Wake Up Call

As you may have been able to discern from the title, this is going to be less of an uplifting entry as compared with the others and before I get into it, I wanted to just step back and let you in on an exciting change you may have noticed. My partner, Rae, now goes by Rey. This is something I just began writing as I was updating the blog recently and I realized I never pointed it out or explained. In addition to going by "Rey" and "Reymond" in his personal life now, he has also petitioned for his name to be officially changed with the city so he can get a drivers license that matches his identity and as soon as that goes through (any day now), he'll be able to officially change it. Woo Hoo! So look to read more about Rey soon and know that I haven't broken up with the love of my life and begun dating someone of a very similar sounding name who also is trans and wants to preserve his fertility before starting T...it's the same old Rey! lol

With that said, here's your next edition of the Transgender Baby Steps Blog!

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For people living in poverty and for people in the middle class alike, preserving fertility may seem like an unrealistic goal. After all, having a baby is expensive enough on its own - undergoing medications, examinations, treatments, and surgical procedures just simply to save up the little guys for later can cost anywhere from $9,000-13,000 and that just might seem excessive and fiscally irresponsible.

But after you start digging around for the information (and with the help of some knowledgeable health care professionals), you can find options for doing what needs to be done at a cost that is anywhere from nearly affordable to absolutely FREE.

Here are some ways we found that would provide a person with alternative financing options for this type of procedure. There are probably more so make sure you look into it!:

-Insurance Coverage - OK, this didn't work for us but it does work for some so check with your provider to see. However, one word of warning (passed along to you from someone in the biz) is that they only need to know what they need to know. This means that you should not offer up any information unless they ask you - you don't want to be disqualified because their company belief is that it isn't "essential" for you to do this because you're queer, trans, single, etc. Just tell them what they need to know.

-Other Clinic-Provided Discounts - Our fertility clinic was able to give discounts to people working for larger companies and organizations in the area who, although they had insurance, would not receive any coverage for the procedures.

-Research Studies - Participating in research studies may make you eligible for discounted or free medication and other procedures. Find out from your fertility clinic what programs they know of that are happening in your area.

-Compassionate Care Program - The pharmaceutical company making the medication most individuals take during this procedure (Gonal-F) gives the medication for FREE to those who meet their financial need criteria - Saving you around $9000 if you qualify.

-Donating your eggs to the clinic in a separate cycle - This may not be something you're comfortable with - the idea of your brethren being born to and raised by someone else entirely and potentially never getting to meet them (at this time, most legit egg donation clinics require donors be completely anonymous) However, if you think you can do it mentally and physically (there are also health-related criteria you must meet for donating), you will see sweet rewards up to $8,000-10,000 in the United States. Also, keep in mind that some clinics will not allow you to donate of you're only doing it to offset the cost of your own procedure as they don't want the reason for your donation to be wrapped up in the rewards themselves.

Of course, if you read the last entry, you know what happened when we tried to get insurance coverage. We also tried to get in on the research studies but there were none going on that we would have been eligible for at the time. So we set out to take advantage of the Compassionate Care program.

Rey filed all the necessary paperwork and sent along his proof of income. He received a call back within days - much faster than either of us had imagined. After asking questions to verify that he was the one who had turned in the paperwork, the woman on the other end of the phone asked if he would be the one carrying the child. In response to the question, he said, "I need to disclose to you the situation of why I am pursuing fertility treatments just to be clear so you are not confused. I am technically in a same sex relationship with a woman, but I am going to be transitioning to male. I identify actually as a transgender individual. My partner and I – we’ve been together five years and are engaged – are freezing my eggs because once I begin using testosterone as hormone replacement therapy, my ovaries will no longer be able to reproduce. So I will not be the one carrying the child, my partner will later carry the child through invitro."

The woman paused for a long time and finally said, “This program is not for you.”

At this point there was no further explanation of why, only silence on the line. Rey eventually said, “Ok…?” The woman finally explained that it is not their practice to provide free medication for someone who is going to be freezing their eggs for future use. The program is only for couples with infertility issues trying conceive now, UNLESS a woman has cancer or some other catastrophic medical event in which it would be considered medically necessary to preserve her fertility. While we of course knew that this procedure was medically necessary for us, we realized now that we had to prove it.

In the meantime, we had already been considering donating eggs as a way to compensate for the cost of our own procedure. After getting this news, we were more sure that this might be our last remaining option. At this point, we'd been knee-deep in the process for more than six months but without some way to help pay for the procedure, we weren't sure we'd be able to do it. I was nervous that we'd become attached to the idea that would never come to fruition.

