Yes its me again with another update to my life. Did I tell you that all this seems to be so very natural. I am just like any other women and with each passing day I relate to other women, as a women, more and more. I guess you can say that I am a success story.
Only a few major changes have occurred since my last update. The reason for this is fairly obvious. After all the major changes have occurred (see Bio Page) you just settle down into an every day life style. I liken myself to a sport figures who’s career is over and they have to adjust to the real world.
The biggest news was that in August, Dr Menard’s office called me to change the date of my surgery to April 23, 2002. I was overjoyed that they were able to knock five months off my surgery date but every month since then I’ve been called Dr Menard’s office in order to see if I could move my date even sooner. I wish I could have it done today.
I also have to coordinate my surgery date with my primary care physician as I need to have various lab test done within six weeks of surgery. Talk about juggling balls in the air. Also, since I’m going to Canada for my surgery and, of course, with the aftermath of September 11, I’m in the process of trying to get a one year temporary US Passport in my new gender. I thought it may make things easier getting through Canadian/US Customs.
In late October I increased my dosage of Spironolact to 200 mg daily. So far all I’ve notice is a 1/2 inch increase in bust size to 36 1/2 and some slowing down of body hair growth. Such side effects as dryness, being very tired and increased urination are things that have just not happened to me. I’m am still running 5 days a week(2-3 miles per day) but I have definitely slowed down. I just don’t have the same endurance I have only a year ago let alone over the past 25 years. I believe its got to be the mediation I’m taking. This I am NOT happy with.
I have gotten to meet new female friends which I like very much. The only problem is the same old one that will never go away and that is that I have to be careful of what I say about my past. I’m pretty good at it but I continuously have to be aware of what I say in this regard. I’m OK talking about my daughters, mother and where I grow up but I say almost nothing about things like marriage or past jobs. Of course women don’t even talk about sports, cars or girls. The funny thing is that I know more about sports especially baseball cards than 90% of men.
These past two months have been very exciting for me in my quest for Gender Reassignment Surgery. Here are the highlights:
Yes, I know I have not updated my Bio in a while. Would you believe writers scamps? However, I finally got motivated and here goes. But first just to review briefly. I have since living full-time since 10-12-99. I have my own apartment, work in Human Resources and am very passable. I thought I'd pick some topical area to focus on.
I am on Premarin at the .5mg level daily. I've been on this level since March 2000. I have been faithfully taking one 2.5mg pill in the morning and the other later in the afternoon/evening. Don't ask me why I do it this way its just that I feel it allows for a more balanced release of the medicine. The one regret I had was not measuring my breast size, waist and hips when I first started using Premarin. I felt it would be nice to see how I've grown and by how much. I did start keeping monthly statistics in July 2000 but between then and the end of May 2001, I haven't grown at all. I'm a 36A breast size, 32 waist and 37 hip. Although my breast size is small with a slightly padded bra I look just find. I am extremely proud of my hips. There are very nice and rounded and in certain shirts I wear I am a real knockout in that area. I've so far avoided Spironolactone because my physician didn't think I needed it, as my testosterone level was so low without it. However, pretty soon I going to start using it so as to get rid of the chest and back hairs as well as add a little something to my breast size.
I first started Electrology in 1996 but until May 1999 I was very inconsistent with treatment. However since then I've been going pretty regularly for weekly two hour visits. I am up to 200 hours. Over the years I've gone to four different technicians. I've switched mainly because of the money involved. The current person I'm going to does a good job and is reasonably priced. Every session starts with 15-20 on the upper lip area and as a result I have practically no hair at all in that area. In fact my face is now pretty clear with only the neck area as the "last frontier". Oh yes, pretty soon my technician will be working "down south".
I've really gotten away from TG groups and have been looking for mainstream women type organizations to join. I've been to several women clubs, organizations and conferences and I really enjoy the people I've meet and the subjects discussed. There are two groups that I've focused in on and with one I've not only joined and gone to meetings but am on the Board of Directors. I can't tell you how wonderful I feel to talk to other women about all kinds of women related subjects. The only problem I have it that I have no past as a women to talk about. As a result it limits my conversations to present day topics. It's OK because I don't want to make up a false past.
