THE NEW TRANSSEXUALS

Dr. Becky Allison

Cardiologist

Photo: Shadow Rock UCC

George Petros: WE’RE TALKING TO DR. BECKY ALLISON — YOU ARE A CARDIOLOGIST, IS THAT CORRECT?

Dr. Allison: Yes I am.

AND WHAT’S A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A CARDIOLOGIST LIKE?

Dr. Allison: Well, today for example, I had hospital rounds and several hospital consults. I did a procedure called a cardioversion, where I use electroshock to restore the normal rhythm of the heart. And, I had a lot of office patients, and some studies to read, echocardiograms, and so forth. So it was quite a mix of hospital and office work.

WHAT ARE THE MOST COMMON PROBLEMS YOU SEE IN THE FOLKS THAT YOU TREAT?

Dr. Allison: Well, coronary artery disease, of course, is the most common thing that we see — and heart attacks, angina, the use of balloons and stents to open up clogged arteries — these are the statistically most common things in my practice.

ARE THESE AILMENTS THAT ARE OFTEN THE RESULT OF BAD LIFESTYLES?

Dr. Allison: The things that put people at risk for coronary artery disease include cigarette smoking, diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure — some of those things can’t be avoided, but they can be controlled, and sometimes people don’t make the effort to control them very well.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CURRENT HOT TOPICS IN CARDIOLOGY? WHAT ARE CARDIOLOGISTS TALKING ABOUT?

Dr. Allison: We have a number of new techniques and programs concerning our drug-coated stents that reduce the risk of future complications. We see some things about using balloons and stents to open up clogged valves, rather than having a person go to surgery. We’re seeing less open-heart surgery and more interventional procedures.

DO YOU HAVE PATIENTS WHO HAVE HAD HEART TRANSPLANTS?

Dr. Allison: I have several. The University of Arizona at Tucson is a transplant center, and so I probably have eight or ten patients in my practice who have had a heart transplant. It’s a wonderful, life-saving procedure — but of course it’s very limited in its application, because you have to have donor hearts, and there aren’t that many of those.

WHO DONATES HEARTS, GENERALLY SPEAKING?

Dr. Allison: Well, persons specify in their living will or power of attorney that they want to be an organ donor, and then if that person dies from, say, a motor vehicle accident, or if they have a death that occurs from a non-cardiac causes, sometimes they will be considered as a donor — and obviously if someone has a serious disease like cancer or severe diabetes or things like that, they probably aren’t a good donor candidate. But, people especially who have been in accidents and have brain injuries and things that don’t involve the heart — that’s where a lot of the donors come from.

IS THERE AN AGE LIMIT ON DONORS?

Dr. Allison: Well, in general the best organs come from people who are in their youth or young adulthood, but we’ve had people donate hearts into their forties. Now, in terms of other organs, like donating corneas and sometimes even kidneys, people older than that can be donors, too.

I SEE.

Dr. Allison: But for the hearts, the younger the better.

TO COME BACK TO HOT TOPICS OF CARDIOLOGY, YOU MENTIONED DRUG-COATED STENTS. COULD YOU TELL US ABOUT THAT?

Dr. Allison: Certainly. Basically we’ve been implanting stents for maybe a little more than twenty years, and the first generation of stents did not have any special drug coating — and so we would get a phenomenon called restenosis where the body would sense the stent as an intruder and it would form a scar around the stent. The restenosis is the Achilles’ heel of interventional cardiology, and it’s resulted in a lot of people having to come back to the cath lab for another procedure. If we’re able to impregnate these stents with a medication that would prevent the scar formation — and they found several candidates for that among cancer drugs — we would be able to prevent restenosis to a great extent. And sure enough, it did work out. So, a new generation of stents all have these drugs impregnated into them, and they are more successful over the long term.

YOU MUST HAVE SAVED A LOT OF PEOPLE’S LIVES IN YOUR CAREER —

Dr. Allison: It’s gratifying. I love what I do. It’s very gratifying to be able to make a difference in people’s lives.

WHERE DID YOU GO TO SCHOOL?

Dr. Allison: I’m from Mississippi. I went to the University of Mississippi in Jackson, and I went to the University of Mississippi in Oxford for undergraduate, and then medical school in Jackson — and so I did most of my training there.

