"Setbacks to trans healthcare"

Healthcare providers are already aware that health services for trans and gender diverse people is seriously lacking. I've found that many people seem to treat it as though our healthcare is a choice rather than a real need.

Recently within the community, a healthcare staff member angrily told me that Transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) people are selfish, and that the cost of our treatment is impacting on others. The understanding of the situation was completely incorrect, and I was left feeling sick with fear that this is what many people now believe.

TGD healthcare costs, although they appear huge from some angles, are in fact tiny compared to the costs of staffing the wider NHS, or other big healthcare issues. Not to mention all the healthcare costs of people being drunk or smoking, or participating in high-risk sports.

Further, to this day my trans healthcare has taken 10 years from start to where we are now, and my transition is not finished, partly due to underfunding, partly due to what I see as transphobia, and the restructuring of services which has directly impacted my surgical care. I've ended up jobless, and had a long term relationship break down, partly due to the pressure of waiting and not knowing how long my healthcare would take. I've heard other similar stories, it's not just me.

The gender clinic that I'm registered with have done their best - providing me with minimal mental health support, which now seems to be down to one appointment per year - but, due to lack of funding and staffing the waiting lists for TGD people to get treatment are horrendous.

TGD people including myself feel held to ransom, trapped, some of us feel unable to leave the country in case that sets back our care, and some of us do leave the country to get surgical care, leaving ourselves open to lack of post-operative care on return to this country.

I realise that the whole NHS is under stress and all I can say is that everybody, absolutely everybody needs to put the pressure on to fund the NHS up to its current need. Every single one of us either needs or will need healthcare. We need to get back to properly assessing what's needed, and then insist on that being funded.

To end on a positive, most of the healthcare staff that I've encountered directly in the gender clinics, the surgical teams in hospital, and most admin staff have been wonderful. There have been a few exceptions, but on the whole I've felt very well supported over the last 10 years in that way.

But I just wish it had taken much less time, like it could have done if resources hadn't been lacking.