First of all...
Dallas, thank you so much for contributing! It means so much to us.
Secondly...I received an email from a friend yesterday asking what sort of surgery Veni needed. I explained, and she replied, "Oh, thank God it's not something serious!"
This made me very sad. You see, folks...the physical transition from the body a trans person was born in to the body that matches their interior image of themselves is
incredibly serious. This is not (no matter what the insurance company bureaucrats say) not elective surgery.
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health agrees, and calls medical treatment of transfolks medically necessary. It is, for many, a matter of life and death. Transpeople who cannot afford to pay for, or obtain in their local area, legitimate medical treatment, do things like
- buy illegal hormones and take them without any medical supervision to insure that they are not doing harm to their bodies;
- go through this very intensely emotional time without appropriate support from friends, family, or trained counselors (if they need them);
- cut off parts of their bodies themselves; or
- kill themselves...20% of untreated transfolks commit suicide, vs. 1% of treated transfolks.
This is serious surgery, serious business. And most insurance companies still don't cover the treatment, so most folks (like Veni), have to come up with thousands of dollars on their own.
And lastly...you can also purchase a copy of my new cookbook to benefit Veni!
The Soup Fairy Cooks
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