Post-operative depression seems a common experience for
transsexual women! I hope to provide you some degree of comfort
that in all likelihood, "this too will pass." I've long
been disappointed that few post-ops have been willing to discuss
their personal experiences of depression and difficult times.
We may feel some misplaced guilt that even having won the
"lottery" at 19-to-1 odds against, we should therefore be
ashamed to admit to feeling depressed. The vision might
have embraced a "happily ever after" life, swept away by the
first available affectionate Emir or handsome prince, etc. In
fact, the new life may be "brimming under" with an unexpected
poverty of love, affection, or simple friendship.
Who wants to hear a lot of sour-grapes voices suggesting "you're
not really a transsexual or proper woman" or something
along
those lines? Once-frequented support groups may thus not seem a
safe place to vent a little sadness.
On the contrary, I have strong suspicions that the post-op
depression is more the rule than the exception, and there are
several factors creating it. As far as I can determine, hormone
balances within the body can require months to adjust
after a sudden change; a year's time to stabilize seems about
right.. and that can trigger some delayed reactions, particularly
in coming down from higher estrogen dosage, or at last in
riddance of the hated source of testosterone. The direct aspect
is in the nature of the transition period as
goal-oriented, rather than ongoing process of
life.
This goal can fully consume one's emotional and financial
resources in staying on track. Finally, when you have reached the
summit of the mountain, life appears to crash! You may
feel ghost-like and empty, unable to find the long-sought joy
that seemed within reach.
I still don't understand fully what went on with me during 1993.
Literally it was a coming down the mountain. Maybe my spirit was
telling me that it was past time to close up things and embark on
a new life to match by new status ... "more of the same" tedium
seemed such a letdown. One's expectations are so raised,
and it's
necessary to rediscover many personal realities, getting out and
doing some new things, just as you have now begun! Travel,
writing, taking courses, trying a new job ... any or all of these
will be a metaphoric step down a new avenue.
Susan comments: I quite agree that being able to give
reassurance to others is very important. My own experience
of GRS was very daunting and to be quite honest I often
felt that I was only just about coping, and even then sometimes I
wasn't really. Having known others who had got through it, and
many in far worse situations than myself, helped me
enormously.
Just being able to keep online was a big thing. Real-time
support, even just in the form of e-mails and chat rooms like
Shangri La, made a big difference. They have an immediacy
that I have found very supportive. Even though there one is
physically so removed, just knowing that there are others
around the world to talk to is very helpful. I have often gone to
chat feeling very down and soon felt much better just with "Hi!"s
and "How are things" even without actually going in any details
of why one is low.
Depression I think is something created in stresses from
just about from every direction. Potentially:
- 1. Loss of one's children.
- 2. Loss of family
- 3. Loss of supposed friends.
- 4. Loss of job
- 5. Loss of self-confidence and self-worth
- 6. Financial problems - usually major.
- 7. Hormone effects from HRT
- 8. Second puberty
- 9. ( Fear of ) Rejection by society
- 10. ( Fear of ) Harassment and possible physical abuse in
public.
- 11. ( Fear of ) not being able to get to surgery.
- 12. Post Traumatic Shock Syndrome (after surgery is
achieved).
- 13. Short and Long term anaesthetic effects.
- 14. Coping with recovery over several months.
- 15. Loss of, and moving out of, one's own house.
- 16. Lack of Sleep
- 17. Electro Shock Therapy, otherwise known as electrolysis.
- 18. Diet, as in not eating properly under stress; thus compounding it.
Moving house is meant to be one of the major life events
so beloved by psychiatrists. This list is of course focused on
the immediate period of transition, and doesn't address all the
other long-term stresses of growing up different from the
"norm" ... although I am not quite sure what that is
either.
Julia: Consider the cumulative effects of
so many potential stress factors in single year or two!
Susan: As far as bios go I have been writing on an almost
daily basis, in e-mails to a friend, all that is happening
to me, down to the trivial of what I have had to eat, and
personal difficulties e.g. all my stresses over dilating, coming
out, children, their mothers, etc.
I think that with transsexuals being such a small group it is
difficult to provide contact, except via the net, as most
disappear into their own lives as quickly as possible. In England
there are only about six thousand of us post-op, in a
population of sixty million. It is difficult to envisage a formal
rite of passage when we are so thinly spread. For me a big moment
is being accepted by other women as a woman, even knowing my
situation. Women wanting to be friends with me because of
who I am, not what I am. I have been hiding away so
long that actually meeting people and making friends is a new
experience.
I am very thankful to have had the orchidectomy early on in my
transition. However getting through my recent surgery was very
difficult, and that was with a very supportive environment in the
hospital. The "small but significant risk" of the anaesthetic
really made me face my mortality... to the point that I
made special efforts to see and speak with a number of people so
that just in case something happened I had said the words
to them that were important to me for them to know, as all too
often things are assumed and then it is too late.
I even, after much agonizing, went through with my eleven year-old
daughter all what I was doing going into hospital, so that
she would know if anything happened. It was a lot to put on
someone so young, but she is very supportive and I felt it better
for her to know the truth. The weekend before I went into
hospital we went out for a special meal, and spent time together
shopping for things on my list to take into the hospital.
Another thought, which I will try to follow up. I don't know
whether the prostate gland is removed in surgery. If it is then
perhaps there is a subtle long-term effect there as well. In
women there is thought to be similar gland tissue present, but
not in a small lump to be readily recognised.
Julia: It's really difficult. Back in 1991-92 I couldn't
find anyone to tell me about these things. Post-ops never came
back to the little support group. I joked with my roommate in the
hospital: "Wow, you're the first post-op with whom I've
had the opportunity to share an extended conversation!" Sadly,
it was true... she was a post-op by two days and still
catheterized, but we did have some time to talk a bit (nowhere
else to go!)
Susan: Hmm, I always thought that there would be many more
post-ops in the U.S. So what you are suggesting is that there
might only be some twenty thousand or so of us
worldwide? I am trying to find out some better figures for
UK and Europe.
Julia: I think no one possesses provable figures. I
recall a medical survey done in Sweden quite a few years ago,
suggesting that transsexuals number about one per thirty-seven
thousand of the general population, and that, while hampered by
imprecision of definition, includes pre-ops ... the figure
may be too conservative by a wide margin, and the truth
might be closer to one per thousand, depending again on how one
defines "TS". One film claimed that only five percent of
those seeking reassignment surgery actually obtain it, but this
figure may be another created essentially from thin air, having
the authority of rumor.
Susan: There was an article in a national newspaper's
weekend colour supplement (Telegraph Magazine: 22nd March
1997), which said that according to a Prof. Louis Gooren, at
University Hospital Amsterdam, there is a one in 11,900 incidence
of transsexuality; about three times your figure.
Julia: It is entirely possible that Mother Nature
is causing us to be born in increasing numbers as a result of
societal stresses (=stresses on birthing mothers) of
overpopulation, conflict, estrogen-mimicking substances in water
supplies, etc. If the incidence of transsexuals born to stressed
mothers doubles or triples every generation, then the world of
the future could differ more from ours than even the boldest
science-fiction writers have imagined! *wink*
