Transgender? A Doctor Won’t See You Now [View all]

[damnedifIknow]

Trans patients face do-or-die situations when trying to find transition care. But the medical community is not ready for them.

In August 2014, Kailey Truscott went to her primary-care doctor with a letter and a mission. The letter, from a therapist, confirmed what she’d known since she was 7—she was a woman. The doctor’s appointment was to begin medical treatment so her body would reflect that fact.

But the path to transition wasn’t so simple. Her doctor didn’t balk, but she didn’t write a prescription for estrogen, either. She’d never provided hormone therapy to a transgender person before, she told Truscott. She didn’t feel comfortable starting now.

But she didn’t leave Truscott in the lurch. Instead, about a week later, she called Truscott with mixed news. She’d found a clinic that could do transition care. But it was more than two hours away from the small western Maryland town where Truscott lives.

“It’s the only place around here that I could find,” Truscott, 31, remembered her doctor saying.

Now, when she needs transition-related care, Truscott drives an hour to a Metro station, takes a train for another hour, and then walks for 15 minutes to Whitman-Walker Health, an LGBT clinic in Washington, D.C. “Imagine when my appointment is at 8 a.m.,” she joked.

Even in areas where transgender patients flock to get care, providers can be hard to find, said Barbara Lewis, a Whitman-Walker physician’s assistant who has been providing care to transgender patients for decades."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/19/transgender-a-doctor-won-t-see-you-now.html