AND WHERE DO YOU CURRENTLY PRACTICE?

Dr. Allison: I practice in Phoenix, Arizona. My hospital is Good Samaritan Medical Center, which is one of the larger medical hospitals in the state.

WHAT COMMITTEE DID YOU CHAIR FOR THE AMA?

Dr. Allison: The AMA formed an advisory committee devoted to issues of concern for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender persons, and the committee was formed in the year 2005, and I was one of the charter members of that committee. There were seven people on the committee. I served four years and was the chair of the committee my fourth year.

AND WHAT DID THAT COMMITTEE ACCOMPLISH?

Dr. Allison: Well, we had a number of accomplishments which were reflected in the proceedings of the House of Delegates of the American Medical Association — including changes in the by-laws to prevent discrimination among physicians, hospital staff and medical students on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, and then we were able to carry that further to have the AMA adopt a policy which favored the policy. The proposition, which passed in the year 2009, allowed insurance companies to pay for medically necessary procedures related to persons transitioning gender and to support insurance coverage for hormonal therapy, surgery and so forth — which was a fairly big step for the AMA to take, and has resulted in a lot of changes in the insurance policies.

DID YOU RUN INTO A LOT OF OPPOSITION WITHIN THE AMA?

Dr. Allison: Surprisingly, we did not. There were just a few persons who were of a counter opinion — and I think that they were a distinct minority because the resolution passed with a significant majority.

YOU MUST BE PROUD OF THE WORK YOU DID THERE.

Dr. Allison: I was very proud of it. I was able to testify for the reference committees of the AMA and talk about what a difference it would have made for me to have had that insurance coverage —and by personalizing the request, it really causes people to be more aware of the importance. They realize that people who are doctors and AMA members are affected by this also.

SO YOU’RE SAYING THAT WHEN YOU TRANSITIONED, THERE WAS NO INSURANCE POLICY TO HELP YOU ALONG —

Dr. Allison: That is correct. I had to pay out of my pocket.

AND I’M SURE THAT WASN’T CHEAP — THEN OR NOW.

Dr. Allison: No, it never is.

MAY I ASK WHEN YOUR TRANSITION OCCURRED?

Dr. Allison: 1993.

1993 — AND WHAT WERE YOU DOING IN 1993? WHERE WERE YOU LIVING?

Dr. Allison: I was living in Mississippi, and I had a medical practice there. Upon transition, I moved from Jackson to Atlanta, Georgia — and I had a lot of support there. I had a support group and I had my therapist, I had someone who had done some of my surgical procedures, and so I hired a search firm to help me look for a new practice position. I went on a number of interviews in several states, and the one which I was most positively impressed by was Phoenix — and so I accepted that offer and I’ve been here ever since.

PRIOR TO TRANSITIONING, WHAT WAS YOUR LIFE LIKE? WHAT WAS LIFE LIKE IN JACKSON FOR YOU IN THOSE DAYS?

Dr. Allison: Well, to be honest, it had its pleasant moments — if one could get past the idea that things weren’t right in life in general. I was very unhappy with myself and who I was trying to be — but obviously a professional person has some degree of prestige and standing within the community. There are things that you know you’re going to give up — you know that you’re going to lose — if you tell people there’s a change that’s going to have to happen in your life, and you tell them what that change is. They’re not going to deal very well with that.

HOW DID YOUR FAMILY DEAL WITH IT?

Dr. Allison: Well, my parents were deceased some time ago, and without getting into much detail, I was married — and obviously that was something that was not going to survive, given the transition. It was a difficult family time.

DID YOU FIND ATLANTA TO BE A MORE ACCEPTING ENVIRONMENT?

Dr. Allison: I wouldn’t say so. Atlanta, at the time, was still the South — and the few encounters that I had with the doctors there, it was sort of an old-boy network, if you will, with people who graduated from the Medical College of Georgia, and outsiders just didn’t have much of a place. I didn’t really feel welcomed in Atlanta that much. Obviously it’s more urban, more metropolitan than Jackson.

WHERE DID YOU HAVE YOUR SURGERIES?

Dr. Allison: Well, the major operation was done in Wisconsin. There was a surgeon at the time, Dr. Eugene Schrang, who did surgery in Neenah, Wisconsin — and people from the eastern part of the country were very positive about Dr. Schrang. And so, living in the eastern part of the country at the time when I made my application, he was the only one I had considered.

