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Karen's thoughts

A blog by KarenPayne in General

  • Entries

    261

  • Comments

    690

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    132,273

About this blog

This blog is dedicated to telling those who read the entries about my journey in hopes that something can be learned. 

Entries in this blog

Cost for your transition

These are some of the cost to consider when ready to transition. I am sure there is enough to do an educated guess what it will cost you. Therapist, each month for one hour was $150 plus time off work and gas to travel 35 miles each way. Now that I have transitioned I have therapist appointments every three months which I think is a wise idea at least as in my case for one year post op. My first therapist worked on a sliding scale so I paid under $100 per session. A in between therapist I did no

Assisting with gender reassignment surgery part 3

The following is scary to say the least.  Ten days ago I was there for a male to female having reassignment surgery. The surgery lasted too long in my opinion and that the reason was the surgeon caused a rectovaginal fistula. A friend of hers was told (but not me) that she had gas coming out the vagina on Friday and the friend got her to call the hospital who said they would get back to her but never did.  I did not hear about this until this morning, she text’ d me and said she was concerned. I

Over planning for surgery is best

It has been four months since surgery and bills are still coming in which is not a problem for me as I make bring home a very good paycheck. With this in mind there are many who are not so fortunate in regards to funds that may be put aside of surgery but rather they need to scrimp and save for a long time to reach the amount needed for surgery. Let's look at an example, you are planning for gender reassignment surgery which will be (rounding numbers off) thirty thousand dollars with virtually n

Cold hard facts moving forward with reassignment surgery

I at no time in my life contemplated suicide which I have learned recently through more than one source (on example came from a video I mention here) that 41 percent of people going under the knife will attempt suicide. Never would I had thought that there were many who actually regretted going under the knife as told in this web site. I would think that one reason for this is that a person with regret may very well had a ill equipped therapist that was not qualified to access transgender (or ma

There is hope (dilation)

So recently I moved from the smaller dilator to the medium dilator, first time was painful the whole time but got a little better each time yet was still painful. Tonight I just finished and very happy that there was almost no pain. If things progress as they have been I should be good by say Sunday. Any ways the purpose of this entry is too tell others who will go down this path is that in the beginning it is no picnic but does get better. eek not looking forward to the larger one :(

Thoughts on passing (again)

I’ve recently joined a closed group on Facebook where the majority of male to female members will post pictures of themselves and ask if they pass physically. Just about every since member who post and ask if they are passable indeed passable.  Having been on this journey would like to offer a small piece of advice which is forget about passing physically and focus on your female voice. When I or any heterosexual male or female encounters a female without thinking “are they really female” expect

I am officially Karen Payne

I was concerned about my name change getting done on time as it has been 24 days since I started part two of the process and was suppose to be done in seven to ten days. Looked in the mail, nothing so I decided to head on down to the courthouse and see what was going on expecting to get a reply I was not looking for. Well I was surprised to learn it was slated to go out in the mail today. The two people work the desk pretty much got it done today and walked out as Karen Payne. Tomorrow my plan i

I blame this on hormones

I get in the shower, wash my hair which is done every week and sometimes two weeks. Stare at myself in the mirror and think, I am bored with my hair color and need to change it to simply blonde rather than blonde with a tad of brownette. So I waited until my fav salon opened, two hours later and went in, chatted with my stylist and she told me what she would do for me. Well three hours later we finished up and I am very happy with the results (need to take a picture still). Two hours is when I n

Swingers club

Excited, going to a swingers club tonight. Last week I was given the tour and saw that it was just as much about sex as socializing. Tonight my plan is to socialize, get to know people and unless something intense happens will leave it at that. One of the things that I liked right up front is they don't give out their address until they exchange a few emails then invite you in before hours, 6 to 8 where the club officially opens for members at 8PM. For females the cost is twenty dollars per mont

Countdown

Six days until surgery, feeling content right now. About the only thing that is a possible issue revolve around, did I bring everything I need? Anyways I plan on keeping a journal from arrival in California through out the time I am in California to the weeks following for recovery on the blog in my signature in hopes it will help anyone else following a similar path as me. Yes I know there are plenty of entries on the web for this but each story is somewhat different than the ones prior so t

Two year anniversary coming up

With my two year anniversary in regards to physical surgeries coming up I have been reflecting on recent changes along with my comfort level has changed in the past few months. Although I've been very comfortable since surgery over time there are things that change which are not always easy to describe, for instance, how I view the world as a whole then how I view my part as a female in every aspect of my life. I know not everyone has positive outlooks, some have constraints of various kinds tha

Passport

About just under two months I applied for my passport, three weeks later I was informed my birth certificate was not good, so I called, asked what needed to be done which was provide another one (which I had) and sent it to them. I never changed my original so it still says M for gender. Today I am now a proud owner of a US passport with F for gender. There was never anything mentioned about my gender change, only a birth certificate not being correct because it did not have my mother and father

