Help a Trans Man Get Top Surgery After Waiting 10 Years

Hi, my name's Flint and I'm a 27 year old trans man living in the UK. I've been out as trans and in need of top surgery for around 10 years. A lifetime of being repeatedly let down by my old schools, child services, mental and physical health services, and the horrendous state of trans healthcare in the UK, has left me depressed, disabled, and in poverty.

I live alone in council housing after finally escaping my abusive father last year, and my only income is disability benefits. My yearly income is around the same amount of money as the surgery I need is going to cost me, so I'm completely unable to save up for this on my own. I'm hoping the kindness of strangers will help me get there.

The clinic has quoted me ''between £10k-£13k'' for the surgery. I've set the initial goal at £11k with the anticipation of transaction fees, the cost of the initial consultation, and travel/a hotel stay in London. Once I'm quoted the final amount I may update the goal, and if I miraculously end up getting more money than I need, it'll go towards my gender recognition certificate (legal recognition as male, a new birth certificate) which is also long overdue.

For as long as I've been out, I've been entirely unable to access NHS trans healthcare. My transition so far has been accessed privately and out of pocket. I was planning on going into my story at length in this post, but I quickly found that looking back at my old email conversations to help services and private clinics in order to piece together a detailed timeline is just too painful. I'm even struggling to write this abridged version because focusing on this whole situation for too long, for lack of a better word, triggers me, and has already distressed me enough to stop me from writing this post a couple of times now, but I'll do my best.

My mental health spiralled in the last year of highschool, partly due to unmanaged dysphoria, partly due to being abused at home, mostly due to spending my entire school life as the viciously singled out, weird, quiet, (re: undiagnosed autistic), vaguely queer kid, and everything hitting critical mass before I could graduate. Whenever it's brought up I tell people I ''dropped out''. First the school allowed me to quit some of my lessons and start going home early. When that didn't work and I became too anxious to even set foot on the property, they put me in a separate building down the road that was primarily used for isolating problem kids, but ironically it also doubled as the counsellor's office, and where students struggling with their mental health were also dumped. When I became too depressed to even show up for that, I stopped attending school altogether, and nobody that should've been helping me could care less. I took some of my final exams, had panic attacks and walked out of some of them, and failed most of them. I'm pretty sure this level of academic neglect and allowing such a mentally ill and struggling kid to fall through so many cracks that they quit highschool is very illegal, but that didn't make anything get done.

I stayed closeted to my family until I was 18, because I thought I'd have a better chance of being taken seriously that way. Like many trans people do, I initially came out as nonbinary, but regardless I'd already been suffering from chest dysphoria for years and I knew I needed to transition. If you know anything about the terrible state of trans healthcare in the UK, then it won't surprise you when I say I was on a waiting list for a trans clinic until I was 20, and by that point I was confident in my identity as a man. Everything after this paragraph is what I need to not think about too hard to avoid upsetting myself, so I'm sorry for the messy writing.

They had one appointment with me, I think three different clinicians were sat in the room with me as I was grilled, and apparently I was too honest about how depressed I was and how being dysphoric impacted my ability to finish school and that I hadn't been able to pursue employment or further education since, because they refused to treat me. They said I was unusually dysphoric and distressed, and instead of helping someone who was unusually dysphoric and distressed, they discharged me on the spot and told me to seek different mental help first. They weren't interested when I tried to tell them I'd already been trying to get mental help for years prior - both during and after highschool - but that teenage mental health services cared so little I ended up not finishing school properly, and everyone I was referred to after coming out essentially kept telling me to wait on my GIC referral.

It still doesn't feel real in my head that they did that to me, and I honestly end up crying at least a couple of times a month just thinking about how different my life would be right now if I wasn't dismissed for... my dysphoria impacting me too much? I feel like some people reading this will assume I'm hiding some important context but that genuinely was the entire reason. I did try and seek mental help yet again afterwards, but they just told me what they'd always told me. If you're in mental distress because you're trans, we can't help you, go back to the GIC. I was passed from pillar to post and nobody I sought help from was willing to be the first to do so.

So I went privately for my HRT. I've been with my private clinic since I was 21, but I was doing something called a ''shared care agreement'', where the private clinic prescribed my testosterone, and my NHS doctor agreed to mirror the prescription, so that I could buy the medication at NHS rates. However, the shared care agreement broke down after approximately 1 and a half years. I can't remember my doctor ever being specific about why he suddenly cancelled the arrangement, but I believe it was due to a period of legal trouble and targeted vitriol the clinic was subjected to in ~2020. Receiving the news instantly depressed me so much that I couldn't find it in me to try and remedy any of it. I was referred back to the NHS GIC that discharged me after my first appointment, and now as an almost 27 year old I've only had one appointment with them since, with all attempts to contact them being ignored. Even if they were to suddenly stop ghosting me and put me on the track to recieve NHS top surgery tomorrow, other transmascs in the UK are reporting having to wait for upwards of 5 years. I'm now back on HRT with the private clinic, but I can't risk a shared care agreement breaking down and losing my prescription again, so I'm paying full price.

10 years of battling with various British medical systems has destroyed me, mentally and physically. All of this depression and waiting for something to finally give has taken a massive toll on me. I chose not to use a photo of myself as the campaign image because I've had to watch my body degrade, and I feel repulsive. A comorbid disorder I suffer from alongside my autism is h-EDs, which has gotten worse and worse as the years have passed without any reprieve, and my physical health has fallen into disrepair to the point my posture is terrible and my legs barely support me anymore. It's something I've only just been able to get diagnosed in the past few months because being so depressed has made me gain a lot of weight, and my horrific, debilitating joint pain and inflammation was blamed on that for a long time. I've lost all my hair to stress-induced OCD/trichotillomania. I suffer with dissociative symptoms and C-PTSD. I've made several attempts on my life.

This is just some of the laundry list of things wrong with me that have been neglected and brushed off every time I've sought help these past ~10 years, and I know that getting my breasts removed won't solve everything, but... Jesus. Being able to cross off one of the things that's been stuck at the top of the list the longest, look at myself in the mirror without feeling my heart drop, and be able to go outside without worrying that I'm drawing attention to myself as a man with (unconcealable, binders caused me too many issues as a kid and my breasts are too big for them to have any effect) tits in a country that's becoming more and more hostile and dangerous for trans people, would be a massive boost.

I've been left so broke by my struggle that I'm subsiding on meager benefits, living in a terrible little apartment that I can't even afford to put floors in, nevermind furniture. I've never been able to work or pursue education since highschool ended disasterously, but I'd love to. I'd love actually enjoy life and make my own way in the world instead of being stuck in this horrible existence the system has abandoned me in.

I'm sorry again for the messy writing especially towards the end, but I hope you can understand why it's hard for me to recall all of this without getting emotional. I don't have many followers anywhere on social media, so if you're someone with any kind of audience whatsoever, helping spread the word could genuinely change my life.

Thank you so much for reading.