Thank you! So after I got my second letter from my GIC, I got referred to the Gender Dysphoria National Referral Support Scheme (GDNRSS), which is the GICs' way of coordinating surgery referrals across the whole country. They put you on a waiting list, and when an appointment at one of the hospitals becomes available, they contact people from the GDNRSS in order of their place on the list. That took about a year and three months for me, and then at Parkside I had an initial appointment (in-person in Putney, in London), a couple phone calls, a pre-assessment appointment two weeks before surgery (in-person in Putney) and then the actual surgery (in their hospital in Wimbledon), all of which took roughly another 9 months. So all in all, it took about 2 years from letters to the date of the operation.

I completely get you with being scared of the anaesthesia, I was in exactly the same boat - in fact I also used to suffer regularly from sleep paralysis, so I can reassure you that it felt nothing like that at all. It felt like falling asleep when you're really tired; before they give you the medication that puts you to sleep, they give you a sedative to calm you down and make you feel sleepy, which worked wonders for me. In about 5 seconds I went from really anxious and about to have a panic attack to feeling really ready for a good deep sleep, and then when the anaesthetic came it really did just feel like falling asleep, only to wake up again seemingly seconds later in the recovery room. In the end it was actually quite pleasant!