Monday, September 24, 2012

For the Dutch: samenvatting vande voorlichtingsavond bij het VUmc.

Samenvatting gemaakt door Gabriël. Hartelijk dank!


Het begon met een inleiding. Daarin werd genoemd dat men eindelijk wat aan de wachtlijsten gaat doen. Er komen 2 nieuwe psychologen, en nog een paar andere mensen van andere disciplines om het genderteam te versterken.

Daarna was er een praatje over het diagnostische traject. Daarin werd verteld dat je dus gaat bespreken over hoe jouw gendergevoel is en of er dus sprake is van een genderidentiteitsstoornis. Men zal vragen of je een levensverhaal wilt schrijven, en men wil ook een belangrijk ander iemand spreken om een beter beeld van je genderidentiteit te krijgen.
En er wordt gekeken of je nog onderliggende problemen hebt (zoals depressies en angsten) en daarvoor wordt je dan verder verwezen naar een regionale GGZ.
En na de diagnostische fase, die 4 tot 12 maanden kan duren, wordt er met het team besproken of je groen licht krijgt voor de hormonen.

Daarna kwam het verhaal van de hormonen, die tegelijkertijd plaats vindt met de RLE. Ookal leef je al langer in je gewenste geslacht, hier moet je minimaal dat jaar RLE doorlopen. Er waren wat verschillende manieren aangestipt van hoe je de hormonen kon aanbrengen (pillen of een pleister bij de transvrouwen, gel of prikken bij de transmannen) en ook een kort tabelletje van welke effecten die hormonen geven in een pubertijd en dat je kan zien dat het allemaal niet in 1x gebeurd, maar dat er een paar jaar overheen gaat voordat je bij een plafond bent aangekomen. En dat er kans is op leverfunctieproblemen bij beide transgroepen, en meer kans op trombose bij de transvrouwen en kans op hemofilie bij mannen.

Daarna kwam het praatje over de groepen Transvisie Zorg, Transvisie P.O.S.T. en Transgender Netwerk Nederland, die vertelden waar ze voor stonden en waarmee ze je zouden kunnen helpen.
Transvisie zorg had diverse groepen die afhankelijk waren van hoe je staat (dus ben je nog zoekende of ben je een starter, of ben je post-op) en die groepen waren dan gemengd. Als ik me goed herinner hadden ze ook de mogelijkheid voor persoonlijk contact.
Transvisie Post heeft ook zelfhulp groepen, maar dan meer over voor wat je komt: dus mannengroepen, vrouwengroepen, zoekersgroepen, groepen voor ouders van trans*kinderen, groepen voor naasten van transen, en transgendergroepen voor mensen die zich wel als het andere geslacht voelen maar geen operaties enzo laten doen. En ook zij hebben de mogelijkheid op persoonlijke ondersteuning.
En Transgender Netwerk Nederland zet zich in voor alle transgenders als groep, tegen discriminatie en voor het verval van die sterilisatie-eis in de wet.

(toen was er eindelijk pauze)

Daarna ging het praatje over de chirurgie. Er werd maar heel kort aangestipt hoe dat ging, omdat er over enkele maanden een uitgebreide informatie avond voor de MtF en FtM apart komt.
Maar het ging over dus dat men een volledig werkende neovulva kon maken die hetzelfde werkte als een biologische vrouwelijke vagina en waarmee je ook gewoon nog een orgasme kon krijgen.
Voor de transmannen had je 2 opties voor borsten verwijderen: met een grote snee over de borst bij de wat grotere borsten, en rondom het tepelhof bij de kleinere borsten.
Baarmoeder verwijderen wordt gedaan via 3 kleine sneetjes en geeft zo weinig littekens. Men wil in de toekomst de borsten verwijderen en baarmoeder verwijderen in 1 operatie doen, ipv 2 losse.
Voor het creëren van een penis had je 2 opties, maar die hebben beide hun voor en nadelen, en vooral veel mogelijkheden op complicaties omdat het erg klein en fijn is. En het is ook heel belangrijk dat als je aan deze operaties wil beginnen, je eerst goed gaat praten met een arts en seksuologe om te kijken wat je verwachtingen ervan zijn; niet dat je uiteindelijk met een grote teleurstelling thuis komt.

En het laatste praatje kwam er op neer: Stop met roken, want roken is slecht voor je, en heeft ook negatief effect op de opname van hormonen en geeft veel meer risico's bij operaties.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

What's life about?

