Big smile post 1: A potential hurdle remover

As you may have noticed from my last post, I hit a bit of a trough when my psychiatrist didn’t want to write me the referral letter. I was really rather sad with that. She seems to really believe in me and did make it clear to the gatekeeper at the hospital where she works that she really feels surgery is something I need, yet she felt that not mixing the therapy and the gatekeeping was more important. To a certain extent, I admire her strength of conviction, but I feel a bit let down by the ease with which she did that.

So, I managed to keep things together during the day at work (a crazy day as usual) but when I came home, I was in quite a state. To cut a long story short, I ended up spending the last hour of my nightly Skype session with my lovely girlfriend in tears (and I feel guilty about that because that meant she worried far too much about me). During the day, which included a 270km trip to my other office, meetings galore and a return trip of 270km, I’d had lots of opportunities to think, but not many chances to really find a solution. Yesterday was different, though: I was in the office in Hamburg and had the chance to do some Googling.

I’d already found an online therapist the evening of hearing about not getting the letter, but I was a little worried about her since she used a very unorthodox system with self-made online tests costing some $1,100 for the full process to get a GRS referral letter. I was worried by the unorthodox tests and by the fact that I knew so little about the therapist that spending $1,100 not even knowing if the letter would be accepted was far too risky.

Then, yesterday, I changed my Googling method and found another online therapist, one who showed all the right credentials and one who followed a process I believed in. I connected to his site and we had a good 45 minute chat (whilst I was at work) and I left that feeling I could work with him. We agreed on working together, I gave him a lot of info about myself in a biographical profile document and set an appointment for 7am this morning.

So, rather scared, I got up this morning and connected to his online chat server and we started talking. He’s very good, actually! He showed a lot of concern for actually helping, not just getting me my letter, and we had a good hour of talking where he explored my background and my life. Then we came to the agreement that we’ll meet twice a week for the time being, but he already felt comfortable enough to suggest that he’ll get me my letter during the first week of February so that I can relax in the run up to my operation! It will still cost me $700, but I’m not complaining… That letter is worth that and more then that when I think about it!

So, I’m huuuuuuuuuuuugely relieved! I’ll still be worried until I have that letter in my hand, but it’s so lovely to be working towards a solution!

I’m smiling, in case you can’t guess that!!!

PS. I won’t share details about either online psychiatrists online, but have heard good things about both and will share details privately if you’re in need of them.

PPS. “Big smile post 2″ will be coming tomorrow on a completely unrelated but terribly sweet subject.

Possibly Related Posts:

• It’s so easy to forget
• How to overdo it completely!
• It’s OK to be gay
• Back to work
• Back to reality

Tags: GRS referral letter, online therapy, Trans