Changing gender is an extremely long and quite intrusive process in the UK. You need to spend several years "cross dressing" and have several psychiatric assessments before surgery can be approved, then more as you go through the whole medication and surgery. She had the final surgery a few years ago.

We do not live nearby, so we were not party to the process while it happened, and as I hinted he retreated from almost all social situations, so very few people knew anything until afterwards.