I live in Indiana and will likely be here for another 10-15 years depending on how successful my business  is. State insurance steadfastly refuses to cover ANY transitional medical care. Any private insurance for the state also refuses. I live paycheck to paycheck and have start up costs. I simply cannot afford to drop 8k on surgery, travel, and down time any time soon.

Does anyone have any ideas on what I can do?

Travel and downtime are going to be unavoidable with surgery. So if you can't afford to at least take time off, then it doesn't sound like surgery is even on the table regardless of who's paying for it.

Beyond anything else, I would say take a look at your finances and see where you can start making cuts in order to save money. The true cost of surgery is more than just what it costs to pay for the procedure and travel there. You'll need supplies, medicine, food, etc. And that's if everything goes according to plan. If there were complications, you may need to travel back to your surgeon to have them resolved.

I know guys who have gone to all kinds of extreme measures to get surgery coverage. Probably the easiest thing you could do would be to get a part-time position at Apple or Starbucks, who have employee health insurance that covers trans-related care. On the more extreme end, you could move to another state.

Before you jump into any of that, I would consider whether or not surgery is actually an option for you at this time based on your ability to take time off. You'd need a minimum of two weeks off work, ideally a month from what most guys will tell you. If you don't have vacation time, sick leave, or short-term disability, you'd need to figure out how to pay your bills while you're off and not being paid.

I'm sorry I don't have better news for you, but I wish you luck as you figure things out.

I work two jobs - a factory job and starting up my business. Closest apple store is 2 hours away. Closest Starbucks is 40 minutes. Working three jobs with that kind of commute is out of the question.
Moving anywhere for the next 10 years is out of the question.
Time off isn't a problem. Neither is travel. The problem is that I don't have any extra to cut back on, I don't even eat out. What I have goes into being self sufficient so I don't ever have to work for someone else ever again. Surgery is a huge deal for me, but I make about 15k a year and have start up costs along with saving to purchase property. I'd literally go hungry if I decided to put away enough for surgery.

What stage is your business in? While I think it's definitely a worthwhile goal to become self sufficient and not reliant on someone else for a paycheck, if you're still in the early stages and you aren't working with investors who are expecting a return on their investment sometime soon, it might make more sense to knock surgery out and then focus your attention on the business.

I manage a start up for an absentee owner. It took about a decade for him to be able to take extended time off, and that only came after paying for someone like me to watch over the place while he's gone. So my advice if the stuff in the first post isn't possible would be to put business stuff on the back burner and take care of surgery first. It can take a long time to get a business to the point where you can put it on cruise control.

I'm about 8 months in, and all profit goes toward start up costs (personal loan from a friend, not long term investor) for putting up a pole barn and 20 kennels with a training room and grooming station. It's me and a partner. We both train, and she also does grooming. We have 15 out of 20 kennels filled 3 weeks out of the month the last 4 months. And half of those are boarding only. The other half is board and train (the meat and potatoes of what we're doing).
At any time I can refuse to take on boarding dogs and clients for any amount of time, or my business partner and cut back so she can keep up with it. I can also take on more boarding clients instead of training since boarding is a lot less physical.
Things should be going smoothly in 2 years with a large client base and more add-ons. My salarywill be comfortable, but those two years will put me at 5 years of struggling.