Consult Outcome-May 29th,2010

Basically the consult was a waste of time. The surgeon seemed promising at the first consult but he won't be able to help me in a meaningful way. He is a skilled surgeon but for reasons I don't care to go into it doesn't look like I will be having lower surgery with him HOWEVER, if I have any complications he is close enough and skilled enough that I would feel more than comfortable having a revision with him if necessary.

After indulging in a few moments moment of frustration I reevaluated things and decided to for now stick with my plan A. The reason why is I was allowing the stress to get to me as well as outside influences. As of right now the original plan seems most practical for my needs, wants and budget. While the amount for the surgeon's fee upfront is annoying I know 3 things. 1) If I pick another surgeon for the same procedure it will be more 2) I may not get reimbursed with another surgeon 3) I will have to start all over again with the pre- approval process.

This is the plan for now and I will just prepare.

I need $11,200 to meet the balance and have a chipin (see below). As I save money I plan to adjust it to show how much money I still need. I didn't want to ask for help but someone told me that there is nothing wrong with asking for help since I have helped so many.
Anyone who wants to donate I greatly appreciate it and thank you in advance.

Consult day- May 29th, 2010

I decided to not let the issues with the other surgeon get me down. I am still working on that but in the mean time I have decided to move forward with following up on plan B in case I need it. I am going for consult number 2 with this surgeon. I had a consult with them back in November '09. They require all their patients to have hysto before he will begin lower surgery. I had my hysto since I last saw them. They are in network and take both my primary insurance and my wife's insurance so hopefully they will just take that upfront and not charge me the surgeon's fee ahead of time. I know the hospital stuff is definitely covered because the hospital where they have surgical rights is a "preferred" hospital for my insurance so that's a plus.

I'm about to head out. I am a little nervous but I am going to pray the entire way there and trust that all will work out for me to have surgery sooner rather than later.

I have my list of questions and I am ready to go!

I plan to come back posting nothing but great news when I get back!

Prepping plan B and putting plan A on life support

After yesterdays news I called the surgeon's office today and spoke to them about my concerns. They were really nice and agreed to "see what they can do" because they want to "work with me". I appreciated that. Even if they knock off $4,000 that would make a HUGE difference.

Since my plan B was fuzzy I decided to make one last attempt to clear things up. I was able to get some answers which was helpful and has lead me to feel the need to go back for another consult. This surgeon is DEFINITELY in Network for my insuranc and I know because the surgeon and the insurance old me. Also my first consult was paid 100% by insurance (they never pay 100% but rather an agreed upon rate).

I will discuss some of my concerns that was initially putting me on the fence. If I can secure answers that leave me feeling comfortable then that puts me in GREAT position for surgery to happen sooner rather than later.
I am prepping my plan be in case I need one and putting plan A on life support hoping for a revival!

The hurdles keep on coming!

I received an email today from the insurance person at the surgeon's office for my lower surgery. Basically it says that NOW (after all these weeks) that she realizes that the surgeon is no longer in network. WTH?!!?!? The email goes on to say the surgeon's fee alone is $11,000+ that I have to "pre-pay". Then on top of that they don't even know yet if the hospital is going to have me "pre-pay" so that will be more $$$$. I know that my penis is an investment and that is an investment I am willing to make. I just wish I had this information before I made my "in good faith" deposit to schedule a surgery date. Mind you this "deposit" is non-refundable. If I knew this was going to happen I would have used the deposit to a plane ticket to have a consult with another surgeon or even 2 that I was interested who are more UP FRONT about their insurance stuff.

I am going to go back to the drawing board and see what I am willing to compromise and what I am not willing to compromise. I may continue with this surgeon on this path and then again I may decide not to go that route at all and go a completely different direction. Honestly I am considering holding off all together and going overseas. If I am going to pay any large amount of money might as well get exactly what I want and for a reasonable amount which I know I can get overseas from very good Doctors.

Stealth is on my mind!

After blogging about attending a Trans conference and not disclosing my trans history but being seen more as a "provider" and "ally" as opposed to a community member the wheels in my head began to turn. I have been thinking lately about how stealth I want to be/ will be since I do have an infant daughter and I need to think about me as a transitioned man and how much of my history I want to disclose to her if any as well as a whole sort of other stuff.

I guess what I am trying to say through my ramblings is that the label/ identity/ word STEALTH has really been on my mind. I decided to look it up just for arguement sake and I found on wikiepedia the following:

Stealth

The term stealth is used to refer to a person who passes as their desired gender at all times, and who has broken contact with everybody who knew their gender history. Thus, everybody around them is unaware that they were not always of the gender presented, and they are effectively invisible within the population of their current gender. In order to live in stealth, an individual has to be extremely passable.

