From 'Perverts' to Patients: Trans Health Has Come a Long Way

[DriftingCrow]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stacy-lu/trans-health-care_b_4432186.html?utm_hp_ref=transgender
Author: Stacy Lu Source: Huffington Post--The Blog

[This is an interview with] Dana Beyer, MD, is a retired eye surgeon who has practiced medicine in Kenya and Nepal, served as candidate for Maryland State Delegate; and fought for the first countywide ban of artificial trans fats in the U.S. She also lived most of her life as a man.

Is the system coming around? What's the current biggest barrier?

The work I'm doing with Kaiser [Permanente] is to help them roll out their program of culturally competent, medically comprehensive trans coverage [. . . ] What ten years ago cost me $100,000, I expect in five years will cost no more than a couple of thousand dollars in deductibles and co-pays.

Can you speak to the barriers transgender individuals might face as they navigate health care?

There are nuances that medicine needs to grapple with to make trans patients feel more comfortable, but that kind of cultural competency doesn't come easily. The upcoming medical generation will do better than my class has done, and certainly better than teachers who told me - not directly but to the class as a whole -in psych class that I was a pervert and a deviant. I've turned the tables; I've gone back and taught in the same auditorium where I was told those things 37 years earlier, and I say: The circle is complete. We now know that my life experience is more truthful and real than what we were taught then.

[Adam (birkin)]

It is always nice to get kind of a "historical" perspective to see how things have changed so drastically over a relatively short period of time.

[Vicky]

I was a participant in a panel of speakers at the USC Keck School Of Medicine two months ago, and am drinking from the coffee mug they gave me then.  I and a Trans* man co presenter had about 50 first year medical students, who were wonderful to talk to, and who in the face they presented were warm and accepting. (There were 4 other panels going at the same time in other rooms.) I wrote about that in one of the other forums here, and I can fully appreciate and concur in what Dr. Beyers wrote here, that a circle has been turned.  I have had to train my personal local care givers as I went along so far, but the idea of caregivers being ready to deal with me as I come in the door is exciting. 

[suzifrommd]

I wrote about that in one of the other forums here, and I can fully appreciate and concur in what Dr. Beyers wrote here, that a circle has been turned. 

After having two psychiatrists treat me as if I were incompetent within the past couple years, I'm going to have to label Beyer's outlook as a tad rosy. I've heard her use Johns Hopkins as an example of one of her newly enlightened institutions, and yet it was the very one that houses the two people who treated me that way.

[Jill F]

After having two psychiatrists treat me as if I were incompetent within the past couple years, I'm going to have to label Beyer's outlook as a tad rosy. I've heard her use Johns Hopkins as an example of one of her newly enlightened institutions, and yet it was the very one that houses the two people who treated me that way.

Wow.  Just, wow.   So sorry that happened to you.   I didn't want years of runaround if it turned out my level of GD warranted a transition, so I purposely sought out a network of trans* specialists just in case.   It would be nice if the rest of the mental health community caught up with the times.