Could any one help please, I am having a battle at the moment with my PCT (North East Lincs) I have been attending the London Gender clinic (Richard Curtis), The PCT want me to go to an NHS one, I am very reluctant as Dr Curtis has been treating me for over a year now, I was wondering if anyone has anything to say Good or Bad with regard to Leeds GIC or Charring Cross, before I fight some more. Thanks.

Hiya
well i have had my first appointment at cx london
and found it was fine , very relaxed and have my second appointment sept
Nickyx

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later

Hi Nicky thanks Have you been given an information leaflet with regard to charring x of the services they provide if so is there any chance i could have a copy of it

I have had a couple of appointments at Charing Cross GIC and I have been very impressed with how the nice friendly staff there have treated me.

As for services they provide, I'm not sure what you mean. The way I understand it is the consultant psychiatrists at Charing Cross make recommendations to your GP and your GP refers you to whatever services you need or your PCT will allow you to have.

So from me Charing Cross definitely gets the thumbs up .

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hiya no leaflet was given hun
doesnt work like that
good luck with it
and so far thumbs up from me too
hugs Nicky x

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later

Thanks to you both, I asked about info leaflets as Leeds GIC have one which details the services they provide and the services they will not recommend you for

i'm not 100% sure about this, so you might want to check, but i was under the impression that the waiting lists for Leeds were pretty lengthy, so you might be better off targeting CX.

the problem with the NHS is that it takes time for appointments to come through, but that's just the difference between state-funded and private care.

i presume you've been paying for yourself so far, yeah, and it's the appointments to the psych you're trying to get from your PCT?

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"Throw yourself in the road darlings! You haven't got a chance!" - Withnail

As far as I am aware, there is no real difference in the quality of the service between NHS and private; the difference I mostly in terms of waiting times and prices.

If my PCT was like that and I actually had the money to be going private, I'd be like, sure, rush me to the front of your months-long waiting list and I'll happily go NHS. Until then, I want to get this ball rolling, kthxbai.

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The boobs are just a set of metaphors.

Thanks for all your replys, I have already got the psych, letter I have got a right to choose under the new right to choose scheme its just the pct want me to use an nhs service and not private as I have been doing due to ignorant GP, thnakfully i have not got that GP now but wold prefer to crry on useing Dr Curtis

Isn't the doctor from Charing Cross he guy who called transsexed and transgender men 'women who have sex changes' recently?

That set off alarm bells immediately, if a supposed specialist is getting such simple things drastically wrong.

But then, he could have been misquoted to fit what the Daily Mirror wanted, so i'll stay open minded.

NHS clinics are generally okay although they are less likely to co-operate with you and sometimes have a 'i know better than you' attitude. private clinics tend to be more flexible with individual circumstances (as you probably know), but seeing as you're 'established' by Dr Curtis, you probably won't encounter problems in regard with being 'assessed' (well i should think so anyway!).

If you're already seeing Dr Curtis it can't do any harm to see an NHS clinic as well. You can always contnue seeing Dr Curtis while you're waiting, and if you don't like CHX you can always just fall back on private care again.

Don't do anything you don't want to do, but i think you should go to CHX, and then at least you'll have shown your gp that you have tried different avenues, and if it doesn't work out, you'll have a better reason why than 'i don't want to go'.

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forum moderator

william if you're talking about the current head psych, then, yeah, that wouldn't overly surprise me. however, while i have no particular love for the man, he is far, far easier to get on with than some of his (thankfully now retired) contempories. he also does appear to give something of a damn.

it's also probably best to not get too hung up on the exact phrasing they use. you gotta remember he is one of older psychs there and, as such, would have learnt his trade from sources where that kind of terminology would have been commonplace. that is, indeed, if the mirror didn't distort his words.

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"Throw yourself in the road darlings! You haven't got a chance!" - Withnail

I'm guessing that william is referring to this:

Dr James Barrett wrote:

It is also highly unusual for a woman who has undergone a sex change to become a man to actually WANT to get pregnant. Psychologically they usually wouldn't want to as that's something women do.

in the article that Stella posted earlier here.

I've seen Dr Barrett a couple of times now, and I've found him very easy to get on with, and had no problems with him at all. I can understand that not everyone would appreciate his manner, but that's just a personality thing really.

From the conversations I've had with him, I don't think he actually sees trans men as women, or vice versa at all. In fact, the quote above pretty much shows that he sees trans men as men. It may be that either he's worded it like that, or the tabloid has worded it like that as that's the sort of language that the majority of tabloid readers are expected to understand.

laurdeb, in answer to your original question, I've had a very good experience overall with CX. Are you asking the PCT to pay for you to see Dr Curtis, or is it that your GP is reluctant to work with Dr Curtis by providing prescriptions and blood tests etc on the NHS? I'm a bit unsure as to what's happening here, so I can't really give you my opinion until I'm sure of the situation.

Dave

dave, yes that was the quote i was talking about. it just always baffles me that someone who is supposed to specialise in dealing with these sort of birth defects can refer to a man as a 'woman who had a sex change'.

la_glitch, i don't really get hung up per sae, because it doesn't affect me personally, but it's very bad looking when an expert gets it wrong, and also encourages people to take his word as gospel. but it is likely the Mirror misquoted in order to fit their own incorrect terminology used in the article. if not, i'm disappointed.

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forum moderator

william, yeah, point taken.

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"Throw yourself in the road darlings! You haven't got a chance!" - Withnail

Ive have been going to CHX gender clinic now for nearly 3 years and I have never had a problem with them. They are very proffesional, friendly and caring.
It has taken me nearly 4 years since referal to them to get to surgery level (later this year) but that is absolutely thru no fault of CHX. They refered me for surgery in accordance with their timelines. It was my GP and the PCT that held up things.
So I have had no problem at all with them. Dr Barratt in my opinion is very forward and says what he thinks but thats just the way he is. I cant comment on the article cus up until now I didnt know about it and I havent read it yet. But from just seeing him a few times over the last 3 years id say that any comment he made might have been taken out of context, he may be forward but he isnt a horrible man.