Evelyn

Evelyn’s mum: Yeah, we had a few issues, cos , when [name] changed her name initially we, I asked them to change it on the doctors thing, because they’ve got a big monitor in the surgery, obviously you don’t call people in now verbally do they, they call them in through a big screen. So obviously we didn’t want her name to flash up so I asked them to change it. And she said, “Well it will still flash up,” she says, “I can put a preferred name option, but her legal name will still come up on the board,” and I said, “Well that’s not really acceptable, because obviously she’s going to be sat in the middle of a busy surgery,” and, they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t alter it. She refused. So in the end we ended up getting the deed poll done a lot quicker than we probably would have done. Just to stop all, you know, the hassle we were getting really. Then she got a letter through another part of the NHS, for an injection with school, and that came through in her old name, and title. So, I phoned them up and I asked how we can alter that because I’d obviously changed her name by deed poll at the surgery by this point. So, the lady I asked, said well you’d have to get a new NHS number, cos this comes from a central bank. So basically, if she gets referred to any other area of the hospital then they will refer to the central bank and it’ll come in her old name, regardless, so you’ll have, so this is what we had to do. So, I did some research on how to do that.

Well we talked with the, there’s this one private doctor, I think they’re up in like [country] or something like that, where we, who we reached out to get blockers early whilst we were on the waiting list for Tavistock. We had to have this phone call conversation with a person, we, it was basically like everything the Tavi was wanting us to know, but in an hour, you know instead of like five months. And then after that they were prepared to give us blockers and we could get them cheaper if we did this shared care agreement with the GP, but the GP’s and the like clinics said no, they’re not going to do the shared care agreement with us, so then we had to scrap everything really because it’s really expensive for all the blockers and things like that, if you don’t have the shared care agreement. And then the Tavistock tried to dissuade us from taking them as well, they were like, “If you go with the shared care agreement, you’re not going to be able to get blockers from us,” so basically it was like, almost like blackmail or bribery, or something like that, like you can have this but you’re not going to get the help that you need if you get the help you need basically.

It was hard and then also it felt kind of helpless, like because I couldn’t see the Tavistock cos obviously I was on the waiting list, so I couldn’t see them, and then as soon as I got to the Tavi appointments I still had to wait like, I had to have multiple assessment sessions before I could even get on blockers, and before I was even like on blockers a lot of like the main things that defines a male puberty had already like happened or finished, like voice breaking, getting taller, and things like that.

Like I said we got to, once we got referred, we got a letter back from the Tavistock saying that we were on the waiting list and it was, I think it said nine to twelve months we were waiting for. And it was just kind of like helplessness, especially like after a few months, when I’d started going through puberty a lot more, it was like there’s literally nothing I can do, I just have to wait for an appointment. And then we got, I don’t, we didn’t get lucky, but like we were on it for nine months when the waiting list was like up to twelve months, so I suppose we got the better side of things, but still, we were still waiting for a really long time and lots of changes to my body was happening that are irreversible, and that blockers can’t take back.

I think hormone blockers are good for trans youth, but I think they could be better if the wait and the effort to get them is a lot shorter, because I basically was going through puberty whilst I was waiting to get the puberty blockers, so it was, it seemed really dumb and unnecessary and like I experienced a lot of the things that in the first place I was trying to stop, and I didn’t get to stop them.

It was exciting, obviously, I knew already that there was like an assessment process, so you had to take before you get blockers, because we’d researched into that. But anyway we met the therapist and the person that was with them, because you have to have two people usually to do therapy. You have your main therapist and then you have someone else with them, so we met them both. Obviously, introductions, told them what I wanted to get from the Tavistock which was blockers initially, and then they said that as the assessment process went on we would have one to one sessions with the, I would have a session with one of them, and then my parents would talk with the other one. It was mainly just like a, “Here’s what’s going to happen in the future.” We didn’t really accomplish much then. And then the appointments are monthly.