We had already been on our fertility clinic's website for egg donation and Rey met all of the criteria. That, along with the fact that they had been amazingly supportive, understanding, and incredibly trans and queer-friendly all made us feel pretty confident that this would be as simple as just letting them know we were interested in donating. Here's the criteria they list:

Are you between the ages of 21 and 32 years of age?
Are you in good health and a nonsmoker?
Do you have regular menstrual cycles?
Do you have both ovaries and do you have no reproductive problems?
Do you have no current history of a sexually transmitted disease such as chlamydia or GC?
Do you have no history of HIV or hepatitis?
Are you psychologically healthy?
Do you have no current use of drugs or excessive alcohol consumption?
Do you have no family history of inherited genetic disorders or conditions?
Does your work or school schedule allow you to make it to daily doctor’ s appointments?
Are you willing to take hormone injections?
Do you have a car, a valid driver’s license, or reliable transportation?
If you have children, do you have a babysitter for when you have doctor’s appointments?
Do you have a normal height-to-weight ratio? Is your body mass index (BMI<27).  You can visit www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/ to see if your BMI is less than 27.
Are you dependable, mature, and able to keep appointments?

The website also clarified that donors get paid immediately after having donated, regardless of how quickly their eggs are used by other individuals. So, excited and nervous, Rey picked up the phone and dialed their number. I sat right next to him for support. He was immediately put on the line with the director of egg donation, herself. The following are nearly perfect quotes from the conversation:

Rey: "Hello. My name is Rey Drew. I'm actually working with Main Line already. I'm preserving my fertility before I transition from female to male and I am interested in donating my own eggs to offset the cost of my procedure."

Egg Donation Director: "Um, so you're having a sex change operation?"


Rey: "Well, not exactly <Welcome to 2012 in America, lady>. I will be going on testosterone to produce secondary sex characteristics and before doing that and potentially destroying my ability to reproduce, we decided to go through this procedure to preserve my fertility. I'm thinking of donating in a separate cycle".

Egg Donation Director: "<LONG PAUSE> Oh. Well, that's a very unique situation and everyone wants something more ...normal. I would have to tell people about this and ...well, no one is going to want your eggs."

Swear.To.God.

That was essentially the entire conversation which was then followed up by our collective cussing and yelling and crying that went on for a good, long while as we realized we'd been discriminated against by the same clinic that had made us feel so loved. I felt so angry that our trusted health professionals who seemed to know so much about appropriate trans and queer vocabulary and etiquette really hadn't been schooled on the more complex array of transphobic issues they were apparently perpetuating.

This used up the very last of Rey's motivation. He had no desire to call and speak with her supervisor, much less start an effort to fight back! I, on the other hand, felt internally obligated to fight back! When I see the line clearly drawn between right and wrong, I just can't help myself!

I called Main Line the next day during my lunch hour at work. A gentle, truly caring nurse we'd recently spoken with answered the phone and I relayed to her what had occurred the day before with the director of egg donations. I also told her we'd been denied the Compassionate Care coverage because of their philosophy that starting testosterone is a choice and not medically necessary. She seemed genuinely apologetic and said she would pass the message on to our doctor. She said she was certain that we'd hear back something from him soon.

It was a week and a half and three phone calls to him later when I finally heard back from Dr. Glassner one morning at 7am as I was getting ready to go to work. He didn't seem like the same charming, gracious soul we met on our first visit. He said hello and quickly jumped into the mini-investigation he had launched after receiving the message the kind nurse jotted down. He had spoken with the director of egg donations and she had confirmed that what we claimed was truth but she stood by her statement that "no one would want (Rey's) eggs". This, apparently, was very important to them even though they always pay their donors immediately after donating, regardless of whether they'd be purchased.

I waited for him to let me know he had reprimanded her or that she'd even been fired for practicing against their open, welcoming, diverse philosophy of practice. But he didn't say those things. He stood by her decision, saying she was the expert in that particular field. I argued with him that this was discrimination and if Rey met the criteria posted online, then he should be able to donate. And, I protested further that by keeping trans and/or queer people from donating eggs, they were preventing trans and queer people from having the option to use eggs from people similar to themselves.

I was livid! How was it possible that we fell for this? How was it that we had been treated like gold by all of our friends and all of our family members throughout Rey's coming out about being trans AND  throughout this fertility process, and these people - who didn't even truly know us - were judging us based on their assumptions and on society's real fear and hatred of trans people. What if Rey had disclosed he was a Muslim? Or what if Rey disclosed he had had a car accident in which he acquired a brain injury or quadriplegia? Then what? Would anyone want his eggs then?

Dr. Glassner became a bit more empathetic after I shared this viewpoint with him. He then apologized that i was feeling the way i was (which of course really doesn't mean he's sorry at all) and closed out our conversation with a deal. Yes, a deal. He was going to give us $4,000 off our procedure since we were not able to donate. $4,000, remember, is maybe half of what we would have gotten if we had donated. I told him I had to think about it and talk it over with Rey since this was not what we had hoped he would say. This was generous, yes, but it was a response to a heinously discriminatory experience we'd had by one of his staff...and that was going to cost us around $4,000-6,000 in the end...close to the exact amount we needed to completely pay for our procedure.