Diana’s Little Corner in the Nutmeg State: Trans Doctors

Friday, February 13, 2015

Trans Doctors

No I don’t mean doctors who treat trans patients but doctors who are transgender. There is a pediatrician down in Concord North Carolina, who is transitioning,

Patients support Concord doctor's gender transition
WCNC
By Tony Burbeck,
February 12, 2015

CONCORD, N.C. -- A longtime local pediatrician has announced he is going through gender transition.

Dr. Hal Levin is the medical director at Piedmont Pediatrics in Concord.

In a letter he sent last March, he said he will return to work as a transgender female and go by the name Dr. Laura Levin.

The clinic and Carolinas Healthcare System sent letters to patient families letting them know.
[…]
Dr. Levin's touched on that in a personal letter to patient families.

This is part of his statement:

"I want to assure you that the only thing changing about me is my appearance. The excellent care your family has received at Piedmont Pediatrics will not change. When I return to the practice in March, I hope you will see that I am the same person at my core that I have always been - a physician who cares deeply about patients, who provides compassionate, excellent care, and who is committed to patients' well-being and health. Being a woman does not define me. It just happens to be part of who I am that will now be visible to everyone else."

The clinic also sent out a letter where they said that they welcome diversity where it “promotes an environment where difference are valued and integrated into their workforce.”

I know a doctor who transitioned in her practice in the Boston area and she lost a few patients but the majority stayed with her. One of the first blogs that I found on line was that of another doctor, Dr. Becky Allison’s “Becky's Story,” and it was reading her blog that I first realize that my transition was possible.

Healthcare professionals who are trans help the community in many way, and I think the two important ways are that they understand what it is like to transition so they can treat trans patients better than non-transgender doctors and the second way that they help the community is by being visible. As a social worker I think I make a strong impact when I am meeting with other non-transgender professionals.

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Quotes

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

A right delayed is a right denied.Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.

Martin Luther King Jr.

No one is born hating another person… People must learn to hate and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
Nelson Mandela

We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist
James Baldwin

There is a fine line between free speech and hate speech. Free speech encourages debate whereas hate speech incites violence.
Newton Lee

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
Albert Einstein

"The point is that there are always obstacles, whether they seem insurmountable or merely bothersome. The question is not how difficult the path, but whether in your heart, you wish to undertake the journey."
Zandru's Forge

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.
Mahatma Gandhi

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

You've Got To Be Carefully Taught
You've got to be taught
To hate
And fear
You've got to be taught
From year
To year
Its got to
Be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to
Be carefully
Taught
You've got to be taught
To be
Afraid
Of people
Who's eyes are oddly made
And people who's skin is a different shade

South Pacific
Songwriters: Oscar Hammerstein II / Richard Rogers

Friday, February 13, 2015

Trans Doctors

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