Am I elgible for the VA Directive?
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By Lydia_R · Posted
This internet video thing is pretty amazing. I'd call it Zoom, but there are other platforms out there. I prefer Zoom over Teams because Zoom puts me and everyone else in the same picture. I like seeing the whole group in one shot. Teams of course is about having so many people that you can't get them in the shot, or is it? Just saying that I have never met any of my counselors in person. Doctors, of course I have and I am lucky there. They are 3.5 miles from my house as is the main transgender surgery place in town. I've been doing virtual visits with the medical doctors lately though. It feels like once I became steady state, they don't need to interact with me physically that much. I have enjoyed going into their office in my nice clothing. -
By awkward-yet-sweet · Posted
I guess a lot depends on where you start and where you wanna end up. For me, doing the "boy form" thing has come with disadvantages. Smaller skeleton, thinner bones, and skinny/tiny everything. I'll never be taken seriously. I guess the advantage is that my way of blending in is just kind of confusing. "Mommy, is that a boy or a girl?" One of the biggest arguments for starting transition early in life is I think it gives a person a greater ability to pass. My two MtF friends started early, and pass really well. They never got to the larger bone structure, beard, deep voice stuff. Me being intersex (which is more complicated) and not getting around to "boy form" until my 30's, my body size and features were pretty much set in stone. You're lucky. Some folks pay all that and more, even AFTER insurance. One of my friends faced the choice last year - pay for her final year of college or pay for her meds. She's taken a year off from college to work and save up money to finish. My medical expenses have been more injury-related than therapy or medication The state covered some of it with a fund for crime victims, insurance covered a lot, but there's ended up being a few thousand dollars spent out-of-pocket since 2022 to put me back together again. I've never found a decent therapist, but my husband has a psych degree among other things, so I figure talking with him is almost as good. I do have a good doctor, although I have to drive a long way to a big city to see her. Mostly she takes a basic look at me, and writes another year's prescription. Since I'm non-op and only using testosterone cream for a localized effect, its pretty simple stuff. -
By Lydia_R · Posted
I'm a tracker and I've paid for 100% of my transition costs out of pocket. Counseling was a huge, huge part of my transition and well worth my money. Not to be uppity about all of this. I'm just sharing information I have because I have it and it may be useful for others. Here is my analysis of my spending on transition over the last 2.5 years: Medical Doctors and Blood Draws: $2,397 Counseling: $3,800 Medications (brand name): $2,702.85 Medications (generic): $485.39 Total: $9,385.24 I picked up on the internet early in transition that transition is a consumer activity. I tend to agree with that. This year (Jan - May 18th, 2024), I've spent: Medical Doctors: $102 Medications: $241.52 Total: $343.52 So I'm on a much more sustainable path with it. I'm pretty happy with where I am with it, although I do still desire surgery and am nervous about how that will all unfold. But my doctors have me on this steady state thing. I could seek out other medications, but what I'm doing is good enough. Oh, I'm missing something.... I did a bunch of electrolysis that didn't appear to have any effect. I've always enjoyed shaving and I use pink shaving cream now (I've got some lipstick blond in me). It's good enough. Not sure if I'll do electro or laser in the future. The need to shave my body has become less and less. Before HRT, I was shaving my body weekly or even every 5 days. Now it is more like 2-3 weeks. Everyone's body hair is different. My beard is very coarse and stiff while my body hair has been somewhat minimal and light. It's nice to have smooth legs and not have to shave as much. Counseling was $200/session. I tried one or two counselors before I found one who resonated with where I really was. When I was prescribed HRT, I didn't fill the prescription until 4 months later. I had to take some time to decide that I really wanted to take on that lifetime financial commitment. And of course the possibly negative health consequences too, but I think I was actually thinking more about the finances of it all. Maybe 51%. I did a lot of work to revitalize my career before jumping into medical transition. I started counseling 3 months before I got the best paying job of my life. The pressure of wanting to transition was so great that I couldn't wait any longer. She was coming out. Even though I had very little money, I splurged on some nice dresses and a full length mirror and then started counseling. Sometimes you just have to move forward and hope for the best. Other times it is better to wait and do some hard work. The grace of it all.. -
By Ivy · Posted
And when the pressure is released it sucks in heat. I had a regulator leaking and it was covered with ice. It's how a heat pump works as well. Why do they always pick names like this? It's like the exact opposite of what it really is. I hate politics so much. But I still have to follow it. -
By Lydia_R · Posted
Wonderful! This reminds me of a discussion I had with my brother a decade ago. I said that things expand when they get hotter. He said, no, they expand when they get colder. And I had to think about that for a while. The weird thing is that H20 is special in that when it reaches freezing, it expands. The pressure makes the cold and then we see the condensation. -
By KatieSC · Posted
