11/17/2023 FacebookTwitterLinkedInEmail
HIVMA Board part Catherine Grace Bielick, MD, MSc, highlights the life-threatening disparities that trans people experience and shares her personal experience in this first part of a two-part set in connection with Transgen Day of Remembrance on November 20.
Being a trans woman, doctor, data scholar, victim, Christian, and social advocate can be challenging at times. I came across my people in the field of infectious diseases, where we have a week-long conference focused on improving ourselves socially, morally, functionally and ethically. We also have an equitable conference on clinical, emotional, and technological advancements. We represent the model of ancient doctors who combine all of these fields to form a single, vocal specialist that does not sacrifice love for even the most vulnerable members of humanity in exchange for greater pay or fame. As Transgender Day of Remembrance draws near, I find myself thinking of Mark Dybul, MD, who said in the closing plenary of this year’s IDWeek,” You ca n’t fight HIV unless you support the LGBT community.”
The 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey Report, from which many ominous statistics have gained widespread recognition, may be more well-known to the Passport group than to others. In our lifetimes, 40 % of us reported making a suicide attempt ( nine times the background rate of the U.S. population of 4.6 % ), including 7 % who did so in the previous year. 3.4 % of trans women, or up to 57.6 % of Transgender Ryan White patients in 2017, reported having HIV, 19 % of whom were Black. 30 % of respondents said they had ever experienced homelessness, 15 % were unemployed ( compared to the country’s overall unemployment rate of 5 % at the time ), and 29 % were living in poverty ( as opposed to 12 % overall ). Due to mistreatment, 17 % of students dropped out of K–12 school, and more than 55 % of those who requested insurance for gender-affirming hormones or surgeries were turned down. As a result, 23 % of the trial chose not to get medical attention when they were told to do so out of concern for abuse.
These data did not elude me. Additionally, it’s crucial for you to learn about what your affected patients and coworkers have gone through in order for health care professionals to consider any group most efficiently. If you do n’t know what’s killing us, how else can you prevent us from passing away? If you try to lessen someone’s anguish, you may be able to make a differential examination for every aspect of their condition. I first experienced gender dysphoria as a child, but I was n’t aware of it until after college. By that point, I had discovered and involved myself in a variety of realities that prevented me from considering my health or the future.
The real world eventually found me, as it always does, despite the fact that I had two to three jobs during my college career and a pointless bachelor’s degree in psychology and advertising. After graduating, I was unable to find employment, and I had only considered my occupation as a pipe dream that I may one day unintentionally realize. I lived in my friend’s parents ‘ living room for a month while I was homeless, but even in the depths of my own misery, I could n’t help but think back to an innocent dream from my childhood. I committed my entire life to becoming a doctor in order to combat disease and hunger by improving and developing people and communities who are most in want.
However, I was also residing as a person. I did n’t realize that was a source of ongoing pain until I had completed two more years of the requirements for post-baccalaureate medical school, another year of working for minimum wage, and two additional years in graduate school. I was dating a girl who I genuinely wanted to marry. Unexpectedly, 26 years of memories came together to form the suffocating discovery that I was a woman one day as my closest friend and I were attending the Brandon Sanderson book signing event. I had never heard of what it meant to be transgender, trans, or any other term you could think of in 2012. I devoured another trans women’s online stories that evening and for the entire following month. You could simply take a medication and have your body behave exactly as you have felt it really throughout your entire life?
It was n’t that easy. Although it ought to have been, it was n’t. At the time, I did genuinely love my partner from the bottom of my brain. After much suffering and putting it off, I finally sat down with her at a Raleigh factory one evening after church and stole the Band-Aid. She began by saying,” I’m still here, and I wo n’t be leaving.” Both she and I were evident about what we wanted. I wanted to stay with her and make the transition to being a girl. She wished for me to sit as a person and for her to remain with me. I opted for the latter situation for a number of factors.
Before I matriculated, I made the decision to put my best foot forwards in change counseling after we got married and I was accepted to medical school. It did not proceed smoothly. I can attest to Victor Madrigal-Borloz’s report to the United Nations, which states that it is usually irresponsible for health care professionals to claim to handle anything that is not a disorder and that they are required by the “do no harm” principle not to provide treatments that are acknowledged as inadequate or purport to achieve unreachable results. Offering” change therapy” is a form of fraud, false marketing, and fraud, according to the Independent Forensic Expert Group of the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims, an organization of eminent global medico-legal experts from 23 states.
Watch out for the next article in this series, in which Dr. Bielick expands on her experience and emphasizes the crucial role that doctors play in delivering and safeguarding gender-affirming medical care.