The first job as Karen I had lasted three months. Basically the CEO wanted to consolidate my job with another and I decided to leave before the bad news came. However, luckily within two weeks I got another job going something similar to the first one. I'm still working for the company and doing a variety of job duties many outside the HR role. There are five people at work who knew me from the past and they are all great at treating me as a women with respect. All the other employees believe I'm just another girl and as a result am treated accordingly. I like working with people anyway, I like to help others and try to assist when I can.
There is still one final step to take that I am working on. I'll let you know about it in the future.
Thanks for clicking onto my web page. What you will be reading in the next few pages and updated from time to time is about me. The beginning, present and future. For decades I had no clue what I was. Now that I know that I am a transsexual women there is NO stopping me because I have the tools to successfully tear away the false self that I have put up since born in order to get at the real me. I want to tell you about myself so that if you want to transition or are in transition you can gain some measure of comfort or comparison from reading my past and present. I must warn you that my steps, at times, were very different that others.
I was born during the War years in Schenectady, New York. My birth certificate said male but that is not true. You see I believe what really happened (from what I have been able to read on the subject) is that around the second or third month of my mothers pregnancy somehow there was a hormonal imbalance in this stage of development . That event forever changed the course of my gender. It is extremely important to understand that I love my mother and father and do not in the least hold them accountable. Its just something that happened.
My discovery came at age 11 (I think). I moved to Norwalk, CT. in the early 50’s. Yes I think it was right around the time that the news media broke the story about Christine Jorgensen. Although I can’t say for sure that the two events (my discovery and the news of Christine Jorgensen) were connected, I know that I used Christine’s story as the time of the start of my journey.
I am an only child. At the time both my parents worked and so I had complete freedom of the house when I came home from school. My bedroom was on the third floor. There also was a space bedroom as well as a storage area for off season and discarded clothes which were mostly my mothers (Yes, I know you already guessed that).
I don’t remember how or why I became curious about her cloths and started looking through them but I did. Obviously one of them attracted my interest enough to want to wear it. And so I did. I’m sure I looked at myself in a minor and fell in love with what I saw. The reflection was that of a girl. No wig, makeup, shoes, undergarment ( all that would come later) but the image was so powerful that it would someday change my life forever.
Although the event was to changed my life, I didn’t know anything about what it meant at that time( and even decades later, until the 1990’s, I still didn’t know). All I knew was that like a narcotic I loved what I saw in that minor. I progressed through the years into wearing my mothers undergarment, shoes and makeup. Then buying these things on my own and yet at times becoming so disgusted with myself that I would throw all my treasures away.
You see at that time I WAS ALL ALONE. There was no one I could trust well enough to talk to about this. There were no books, articles or stories about this subject (except for Christine Jorgensen’s story in the papers). There was nothing about this subject on television, radio or in the movies. The only computers in existence at that time took up a large house.
Thus I just went through junior high school, high school and college ALL ALONE.
From age 11 on, I followed the same cycle of dressing up as often as I could, eventually getting frustrated with myself, throwing away my clothes and then starting all over again. This process sometimes took years, other times months but it was always the same.
Unlike many others who have gone through the same experience that I went through, I kept my secret so well hidden that I was never teased, involved in school yard fights or treated in any way other then that of being another guy. I was involved in the theater, I ran cross-country and was the basketball manager in high school. I was on the soccer team and joined a fraternity in college among many activities. On the outside I was just an average guy( oh how I hate that word).
In my senior year in college, I met my wife to be and I really believe that if I didn’t tell her about my other gender it would go away after we were married. I believe that so much that I never told my wife about my gender disorder until April 23, 1999. Of course as a result we are now living separately.
Stupid you say. Well I definitely agree! But at the time I met my wife I didn’t know a thing about this subject. Anyway I got married and had a very happy marriage, raised three beautiful children, had a successful business career and a second avocation in selling baseball cards (anyone interested in buying cards?). I had everything I could reasonably hope for (except one thing...I wanted to be a girl).