Last night when I went to bed I had a moment of clarity one might say. One of those moments when everything is put into perspective and suddenly seems rather strange. I was lying down in my bed, a construction made of wood, and covered myself with sheets of fabric in a concrete box stacked upon other boxes that we call apartments. All these human made structures, these items, objects, concepts, we made for our convenience. It's supposed to make our lives easier. But when you look at them objectively they seem rather strange. We go through so much effort to obtain these object but what do they really mean to us? Why do we desire them? Are they really important or are they just a way to support our basic needs so we can pursue other goals? We claim the later but act more like it's the first. We let objects control our lives while they actually are just silly things, inventions of our own minds with no true meaning when it comes to happiness. We used to survive in the wilderness with none of these items and were perfectly happy. So instead of making our lives easier and more fulfilling they have made our lives emptier and more burdened.


Right now I am trying to make up an inventory of my life and my needs. What do I want? What is important in my life? One thing I know for sure is that right now I am not happy. This means something has to change. I need to prioritize.

Work at the gym is far from ideal, things are not what I want eventually but those things take time and until New Year's I am set so I should shelf my worries about my fitness career for now. There is nothing I can do right now, as in today, or even the next week, to speed things along. I need to be patient.

I have been able to find a bit of time to paint again lately so that feels good but it's not much. I would like to sell my paintings, even if it's just for a small amount of money. I don't like them sitting here, gathering dust and not having anyone enjoying them. That's the most important thing. I want people to enjoy them and as long as that doesn't happen they have very little value. So if anyone is interested, just make me an offer. As long as it's reasonable I'll probably accept it (check my Facebook page). Right now, having them stack up here, it's just frustrating. It feels pointless.

What happens with gallery Noodweer is up to my companion. I can't say anything about that right now. Exhale and wait.

I went to the information evening at the VUmc about the transition process there. I didn't get a lot of new information. Hardly any. Just one confirmation of a rumor and that's pretty much it. Today I talked to my predecessor about the coordination of the Trans*-initiative here in Leiden. She explained a lot about what's what and everything. It became clear to me that everything really is just small scale and there isn't that much we can do. I keep forgetting how small our group seems to be. I still find that hard to believe. I heard numbers of close to a million people in The Netherlands having some form of transgenderism. Of course this is a huge sliding scale going from simply not fitting the standard narrative of your gender to full transsexuality. But somehow there seems to be no space for the gray scale. Somehow we are expected to focus fully on the transsexuals. I guess people need to understand the extreme before they can understand what's between the extremes but still, it makes me feel like we are missing something important.

My own transition is not moving along at all. I'm still on the waiting list. Other then that everyone knows now and mostly everyone is okay with it. That's great. Now I still need to work on accepting it myself. I can accept being masculine. What's a lot harder is accepting that something as bizarre as this has happened to me, before I was born even, and has been with me my whole life. I never wanted to be a transsexual. I just want to be me. And now suddenly I have a cause to fight for. I'm a member of a very special club that you can only be a part of if you were born with some sort of brain defect. People tell me I'm brave and they are proud of me. As if what I'm doing, trying to be myself, is a major accomplishment and as if they should have some sort of opinion on it or should validate these things. I never asked for any of this. I totally understand why a lot of transmen blend in and try to pretend they are just like all the other guys. Why they run from it. It's exhausting. And I just got started. It takes over your entire life. I wonder if it will ever end. If one day being trans will be so accepted and understood that it doesn't turn your entire life into a constant struggle. Somehow I doubt it.

There are so many things I want to do in my life, so many thing I want to learn. Right now I am stuck with reading up on gender issues and sorting out my insurance and trying to get the hospital to see me before next summer. Right now I'm going to have to pay over 500 euro's just to have a few talks with some psychiatrists so they can send me to an endocrinologist so he can prescribe me my testosterone shots that don't get covered. At least, the ones you only have to take once every 3 months don't get covered. The ones you have to take every 2-3 weeks do get covered but they usually don't prescribe those. I won't even mention surgery.  I would rather save up that money to visit my sister who now lives in Sydney. It would be nice to see her more then once or maybe twice a year. But no. I have to spend all the extra money I make on medical bills.Bills I never intended to have. And compared to some other countries I am lucky. In some countries I would get lynched. At least that's one blessing I can count.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

It's the waiting that's killing.

Patience is a virtue. It's also something most people lack. That includes me. In some cases I can be patient. If I know why I should be. Like when I am at the gym and I have to wait between set for my ADP to switch back to ATP so I can get a proper training to build some massive masculine muscle. It feels a bit silly, sitting there, waiting, looking like you're doing nothing. But I know why and I know that if I don't I will miss out on some good results and in the long run I will profit from sitting there and being patient.