And so, what was it like for you on that first appointment?

It was exciting, cos it was like finally after nine months I get to see these people, and then, yeah it was kind of exciting. But then it was also like disappointing because we didn’t really achieve much and they were like, “Oh you can do it in four to six appointments, before you can even like start thinking about blockers.” Or something like that. Which obviously there’s an appointment every month it was going to be at least another third of a year before I even get any chance of getting blockers. So, we kind of left feeling like, [puff of air], like, it is like defeated because you know it was all this big excitement like finally get to see someone who can help, and then they’re just like, “Well you know we can help in like four or six months, we’ll see you next month.”

Okay. So what happens after that?

After that appointment, well at the end of the appointment told them other dates that we could do, and then they told us that it was going to be monthly, and we went to monthly sessions where basically they, I had a one-to-one session with my therapist, basically he asked me questions like: “What’s my main source of dysphoria?” Do I have a gender dysphoria? Where do I see myself in X amount of years? It was just like questions about sexuality, gender dysphoria, like gender identity, some of the questions seemed a bit dumb because we started talking about like, “Oh what’s your sexuality?” And it was like, “Does this matter? I just want blockers, like why are we talking about this insignificant stuff?” it’s like, the assessment process seems really long and most of it’s like pretty pointless, especially someone like me who came to block, to the Tavistock with a clear idea of what I want, had wanted. Cos a lot of people come not really knowing a lot of information, but we came like, “I want blockers, I’m this, that and the other,” but we still had to go through everything that everyone else does even though most of it we’d already accomplished.

I suppose like when I was like really, really, really young, I think I told my Mum that I, like wanted to be a girl or something like that. I don’t remember it myself, but I’ve been told that I said that to my parents. And then as I started to hit puberty I kind of like really realised that this isn’t, I don’t want to be a boy, I am a girl. And this, puberty that I’m going through isn’t right for me. So that’s when I started to come out to my parents.

I suppose obviously, the first kind of things that was really, like that triggered dysphoria was obviously like growing hair in my genital area, and then armpit’s as well, also like voice breaks, voice cracking and then getting deeper, that was like a big thing to me as well. Getting a lot taller and shoe size is also a thing, cos that’s like constantly there, and you always have to buy you know like new shoes, and new clothes and things like that, so you just, so it’s like always in your brain that that’s like abnormal for a regular female.

[GIDS] were constantly like, “You should see fertility, fertility, cos you’ve got to go to fertility before you go on blockers.” Like this should be done afterwards pretty much. So And they said that it won’t take very long to do, so we’re like “Oh okay, lets do,” cos this was like just before we were going to go get on blockers, like, “Okay lets go do fertility,” just, and if it works it works. And if it doesn’t work, then eh, cos I, I talked really fast then, I wasn’t too bothered about having my sperm taken, I don’t mind adopting, if I do want kids. I don’t even know if I want kids yet. But we went to see fertility, we had to see this fertility therapist, you know, another therapist to talk about it, and then after that we had more bloods done, the fertility , we had to wait a few months, or was it like just one, it was like a month.

We had to wait one or two months after the seeing the therapist person, and then we went and did the whole sperm donation thing, or whatever it’s called, like keeping it, I can’t remember what it’s called. Keeping the sperm, but there was no sperm present. So, then it failed basically. And it was just like an extra one or two months not on blockers, pretty much, cos we had to not go on blockers to it. So, it was just kind of like a pointless extension.

I think with trans youth, the GP’s should understand like the urgency of it, as opposed, because she was like, “Oh I’ll write the referral letter,” but the referral letter was quite a while for it to be written out to the Tavistock, and sent to the Tavistock, and obviously when you’re not on blockers and you’re twelve, thirteen years old, going through puberty, it’s a really rushed thing, like whilst we were waiting on, if it was pulled back a bit you know, if she’s done it sooner or things had been done quicker, we could have maybe prevented some areas of puberty that I went through more than they are now.