For Robyn the last few months have been tough, her health has been a big issue as has her anxiety. Moving up to high school has caused a lot of issues, she now isn’t attending school as the impact of the huge change it presented caused her gastrosophageal reflux disease to become much worse. She has been vomiting and feeling ill for a few months. She was absent from school ill and being sent home so often the school agreed it would be better for her to do some online schooling until after Christmas, we will review this situation with support from school after Christmas. She was referred for a wheelchair by her peadiatrition to help with her joint pain and tiredness and we are now waiting for the wheelchair to be delivered.

We have changed her medication with the help of a peadiatric gastroenterolgist and are waiting for an appointment for an endoscopy with biopsies to be done under general anaesthetic to try to find out what is causing the reflux to become so much worse. They feel it could be allergies but it also could be her anxiety causing the increase in severity. This procedure will likely happen in December or January and will most likely be a very stressful time for Robyn as she gets very anxious about medical procedures. She has been referred to Occupational Therapy to be assessed for aids to help her at school and at home. She is tired much more often and in pain, uncomfortable and struggling to get to sleep at night. She has also just started Cognitive Behavioural Therapy with CAMHS to help with her anxiety and we hope this will also help with her reflux and tiredness. The therapist after assessing Robyn feels she may have Agoraphobia which is causing most of her anxiety. She anticipates having a diagnosis for her mental health issues in a few weeks.

She also now has a date for removal of 4 impacted teeth which she will be under general anaeathetic for. This involves cutting into her gums in 4 different places and removing them and stitching her gums back up. She will not be able to eat solid food for around a week. Her surgery is in less than 2 weeks and she may need to stay overnight, trying to arrange childcare for the other two kids between Steve being at work and me being at the hospital for Robyn is a bit of a nightmare. The day before her surgery we are due in London for an appointment with the Gender Identity Service to discuss the next steps for Robyn. It’s going to be a busy month as Robyn also has an appointent with respiratory consultants and then there is all the usual mayhem of December with school performances and Christmas plans.

Another huge complication for Robyn is that puberty has arrived, this means we need to start the journey for puberty blockers which is what Robyn has said she wants. It’s a long process and requires blood tests and bone scans before we can get to the stage that she can be prescribed puberty blockers. Once they are prescribed we have to hope that our gp practice will agree to administer the blockers as many doctors are not comfortable with this. She is so worried about puberty, these changes are very stressful for any growing young person but for a trangender child this is a whole different story. She is scared that her voice is going to change and that she is going to become a man. She said to me that if that happens she wont be her, she wants to be Chloe, a girl who will become a woman, not someone who is growing into a man. Although i cannot possibly understand how this feels to her logically i can see that the idea of your body becoming more and more masculine when that feels so wrong must be so upsetting and stressful. I can’t do anything other than reassure her that we will do everything we can to help her.

I have never wanted to change things for one of my children so much, i can’t begin to understand how all of this stress is affecting her. Life just keeps throwing things at her and i want to just take it all away for her.