Observations, the female voice in LGBT M to F

With no disrespect I’ve been noticing the more I’m with cross-dressers that two things (at least from my experience in the last several years) is, the majority of cross-dressers will not transition so they are part-timers only and that they never attempt to mask their voice to female mode and one reason I believe for the voice aspect is they only do to trans-friendly establishments. Keeping with voice, I’ve only met three post-op transgender and I’m astonished to find they don’t attempt to chan

Saturday drive

Yesterday met up with the local Miata club, normally there are about five or six cars but yesterday there were 15 cars. With that there were many new people I got to meet and not one of them as with the members I met already had anything to say about me other than what someone would say to a cisgender female. We start off with a sit down in a restaurant for about 10 to 30 minutes chit chatting then hit the road normally for one to four hour drive through the countryside. Each time  so far it's a

Girl talk at adult toy store

I was coming home from the grocery store and thought "I have not been to the toy store recently, think I will stop in for a few minutes". So I walk in, young female sales person greets me "HI how are you doing today", I replied "Great", next comes "if there are any questions or if you want something opened let me know". I said, just browsing, nothing in particular. So I first go to the female toys, about two minutes go by and she comes over and said what do you think of this? She has what looks

Still working on name changes

Just when you believe you are done with all things related name change and gender changes. I am still getting mail that has my former name and the senders are from state government and have changed my name and gender at the federal and state level.  As a Microsoft MVP comes with it a handler who is someone that can assist you in ways that the average person does not have access too and is completely free. I told my handler in January of my transition, no problems there but kept sending special e

Irritated

About three months ago, I contacted an acquaintance who practiced law but had to quit because of serious health problems. She indicated that I wanted to start my name change to contact her. Four weeks ago, we met for coffee and discussed the process, she asked for $100 to start working on it. Now I know some will say this is a lot but “wait for it”. The following weekend she asked me to fill out seven pages for the process. Got it done then gave it back to her. At this time, she asks for anothe

My new job

Four years ago, my company decided to implement a canned solution for the business which meant after the four-year process those (like me) developers that were not part of the migration from old systems to new systems would be placed into a very different position with the same pay, extremely easy work. Sounds great unless you’re like me, not into easy work. So I emailed the CIO of a sister company asking if they had any positions open? Side note, she knew me as a male when she worked in my comp

New cards

Just returned from obtaining my new driver license that has gender as Female with my new name then went to my bank, changed my debt card over to Karen Payne. Do I feel different, no but happy it's done Do I feel one step closer, heck yes. The two people at DMV were so nice too me Ended up not able to sleep very well last night and had a bad dream that from start to finish of the name change process I had spelled my last name wrong. Woke up and had to check my license to confirm I did not

Missed resources

Went to pick up my regular prescriptions from the local pharmacy, the lady behind the counter called for the manager before handing over my prescriptions. He comes up and says, would you mind me changing our records to reflect your current gender? I said thought it was (and then thought back, sure enough I never did). I replied with "yes", done deal. He said, wow how times flies, I remember when you first started out and back then I didn't have a beard, look at me now lol. Then I went for an MRI

Shared a brief story with the New York Times

One of my friends on Facebook shared a link where transgender people are sharing their stories. So I decided too and found it difficult to confined the story to 400 words but finally did. Once approved I will post a link back here. Anyways I am committed to this and spreading the word especially to those over 50, and older that it's possible to do this. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/storywall/transgender-today  

Remembering my sister

Unfortunately at the time of my transition was when my sister developed a fatal cancer and could not bring myself to fly east to see her one last time. My impression was we have a decent brother sister relationship but after her passing my mother told me I was more to her than what I had imagined. I so regret not being stronger and just gone to see her. Please don't let something like this ever happen to you. Since then I have been thinking of getting a tattoo of an owl which was something she w

Some habits come back to haunt

Many years ago prior to my real life test I would go out dressed with no fear except when leaving and returning home. If I was wearing any type of heels that made noise as most do I would avoid landing on the heel and tippy toe inside my house. Have not done that for many years. So today I wear a nice pair of business style pumps and while walking along a hallway found myself tippy toe for a few steps. I thought to myself, WTF then had one of those moments "yes this was from back in the day when

Self Analysing

In a recent post I place the image below into it which was taken by my friend who said she wanted a picture of me for memories of that day. I was thinking about female Mannerisms and Body Language but not at that moment looking at the picture below. Note this is three days after breast augmentation and not thinking about my body language what-so-ever. Several things became apparent that I would like to point out, men generally sit forward while females sit back on a chair, men typically have the

Huge mistake

Be forewarned what follows is sexually explicit and there is no need to warn me about what I did as I am an adult and know the risk. The intent here is for others to learn from my mistakes, nothing more nothing less. I take no pride in what follows and hope others will learn from this. So Friday I was feeling frisky but not enough to act out on these feelings as I was comfy at home. So I used my toy and pleasured myself early evening and throughout the night the sensations lingered, went to bed

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