ONCE IT WAS DONE, WERE YOUR EXPECTATIONS MET? WERE YOU HAPPY? WAS IT A SLOW ROAD TO FULFILLMENT, OR DID YOU WAKE UP ONE DAY AND SAY, “WOW, THIS IS GREAT!”?

Dr. Allison: That’s a good question. Was I happy? Yes. Did the surgery itself make me happy? It was necessary for me. It was a completion for me — but the entire process of transition, including the surgery, is what made me happy. The satisfaction with being open and being honest with myself, and living life as the person I had always felt I should be — that process began when I started my transition, and it completed with the surgery. I say “completed” — but actually you’re always completing transition, even months and years later. You find other things that make you feel better about yourself. There were some other facial procedures and so forth. Part of the process of transition involves knowing yourself — and that involves a lot of time with a counselor or therapist, and answering some questions about who you are and why you’re doing this and why you didn’t do it earlier. For me, those were very important questions to answer — and I know that there were cultural reasons for me not to transition at a younger age. Not to mention the time we were living in, in the Sixties — people did not consider this a viable alternative, and the story of Christine Jorgensen was notable mostly for its shock value, and even though persons like me strongly believed that her story was a description of our lives, the press, the media and even doctors did not see it as a viable alternative for serious people. “When I went to medical school, I headed for the medical library and tried to find any information on Transsexualism, and the only books that were available — and there weren’t very many of them — they used words like “perversion” and “deviation,” and you read that and say, That’s not me. I don’t want to be like that.” So between that, and the religious belief — growing up in the South — that if you pray and you’re sincere, that God’s going to answer your prayers and change you — you buy into that for a long, long time, and you feel that you can quote-unquote beat this, and you don’t realize that it’s who you are; it’s not a choice and it’s never going away, no matter how hard you pray or how sincerely you believe that it’s going away — it’s not. So in my case — and in a lot of people’s case — it takes years and years to really come to terms with that. But once you do, it does direct the rest of your life, and you’re able to live in a more authentic way instead of being miserable all the time and wondering why your prayers aren’t being answered.

BUT YOUR PRAYERS WERE ANSWERED —

Dr. Allison: Ultimately, yes. Exactly.

YOU SAY YOU WERE LOOKING IN MEDICAL LIBRARIES AND COMING UP WITH A NEGATIVE SPIN ON WHAT YOU WERE RESEARCHING — DID YOU EVENTUALLY ENCOUNTER HARRY BENJAMIN’S BOOK THE TRANSSEXUAL PHENOMENON? I WAS UNDER THE IMPRESSION THAT IT WAS A SEMINAL WORK —

Dr. Allison: Indeed it was, and that was one of the books that I looked in — and while Dr. Benjamin himself was always positive and complimentary, he cited other people and references, because he had collaborators in collecting the material for the book. Some of those people were sexologists who felt that Transsexualism had to be a form of Homosexuality, and so they wrote using those types of terms. They couldn’t distinguish between Transsexual people and Homosexual people — or Transvestites and Cross-dressers — and we know now that there’s so much difference; we’re talking about completely different people. Back then, they sought a simple explanation out of the psychoanalytic theory that was in vogue in the Sixties. It was used to try and explain the motivations behind why people would want to transition from one sex to the other. Looking back at it, you can see that it was all a fabrication — just people trying to take their own pet theories and fit our diagnosis into their theories. I think that book was published in ’66.

MUCH HAS CHANGED SINCE THEN —

Dr. Allison: Very much, yes.

AND THERE WAS WENDY CARLOS —

Dr. Allison: Wendy Carlos was a very positive role model, and I’ve always admired Wendy. I’ve never met her, but I read her Playboy interview — and it certainly was a very powerful force in my life, at the time helping me to realize that it really is okay to accept who you are.

YES, AND HER MUSIC’S GREAT, TOO.

Dr. Allison: Absolutely.

WAS THERE ANYBODY THAT WAS A ROLE MODEL FOR WHAT YOU WANTED TO BECOME?

