I am Kia, I am trans, and I need FFS surgery. FFS will allow me to flourish with real-life interactions and help remove the limits being trans has placed on my career and my life. Though I have been saving up since I've had an income, FFS is still a long way away given I currently make only 13k USD per year. Many people are facing financial difficulties at this time so I don't want to ask for help from anyone who isn't financially secure. I greatly appreciate any support you can offer.
All the money I raise goes in a separate savings account and will only be spent on consultations with surgeons, preoperative tasks such as CT imaging, the surgical procedure itself, and post-operative care (this is a multiple-hour surgery). I'll post updates as I go through the process of getting consultations and surgery. If you want to donate with another means of payment, you can do so, just contact me, my email is on my website.
I started transition as soon as I could, back in 2010. Due to endogenous androgens and genetics, I have facial features that are masculinized: my nose, chin, and forehead/supraorbital ridge. Unfortunately, hormonal replacement can only change soft tissue and fat distribution. The bones/cartilage of the face can be surgically reshaped to de-masculinize secondary sexual characteristics in a set of craniofacial/maxillofacial procedures called FFS. FFS is significantly invasive, but almost every clinical study shows a significant increase in patient quality of life after FFS. To clarify, I am not interested in aesthetic/appearance improvements beyond those inherent to de-masculinization. Because of those facial features, I've never taken (nor posted online) any photos of myself. In lieu of a photograph, I've included a sagittal X-ray of my skull which shows most of the structures that will be operated upon (the sensor plate was not big enough to include all of my nose).
FFS is drastic and expensive, so I've tried every possible way to live without it for a decade. This has failed. I've explored a panoply of less drastic options -- psychotherapy, pharmacotherapy, weightlifting, meditation, temporarily detransitioning, changing hairstyle and glasses frames, losing weight (36 lbs since the last week of December) -- and while some of those have been otherwise beneficial, none have helped with the face dysphoria.
In-person interactions are currently stressful and awkward if not outright risky due to my dysphoria and visible transness. There's many in-person tasks I'd like to do that are mostly infeasible for me because of this: getting a full-time engineering job, professional networking and job interviews, working on technical projects with others, in-person socializing in general, and learning to fly. These missed opportunities compound over time. It's stressful and inadequate not having a social life beyond text, and it limits my performance on everything in life, even on tasks that don't require in-person socialization (personal technical projects, FPGA contract work). Me being trans doesn't affect interactions over text, and I dearly wish that was the same in real life. I don't want to be avoidant of people, and I want to feel at ease with myself. Even after a decade on hormones, I'm still uncomfortable presenting female: I haven't changed my name and still wear the same clothes. Being more able to blend in as cis will drastically expand what I'm able to confidently do for myself and with others.
I don't regret starting transition before I had a career, education, or work experience (primarily because delaying it was untenable) but the costs were very severe. My parents threatened me when they found out and then disowned me. I didn't have a safe place to live for years after and was completely homeless twice. The opportunities to get a degree evaporated. However, I haven't given up on establishing my career and acquiring skills. A friend encouraged me to get into FPGAs and lent me some test equipment to get started. As a result, I've taught myself signal processing, multiple FPGA hardware description languages, and RF PCB design and have been learning how to demodulate different radio waveforms (Mode-A/C/S interrogations and GSM) in an FPGA. This familiarity with FPGAs allowed me to find some contract work doing FPGA HDL design. Last year I only made approximately 13k USD, and a lot of that goes to costs of living. Of course, ever since I started having an income, I have been saving for surgery and so far I have 8k USD. Unfortunately, FFS is very expensive. I've gotten a few FFS consults done and I've been quoted around 60k USD. Health insurance that covers FFS is rare (I don't have it) and most FFS surgeons don't have agreements with medical insurance providers; which means that even if I had insurance that covers FFS, I'd need to pay the surgeon out of pocket to operate and only *then* could I attempt to get reimbursed by insurance. Alternate options for funding surgery aren't feasible: I don't have good credit so I can't get a loan nor do I have any assets (stocks, real estate, etc) that I could sell to finance surgery.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. It's been a huge mental barrier to become OK with asking for help. I am thankful that my friends have encouraged me to go through with this. I've been avoiding in-person interactions for the past decade to the same degree that some people have been in 2020 and I am desperate for this to stop. Getting rid of this dysphoria will improve my quality of life by an order of magnitude. I am truly grateful for any help you can extend.
