Enabling Works

[auslanderin01.livejournal.com]

I am a trans woman.  I'm also a project manager, so I will use the language of my trade to try and explain my need.  When you've got a project that you're really sure about and which has a fixed deadline, but doesn't have the full go-ahead, you can carry out 'enabling works,' things that will make possible all that is to follow.  We're doing it in London, to the tune of £15.9bn, on the Crossrail project (as anyone who's been around Tottenham Court Road should have seen).

I have decided that I am going to stop fucking around with "Oh I so want to live as a woman but can't do it because life is too difficult" and that, when I go to see Penny Lenihan at CHX this September, I will express my determination to transition fully.  With one caveat (mentioned endlessly before).  My daughter, who is 13 now, must have reached adulthood before I start RLE.  That is because it will signal the end of my marriage and I can't do that to her yet.  And that means there's a four to five year moratorium but an absolute need.

So I am after advice on what I can do in the mean time to make RLE as 'passable' and painless as possible.  Really specific advice, like:

• a very good voice specialist currently working in the London area and likely to be sympathetic to me (I've bought and tried Andrea James' very good video but hate, hate, hate doing it in private)
• a good surgeon in the UK for facial feminsation (at this stage, just rhinoplasty)
• targets for permanent hair removal (face was obvious and is in progress, but I'm not sure what would diminish with estro/orchi and what's bloody tenacious.  I'm not by nature very hairy at all...)
• any views on the likelihood that CHX will accede to my request for an orchi now in order to get off the anti-androgens and prevent the baldness that is just starting (my paranoia, more than anything that's visible)
• examples of anyone else who's done this
• anything I haven't thought of (that's the beauty of this community: every day I learn so much new stuff)

I have time and I have money.  Help me to spend it well.

I'm happy to see posts here or to receive messages.  I don't care what they are: I just want to GET ON WITH STUFF BEFORE I DO SOMETHING STUPID.

I will cross-post this to tguk.  Thank you for any advice, however off-beat you might think it is!