Receiving Gender-Affirming Care Hasn’t Worked Out for Me Three Times in Just 10 Months

It’s been a nightmare for me, a woman who is transgender, to receive gender-affirming care. That’s because it hasn’t worked out three times in just 10 months. I have gotten severely depressed due to the setbacks.

The first issue regarded Intermountain Health, before I came to the Los Angeles area from Utah in mid-February. The second and third problems have been in southern California.

Intermountain Health

IH didn’t even have equipment for vagina surgery to take place.

Also, a nurse practitioner, Noemi Gay, claimed I had to wait a year before starting progesterone. As I’ve learned from four medical providers, that’s not the case. Also, her assistant was difficult.

(Also, Micah Sheldon, the case manager who was supposed to coordinate my care, didn’t write his case note of our visit for 16 days. A different social worker told me that his employer requires it within 72 hours. And I find that he told me 48 hours.)

IH sent me six complaint forms, as I initially requested, before I left to southern California (as I then told an IH patient advocate I was doing). One of just two reasons I relocated was because I imagined things would go more smoothly in the left-leaning state.

(IH was one Utah problem. Another was that I wasn’t even granted insurance coverage of a hormone for a fairly basic gender-affirming treatment until my name and gender were legally affirmed. Many if not most transgender individuals at least in the United States aren’t legally affirmed. There was a second issue with getting transition coverage as well. And that was in the early stages in which I was medically transitioning.)

Unfortunately, it was only while I was driving to the LA area that I remembered that an IH provider herself said that I should not go through IH for medical transition care. (It’s too bad that I had to leave IH since I could have just never started down the IH path.)

My understanding is that IH has had other problems in providing gender-affirming care to other transgender folks as well.

Does IH need to do more than rebrand, as it has done this year?

Changing providers

Dr. Jonathan Kao, a UCLA Health primary care provider, told me information that was completely false regarding seeking insurance coverage for preparation for bottom surgery. (I know because I corroborated it with a professional who does the preparatory work.) That made me uneasy to work with him. (UCLA Health claims that Kao is an “LGBTQ+ champion.”)

In the appointment where it seems clear he lied to me, I also told him that I traveled to see him in-person from my rental, which is usually 40–45 minutes away.

I also didn’t want to work with UCLA Health for several other reasons.

After that, Dr. Katherine Gardner was recommended to me. Thus, I switched primary care providers. I didn’t know that would result in me losing all of my appointments with surgeons. I had appointments lined up for five surgeries. And it was taking months to even get to the surgical consultations.

Lack of housing (after losing it)

I then set up consultations with Dr. Nance Yuan. However, in the consultation, she refused to conduct any surgery because I didn’t have shelter. (Two weeks into being in the residence I found in Los Angeles County, I was told to leave. The claimed reason was for not yet unpacking most of my things, all of which were in my room I paid to rent.) Yuan also refused to re-schedule consultations several months out. As I told her, I was confident I’d have shelter by then.

I understand Yuan not wanting to do any surgery if I didn’t have shelter in which to recover. However, that didn’t mean that the major setback didn’t hurt. I cried the second she said she would not provide the surgeries, even though she also said why.

And I cried hard.

I again have shelter and again have started down the gender-affirming care road in terms of having made appointments.

Other than not wanting anything bad to happen to my kiddos, the last thing I want is for the care to not work out again.

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