By this definition I am not stealth and neither are most of the people I know who self-identify as stealth. This leads me to believe that there might be a need for new language or a redefinitiion of what "stealth" means. For me I feel like I need to stop calling myself "stealth" due to languagea not being fitting. I generally don't call myself a "transman" or "trans" either but more a "man of transexperience". So for me a better fit in terms of language might be for me to say, "I'm just a private person" which those who know me long enough know is true. I am private about many things not just my transition/ medical history.

More thoughts floating through my mind.

Empire Conference May 22nd, 2010- Day 3

Day 3 was far better. Some guys showed up and we did have a good conversation during the "Ftm Sexuality" discussion. It was really interesting how things worked out. Though the workshop only had about 6 men of trans experience I feel the discussion was awesome and enlightening.
I have been networking and meeting new people. To be honest when I first got to the conference it reminded me a lot of SCC. Some of the reasons why were:
1) Predominantly organized and attended by (Self Identified)Crossdressers
2) Held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel (Scc is held at the Crown Plaza Ravinia in Atlanta and this conference was held at the Crowne Plaza Albany).
3)People shocked to meet a transitioned man

I will say that though there were NO other POC and very few men I felt more comfortable getting to know the caucasian Crossdressers. Everyone I spoke to was nice, friendly and respectful. While at SCC the past 2 years I went there was definitely a lot of "separation".

I feel that this conference gave me the opportunity to be in a trans/gender variant space and be a provider. I only disclosed to the transmen in the workshop about FTM sexuality and everyone else knew nothing of my trans history. Though there was opportunity for me to disclose to different individuals in the context of conversations that it would be relevant I still found myself feel fine not disclosing. I felt like it would be weird not to disclose because I have been tyring to find a way how to balance my "stealthness" and being an activist. I feel like this gave me the opportunity to practice that balance and I feel I was successful.

Empire Conference May 21, 2010- Day 2

Day 2 was better than Day 1. There is still not many men of trans experience. To be honest I can count on one hand the number of guys here on one hand. I did a presentation today which had little attendance. I did manage to go to 2 presentations/ workshops today so I guess I would call that progress. Dinner was surprisingly good though the entertainment "Trannies got talent"- A talent show did leave me with mixed feelings. I didn't like the name especially the use of the word "Trannies" However I will say the show was entertaining with people showing talents such as juggling, actual singing (which was really good I might add),different tricks and comedy.

I will see how the rest of the Conference works out.

Empire Conference 2010- Day 1

I am here in Albany, NY at the Empire Conference. This is my first time attending. I was optimistic about this conference. Day 1 is almost over and I am disappointed. There were 2 workshops today that I was very interested in attending. "Privilege of passing" and "Male Privilege for Trans-Masculine people". Unfortunately BOTH of these workshops were cancelled and they were the only 2 workshops that I wanted to attend. Everything else on the program to me was kind of "blah" because either I have done the exact same presentation before OR it just wasn't something interesting enough for me to want to sit in a room and talk about it for an Hour and a half.

Since those workshops were cancelled I decided to go to the pool and swim off my stress. Well guess what... The pool is closed for maintenance! Now I am hoping this is temporary because earlier in the day the pool was open and the water looked inviting. The pool is beautiful. The pool being closed don't help my mood.

Lunch was a little disappointing but I ate a BIG breakfast late in the morning so it was fine.

The day isn't done yet so we will see hopefully it gets better. I will keep you all posted!

I survived... my first week of accounting!

Yup my title said it. I survived my first week of accounting and I did better than I thought. I still have about 6.5 weeks to go in the course but I am optimistic espcially because for the most of the week my mind was preoccupied wondering whether my surgeon called my insurance and/or what was their decision. Sine I have that answer I can now focus my energy on other things such as passing this accounting course.
Speaking of which I have homework to do!

Surgery date...

So now that I have all my affairs in order I should be getting my surgery date some time this week. The schedule has to be reviewed and I will be talking to the surgeon to see how soon I can get in for surgery. I am very happy and this all feels surreal. I don't know when I will post the exact date up on the journal since I like to keep at least some aspects of my transition process until I feel ready to share them but I will eventually share which surgeon I am going to, when and where.

I truely feel blessed for how far I have gotten in my process and I continue to have faith that all will go well.