The waiting list for the genderteam in Amsterdam is 12 to 18 months, read 18 months. Why? because they are understaffed. That's the only reason. They are understaffed because they don't have a sufficient budget. They don't have a sufficient budget because... I don't know. I guess we are such a small group the people dividing the budget figured they can just set us aside cause there wouldn't be that many people complaining about it compared to other budget cuts. And that's the reason why I'm fiddling my thumbs. Lovely. I know money is a complicated matter these days but it does mean there are loads of people sitting and waiting till they can start their lives properly. After years of struggling and doubt you finally come forward just to be told you have to wait to get any kind of help with this for a year and a half. It's just cruel. Sure you can be yourself, just not yet because the government thinks your happiness is not important enough to invest those few euro's. *shudder* And once you've passed that waiting list you have to go through the screening process which can take about 6 months or more if you're unlucky for the exact same reason: lack of funding.


And then? Can you finally get started? Sort of. You can get hormone treatment but you also enter the real life phase. To quote the VU website: Deze fase duurt voor mannen achttien maanden en voor vrouwen twaalf maanden, en houdt in dat men gedurende die periode leeft in de gewenste rol, zonder dat daar een operatie aan [te] pas is gekomen. (http://www.vumc.nl/afdelingen/zorgcentrum-voor-gender/faq/gabvragen/322592) Roughly translated: This phase lasts eighteen months for men and for women twelve months, and implies that during that period you will be living in the desired role, without any surgery. 18 months for men and 12 for women. Okay, so which one do I get? The 12 or 18? Cause I'm a woman by birth. But I am going to be a man... So which one is it? And why is there a difference? Why would one group have to wait longer then the other? Does it take longer for the hormones to take effect? Does that matter? You can have the surgeries without the hormones so that shouldn't be the reason. I honestly don't understand. Do they want to give one group more time to get adjusted? To let their surroundings get used to it? Is that necessary? I mean, you already had to wait a year and a half before you could start hormones. Do they really think we've just been sitting on our asses the whole time and not tell anyone and not make any changes in our appearances? Personally I don't see how I will be doing things much different on hormones from what I do now. I think the biggest change will come after my top surgery. But that won't be covered by my insurance until after the real life phase. I could do it if I pay for it myself though. And I am seriously considering it. I don't want to have to wait that long and I don't want to have to walk around in chest binders all the time (or some of the time anyway) increasing the risk of breast cancer and being uncomfortable because someone at the top decided it's financially more comfortable for them. But I'm sidetracking. I still can't think of any reason why there would be a difference in length for the real life phase for the 2 groups other then simple discrimination. Honestly, I really don't. Could someone explain this to me? I find it amazing that in a place, where people like us are finally supposed to be excepted for who we are completely, we still have to face discrimination.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

It's a sign!

One of the problems people have today is that they are no longer in contact with their own bodies. They don't understand the signals their bodies are giving them. In the long run this can lead to obesity, burn outs, heart attacks and lord knows what. Nothing pretty I assure you. The body doesn't really discriminate between types of stress. Most people can't feel the difference between hunger and thirst. Deadlines can set off the same type of triggers in the brain as an angry bear. So between us not listening to our bodies and our bodies not always being too clear on what the hell is going on, it is understandable we are pretty clueless as to how we should treat our bodies.

What we need to do is learn to listen and then to learn to respond appropriately. Easier said then done. What I have found helpful is to stop and think. When ever you are craving something it's a sign. When you feel like having steak it usually means your body wants protein. When you are craving crisps it could be something else though. It could be the salt, the carbs or the fat or that little additive they are said to put in there to make it addictive, or it could just be habit. Which one is it? Stop. And think. Which one? It could even be you're not craving food at all but comfort and you would be much better off with a genuine hug. As the orphanages during and right after the second world war discovered, you can give a baby shelter and food and clean nappies, but if you don't pick it up and give it a hug, it will die anyway. People need love as much as they need oxygen. So if you want a healthy lifestyle replacing crisps with hugs is one of the best things you can do.


People tend to eat what they think they crave but often they misinterpret the signals. Probably the most common signal read as need for sugary and/or fatty foods is stress. Everybody does it. I do to. You really don't want to know how much chocolate I have been eating lately. It's horrible. And now my teeth ache. Not because of the chocolate but because I have been grinding them at night while I sleep. Gee, stressed much? Just a little. Eating chocolate is not a bad thing. You can have a cube every day if you want. Just not a whole bar every day. I measured my fat% again last weekend and it went up quite a bit. I guess that's what I needed to pull myself together and get a grip on things. To say Stop! and think. What am I so stressed about? A lot of things actually and that makes it harder to deal with. There isn't just one solution. It's going to take quite a bit to get things organized the way I want them. It would be nice if things were a bit more clear at work but it looks like I'll just have to accept a temporary solution. So be it. On a brighter note I have been accepted as the new coordinator at the trans initiative here in town. This means more work but at least I will have the feeling I'm making a difference. I guess that is a way of getting a hug, knowing that what you do matters to someone. That would be much better then chocolate indeed.