I Thought That We Were Beyond This

There is one person who we put our lives in their hands and that person is our doctor. We count on their skills and good will to keep us alive and when that trust is not justified we can literally die.

When I first came out, I saw the movie “Southern Comfort” about Robert Eads, a trans man who died of ovarian cancer in rural Georgia because he couldn’t find a doctor to treat him and I always wondered why did he come north to get treatment. I figured it was only southern doctors who wouldn’t treat him, I was wrong.

This Trans Man's Breast Cancer Nightmare Exemplifies The Problem With Transgender Health Care
HuffPost Live
By Ryan Buxton
Posted: 06/15/2015

Jay Kallio is a transgender man who lived through a healthcare nightmare he hopes no other trans person will ever have to face, and he shared the painful story with HuffPost Live's Nancy Redd last week.

It began when Kallio found a lump on his breast just three months after a mammogram. He had a second mammogram, then a biopsy and, when weeks went by without receiving any test results, he just assumed everything was fine. That changed when he suddenly got a phone call from the doctor who performed his biopsy -- and who was not his primary physician.

"She said to me, 'Hi, I was just curious how you were doing with your diagnosis.' And I said, 'What diagnosis?' She she sort of spurted, '[Your doctor] hasn't called you yet?'" Kallio remembered.

And what did his doctor have to say…

"The first thing [the doctor] said was, 'I have a real problem with your transgender status.' And he said, 'When I found out you were transgender, the first thing I wanted to do, my first impulse was to send you to psychiatry,'" Kallio said. "So this is what a breast surgeon wanted to do with my breast cancer, is first send me to psychiatry."

After a long struggle, Kallio eventually did find a "very welcoming" surgeon to help him, and the procedure also accomplished something Kallio had never been able to do because of his low income.

I worry about his because you will probably not know if your doctor is biased against you, it is one thing to tell you to your face that he or she doesn’t want you as a patient but another to withhold information that is vital to your health. Also as "Religious Freedom" bill proliferate you have to wonder how they will affect our healthcare if we end up in an emergency room/

I had one doctor who I was a little leery of, he seemed a little uneasy to treat me. To me he seemed eager to get me out the door and unfortunately it was about a chronic disease. He never found a cause of the illness but I am showing improvement, he that there was no need for any follow exams because I was improving. I am not seeing him now and if my condition gets worst I will seek another doctor.

Here is Jay’s interview on Huffington Post Gay Voices