May 13th, 2010- Usually 13 is unlucky

The surgeon finally called! I spoke to my insurance today and my hospital stay for surgery was approve which = to my surgery being pre-approved also. I spoke to the surgeon's assistant and she will be consulting with my insurance to get the "rates" that they pay. Once she has that she can see if there is going to be a difference between the surgeon's usual cost and what my insurance pays. If there is a difference I will have to only pay the difference in the surgeon's fee but NOT the hospital stay. So within the next few days I should know more about that.
I am excited to book a surgery date! I want that date for this to feel real but even then I wont get excited until I am on the table.

That is all for now.

Lower surgery update as of May 11th,2010

I am still waiting for my surgeon to call in for the peer to peer review which should have happened by now. UGH!

I will post more once that happens.

The only good news is that once the peer review happens I am good to go for surgery and will just have to schedule my surgery date.

Religion and me

Lately religion has been coming up more and more for me. I was brought up Baptist. Though my church was in NYC we were part of the "Southern Baptist" chain so basically VERY Extremely conservative.
When I turned 18 I ran for the hills and avoided all religion though it was all around me. I women with all sorts of religious beliefs and upbringing. Now I am married to a womna who has been raised Catholic but considers herself "spiritual". I too consider myself "spiritual" but I really don't feel like that is enough.

I find myself search for the higher power. It is hard to discuss it with guys around me because the friends I hold close all have different views on religion. One is an adamant (yet respectful) Atheist, another is Muslim, Another I don't know what he is, I have some christian friends and another fried currently considering converting to Islam.

I have one friend who has been go over bible teachings with me for the past few months so that I can actual learn what it means to be a Christian as opposed to being told "BE A CHRISTIAN". Yet even with that I find myself searching. Part of me likes what I know about Buddhism, another part of me is interested in Islam then there is the side of me that i comfortable in Christianity.

I feel like I am shopping for faith in a way. I just find it interesting that all of this is coming up for me now. I feel like part of it has to do with the fact that I am no longer angry at the world and God for that matter.

I don't where I will end up but I find learning to be very helpful and I plan to learn as much as possible before I go any further.

Are you serious?!

I was on a forum and a guy someone comes on asking people about THEIR experiences with regards to relating to cismen. They expressed that they felt "different" from cismen because they were a transman.
Along with some other commentary about the "female experience" and being feminist.

I responded to them respectfully stating that my thoughts, experience and opinion differ.

They made a comment about being raised female and how that is a disadvantage in being able to relate to cismen. I responded saying that I guess I was lucky for not being "raised female". I said this being "sarcastic and because my upbringing WAS NOT FEMALE!

Was I assigned female at birth? YES

That however does not give anyone the right to assume what I have been through and what I have experienced. Also the person was white American. As a Jamaican by culture but American by birth Person of color my experience vastly differs from theirs. I even said that later in a comment but all of a sudden I am "an asshole".

Well I am one happy asshole because I do not feel "tortured" or "less than" because of what my birth certificate used to say.

This kind of thing is getting really lame and I am getting tired of seeing it OVER and OVER again. You say you are a feminist and women shouldn;t be seen as less than because they are women but then you call yourself less than because you "used to live as a woman". Stop contradicting yourself!

UGH!

The wait continues

I am still waiting for the surgeon to call insurance so they can make the decision.
I honestly understand the situation why the surgeon hasnt called yet. (Im not going into it all issus here). One of the issues is that the surgeon is in a different time zone and how they structure their day makes this conversation more challenging to have throughout the day. I am assured it will happen soon.

That is all for now on the Lower surgery front.

Quick - 5/6/10 update

Lower surgery and Insurance

I called the insurance office today and surgeon hadn't called yet. I called the surgeon's office and surgeon was in surgery BUT surgeon had it in top of the desk to do first thing when out of surgery.

I will follow up tomorrow.


Education

I got all the financial aid stuff finished for my Master's progam *Does happy dance".
I was able to accept my financial Aid package and now I am OFFICIALLY registered for my first course which starts soon. I already got a head start on the reading!


Conferences

It looks like I will be going to the Empire Conference, Philly Trans Health Conference AND SCC this year.
If any of you readers are going to be at any of these let me know so we can meet up and hang out!


I hope I can post tomorrow about my insurance response and hopefully I will be celebrating having booked a surgery date!

Productive day!

Education/Loans

I resolved a mistake that was made with an old student loan I had. The loan people were very apologetic since it was their error and they let my MBA program know that the error was corrected. I also was able to successfully get everything in for my Financial Aid for my Master's program so soon everything should be set!