I used to have a really good therapist, however, she does not accept health insurance reimbursement fees as they are too low. I had to pay 130 per session. When she decided to jack the rates to 185 per hour, I cut bait. Without a doubt, counseling is very helpful. What concerns me greatly is that we are a vulnerable population. Unfortunately, we can easily be targeted for some pretty high fees. How many of us have been in the situation where our healthcare provider, surgeons, or counselors, have required cash payments? We get jammed as well by the health insurance companies as they often will not pay for items that could be essential to our well-being. It is my contention that our chances of being targeted for violence, death, or harassment, go up when we cannot easily blend in with the female population. For those of us that are MTF, some of us are blessed with more feminine features, and many of us are not. We get the whammy of a larger skeleton, bigger hands, bigger feet, a beard, a deep voice, and masculine face. It takes a lot for some of us to be able to blend in. My belief is that the better we blend in, the better chance we have of not being targeted. In this, electrolysis, facial feminizing/gender affirming facial surgery, voice/speech therapy with voice feminization/gender affirming voice surgery, and body contouring are all potentially lifesaving. Unfortunately, many of the insurance companies deem the procedures as cosmetic, and yet there is no cosmetic that fixes all of these issues. If you pay your money, you can get anything you want in this world. The sad reality is that for us, many of these procedures would enhance our lives tremendously, yet we face ongoing battles with our very existence. Yeah, an empathetic therapist helps, but is it just the concept of reasonable empathy at a reasonable cost? When my therapist jacked her rates to 185 per hour, I said enough is enough. Your mileage may vary. -
By awkward-yet-sweet · Posted
I don't think the temperature matters as much. Think about how gases like CO2 are stored in cylinders, and they are basically the same in summer or winter. Any gas becomes liquid under enough pressure. What does matter is the strength of the pressure vessel. If exposed to excess external heat, pressure increases and can burst a tank or a pipe. Household propane tanks are often painted white or silver and have safety release valves, because sunlight can heat a tank enough to cause a significant increase in internal pressure, even though the contents remain liquid. -
By awkward-yet-sweet · Posted
It has been a long week, and I think this weekend is going to be pretty busy. The high school is having their graduation later today. Although we don't have any grads in our family this year, my husband is going because he's involved with the school. And tonight there's the torchlight ceremony for the county cadets who are finishing their program, and the reading of assignments for the new seniors. One of my stepkids will be a senior this year. She's talented, and will be assigned a squad leader position. My husband is really proud of her, and she's well-liked by her peers even though she's very quiet and serious. I might get to go on a trip to Texas this week. The storms that hit Houston caused a lot of electrical damage, so no doubt the utilities in that area will be ordering stuff from my husband's company. When the big hurricane hit Florida in 2022, we made several trips there with badly-needed equipment, and the entire transportation department was involved in the first convoy. When he travels, I usually want to go along, since 1-on-1 time is kind of rare for us. -
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By Lydia_R · Posted
Maybe surface tension? I was in a political debate yesterday and it got way too focused on social stuff and I just had to steer the conversation back to how natural gas transitions to a liquid under pressure. One of the people I was debating had a career working in that field and it was a good opportunity to expose stuff like that. He mentioned that it isn't just pressure, it is temperature too. So then I mentioned how the lines are running underground and asked how that played a role in it. He came back saying that natural gas is a liquid under pressure. I guess I didn't get a straight answer on that, but it did move my thinking one step down the road. Perhaps I should have been more direct with him and asked him at what temperature and pressure. Is there a chart? I feel people would be better off if they paid more attention to the objects in their environment instead of focusing on some of the things that we hear so much of in the news. People are pretty clueless as to how much trigonometry plays a role in so many things in our society. Even land surveyors don't really use it anymore because programmers locked it away in a function. Much like how cascading style sheets (CSS) is a wrapper for math. I wonder what former president Trump thinks about all of that? He must have some knowledge of how his buildings are constructed, right? There certainly is a part of me that thinks he is just putting on a show about all of this. Perhaps I'm wrong though. All kinds of people in the world. -
By Jani · Posted
Me as well. I can use my left hand for many tasks though. -
By Jani · Posted
Hello Jennifer and welcome back. I find New England to be a great place to live. I have a number of acquaintances and friends in Maine and I love the state. It seems you are doing well. Hugs, Jani -
By MirandaB · Posted
Oh, my "maybe this person is an egg" story is the (male presenting) piercing person and I discussed body hair removal methods, he says he doesn't want any hair except on his head, which is what I said during a couple hair removal sessions before and just after the egg cracked. -
By Karen Carey · Posted
I, too, am lucky. Here in the UK I have a great therapist, a fully supportive GP, and a psychiatrist and endo who look after me and my needs. I found the therapist on Psychology Today. -
By Lydia_R · Posted
Over the last few years of being on this site and going through medical transition, I've come to own the M->F identification. Funny, I made a typo of M->T. It is a curiosity if I'll ever put Gender: Female on this site. It is my intention to be there someday. Right now, because of career stuff and a high stress event with an electric hair clipper last fall, I'm feeling much more masculine than I would like. I think that once I make some decent headway with my third career, I'll settle into a more feminine feeling. I never really considered gender very much. I certainly always used a feminine appearance as my presentation goal. I think that when I was young, I briefly had the idea of transitioning, but I convinced myself quickly that medical transition would be a bad outcome, so I put all those feelings and ideas in the closet for decades. I'm still very apprehensive about medical transition. I've always taken health to be a high priority for me. I wrote a book last December about my fears of it all and my conclusion ultimately is that sometimes there is more to life than being a pillar of health. It's important to take some chances if that is where your heart takes you.
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