Diana’s Little Corner in the Nutmeg State: What We Already Know…

Monday, September 30, 2013

What We Already Know…

For most trans-people this is not new, we live it every time we go to the doctors.

Transgender Healthcare Still Lags
Medpage Today
Published: Sep 29, 2013
By David Pittman

SAN DIEGO -- Despite advances in civil rights in the gay and lesbian community, transgender patients still face discrimination and disparities in the health system, an expert on gay healthcare said here.

Transgender people routinely avoid using healthcare resources because of the way physicians may have treated them in the past, or because of fear of being treated differently, said Joe Freund, MD, a family physician in Des Moines, Iowa, who cares for a large base of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) patients.

"I've got trans[gender] patients who refuse to go to the emergency room unless they're basically unconscious because of doctors screaming out of the room when they discovered something they didn't think they were going to find," Freund said at the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) scientific assembly. "People are poorly treated at times."

OK, raise your hand if you postponed getting medical care because you are trans.

My hand is raised. Before I transitioned I avoided going to my doctors because I worried what he would say something about shaving my body hair off. I had a fever over 100 but I toughed it out, for all I know it could have been pneumonia.

Medicare is currently examining whether or not it should cover sex-change surgery, and Freund called the pending decision "vital."

There is a very good chance that Medicare will cover Gender Confirming Surgery shortly and I will be starting Medicare tomorrow Congress willing.

1 comment:

Marian9/30/13, 9:13 PM
Diana -

I stopped worrying about what a doctor would think about my shaved body a few years ago. I never got any questions when he or his nurses saw my body.

When the above being said, I wonder how I'd react if I were in one of the stages of transition, or being post transition....

M
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From year
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