I Am Done

Way back on May 20, 1998, I walked into Aboutface Electrology and began the long, painful, and arduous process of getting rid of my beard. It was the beginning of a promise to myself that I knew I had to keep in order that I could go full-time in the future. Electrolysis was also seen by my therapist and later by my endocrinologist that I was serious about this journey and not someone who was not committed to seeing it through to the end. I knew that there was no way I could hope to pass with a beard shadow; and as much as I tried to conceal it, the shadow was still there so how could I possibly hope to go full-time with a beard. Now I know several girls that have transitioned without electrolysis, and how they managed to survive is beyond me. Imagine, you get up in the morning, shave, put on your makeup and go to work. By late afternoon you are avoiding everyone until you can rush home to remove your makeup and shave again. Well those girls are stronger than I am because they were “sir’ed” a lot. Your whole day and life centers around your razor.

Before I started I looked at both electrolysis and laser. At that time I could find no one that had done laser who had lasting results. Since then they have improved but no one still guarantees permanent hair removal. Some today advertise permanent hair reduction but that is very vague. Also the longtime results of laser on the skin has yet to be determined. Who knows, it may cause skin cancer in 20 years, and we will not know until then. Like electrolysis, there are risks associated with laser. I saw a photo of a woman who had laser treatments on her legs. She now has 3000 scars on her legs. I mean she looks like she is wearing designer hosiery because the symmetrical pattern from the laser treatment. I studied the risk from electrolysis like scaring, pitting and hyperpigmentation, and most of those are a result of an unskilled operator. I did have some pitting; but as the collagen returns to the area, it is improving.

I was very lucky in finding an electrologist, Ronda Rotten. I looked in the yellow pages and even though she was not the closest operator near me, I liked her advertisement and she was a member of CPE, which I knew required its members to get continuing education in their field to keep abreast of the latest developments. Ronda’s ad also said that she works on men, which some operators do not. I later got her to add “TG Friendly” to her ad. She was willing to alter her schedule so I could come in the evenings after work. I later found out that she had another TS client. She has become very supportive of our community. She did a seminar at Southern Comfort and she has also spoke to professional groups about the transgendered.

I also knew that this was not going to be some overnight process but a very long one and I needed to start as early in my transition process as possible. They say that the average beard takes about 200 hours of conventional needle electrolysis to complete. Mine took 217 ½ hours (yes, I counted every long, painful, and arduous one of them). Of course some have heavier beards, and some hair kills easier than others do with gray and white being the most difficult. I learned about the three growing stages of hair and how you can only effectively kill them during one stage. I began by doing two and three hour sessions once or twice a week. Two hours was hard and three hours was murder. We used the blend method, which is a combination of AC and DC currents to kill the hair follicles by both thermolysis - heat and galvanic - chemical reaction. At times I felt that was storing up current in me because ever so often my leg would jerk as a discharge from my internal capacitor.

I had Ronda work on all parts of my face at each session. Some electrologists like to clear an area and work outwards. Now that is fine but since I would have to let me beard grow for a couple of days prior to a session, it would look very odd to go to work with a beard only on one side or one area of my face. By doing this it was less obvious to those that did not know, but it also meant that it took longer for me to see real results, and after 50 hours and you still don’t see anything remarkable can be very discouraging.

The pain I found varied on different parts of the face with the area of the upper lip and around the nose being enough to make me come up off the table. Emla cream did help for a while but as side effect of the hormones, my tolerance for pain lessen and the Emla became ineffective so I had to lie there as still as I could with tears streaming down my cheeks as Ronda did those areas. Fortunate Ronda had a television in the room and I tried my best to concentrate on Dan Rather and The Andy Griffin Show so as to not dwell on the pain (the wisdom of Sheriff Taylor pulled me through a lot of times). Still with all the pain, I looked forward to going because I was doing something positive for myself. Every treatment got me closer to my goal and to my dream. And as the beard diminished, I could wear less makeup, my confidence grew and passing became easier.

Of course after a treatment, I looked like I had just stuck my head in a hornet nest to see what was in there. I used vitamin E oil to help the healing, but still the next day I was still red and swollen. I do not know if I am average there or not because I have a friend who had no swelling or redness an hour after her treatments.

And then there is the money issue. Electrolysis is expensive. I did over 200 at $60 an hour (you do the math). I have spent more on my face than I probably will on SRS. Spending between $120 and $360 a week took all my cash and ate into my savings. For the first year I was on a very austere budget. I could barely make ends meet but I had to do it. But then came the day when we cleared after two hours. And as the session began to slowly get shorter, the money I had to pay out became less so I finally got back to break even and eventually began to have some extra cash in my pocketbook to save toward SRS.

So now I am done. I guess the reason for this article is to let all of you out there thinking of going this route to consider the facts. Electrolysis has risk, it is a commitment of time and money; and it takes a long time so the earlier you start the better. Once you are done you too will feel like celebrating, but I am also a little bit sad too. I have spent virtually every Wednesday night for over three years talking to my dear friend Ronda (yes, we are friends more than anything else now) about everything under the sun and more. I will miss her but I will not be a stranger to her.

This step is done and I still have a long road to travel ahead of me so I better stop celebrating and get moving.

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