The Medical Middle FingerLast night,
@Steph2.0 and I attended a dinner presentation featuring Dr. Marci Bowers. She was a very engaging speaker and had an interesting story to tell about how she had started out as an obstetrician, transitioned, and having had multiple job offers subsequently rescinded after she was "outed" as trans, had switched to performing GCS procedures.
While all of this was interesting to me and I feel like it was worthwhile to be there, I couldn't help but let a (let's face it, more than a little) tinge of bitterness creep into my heart. Just a dozen feet away from me was a woman, a surgeon who made a career of performing a particular, often life-saving procedure on hundreds of people similar to myself. Yet, due to my particular circumstances, might as well have been on another planet. As I had said in an earlier post, I've basically gotten a big fat middle finger from the insurance company (provided by work) and, by extension, from my employer who made it known in no uncertain terms that they had no interest in including any kind of coverage for the procedures for which Dr. Bowers had become renowned.
Bitter, party of one? You betcha! Frustrated? Very!
After her presentation ended, we sat for a bit and enjoyed conversation whilst the double chocolate cake we'd had (too much of) for dessert settled in our bellies. Stephanie expressed an interest in going over and talking to Dr. Bowers but she was understandably hesitant to do so. Sitting next to Dr. Bowers was someone I wanted to speak to and had similarly lacked the courage in the past few times we had been in proximity to each other. I smiled, took Stephanie's hand and we walked over to the table where they both sat. I went one way and Stephanie went the other way.
After we had left the restaurant, Stephanie told me that she had learned much from the good doctor during that brief but meaningful conversation. I'll leave it to her to write the details about it in her thread...when she wakes up.
At one point, the realization struck that I had had absolutely zero interest in talking to Dr. Bowers. At all. At the moment, I think it was an attitude of "why bother?" since there was absolutely zero possibility of having someone like her perform the surgery that I want and need. That is, not without some radical changes in my life that, honestly, I'm not willing to risk at this point and I understand clearly that that is my choice and mine alone. In hindsight, I can't help but feel like that was a bit shortsighted but when emotions take over, the choices we make can be...less than wise. It's been almost two years and I'm still learning about all these new emotions that live in my head and my heart.
I feel like some good did come out of the evening. In a negative sense, it reinforced my contempt for both the insurance industry and the medical industry in this country who, as far as I'm concerned, are one-and-the-same since they hold back so many of us with their latex-gloved iron fist. I think that the only reason I'm able to get any kind of coverage for the care I'm getting now (HRT, basically) is that it's being coded as treatment for endocrine disorder. Once the insurance companies are freed from any anti-discrimination laws, it's only a matter of time before they start going after those kinds of loopholes.
It also strengthened my resolve to get everything I need together in order to have the surgeries I want done outside this country. It's the only option I can see for myself - for better or for worse. This is tempered by the reallization that I can empathize (to a small degree perhaps) with thousands upon thousands of other trans folks who find themselves in a similar predicament. I can't say that I
fully empathize with those others because I do have the means more or less to make it happen on my own.
I think that this also reveals not only a lack of confidence in the situation we have going on in this country but also a general lack of
trust. For the folks who do have their surgeries covered in this country, there's clearly a "rush for the door" because no one has any faith that things will remain stable as they plod their way through the (in many cases) years-long waiting lists for surgeries. Everyone is waiting for the next shoe to drop and I don't want to live like that. I can't live like that and I refuse to.
No offense to the faithful out there but I've heard it said that two hands working can achieve more than a thousand hands clasped in prayer and dammit, I'm working and I'm
going to make this happen!