Dr. Allison: Well, the truth of the matter is, when I made my decision to transition in the ’92-to-’93 era, there just weren’t that many health professionals who had done this — and I was one of the first people who had had a life and had a career in my birth gender —

YOU DECIDED FINALLY TO TRANSITION, AND THAT INVOLVES AN EXTENDED PERIOD OF HORMONAL THERAPY —

Dr. Allison: It was more like I reached a point where I couldn’t go on living if I didn’t. It does come to that imperative point — and for me to go on in the old way was to invite a nervous breakdown or maybe even some self-harm. I just said, “Okay, if I’m going to continue to be productive and go on with the good life, I’m going to have to make this change” — and it did involve a lot of hormonal therapy and a lot of counseling at first to help me understand what I was getting into and what I was going to give up. I imagine you’ve heard of the Standards of Care?

YES.

Dr. Allison: The Harry Benjamin Gender Dysphoria Association Standards of Care, which is the protocol that people follow to insure a successful transition — and part of those standards of care involves seeing a therapist who’s trained in Transsexual issues. That was one of the reasons I moved to Atlanta, was because my therapist, Dr. Jim Powell, was in Atlanta and he had counseled a number of adults going through transition — professional people — and Dr. Powell also was an ordained Methodist minister, so he knew that the spiritual side of this was very important to me.

YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT PRAYERS THAT WENT UNANSWERED —

Dr. Allison: Well, you’re correct when you say that my prayers were answered — and I feel that they were, that God gave me the understanding that this is me and it’s really okay to go ahead with transition. I don’t have to keep beating myself up about why can’t I be cured because it’s not a matter of being cured, anymore than someone being left-handed or right-handed — it’s just a part of my identity to develop this gender dysphoria. It’s interesting that some of us came from backgrounds where our mothers were exposed to hormones, say, to carry a pregnancy to term — back in the Forties and Fifties people used to take diethylstilbestrol to prevent miscarriage, and I have some fairly strong evidence that my mother was one of those. I don’t know for sure whether that produced hormonal changes in my fetal development, but I’ll always have a suspicion that it did.

INTERESTING. SO, WHEN YOU TRANSITIONED, WERE YOU MARRIED AT THAT TIME?

Dr. Allison: Yes, I was.

AND I TAKE IT THAT DIDN’T LAST — HOW SOON DID YOU START DATING AFTER YOUR TRANSITION?

Dr. Allison: Well, to tell you the truth, I’m a medical professional. I’m involved in my work, and I really haven’t been interested in dating for quite some time. I love what I do. I love my life and I just haven’t had that much of an interest. I’m aware that quite a few people do transition and they date. Their sexual orientation may or may not transition with them. Some people may end up attracted to men post-transition, some may be attracted to women. For me, I’m just not in the market.

OKAY. WHEN YOU STARTED TAKING HORMONES — I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE PROPER TERM IS; I DON’T WANT TO SAY THEY CALMED YOU DOWN, BUT THEY CERTAINLY MUST HAVE CHANGED YOU PROFOUNDLY —

Dr. Allison: Calming you down is actually a very good description. There is a very disconcerting feeling that I had for years — and I found out that I’m certainly not alone in this — that’s just an angst, if you will, a sadness, a self-loathing — and it never goes away. I’ve heard it described like a car alarm that’s going all night and it never shuts off. When you start hormones, after a very brief time you start to feel more in harmony with yourself, the jarring feeling lessens, and it really does go away. It’s almost a diagnostic tool, you know — people who are really Transsexual and need to transition, they start on hormones and things just become right. Whereas some people may be a little uncertain and confused about what they need to do, and they think, “Well, maybe I need to make a transition,” and they start on hormones and they hate the effects. You know, it affects their ability to function sexually. They can’t stand that, so they stop hormones — but for me, it was the opposite. I just couldn’t conceive of stopping them after feeling the improvement they produced.

WERE THERE ANY OBSTACLES OR ROAD BLOCKS IN YOUR LIFE THAT WERE A RESULT OF YOUR TRANSITIONING?

