I’ll be honest: Choosing to make this project, to ask for help, is one of the hardest decisions I’ve made in a long time. I am painfully aware of how many people need financial assistance and my trauma’s laundry list of reasons for why I have no right to ask for your assistance. The fact that I’m asking anyway is both part of my healing journey and also a sign of how difficult this situation has gotten for me.
The short version: Despite being gainfully employed with health insurance, neither the province of Ontario nor my private insurer cover a significant portion of the costs of facial feminization surgery. Despite choosing one of the more well-regarded-but-affordable surgeons I can, this necessary dysphoria-alleviating procedure will leave me with tens of thousands of dollars of debt at a time when I’m already shouldering significant debt from a painful but necessary divorce. I am asking for help in order to be able to start my new life in my mid-40s with a more manageable debt load for a surgery that has become urgent as my dysphoria has reached an agonizing peak.
I have been living through some of the hardest years of my life.. There is much about my divorce–ending an over 23-year relationship–that I am not at liberty to share. What I can say is that with a combination of the COVID pandemic, serious health issues in the household, and processing lifelong trauma, the relationship became an unhealthy place for me to be, and I had to leave. This process was not only emotionally painful, but financially as well.
Over a year later, I am nearly finished with all ties to my ex-spouse. Due to lawyer fees, paying mortgage/rent for multiple households at once, spousal support, and the therapy that kept me afloat during this time and allows me to continue addressing my CPTSD, I have been left with tens of thousands of dollars in debt. As the rush of divorce led to our marital home being sold drastically below value, I’ve been left to cover a large portion of the negotiated spousal support on a line of credit. Meanwhile, I am attempting to build a new life, living on my own for the first time as an adult, with all the costs that entails. During all this, I am also navigating finally working through mental and emotional illnesses that have plagued me since childhood and also experiencing increasing living costs from worsening physical health demands, as my trauma and AuDHD cause a host of body issues that require an unsteady Jenga-tower of medication, supplements, and dietary navigation. All of this, of course, is exacerbated by giving up my secondary private insurance as part of leaving my marriage for my own health.
I am working with a financial planner to budget my money effectively and engage in debt paydown while also beginning long-term financial planning that was not achievable before.
Here is the ask for help:
I have spent nearly the last decade telling myself that I don’t ‘need’ facial feminization surgery (FFS). I shoved down the feelings of dysphoria because I knew that the surgery was expensive and not covered by Ontario health insurance. A couple years ago, my insurer announced that FFS was now covered by my plan. Unfortunately, this ‘coverage’ is deeply limited; my insurance has a lifetime maximum on all gender-related procedures of $15k CAD, which is 25% of the cost of the surgeon I have chosen (who is a budget-friendly option that is half the cost of most North American options).
Between starting my new life, trauma healing, and the bait-and-switch announcement of coverage by my insurer, the Pandora’s box of my dysphoria on this matter has been opened and cannot be shut again. I am struck by regular waves of dysphoria and panic about the difficulty in reaching surgery; these set off intense CPTSD emotional flashbacks that can plague me for days or weeks.
I can’t wait on this any longer. I am doing the hard work of losing the last 15-20 pounds necessary to meet the affordable surgeon’s upper BMI limit, as well as devoting a significant portion of my income to paying off my divorce debts. I am putting off major purchases like furniture for my new home to pursue this goal. I am putting in the work. But the dysphoria has become so urgent that I can’t wait the years it will take to pay off my debt and then save up enough for this surgery. I am at the point where my desperation means I will be essentially filling up all my available sources of credit to get surgery in the coming year.
I’m asking for help to make that decision slightly less damaging to myself.
The surgery is approximately $40k USD, which roughly translates to $60k CAD. My insurance may cover up to $15k CAD, leaving $45-50k in debt for me to carry. (This is the same 15k that any other gender-affirming procedures such as my ongoing hair removal are drawn from; any expenses I have covered now lower the amount of surgery coverage later.)
I’m asking for help–any help–to lower this amount. I am nearly starting my life over at 41, with an 8-year-old car and a small amount of furniture and belongings from my prior marriage. It is hard to not feel hopeless and disheartened about being so far behind in life as a trans woman, disabled by mental and physical chronic illnesses, still working full-time despite burnout and exhaustion, and then having to sign myself up for such a staggering amount of debt.
So much of my life, my trauma has forced me to make myself small, to be unobtrusive, to not take up space and to not ask others for help out of the feeling that I am less deserving, that I am Too Much, that I am Not Enough. The fact that I am able to make this project, to ask for help with something so big, shows not only the trauma healing I’ve been doing but also how painfully desperate I am to take this necessary step.
Thank you for reading this, and thank you for your support.
