Allison's TG Articles

Finding a Therapist in the Hinterlands                                                            Allison Daniels Those of us planning on following this transsexual highway to it’s ultimate conclusion, have learned that it is vitally important for us to be under the care of a licensed therapist knowledgeable in the field gender identity disorders in order to fulfill the requirements of the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care for Gender Identity Disorders, which is essential for us to follow exactly, as it is the only way that we can legally become eligible for Sexual Reassignment Surgery. That encompasses psychological evaluation, recommendation for hormone replacement therapy to a prescribing physician, engagement in psychotherapy, and to provide recommendations for surgical therapy. Imagine your consternation upon learning that the psychiatrist you’ve been working with weekly for the previous two years has told you that he is NOT experienced in this type of therapy, and that he knows of no one in your entire state that is, and having him then ask if YOU knew of any. That, then, is where I found myself, stuck in Limbo, without a plan. I had become familiar with Dr. Anne Lawrence and her work through her web site, and had been self medicating myself with bootleg hormones following a recipe I found on one of her pages for over 4 months, so I thought to myself, why not write to Dr. Lawrence and ask her if she would prescribe hormones for me, and make me street legal and fulfill a part of my SOC requirements for hormone therapy. I e-mailed Dr. Lawrence, and received her response within a day from my original post, and to my surprise, she agreed that she would indeed prescribe hormones for me, provided I agreed to follow her requirements with respect to appropriate physical consultations in her office, lab tests at her required intervals to be certain how my body is reacting to the hormones, and that if I did so agree the those stipulations, she would prescribe for me under a reduced risk standard. That merely meant that since I had been taking the hormones unsupervised for these previous four months, and I have not killed myself, or if the physical exam reveals no abnormalities, she could safely assume that I would have no reaction to the continuation of the hormone therapy. All she required was proof that I had indeed been on hormones for that length of time. Fortunately for me, the Pharmacy that I obtained the hormones from kept a record of all of my transactions, and I was able to print those and forward them as my proof. Now  all I had to do was to schedule a time for me to travel from Arkansas to Seattle, for my initial person to person consultation. (That is a story unto itself, which I can share another time, if you so desire)

I arrived in Seattle, and decided that it would be most proper for me to arrive at my session as Allison, so I shed my male persona, transformed myself into Allison, and headed to her office. It was the first time I had been out in daylight, as I had been in Vampire Mode previously, and that ride was very enlightening, the gender police did not pull me over, and in fact, nobody even gave me a second glance, thank goodness. You know driving in eight lanes of traffic in one direction calls for a bit of concentration anyway. As I entered Dr. Lawrence’s office, I thought to myself, am I really doing this? If you would have told me four months earlier that I would be halfway across the US in a strange town, dressed as a woman, talking to an unknown doctor about transsexual issues, I’d have never believed you, yet here I was, about to meet who I considered to be a TS Icon, and here she is. It was a two hour session that I asked for, and was granted, as I had traveled so far, and after filling out the initial paperwork, we began our discussions as to why I wanted to change my body, why did I want hormone replacement therapy in the first place, and other probing questions, with her acting as the devil’s advocate, which I understood, and appreciated. We then went to the physical examination part of the sessions, and I was relieved to discover that this was handled in her office, with her as the practicing physician, and I did not need to go to an outside lab for these tests. Luckily, I made it through all of these without a problem, and she was pulling out her prescription pad, and got her recommendation that I start using 2 Estriadol weekly patches in lieu of the oral Premarin that I was currently taking, as the patches bypassed the liver or kidneys, and went straight into the bloodstream. I still don’t believe that it can happen like that, but I’m doing it, and she wrote me a six months supply for these new wonder drugs for me, which is the longest that she’ll prescribe for me without an additional personal consultation. Yeah, now I was street legal. The only hiccup in this whole scenario was that Dr. Lawrence is not a licensed psychotherapist, and I would still need to locate one of them somewhere.

Fortunately, I had been an active participant in several TS discussion groups, and received offers from many of the girls to contact their therapists, as they were the greatest, etc. etc. etc. I have since come to believe that if you don’t think your therapist is the greatest, you are probably seeing the wrong therapist. I finally settled on meeting with a doctor in Tampa, Florida, and after an introduction from the girl that was kind enough to share her therapist with me, I called and set up a meeting date to begin our initial consultations. Since she knew that I was traveling so far for our sessions, she thought it a good idea that we schedule our initial sessions two at a time, and then later into the therapy, use the telephone for our sessions. I was extremely grateful for her willingness to work with me in this manner, and now I was ready to start making some real progress toward fulfilling those pesky requirements listed in the Standards of Care.

When I arrived in Tampa, I was wearing my male disguise, and I again had felt that it would be best for me to appear at my initial consultation with the therapist as Allison, so I scheduled my sessions on the following day. The trip to her office was another tale of and to itself, best described later, if interest warrants, but I finally arrived and our session began. I have to tell you that was a very empowering meeting for me, as the first words out of her mouth following our conversational introductions, were to the effect that it’s not my fault I feel like this, or act like this, because I was born this way. That immediately took all of the guilt I’d been carrying around with me for so many years, and placed in a category that I could accept, and now that it is taken care of, lets move on to the important issues. The time flew by in those two sessions, and before I knew it, she was calling her Psychiatric Associate to schedule my next visitations, and have him administer the Gender Psychological Evaluation test, and to co-ordinate that with her two next therapy sessions. That is where I will be next week, if all signs are favorable, and I hope to report to you on that outcome soon. Until then, thanks for listening Yours, Allison