On health and Hormones

Hi ladies!... I'm recovering from a very bad bout of Bronchitis and it led me to ponder on the subject of T* health. Face it, we are unique individuals in a world of unique individuals. First thought... if you are considering taking, or are currently taking Hetrotypic* Hormones, either by scrip or on the sly... blood tests are not just important, they are urgent... female hormones are very very powerful, I'd say even more so than male hormones. they can effect and damage many of your vital organs, kidneys and liver especially. they can increase your risk of breast cancer, so, self exams are a must, and not as much fun as you might think.
Next, smoking. Don't. Quit if you do, but smoking and HRT** do not mix... you will rocket into a very high risk group for heart disease and stroke.

Exercise... it sounds sexist but this is true... Men lose weight easier than women do... and the culprit is Estrogen. so if you are over your target weight for a woman of your height, and haven't started HRT yet, lose it now. take it from me... it don't go easy after you've been taking hormones. Don't believe me? Ask any woman trying to shed the 'baby weight'. Diet and exercise are your best friends.

Mental health is a whole 'nother subject and I will post at length, but one thing I will say now is that we gender gifted, ever at odds with, most if not all societies, have a greater chance of being depressed than most people and that includes our T* Brothers as well as you Sisters. Learn the signs of Depression and if you think that it sounds like you, please, please, please seek help. to many brilliant T*'s die by their own hands.

*Hetrotypic... basically opposite. hetrotypic hormones are estrogen and progesterone for men and androgen and testosterone for women
**HRT hormone replacement therapy.

Tonight we dine in....Scarborough!

Hi Ladies and associated T* people, Had a bad couple of weeks but I did have a couple of good blog ideas that I'll post this week...including one on the care and feeding of your mental health... trust me, it's important.

Huggs to you all,
Diana, moon-goddess at large

The nitty gritty on transitioning as an older T* , part 2

First off...welcome to all my new followers! <Glee> Who knew I'd get 6 followers in five days! I hope I am writing stuff that will be useful to younger T* girls of all stripes (more on that later).

Secondly, where the heck did i leave off... oh yeah, 10 some odd years ago, about 2001. Our heroine has just had an emotional break with both reality and the film industry. After laying around being a misery-guts, the media and world intrude on her little self imposed prison (I'll leave guessing as to the intrusion as an exercise for the student), and give her a severe slap to the brain.

Between November of 2001 and may of 2002 I tried to be as brutally honest with myself as I could... I started therapy with a councilor who really helped me dig away at the concrete wall I had built around my 'self'. it was around mid June of 2002 when the ding of reality hit me.. you may know it, the "Sh*t, I'm a woman!" moment.
suddenly, all the memories that I had so diligently buried started coursing through the wall like a dam about to burst. I was happy and sad and furious and in pain and angry at the world and angry at my family and angry at me...especially angry at me. How could i have sacrificed so much of myself, for really so little happiness.

well, now i was on the right track, i found a psychiatrist, who after a total of two sessions agreed with me and gave me a diagnosis of gender dysphoric... finally, someone understood me! Then i was recommended to an endocrinologist... blood tests galore and i got the prescription in my hand that would solve my problems... oh was i ever naive for a 36 year old. more councilling followed as well as a growing fear that i was being stared at...  apparently gender dysphoria was the least of my difficulties... my self image was making me depressed and i stopped going out as i started to fear people... social anxiety coupled with chronic depression.... i was withdrawing...

by 2005 i was classified disabled due to agoraphobia... but i discovered art through therapy and suddenly my creative side emerged. that one caught me by surprise... the urge to write also was new and it led to my first novel, The Enhanced: TRI ( http://tinyurl.com/6ywrj9q ). so... at this point, i still have to shed about 100 pounds (the tits are good though), get my beard yanked (ka-ching), get hair installed on my sunroof (ka-ching, kaching), facial reconstruction, dermal smoothing, tummy tuck, hips, ass, tits... yeah... and SRS... could be worse... at least my mind feels more comfortable now i've made an effort.

I'm gonna whomp up a cost table for why i figure that it'll cost me 6 figures for my next entry... till then, remember, there's hope, there are others like you, and it will get better...

Diana

The nitty gritty on transitioning as an older T* , part 1

Look, I'm pretty sure we all have known, in one way or another about who we really are inside from a very young age... about the same age that we realize that boys and girls are different, and we are on the wrong side of the different. I grew up with older sisters, so the difference was fairly obvious to me by about age three.

Now, if I knew about the wrongness at age three, Why, you may ask, did it take me till I was 36-37 years old to admit who I was and try to move forward?... well simple answer... I was at least 25 before I knew I wasn't alone in this desire/need/compulsion. Growing up, I didn't have access to information that didn't come out of medical books or porn stores.What I had plenty of was shame.

T* people were looked upon with ridicule and/or horror, as deviants and freaks. It took me till I was twenty something to discover anything even resembling acceptance...up till then... I had been caught twice cross dressed by my parents, who shamed me and whisked me off to the shrinks... the only shrink who even asked me if I wanted to be a boy or a girl, did so with my parents present...making my decision impossible... shame won out.

After that... I buried my true self deep...so deep that I would have serious depressive episodes and even fugue states where time passed that I had no memory of. It is no small wonder to me that I survived at all... I became a societal drone...work sleep eat... the occasional guilty trips to a cross dressing service followed by angst and guilt again.

In the late 80's early 90's, a miracle appeared to me... something that a lot of people now take for granted, but it was a life line to me... the internet. I finally discovered I wasn't alone, that I wasn't a freak. I still had years of shame to throw away, but it was a light...

In 2002, I finally admitted to myself that I was a woman. 35 years after I realized it the first time.

Diana

World Premier Post

Howdy whomever may be reading this! I have decided that now may be a good time to start writing out my thoughts before they consume me...eek, Mental Cannibalism!  But, I digress, as I often do, a little about me to satisfy your prurient curiosities... At age 46, I have come to know that I am Transgendered, in fact, it's been nearly 10 years since i admitted this to myself. the transition itself? well, in a word, rocky. i look sort of like a cross between a biker and a trucker... not like Amy Acker <pictured above>.

Ahhh well, a girl can dream can't she? with luck, and lots of $$$$$$ i will be able to become the girl i know i am... it's up to skilled surgeons and science as to whether or not anyone will actually say "you're kinda pretty, Diana". That's what i hope for now... not so much glamour, not so much sexy <though that would be nice *wink*>, pretty will do me just fine.

 Wondering what the $$$$$$$ represent? well, at my last calculations, it will cost anywhere between 100,000.00 and 150,000.00 to make me into a girl... mostly surgery, some wardrobe...lol. People ask me why i choose to walk this road... I tell them it's not really a choice, it's something that needs done, like corrective surgery for a heart murmur or any other birth defect... if i had a choice in the matter, I'd choose boring, plain vanilla...like most everyone... but the ache in my soul has driven me nearly crazy all of my life.

If you need to understand what i mean by ache, try wearing your shoes on the opposite feet for a day... now imagine the pain of the incorrect body on your soul...every day...forever... it's no wonder so many of the gender gifted take their lives or live with depression... it hurts.

Well, wasn't that cheerful... I'll try for more upbeat stuff next time...
Ta Ra for now,
Diana