Transgendered Face Healthcare Crisis     http://www.newyorkblade.com/2004/8-27/news/localnews/transhealth.cfm     By Mike Lavers Friday, August 27, 2004     Chloe Dzubilo, 43, of Manhattan, was diagnosed with HIV in 1987. Six years later she began her transition from a man into a woman.     The Connecticut native, who has suffered a number of serious illnesses and injuries requiring hospitalization over the last several years including the debilitating bone-degeneration disease avascular necrosis, said she and many other transgender people face difficulty accessing even the most basic of medical care.     “Basically when you’re transgender there’s a lot of pathologizing,” Dzubilo said as she described the way she said many of her doctors reacted when they learned she is a transgendered woman. “People put you in a category or think you are nuts.”     Dzubilo was one of nearly 30 people who attended a town hall meeting on Thursday, Aug. 19, at the Center on West 13th Street.     Titled “Transgender Access to Health Care Forum,” representatives from local transgender advocacy organizations, including the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy and the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund moderated the hour-and-a-half long discussion. People talked about their experiences in the health care system and the difficulties they face when seeking treatments such as hormonal therapy.     Carrie Davis, gender identity and project coordinator at the Center, said the insensitivity many health care providers show towards their transgendered patients is a big problem many people in the community routinely encounter. She also said she feels many transgender people are forced into a position where they have to serve as their own spokesperson.     “Transgender people are often called upon to be their own doctors or advocates in the health care system,” Davis stated.     Indeed, one person who said she spent many years in the foster care system recalled that as a child and teenager she was forced to play a “little diplomatic song and dance” with doctors in order to receive the medical care she needed.     “There should be a policy [and one] is not there,” she commented as she described her experiences with health care providers. “A lot of kids are suffering.”     Another problem the transgendered face, according to Davis, is they are often forced to not identify themselves as transgender in order to receive hormones, undergo sex reassignment surgery or even get basic health care.     “Transgender health care is restricted in the system and the only way you can get access to some of these things is to not be transgender,” she commented. “Transgender health care shouldn’t be about beating the system and erasing identities.”     Other problems transgender people deal with when accessing health care, according to NYAGRA Co-Chair Pauline Park, include a lack of doctors, nurses and other caregivers who are trained to properly treat them. Also, she said there is a significant shortage of information available to medical students about transgender health.     Indeed, according to Dzubilo, who has been treated by several New York hospitals, she has struggled to find doctors and health care providers able to adequately treat transgender patients. “People really choose to be ignorant,” she said.     Others attending the meeting also complained that most medical facilities do not have the proper facilities necessary to accommodate transgendered patients including gender-neutral restrooms. One person even said he was nearly “assaulted” by security guards after using the “wrong” bathroom while he was in the emergency room.     Armed with such stories, Park and other panelists – who included Michael Silverman, head of TLDEF — said there is a need for health care providers to develop a specific policy to adequately treat transgender patients from the moment they seek care to the time they are discharged. This protocol, he stated, should include everything from room assignments to using the proper pronouns to address patients.     “In general, health-care providers need to become more sensitive to transgender patients,” Silverman commented.     For people such as Dzubilo, who said she and other transgendered people are not taken very seriously when they speak up about the lack of adequate care available to them, the time is right for the health care system to listen to them and provide the care they need.     “We’re not crazy,” she said. “We’re enraged and we are not going to take it anymore.” * close this window * go back to the website