Dr. Allison: You know, since I’ve been in Phoenix, I really wouldn’t say that there have been any serious obstacles from a professional or personal standpoint. Obviously the longer one lives in one’s new life, the smoother one gets — and the rough edges are not rough any more. There are other little procedures that one has. I had what they call facial feminization surgery done after the sex reassignment surgery, and it certainly produced a desirable appearance. Reducing the brow — typical male brow bone and so forth — and all that helps me to blend in. I’ve been very fortunate to have a voice which is pretty appropriate for my age and the person that I’m presenting to be. So that hasn’t been an issue for me like it is for some people. I would say that I have been very fortunate in not encountering a lot of resistance. That wasn’t really that way in Atlanta when I was starting transition because, number one, I still had those rough edges, and two, Atlanta is the South. It’s still enough of a phenomenon in places like Atlanta. Some people don’t deal with it well. Anything that goes against tradition is not going to be well accepted.

I SEE. DO YOU FIND YOURSELF BEING A ROLE MODEL OR A MENTOR OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT?

Dr. Allison: Well, I suppose so. My website — which I haven’t really spent time on in a couple of years because I’m so busy with my cardiology work — but for awhile, it was one of the very few sites that people could go to and find information and support for transition. Even today I got a Facebook friend request from someone who said, “Your website saved my life” — and I think that having it out there still after all these years does continue to make a difference. It’s been a very important part of the giving back, especially with the list of therapists so that people can find someone close to them who they can go to and start counseling.

RIGHT.

Dr. Allison: Some issues — like with spiritual life — a lot of people still can’t get past the idea that this is all some terrible sin. It’s a long task to work with those folks and make them realize that it’s okay to be who you are.

YOU ALSO HAVE ATTORNEYS LISTED ON YOUR WEBSITE, DON’T YOU?

Dr. Allison: I haven’t had a great response to that. I had advertised for people to submit their names for inclusion if they wanted to be listed as people who help Transsexual people with the legalities of changing their birth certificate, changing their social security and so forth —

AND YOU SAY YOU HAVEN’T HAD A GREAT RESPONSE —

Dr. Allison: No. Not as much as I had expected.

I SEE. SO, WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR THE FUTURE?

Dr. Allison: Well, I’ve been active in the greater Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender community, with the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association. I’m completing a two-year term as president and I’ve just been elected to the board of directors of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, which is the new name for what was the Harry Benjamin Gender Dysphoria Association — and this is the professional body which includes therapists, surgeons and medical doctors who treat Transsexual persons and formulate standards of care. Being on the board of directors there, I hope to be able to contribute in terms of my background as a medical doctor, and to continue the emphasis on the medical needs of people in transition.

WELL, CONGRATULATIONS ON THAT.

Dr. Allison: Thank you.

SO YOU’RE HELPING PEOPLE ON TWO FRONTS — HANDS-ON AS A CARDIOLOGIST, AND AS A KIND OF A SPIRITUAL GUIDE AS WELL —

Dr. Allison: And I’ve tried to remain active in the community and give back because while I am a cardiologist — and I love my work and I do well with that — I also am in a unique position with my experiences as a transitioned person, and not everyone is comfortable with remaining in the public eye — but I am. I didn’t do it for any notoriety, and certainly not for any gain on my part, but I thought it was the right thing to do. I wish somebody would have been out there when I started my transition, with such a website and such a resource. By giving back, I feel that I have made a difference in people’s lives.

HOW DID YOU FIND THE RESOURCES THAT YOU EVENTUALLY LISTED — BECAUSE THERE WAS NO INTERNET TO SPEAK OF AT THAT POINT —

Dr. Allison: I had a few friends who I corresponded with by the very early email techniques, and there was something called CompuServe that we used at that time to get online. Searching online, I found a support group run by a husband-and-wife team, who are no longer active — but at the time people were driving from all over the South to come to the Montgomery Support Group in Atlanta, and it was through there that I was introduced to my therapist and found the resources necessary to contact people about surgery. We would have weekly group-therapy meetings, and we got to know one another pretty well.

DO YOU HAVE A CIRCLE OF FRIENDS WHO ARE TRANSSEXUALS?

Dr. Allison: Oh absolutely. Yeah. For a number of years I had a housemate who’s my best friend and confidante. She’s also a post-op Transsexual woman named Margaux Schaffer, and we’ve been friends since our Atlanta days.

WHAT LINE OF WORK IS SHE IN?

Dr. Allison: She’s an artist. She does a lot of original art and has done installations for some doctor’s offices, including our own — and she does a lot of fine and commercial art.

