When I first came to Spain back in 2007, I didn’t get a formal introduction to the Doctor as I think I was working at the time. So I didn’t get my current medication that I had from the UK transferred over, and I thought I would be OK. I’d been taking hormones since 1998 and I didn’t think that it was urgent to sort out right away, and I would sort it out later, well one thing lead to another and it never happened, even when I started to be treated for high blood pressure it I never brought it up.

A couple of years ago when I started to realise that I had slipped into a depressive state and started to take action to deal with it, I decided that as well as an antidepressant ( I initially started on st. John’s wort) I would try and take some thing that was as close to a hormone that I could get, I found something that was based on a soja extract. The combination of these two did help to stabilise my mood and make it a little bit easier to get things under control. 

A few weeks ago just before I left for New Zealand I decided that I would approach the doctor and ask if she could put me back on hormones properly. At first she said that she would have to send me to the hospital so that they could do a ultrasound to check what was going on with my ovaries, I gave a chuckle at this point and explained that wouldn’t do any good, which got a blank look from the GP, So I took an intake of breath and explained that I was trans, etc, etc. She said she would give me hormones, but required a blood test first, This would have to wait until I returned as I was leaving in a few days and wouldn’t be back for about 3 weeks. So on my return I got the tests done and then went back to speak to the doctor, only this time I get a different doctor, and she said that she can’t do it and refers me to the endocrinologist at the central hospital on the island.

So I wait a few weeks to get a phone call from the hospital with an appointment, So at the required time I arrive at the hospital. When I finally get into the talk to the endocrinologist, she’s a little confused as to why I’m there, so I explain. It turns out that for some reason the original doctor totally screwed up the blood tests and referral it was down on the system as hyperthyroidism which is not right at all, and that there were no hormone levels on the blood test, only the thyroid hormone levels.

Then she drops that bombshell, that she can’t put me on hormones as a trans woman without approval from the specialist gender clinic in Tenerife so she sent them a referral. So once again 20 years later, I’m back on a waiting list for an appointment with a gender clinic. 

This a typical thing across the globe with any form of trans healthcare, had I been a cis woman presented at an endocrinologist with these hormone levels, then I would have been on HRT right away, but because I’m trans I have to jump through the hoops like a performing seal once again. There is an expression of the trans broken leg where you go for treatment of a completely unrelated medical condition, but it’s gets complicated or made harder just you are trans.

So hopefully sometime in the new year I’ll get a phone call and then I can take a flight over to Tenerife and continue the next step in the journey. It will be interesting to experience the gender clinic process in a new country.