was there when I woke up. She gave me a little blue elephant that had a shirt on it that said “Hello World I am here.” I thought it was quit fitting.
I had not come out to anyone in my inner circle yet, so I had to keep the surgery and my hospital stay secret. Linda stayed with me as long as she could but had to go back to the hotel. I laid there alone, floating in and out of sleep as the drugs wore off. I kept getting woken up by my heart monitor alarms. I was in very good shape, and as I relaxed and drifted off to sleep, my heart slowed to 47 beats per minute. The monitor alarm goes off when your pulse goes below 50. My pulse dropped, and the alarm would go off; it would wake me up and of course my pulse went above 50 again. The nurse would come to the room, and when she arrived not find anything wrong, reset the monitor, and leave. Well we play this game until about two in the morning, until they figured out what was happening and just removed the monitor.
I was woken the next morning by the shift change and the first round of blood pressure and temperature checks. I lay there alone listening to the hospital activities. I have to be a foot away from a television to see it, so I left it off and just thought of my future. I reached up and touched my throat and felt the bandage. It felt bigger than when I went in, but I knew it was gone. I just had to wait for the swelling to subside. As I rubbed the bandage, I contemplated my future. It was the first time I knew for certain what I was going to do.
My thoughts drifted to what was coming next and what it was going to cost me. I am sure if it was because I was tired, or being alone in the hospital, but the reality of what I had to do hit me hard. One minute you are ecstatic about being on a journey to freedom and then the next you drift to thoughts of losing family and friends. At this point, I had no way of knowing how they would react. I think as humans it is harder to be optimistic than it is pessimistic.
I lay there wondering what I would do if I lost everything and had to start over. Did I have the energy to start over? Did I even want to start over? If I started over, what would I do—I am blind, and how much work is available for a middle-aged, blind, transgender woman? All these thoughts were coupled with the fact that I probably would not have any family to support me then and in the future. I felt like one of those wild animals raised in captivity by humans. They care for you, look after you, feed you, and prepare you for the future outside of captivity. As the animal, you look forward to the day you don’t live behind bars, but there is a price for freedom. Someday your guardians are going to release you into the wild, knowing that the odds of survival are against you, but they release you anyway. Once you are free, you are on your own, and you have to get on with your life or die.
The next months were going to take every once of energy and strength I had. Once I came out, there was no going back. No matter how scared I was, I could not show any fear or hesitation. People would want to look in my eyes when I told them, and if they felt I was unsure, they would be unsure. Go big or go home is a phrase used in our office; maybe it was the drugs, but I decided to go big.
I had not eaten in over a day, the breakfast cart was coming around, and even hospital food smelled good that morning. I had been drinking ice water, but my throat was sore and swollen, making it hard to talk and swallow. Still, I would have given anything for a good cup of coffee. Soon my breakfast was in front of me on the tray. It was not very colorful: anemic eggs and pale oatmeal. The color was a refection of the taste. No salt or butter, just a packet of seasoning. There it was in the corner of my tray: a lukewarm cup of decaffeinated coffee. It was one of the best cups I had ever tasted until I swallowed it. As cool as the coffee was, it felt like it was burning my raw throat. I nearly dropped the cup.
I put the cup down and let it cool even further as I proceeded to eat my breakfast. Four days earlier I had just run the Disney Marathon, and I was used to eating about 3,800 calories a day. The 200-calorie breakfast barely took the edge off my hunger. I laid there for a couple of hours wanting to eat more but not wanting to swallow. I asked for some more coffee and that caused a bit of confusion, because the nurse could not find Stephanie. She had looked in the room several times and saw a man, so she left.
Linda arrived at about 9:00, and she brought me a good cup of coffee. By now, the pain had subsided a bit in my throat. The coffee tasted heavenly and helped get rid of that after-surgery groggy feeling. I was so glad Linda was there because I needed to talk to someone. I was still married, and I had not even told my wife about the surgery. My marriage prior to surgery had deteriorated to nothing more than a dependency relationship. I can’t even call it a friendship.
Linda did most of the talking that day. It was afternoon before the doctor show
ed up for rounds to discharge me. I was so anxious to get going. We left the hospital and made the two hour drive back to New Hampshire, and go home in time for a late dinner. I was famished. Every bite I took reminded me of what just happened. I had irreversible surgery; what they did could not be undone. I had to live like this the rest of my life—was I ready for this?
This was a simple surgery and the impact on my life would be minimal if I never transitioned. It turns out that few people noticed. I think the fact that I got my ears pierced shortly after the surgery distracted everyone. The surgery had a huge impact on me and my marriage. I knew after surgery I was going to complete the journey, and the surgery was the defining moment for my wife as well. She knew at that point there was no going back. I think she was relieved: it gave her an excuse to get out of a marriage. It turns out I was a just a “Do For” husband. I would do for now until she had a better option. Now she could get out.
Within days after surgery, I booked my next one. The next surgery was my forehead browsing and scalp advance. I could only have surgery during the slow time at work. Our business cycles around the school year and the slow times are between Christmas and New Year’s holidays and the first two weeks of July. I wanted to book the surgery to make sure I got in during the time. July 9th was my next surgery date. There was a lot to prepare.
Around the time I booked my facial surgery, I started looking for a surgeon to do the sexual reconstruction surgery and the breast augmentation. Both places required a 30 percent down payment. I had to quickly come up with $6,500.00, and the balance for each was required prior to surgery. The first surgeon I selected was unavailable at the time I had, so I went with my second choice. All I can say is that I was lucky. My surgeon was great, helping me through the whole process.
The Great Elephant Ride Page 14