Conferences

I am going to the Empire conference in Albany and The Philly Trans Health conference . So I had to finalize my arrangements related to both of those. I also had to start thinking about whether or not I would be going to SCC this year and submitted the appropriate stuff for that. Chances are I will be there too. Those are my 3 conferences for the year. I may try and squeeze in Gender Odyssey BUT that all depends on surgery stuff.

Lower surgery

I called my insurance today since I was told the surgeon would call yesterday for the "peer to peer medical review". My insurance said that the surgeon's office and them have a conference time set for Tomorrow! *Does happy dance* When I asked the guy how long it takes for them to make the decision he stated "peer to peer medical review" is fastest and the decision will be given to the surgeon at the end of the conversation and within 7 days both the surgeon's office and myself will get the decision officially in writing for our records.
So tomorrow is a BIG day!


I Got mail... AGAIN!

I opened the mailbox and once again there was a letter from my insurance. I took a deep breath and opened it. It was a statement regarding my hysto saying that they paid the anesthesiologist. That made me smile because though insurance can say whatever they want when it comes to paying stuff it is never final until they actually PAY!

I got mail... or so I thought!

I came home and opened the mail box to see a letter from my insurance company. I got nervous because the surgeon was to call today so if this was regarding surgery that wouldn't necessarily be so good.

My heart is racing my friend and I are texting. He told me to see what it was.

It's some damn letter about some BS that has nothing to do with me. JUNK MAIL!

Ugh! I almost had a heart attack for NOTHING!

Being a married man

I am happy to now have another friend who is a married man who I can relate to who can relate to me as well.

My single friends NEVER understand and my friends in relationships kind of understand but not really.

I was starting to feel like maybe it is just me. It took me hanging with and talking to another guy who is a newly wed to understand what I deal with as a married man.

Navigating married life, socialization and all things take balance and it is good to have someone around who I can explain it too and they get it without over explaining. It is also good to not be the only "dead man walking" "married guy" in the bunch.

Saturday, May 1st recap- Lots of fun!

Yesterday was an AWESOME DAY!

I hung out with about 20 awesome people. There was soccer, boxing, good conversation and a ton of laughs in the park.

I got to test out my new boxing gloves and the headgear. The boxing gloves were awesome but the headgear... not so much. I think that had to do with the fact that we were boxing in 80+ degree weather in the park!

Other than that it was good.

Afterwards some of us hung out and I really felt good bonding with one dude in particular. We have known each other casually for about 5 years yet we talked more in this one night than we have in all those years. I came to realize that we had more in common than we thought!
It was really nice and talking to him made me realize a lot. THANKS MAN!

I had a good time TRYING to play pool, eating food and all that extra stuff afterwards.

My maleness is adapting

I always say myself as a man pre-Transition. When I began to seek out medical transition I had a vague view of what Kind of man I would be in the world. I was just happy to finally be seen in the world as a man.

Now that I am seen 100% as the man I knew myself to be life feels new and a little weird. I am a man yet sometimes I feel like a lost boy.
I am very mature. I have my own Non-profit, my own home, a wife and child yet sometimes I feel like a boy trying to find his way in the world. Part of it I feel has to do with the fact that I never really had a childhood muchless a boyhood. Sometimes I feel that lack of childhood has helped me get to where I am. Independent, determined and focused. I feel wise beyond my years yet lost at times.

I have been struggling with this lately especially due to the fact that as I near my lower surgery which will feel like the major closing of a chapter in my life (transitioning) I also feel a weight lifting.

I have really been reflecting alot on life and I am focusing a lot more on the Quality of the relationships I have over the quantity.

I felt so happy to be able to be out of my old body and more comfortable relating to people that I was willing to befriend everyone. I am learning not all people deserve my friendship. Not all people are good friends.

I have been hanging out more and more with people I know and am getting closer with some people while moving away from others.

Just because we know the same people, both have transition histories and or like each other does not a friendship make!

I am a habitual people pleaser. I always want to see people happy and having a good time even if I have to sacrifice myself to do so. That is changing. I feel stronger and more confident saying "NO" and moving in a different direction from the crowd.

I used to fear going back to being alone and isolated but I know I will never be alone or isolated. I need to let that fear go.

I feel that my maleness has more direction and that I am in my teenager year a little now but realizing where I want to be and where I am going. I am focusing my energy on how to get there.

As a man it is time for me to put away childish ways and move forward. I am young but life is too short.

I feel like my maleness is adapting and that is okay!