OKAY. REGARDING YOUR RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHER TRANSSEXUAL PEOPLE — THERE MUST BE POINTS OF DISAGREEMENT; YOU MUST RUB EACH OTHER THE WRONG WAY SOMETIMES — WHAT ARE THE POINTS OF DISSENT AMONG YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS?

Dr. Allison: Well, it’s interesting that you would bring this up. There’s always a little bit of debate and dissent, because there are different types of lives that people live. I’ll use the broader term “Transgender” to designate the big tent, if you will, of Transsexual people as well as the people who do not feel the need to change their physical bodies. They consider themselves to have a feminine side, if they’re genetic males — but these people use the word “Transgender” to not only include everybody but to designate persons who don’t feel it’s necessary to complete a physical transition. They use the term “gender expression” to designate how a person appears in public, and some of these people — I suppose the old term would be “cross-dressers.” Some people would be offended by that term. There are all degrees of living in the role. There is some conflict because some people feel that it’s elitist to complete a physical transition. Admittedly there are people who cannot afford to have surgery. There are people whose health won’t let them. They live without surgery, and for some of us that’s hard to understand. I certainly wouldn’t have chosen that life for myself — but my task is to try to respect that, without yielding or diminishing myself by affirming that for me the physical transition was necessary and right. That doesn’t mean that these people are invalid. We just have to realize there are differences, and learn to live with those differences — and yet do what we can in terms of advocacy, and try to improve everyone’s lot in life. If there’s things that need to be done on a legal or political front — we have to be very sensitive to the needs of both groups.

I’VE BEEN TOLD THERE’S A HIERARCHY, AND THE TRANSSEXUALS ARE AT THE TOP, AND THEN THERE’S LIKE A DESCENDING PECKING ORDER — WOULD DIFFERENCES OF OPINION ARISE BETWEEN PEOPLE WHO FEEL THAT THEY WANT TO BLEND IN AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE, AND PEOPLE WHO FEEL THEY SHOULD BE MORE ACTIVE AND DRAW ATTENTION TO THEMSELVES IN ORDER TO HELP TO PROMOTE THE GENERAL CAUSE?

Dr. Allison: Oh absolutely. Several thoughts: First of all, I hear what you’re saying about people who believe that there’s a hierarchy. I personally don’t see it in a hierarchical sense. I think people who believe that are the people who consider themselves not on top and would like to change things so that they would be, in their own minds, considered equals, if you will, with the people that they consider to be on top. The fact that they say that the post-operative or post-transition transsexual person is the top of the hierarchy is their opinion, not mine, not ours. I don’t consider myself to be better than anyone else — but i feel that we have different lives, and for me it’s not a matter of, “i’m better than this person” or “that person’s better than me.” I’m doing what works for my life. I do blend in. I’m happy with that. That’s what i want to do, and i do not dismiss people as invalid who chose not to blend in — but it’s not my life. There are things that i’m not going to do in terms of my activism. My activism is going to be from a point of competence and authenticity — being who i am — and not getting in your face. Not so much political as professional.

I SEE. OKAY. IS THERE ANYTHING I’VE NEGLECTED TO BRING UP HERE? IS THERE ANYTHING YOU’D LIKE TO ADD?

Dr. Allison: You’ve done your homework and you know a lot of the right questions to ask, so I think you’ve covered it very well.

WELL, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I’M FLATTERED. ACTUALLY, I DO HAVE ONE MORE QUESTION FOR YOU — BECAUSE YOU ARE A CARDIOLOGIST, I MUST ASK YOU THIS QUESTION WHICH WAS FIRST POSED BY THE BEE GEES IN ONE OF THEIR HIT SONGS MANY YEARS AGO: HOW DO YOU MEND A BROKEN HEART?

Dr. Allison: That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, isn’t it?

YEAH.

Dr. Allison: You know, George, sometimes hearts stay broken — and I can tell you that even with the happiness that I’ve experienced and the completeness and the satisfaction that transition brings, there’s still some broken-heartedness over lost relationships, and it’s a loss that we live with and we accept because we have to keep going. But it’s not as though we forget some of the persons who can’t stay with us in our new lives. So there’s some bittersweetness.

OKAY — WELL, DR. ALLISON, I THINK THAT ABOUT WRAPS IT UP ON THIS END. THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME.

Dr. Allison: Thank you. ~