Thank you.
All the money I raise goes in a separate savings account and will only be spent on consultations with surgeons, preoperative tasks such as CT imaging, the surgical procedure itself, and post-operative care (this is a multiple-hour surgery). I'll post updates as I go through the process of getting consultations and surgery. If you want to donate with another means of payment, you can do so, just contact me, my email is on my website.
I started transition as soon as I could, back in 2010. Due to endogenous androgens and genetics, I have facial features that are masculinized: my nose, chin, and forehead/supraorbital ridge. Unfortunately, hormonal replacement can only change soft tissue and fat distribution. The bones/cartilage of the face can be surgically reshaped to de-masculinize secondary sexual characteristics in a set of craniofacial/maxillofacial procedures called FFS. FFS is significantly invasive, but almost every clinical study shows a significant increase in patient quality of life after FFS. To clarify, I am not interested in aesthetic/appearance improvements beyond those inherent to de-masculinization. Because of those facial features, I've never taken (nor posted online) any photos of myself. In lieu of a photograph, I've included a sagittal X-ray of my skull which shows most of the structures that will be operated upon (the sensor plate was not big enough to include all of my nose).
FFS is drastic and expensive, so I've tried every possible way to live without it for a decade. This has failed. I've explored a panoply of less drastic options -- psychotherapy, pharmacotherapy, weightlifting, meditation, temporarily detransitioning, changing hairstyle and glasses frames, losing weight (36 lbs since the last week of December) -- and while some of those have been otherwise beneficial, none have helped with the face dysphoria.
In-person interactions are currently stressful and awkward if not outright risky due to my dysphoria and visible transness. There's many in-person tasks I'd like to do that are mostly infeasible for me because of this: getting a full-time engineering job, professional networking and job interviews, working on technical projects with others, in-person socializing in general, and learning to fly. These missed opportunities compound over time. It's stressful and inadequate not having a social life beyond text, and it limits my performance on everything in life, even on tasks that don't require in-person socialization (personal technical projects, FPGA contract work). Me being trans doesn't affect interactions over text, and I dearly wish that was the same in real life. I don't want to be avoidant of people, and I want to feel at ease with myself. Even after a decade on hormones, I'm still uncomfortable presenting female: I haven't changed my name and still wear the same clothes. Being more able to blend in as cis will drastically expand what I'm able to confidently do for myself and with others.
I don't regret starting transition before I had a career, education, or work experience (primarily because delaying it was untenable) but the costs were very severe. My parents threatened me when they found out and then disowned me. I didn't have a safe place to live for years after and was completely homeless twice. The opportunities to get a degree evaporated. However, I haven't given up on establishing my career and acquiring skills. A friend encouraged me to get into FPGAs and lent me some test equipment to get started. As a result, I've taught myself signal processing, multiple FPGA hardware description languages, and RF PCB design and have been learning how to demodulate different radio waveforms (Mode-A/C/S interrogations and GSM) in an FPGA. This familiarity with FPGAs allowed me to find some contract work doing FPGA HDL design. Last year I only made approximately 13k USD, and a lot of that goes to costs of living. Of course, ever since I started having an income, I have been saving for surgery and so far I have 8k USD. Unfortunately, FFS is very expensive. I've gotten a few FFS consults done and I've been quoted around 60k USD. Health insurance that covers FFS is rare (I don't have it) and most FFS surgeons don't have agreements with medical insurance providers; which means that even if I had insurance that covers FFS, I'd need to pay the surgeon out of pocket to operate and only *then* could I attempt to get reimbursed by insurance. Alternate options for funding surgery aren't feasible: I don't have good credit so I can't get a loan nor do I have any assets (stocks, real estate, etc) that I could sell to finance surgery.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. It's been a huge mental barrier to become OK with asking for help. I am thankful that my friends have encouraged me to go through with this. I've been avoiding in-person interactions for the past decade to the same degree that some people have been in 2020 and I am desperate for this to stop. Getting rid of this dysphoria will improve my quality of life by an order of magnitude. I am truly grateful for any help you can extend.
Thank you.