Yesterday

Here's a quick summary of the journey there are back, just for completeness:

• Train delayed from Chorley to Manchester because of "cable theft"!!
• Missed my 9:15am train so had to get the 9:45am instead (not too bad really).
• Nice comfy trip down on one of those Pendalino trains (we passed one named "Penny the Pendalino")
• London Underground was busy, noisy and smelly as ever but worked fine
• On the trip back I managed to get on an earlier train ...
• ... which was then delayed because of "Youths placing things on the track near Coventry" (if any of said "Youths" are reading this: Thanks you inconsiderate morons!
• Missed my connection to Chorley so had to wait at Manchester for 20mins followed by a further 40mins at Bolton (on freezing cold platforms, me with no coat and with all waiting rooms closed!).
• Finally got back to Chorley to be greeted with howling winds and lashing rain!
• Got into bed around 11:40 in the end - rather tired today!

Anyway, the appointment itself: I'd met up with Mandy (fab friend from FaceBook) earlier in the day and she was kind enough to come along with me. The place where Dr Curtis has his surgery (is that the right word) is a quite nice but unassuming building on Wimpole Street, nice and relaxing waiting room where Mandy got to sit (reading "Why women can't read maps and men can't listen" - that's such an ironic book to be in the waiting room).

I was quite nervous going into see Dr Curtis, I'd thought of all sorts of things to say but when it came to it I just burbled incoherently (as usual). I was a bit thrown by the initial open question which was "What can I do to help you?". Anyway, we discussed a bit about my history, both basic things like family and obviously my gender issues.

I won't go into the nitty-gritty of all the questions and things that we went through but at the end of it all there is no real conclusion or fixed diagnosis which I didn't expect but still it felt like a bit of an anti-climax when it didn't appear. However, looking at it another way, GID is self-diagnosed, my thoughts, feelings and actions and more importantly my decisions will dictate what treatment I need, which in some ways is better as it gives me a degree of control and time to think things through.

A few things were discussed such as counselling and voice coaching and I need to look into these soon. Also I need to talk to my GP about what is going on.

Most importantly I need to decide what I want to do and how to progress. Following the means that there are essentially two options, 3months of counselling or the same period of real life experience (RLE), the latter including change of name etc. After successful completion of either of these then treatment (if necessary) can proceed.

So, I'm left with lots of big decisions and lots of possibilities and I think I'll leave it until I've got my thoughts in order a little more before I say anything else about that!

Overall a good day though and another step along the way I guess.