During the first eight years of married we moved seven times and had two of our three children. Therefore, dressing up was far and few between. It was after finally settling down in the Boston area, that in the 1990”s I began to explore what the world of transgender by then the word was invented) meant.
I visited adult book stores but only found books, magazines and videos on “forced dressing”, which quite frankly wasn’t the direction I wanted to go. It was only through personal ads that I began to meet or at least correspond with others. Most of the people I wrote to or met weren’t interested in going in the same direction I was but through trail and error I eventually began to meet people, read stories, books and articles about the same subjects I was interested in.
And so it was on Friday night March 8, 1996, I got dressed at home and visited the Burlington, MA Mall I only spent 45 minutes walk around the mall. I only window shopped. I didn’t speak to anyone nor did I buy anything. Amazingly no one laughed at my clothes, no one teased me, no one shouted” look at the guy in girls clothes”. I was treated just like any other women at the Mall. In other words right from the start I blended in.
I was so pleased with my performance I went back to the same Mall the next day and did the same thing over again except that this time I had something to eat in the food court. The following two days I visited two other Malls and gained so much confidence in myself that I have never looked back.
Until I went full-time I kept a journal. The journal kept tract of the days I went out, the number of hours I was out, the weather conditions, the type of clothes I was wearing and of course what I did. I even kept tract of my purchases and my trips to the ladies room. Here is a general idea of the number of time I dressed up and went out: 1996-35 trips totaling 212 hours; 1997-102 trips totaling 568 hours; 1998- 95 trips totaling 585 hours. In 1999-82 trips totaling 444 hours up to October 12, 1999. I stopped on October 12 because I started working as Karen and there wasn’t any need to continue the journal at that point since I was Karen almost all the time by then and the journal stated to get too repetitious.
Once I began going out as Karen in 1996 it was fun going on various shopping trips to stores but eventually that novelty worn off. Although I still go shopping (food shopping), I realized that I wanted to do more then that. I wanted to do everything (out in public) that any other women does. Therefore, I started going to the theater (by the way, a ladies NEVER goes to the movies alone but their are plenty of other women who go to the theater alone), to business conferences, lectures and meetings, to the beach, on day trips to such places as Cape Cod and Newport, RI. I even joined an social organization. Many of my adventures were published in the Tiffany Club of New England’s monthly publication called ROSEBUDS. I am a member of the Tiffany Club.
Here is the ironic thing. The more I went out in public the more confidence I gain and the more believable I was. Many times I’ve said to myself,” how stupid other people are to not see me as just a guy in girls clothes”. But eventually it dawned on me that other people were not only seeing me as the women but believing that I was a women. Other people really couldn’t tell that I was anything other than just another women. I was becoming what I always dreamed about all my life. A women!
By now I’m sure your saying, “let me see this gorgeous hulk of women.” Well before I go any further, please let me describe myself. I’m 5’6 1/2”, 135 lb. blue eyes and brown wavy hair (fortunately I have all my hair and plenty of it). I stopped wearing wigs in early August, 1999 ( another ROSEBUDS article). I’m in my late 50’s indefinitely NOT a glamour girl. In fact all I want to do is just blend into the crowd. I do not wear hi heels, mini shirts or flashy makeup or jewelry. “Plain Jane” would best describe me. But I don’t care because other people now accept me for what I am and show no signs of treating me in any way other then who I now am.
By the late Fall, 1998 it was becoming more and more obvious that when I went out as a women I was happy and feeling satisfied. When I went back to my other gender I was increasingly less happy and frustrated. I know by that time I could be a full time women. I started to develop an action plan of how to go about beginning the transition.
Since I kept my secret so well hidden, there was no one in my immediately family that know anything about Karen. Therefore, the first step was to tell my wife about the other me. Although the plan was very simple and logical it took me nearly six months and only with the great help of a gender friendly therapist that I was able to not only tell my wife about myself but also my children and my mother. By the end of April, 1999 everyone in my immediate family know about Karen. There reaction was to put their heads in the sand and pretend that nothing ever happened.
