On Wednesday of this week (tomorrow in my timezone) I will become homeless. My landlords have sold the property I have spent the past 8 years in and served me with a no-fault eviction order 2+ months ago. Quite separately my daughter decided to leave after 14 years with me, including her transition from girl to young woman. I, myself, transitioned almost 2 years ago after a long gestation.

Some will already be aware of this much.

My biggest issue has been the lack of affordable housing near me. I also needed to downsize drastically.

I spent a few weeks reviewing what my options were given that my GP had refused to prescribe HRT & blockers.
 
[CAUTION applies beyond this point]

Complaint Rejected

It's been and up & down week, and it was only Thursday when I received the latest news from the local NHS complaints office:

"Your complaint and the response from the practice, together with your recent emails is currently undergoing an independent clinical review. We will of course let you know once this has been completed."

So all I can now do is wait.

I have asked, several times, for a change of GP but I've heard nothing about it as yet - that doesn't have to depend on the complaint(s) but I suspect they have linked the request with the original complaint.

Ever since my name & gender change was official, in March of this year, I have been informing various folk officially of the change. One of those was the Tavistock & Portman GIC Trust in London. When I received a "who are you" back in May I had to let them have my old and new NHS registration numbers, but they couldn't find me. Most recently I sent them the referral documentation.

There's a few more weeks before my NHS complaint is due to be resolved, but I'm beginning to have doubts that it will be resolved - at least in one of the scenarios that I would accept. I won't speculate further but will let everyone know what their answer is when I receive it.

Unsurprisingly I have heard nothing from my GP but I was called to the local general hospital for a mammogram, confirmation that my gender marker has been changed. The all-clear letter arrived a few days ago; it wasn't a definite as there's breast cancer in the family.

A lovely surprise call this morning from my Doctor's office telling me that I had been issued with a new NHS number. That's because the gender marker has been changed and I'm officially female. That was supposed to take 3 weeks but was completed in just 11 days! I'm also, once again, able to order prescriptions online now that the national NHS database has been modified.

My GP had obviously seen my letter (see previous blog) as I received a text message addressed to my new name but I was asked to complete a change of details form before anything else happened.

I was doing some housekeeping on my file/media server when I came across a copy of a few long-deleted blog entries from 2012. This one from 2012-07-24 should be self-explanatory:

Anyone who knows me is aware that I seldom stop talking, but one little envelope in the mail managed to do just that.

The envelope was marked "Private & Confidential". I just knew it had to be the psychiatrist's report so opened it with some trepidation, especially given the experience I had 'enjoyed' in the company of the newly-qualified shrink two weeks ago.

Please bear in mind that I'm writing about the UK. Your experience may vary!

I wrote to my GP on Monday, confirming my wish to be referred for a Gender Identity Clinic, adding that I would also like an Orchidectomy. As an elective procedure (and not being performed at the same time as GRS) there's likely to be a fairly long wait for an NHS date.

It caught me, I certainly didn't go out looking for the damned virus!

I'm fully jabbed so it's just a question of riding it out - sorry for the belated posting of UG2 but I chose my bed rather than my desk yesterday. Meanwhile, I'm back at my desk and I may have been working on something new .....

Shiraz

A member of the British aristocracy has been in the news media rather a lot recently and it took me a moment to remember that I had included a very minor scene in one of the stories that included the name of said person. Today that's been airbrushed out of the story.

I don't remember having to do this before, but I guess it might happen again as my stories live in the Real World (tm)

Shiraz

I just tried uploading an image (an 800px PNG) to BCTS but it failed. Resized to 600px and converted to JPG but all failed. Is there a known issue with image uploading?

(I was trying to announce a new mini series .....)

It's taken some considerable number of months but I've managed to finish the conversion of the short first-person Tammy's Summer Diary into Tammy's Summer Fling, a 64k word novel.

What this means is that I now have a little more time available and will split this for two writing projects. The first of these is the third Unaccounted Gains Book (currently expected on Kindle in August) and the second project is a brand new Tammy story that will be premiered here later this summer.

Sad to hear of John Le Carre's passing tonight. I was first familiar with his work when Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was first dramatised by the BBC in 1979 and was hooked on the stories.

It's fair to say I borrowed a little from the genre, particularly for the Unaccounted Gains books.

A real loss to literature. Rest in peace.

Shiraz