I wrote a blog post on one of my sites this week after some anniversaries happened.
One such was 12 years use of a social media account on 20 March. That led me to check a domain I use, and that is 12 years and a month old. Then I found a photo taken 18 March 2008 during my first transition (I lasted 6 weeks, no support).
The current Tammy series, Rank Stupidity, wrapped up a few days ago , and although it did lead into Snowfall's Butterflies, Asphalt & Insanity there are a few unresolved storylines!
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.
I've had an email today from the Tavistock & Portman NHS Trust to confirm that they have accepted a referral for me. I immediately responded, asking them for my effective referral date and who made the referral. The answers took 15 minutes (!): 26 July 2022 and my GP's team made the referral.
So it's in. Unfortunately the other piece of information from the Trust was that they are giving first appointments to patients with a referral date in July 2018! So if you felt tremors, it's not because I'm jumping up and down with joy.
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.
I finally finished a different writing project over the weekend so today I started work on UG5. At the moment the working title is ....{redacted}.... There's a few thousand words down so far and if my muse is going to stay on good form then I may have this book with my proofreaders in about a month!
Meanwhile I will shortly start to serialise UG3 Diminishing Returns
There are plenty of ideas for new Tammy at the moment but no new words as yet.
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.
My long awaited complaint to the NHS about my 11 years of waiting has now gone in the mail and should reach them on Tuesday. I have paid for tracking so will get confirmation.
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.
After monday's call from my GP I had some thinking to do. Last night I was in a pub where the owner was marking his 20th anniversary as the pub landlord. That event had me standing next to a couple who are retired teachers (having both taught my daughter) and with whom I'm involved with festivals & projects.
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.
Progress! My GP has been in touch and emailed me a referral form for the Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service. Completed and sent directly to GIDS.
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.
My mail on Saturday included a letter from my Doctor. I've been exchanging letters with her since March after I realised it had been 10 years since my initial 'gatekeeper' interview with an NHS shrink, and nothing had been heard since then. The irony is that the same GP was handling me then so at least she couldn't blame anyone else in the building. The main issue was that the original paperwork had been lost and now is beyond recovery, although I had scanned the original report that recommended referral.
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 .....
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)
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 .....)
My next Kindle release will be 'Deathtrap', incorporating the Aftermath story. It is being fully revised with new, previously unseen, content. Of course, Alecia is on board for that. Currently that is expected in late November but ... sometimes things happen sooner!
Meanwhile there are two brand new Tammyverse stories in production with one just about finished. Unfortunately they can't be posted here yet but there will be fresh, unseen, Tammy on this site before Christmas! Posting is likely to continue into 2022, after which there will be a break.
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.
The battle lines have been drawn, will I or Amazon be the victors?
My problem is that Amazon seems to object to my books living anywhere else on the internet. This isn't a new issue, and many published authors have hit the same problem, but usually it is a simple issue to fix.
Not this time, I loaded Testing Times onto Kindle a week back and that took a day to be authorised, but it's the paperback that's giving me trouble. To be honest, I'm only putting a paperback option on Amazon for completeness (plus so I can have a dead-tree edition on my bookshelf!)
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.
Firstly BCTS: Tammy's Interlude stories concluded last weekend. The next story 'Deja Flew', in conjunction with Snowfall, will start in a few weeks and will likely run (just) into the New Year. Then there will be a break.
The re-post of Unaccounted Gains Book 1 ('Accountancy Can Be Deadly') concludes shortly. Book 2 ('Spying by Numbers') will be re-posted after UG3 is published on Kindle.
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