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Category Archives: Persistence

Loaned out

15 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by karenpayneoregon in Life, Persistence, Post surgery, Thoughts

≈ 1 Comment

I work for a state agency for the past twenty years and recently another agency close by asked my manager if they could borrow me for a week. The request was urgent so after my manager received I was on my way to the other agency. When I arrived the CEO, a former employee of my agency greeted me, thanked me for coming right over. Within an hour I was assisting them with the problem that brought me in for and finished the day out.

Day two, in the afternoon the woman who greeted me the first day brought a manager over to meet me. This other manager had also worked at my agency and unlike the CEO who knew me in my male identity did not know of my transition. So in the introduction the manager asked how long I had been working at my agency. In return I said twenty years, mostly in one division. The manager in turn said she had worked in this division at the same time and does not remember me.

So she ask me question after question trying to remember me but can’t. The entire time I am waiting for her to say something like “Hey you were a male before” or something like that. I could see she is not going to give up and now know she is not going to put two and two together.  The image below is before (me on the left teaching) and after.

Both

So I finally said “wait a minute”, grab some paper, write my former name down and hand it to her. She looks at the name, looks up, looks down and then finally looks up and says WOW I would not had guessed. She puts the paper down and hugs me. We chat for a few minutes and then she was off to a meeting.

Two days later and several days after that we talk more but never once bring up my past again and treated me like a friend/co-worker.

So with that there is something to be said about those either starting in some place into a journey of transitioning that it gets better as time goes by. What I mean by it gets better is (for those who are cisgender) when a person either male or female begins thinking of transitioning are usually very fearful of a) being discovered b) thinking they will never be accepted by friends, family and co-workers. Sure the ugly truth is there are backwards thinking people who will never accept a transgender person but the majority will. More times than not the rejection comes from the person transitioning by words, actions and attire which causes cisgender people to feel uncomfortable with them.

It’s easy for me to say “I have been there done that” and say nothing else but the truth is, I was frighten to step out my front door in fear of being made but learned from others before me that it does not have to be that way. Also, when I told my neighbors about transitioning two of them said, “what took you so long?” I responded with “What do you mean”, they said yeah we have seen you sneaking out dressed and thought that I should had just came out then.

I said I was fearful of doing this especially before obtaining a letter to allow me to have surgery. Wish I knew that then but I am now telling other transgender people the truth, you may believe you are sneaking out but there are always eyes watching.

Take it from someone who has been there, like with the manager I mentioned above and she was not the first this happened with me, at least 10 people in my past could not recognize me. Hormones and confidence in oneself goes a long way to blending in as the gender you were suppose to be.

Milestone for dilation

15 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by karenpayneoregon in Dilation, My journey, Persistence, Post surgery

≈ Leave a comment

It has been forty-five days since my surgery, forty-days since first dilating and I am finally comfortable with the larger of the three dilation tools.

In short, the dilation process three times a day since first starting has been painful when moving from the middle size tool to the larger size tool. At first I could only handle five minutes out of fifteen-minutes. So I would do ten minutes with the middle size then five with the larger. I then progressed to five minutes with the middle size and ten with the larger size. For about three weeks of doing this most was painful until today. This morning I did the usual, mid-size for five minutes then ten for the larger. For my mid-day dilation I decided to go solely with the larger one and was actually comfortable. Just finished my last dilation of the day and it was comfortable too.

About mid-way in the process I chatted with Marci Brower and she said I must push passed the pain which I did and so happy I have reached the point to using only the larger dilation tool.

One more month at three times a day then for six months two times a day then thereafter one time a day. I will be so happy when reaching the point of one time a day~

Name change visit to work

11 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by karenpayneoregon in My journey, Persistence, Post surgery

≈ Leave a comment

I went to work yesterday to start the process of changing my name which is fairly easy, produce my new social security card and they do they process it from there. They are said (and I should had figured this out) I needed to update my insurance information so I took the forms home and filled them out for returning with them today.

I emailed a co-worker whom I told he could use my parking spot at work that I would be in for HR work.

He said let’s all go out for coffee, which I said sure thing. When I got to work about 10 or so co-workers came over to see how I was doing. I gave them a brief on how things were going and that I will be out for several more weeks (Robin at Marci’s office emailed me today and said I can go back to work around March 2nd).

So six of us took a walk over to the nearby Starbucks, got coffee, came back and chatted for a while followed by me visiting HR to get my name change going there.

I was very happy that everyone came over to see me and had smiles on their faces which meant a great deal to me.

There was way too much paper work to complete today so I will head back tomorrow and give them the filled out forms.

So today I went back to hand in my insurance forms and asked about my badge which is used for getting around as the company has super tight security. I was told to see a woman and went back, told her I needed a new badge. She first asked for my former name then my current name. Next I was given the opportunity to change my picture which surprised me as in the past they would not change your picture (which I never figured out why) and was happy they allowed me too. She took two pictures and gave me the pick of the two.

Tomorrow I am going to lunch with two current co-workers and several retirees. This should be fun and interesting as I have not seen the retirees for several years but over the past week have emailed with them. One told me she knows of two people in her life that are currently transitioning so I figure this will be easy for her.

So other than having some bad mornings over the past few days I have been rolling right along. When I say bad mornings, I get out of bed, make breakfast then get really tired and had just woke up from 6-8 hours sleep. My nap then last about 1 to 2 hours followed by taking pain pills, waiting an hour then do dilation which I start with the smaller dilator for 10 minutes then move up to the medium size dilator for 15 minutes. I did try once (and never again) the medium size dilator and was so painful that I knew never to do this again until I can work with smaller to medium for one or two weeks.

My afternoon dilation is the same as the morning dilation and my evening dilation is just the smaller tool as I am usually to tired to do as I have in the morning and afternoon, it’s just too much. I don’t know what the medical term is but about two inches in there is a very tight spot that I need to gently apply a fair amount of pressure to get by it and that is the focus of pain but once past it the pain goes away in about one minute.

So I can not stress enough that dilation can be painful and one must be prudent to how they approach getting the tool inside you.

Moving up in size

09 Monday Feb 2015

Posted by karenpayneoregon in My journey, Persistence, Post surgery

≈ 1 Comment

Since starting dilation I tried out the mid-size dilator once then retreated to the smaller dilator. Today I got the courage to step up to the mid-size dilator and let me say it is very painful and not looking forward to the next time I need to use it but must as I need to get comfortable with the mid-size then move to the eek full-size.

They say, start with the smaller one then after five minutes remove it for the mid-size and let me tell you that is what I am going to do as the pain level was about a five using 0-10 for a pain scale.

Anyways it has been two hours since my dilation and still feeling after pain from using the mid-size dilator.

Left to right, blue is small, green is mid-size, orange is large. Trust me when I say they are vastly different in width.

DialatorSet

Karen

2015

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