My wife at first didn’t even want to see pictures of me but slowly has turned around. My mother at 84 has seen pictures of Karen and talks about her (sometimes), however, I want to go very slowly with her due to her age. I want her love and support. My children have seen pictures of Karen but are not interested in meeting her. I hope, like their mother, they will come around.
During the summer of 1999, I decided that in November I was going to tell my boss at work after Karen and that on January 3, 2000 I would begin transitioning at the work place. Unfortunately, my big idea blow up in my face on the Friday before Labor Day, 1999. That was when my boss brought me into the office and told me I was “Laid-Off” effective immediately. Also, there was no other place in the company that I could transfer. Over the weekend I decided to rework my resume using Karen’s name and apply for Human Resources jobs (that has been my field of work for over 30 years).
An absolutely amazing thing happened to Karen. In the next three weeks I sent out 21 resumes for various HR jobs. Four people called Karen up for job interviews, one of which offered Karen a job. Actually I had to cancel three other interviews I setup. This never came close to happening to that other guy. The one thing I had to do when it was becoming obvious that companies were interested in me was to square away my job references. This mean that I had to tell my last two supervisors about what I was doing and ask them if they would give a reference to me using Karen’s name and being very careful about the pronouns. Both people were more then happy to help me. Here I was very, very lucky. If one or both people didn’t want to cooperate I would have had a serious problem. The company that offered me a job did indeed check references and all went perfectly.
Starting October 12, 1999 I began my new job and I am using this date as the beginning of my transition. As I go on with this account of my life I will get more specific but generally speaking I get up in the morning, run about 3 miles, showered, dressed, eat breakfast, go to work, come home from work, do errors, go to social events, watch TV and go to bed. Sounds familiar? Yes, I am doing the same thing you are except I am Karen and I couldn’t be happier.
Around the time I got the job offer, my wife told me she couldn’t live with Karen living and dressing around the house. So I started looking for an apartment which I found an eventually moved into on December 17, 1999. It is a nice 3 room apartment, only a town away from my house. Its in a 8 apartment building and is fairly quite and peaceful (we even have a police officer living in the building). While I was waiting for the apartment to be ready I used the Tiffany Club as my place to dress.
The nice thing about my wife is that she actually helped me move furniture into the apartment On Sunday, December 19 she met Karen for the first time. She has taken this transition better then I could possibly imagine except for not being around the house.
Once I got a job working as Karen I know I had to begin the legal actions. One, on October 29 I got a court ordered name change. It was the easiest thing I ever did. The process took me about 15 minutes. All I did was make an appearance at the county court house and together with $60.00, an original raised sealed birth certificate and the change of name form my name was changed. Two, that same day I went to the Social Security Administration office in Boston and in 5 minutes I began the paper work to change my name with Social Security (About a week later I got my new SS Card in the mail). Three, I then went to the Registry of Motor Vehicle. I wanted not only to change my name my most importantly my gender on the drivers license. This process took about 40 minutes but in the end I walked out of the building with a new drivers license in my new name AND gender. Four, I finally began changing my name on my bank accounts, investments, titles, credit card accounts and even my undergraduate degree from Boston University. By now I am so legally Karen my own mother couldn’t find that other person.
One last thing to tell you before going up to date is about hormones. You see in the three and a half years that I went out, all I ever did in preparation was to shave and put on make-up. On October 28, 1999 I began taking prescribed Premarin. My doctor started me off on .625mg daily. Then a month later it was doubled to 1.25mg.
On December 25 it was doubled again to 2.5 mg and finally on March 1, 2000 it was doubled once more to 5mg daily. I feel fine and I guess I’m starting to reshape myself but its very slow and gradual process. The only thing I can tell about is my breast. >I’ve grow to a A cup size and my nipples are sensitive. Other people have told me that its a good two years before I can actually see some definite changes.
That is about all as far as background information. As events occur in the future I’ll post updates.
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