Caelan's top surgery

Hi everyone! I'm a 26 year old trans man from the UK and I'm hoping to raise funds for top surgery.

 

Originally I intended to wait for surgery from the NHS but unfortunately I have been in the NHS gender clinic system over 6 years, with no indication of how much longer I will have to wait. I am unable to work due to a disability and chronic illness so unfortunately am unable to pay this amount for private surgery by myself. This wait time has taken a big toll on my physical health due to binding for so long, as well as my mental health.

Any help would be immensely appreciated, and the results would be life changing.

 

This was the tl;dr version, I have my full story as follows.

 

I purchased my first chest binder when I was 17, and have been binding my chest for the best part of a decade. In 2015 I went to my GP for a referral to a gender clinic and was finally able to start testosterone HRT in 2018. This wait time was already a strain on me but testosterone has changed my life and already alleviated a lot of my dysphoria.

Unfortunately when I moved from Scotland back to England I had to be re-referred to a new gender clinic. Despite the Scottish clinic assuring me that I would still receive care from the NHS with regards to my transition, this was not the case and I was on too low of a dose of hormones with no monitoring for over a year, and was unable to be referred for top surgery until I was seen by another clinic.

In early 2020 I eventually was seen by a gender clinic in England and was given my two necessary medical approvals to allow for a top surgery referral. I selected a surgeon (you are allowed to pick from a list of surgeons available on the NHS based on their individual results and different techniques used etc) and was told that the waiting list for that surgeon was closed but would be opening within the next month. Unfortunately, the pandemic hit the UK 2 weeks later. This meant that elective surgeries had to stop, and my referral was not able to be put onto a waiting list, though I have been assured that I am part of a virtual queue to join that waiting list once it reopens.

As elective surgeries resume in the UK, some surgeons have been able to resume, but the surgeon I have put in the time waiting for is unable to resume NHS surgeries for an indeterminate amount of time. This is due to the NHS not having given them permission to resume yet, and they have no indication of how long this will take. They are, however, performing private surgeries, which is what I am hoping to be able to get since there is no way of knowing how much longer I will have to wait to even be put onto the waiting list properly for this surgeon.

I cannot switch to another surgeon as I will go to the bottom of any waiting list I join. At the moment the wait times are a matter of years in length and I can't afford to wait much longer.

 

Binding for so long has resulted in some health concerns. I have been in and out of the doctors over the past year with chest pains, heart arrthymia, arm and shoulder pains, rib pain, all of which can either be caused or made worse by binding. I'm unable to leave the house unless I am binding my chest due to dysphoria and being unable to pass as male without binding, and often cannot do that for long without pain. Sometimes I cant bind at all due to sensory issues due to my autism. My dysphoria is at an all time high as I am nearly 4 years on testosterone and have a male body shape and body hair, making my chest even more jarring in comparison. Top surgery will be life changing for me, as I will be able to start to heal from the tolls of binding and be able to go outside without pain or fear.