Victor’s Life-Saving Roux-en-Y Reversal

Howdy, everyone! I’m fundraising on behalf of my wonderful friend, Victor Martins, to help him afford a life-saving functional reversal for Roux-en-Y gastric bypass.

[Victor and Jade being best pals at SPX 2018 taken with a camera. Not shaky, very clear and good photo]

 

TL;DR

The funds will be used as follows:

 

THE LONG VERSION

Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass

 

When Victor realized he was transgender, his parents were the first people he told. He ran to the student commons between classes and dialed a long-distance number to Brazil. He was excited to share this discovery with them, this missing piece that made his life finally make sense.

 

Instead of accepting that their child was trans, his parents decided that the real issue was his weight. A few months later, he found himself undergoing a Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, a highly invasive weight loss surgery which reroutes a large part of the stomach and some of the intestines, creating a small pouch that’s only big enough to fit about four grapes, “Maybe my mom is right”, he thought. “Maybe I’m unhappy because I’m fat”. He had just turned 21.

 

Roux-en-Y is a malabsorptive surgery--it restricts the body’s ability to absorb nutrients. It’s meant as a last-ditch effort to ameliorate serious health complications after a lifetime of trying and failing to lose weight (the median patient age is around 44 years old). It necessitates lifelong medical follow-up with specialists in post-operative bariatric care, strict meal plans, and intensive, expensive nutritional supplementation. It is not a good fit for suicidal 21-year-olds with a history of disordered eating and complicated relationships with food.

 

The Complications

 

Fast-forward to 2020: Victor is 26, no longer speaks to his parents, and has been feeling very tired, nauseous, and short of breath. He chalks it up to the pandemic: it’s a stressful time, and it’s taken a definite toll on his mental health. Victor’s condition rapidly deteriorates as the year goes on. He begins to suspect something is seriously wrong.

 

Victor is in Canada on a work permit, with a pending PR application. This means he has no access to OHIP, the government health insurance plan. Even if he had OHIP, he would not be eligible for treatment at a bariatric centre because his surgery was not done in Canada. In addition, because there is no formal medical specialization for trans-specific healthcare, Victor’s “family doctor” is actually a trans healthcare specialist--incredibly knowledgeable and skilled in his field, but not suited to navigating the complicated ins and outs of nutrition and patient care post-bariatric surgery.

 

In January 2021, unable to sit or stand for more than seconds at a time, Victor asks his doctor to be sent the results of some blood work he got done last Fall. His doctor didn’t notice at the time, but the results show that Victor’s ferritin levels--which measure iron in the blood--are dangerously, critically low.

 

Victor has been taking iron supplements this whole time, so he doesn’t understand how his iron could be so low.

 

Victor struggles with getting proper treatment, not just because he is an immigrant with no access to OHIP, necessary for most specialist care in Ontario, but also because the current healthcare system doesn’t adequately equip its professionals to properly interpret lab results for transgender patients or to treat young bariatric patients. After months of unsuccessfully seeking care, Victor realizes he needs to take his health into his own hands. While unable to stand or sit for more than a few seconds, he has to comb through medical journals and decode scientific articles to try to find out what’s going on, what he needs to do to get better. He discovers that Roux-en-Y patients often can’t absorb iron orally at all, and usually need iron infusions or transfusions every three months, for the rest of their life.

 

At his lowest, most desperate point, Victor ends up in the ER.

 

After months of iron infusions at a private clinic and trying out different supplementation routines, Victor feels better. Then, he starts feeling much, much worse. He learns that he has developed reactive hypoglycemia--an extremely uncommon, disabling complication of Roux-en-Y gastric bypass. Reactive hypoglycemia makes it so that Victor’s body can only tolerate very low amounts of carbohydrates.

 

The only known way to manage reactive hypoglycemia is through an extremely restrictive diet. Victor needs to eat every 3 hours, and can’t eat more than 30g of carbohydrates at a time without risking severe health complications. To get the nutrition his body needs, he needs to supplement with high-grade whey protein twice a day, and consume slow-release carbohydrates--raw cornstarch diluted in water--4-5 times a day. No easy task for anyone, let alone someone in ED recovery! His ability to progress and heal has been seriously threatened by being unable to share a meal with friends, being unable to eat sweets and baked goods, and being unable to leave the house without taking baggies of raw cornstarch and protein powder along.

 

As things stand right now, managing these complications from the Roux-En-Y surgery means that Victor has to spend approximately one out of every three months bedridden due to side effects from the iron infusions and hypoglycemia flare-ups. This has cost him any chance at financial stability via salaried roles: he needs the flexibility full-time freelance offers to actively plan around being unable to work for weeks at a time, and to be able to take a day off whenever things get especially bad. The resulting financial uncertainty makes it a lot harder to plan for the future, especially since Victor and his partner have no familial support networks to rely on.

 

Victor’s life savings have been completely spent just getting him through this past year, together with his partner’s. Their shared household budget currently has $680.00/month earmarked for ongoing medical expenses--the infusions Victor has to have every three months, the supplements, the bloodwork, the doctor’s appointments. As it currently stands, Victor is losing one-third of his life to managing these complications. The only thing that keeps him going is the possibility of reversing the Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, so he can return to a happy, healthy life.

 

 

[Victor, D and friend of the show Rabeea in a car. Vic is drinking passionfruit boba (unsweetened), the best kind of boba]

 

The Functional Reversal

 

Reversing Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass is still a relatively uncommon procedure. Full reversal of Roux-en-Y gastric bypass is possible, but it is very dangerous, with a ridiculously high complication rate--29% of patients requiring readmission within 30 days of the surgery. Luckily, there is a safer, less invasive form of Roux-en-Y reversal surgery that, while not returning the digestive tract to normal anatomy, provides “functional reversal”: things work more or less the same as a normal digestive system, even if they don’t look the same. There are two clinics where this option is available: one in Iceland, one in Sweden. Victor has successfully booked an initial consultation at the Swedish clinic, and gotten an initial quote for how much the reversal will cost.

 

 

The Ask

 

Victor and his wonderful partner Dimitri are my closest, most cherished friends. I love them so much! They are both so generous, funny, talented, and warm-hearted. The two of them have always been there for me when I’ve been going through it, and now, I want to do the same.

 

These past few years have been particularly hard for them: their life savings have been decimated, and they are so tired. They need rest and security, and they need it as soon as possible.

 

For as long as we’ve known each other, I’ve watched Victor struggle to live under a system that actively works against immigrants, trans people, the poor, and the disabled. I’ve also watched him get through each hurdle with grace, courage, and strength. I want to go out with my friend without him having to worry, I want to eat cake together [very fancy cake]. I want him to not have to miss out on a third of his life because he is in bed sick. I want him to be healthy and happy.

 

So, I made this GoFundMe on Victor’s behalf to raise CAD$42.000,00 for his surgery, including travel, accommodation, pre-and post-op exams, and consultations.

 

Thank you so much, every little bit counts.

 

 

[Victor and D being very cute. On a date at the Ontario Science Centre for Vic's 25th birthday]

 

From Victor:

If you’ve made it this far, thank you so much for reading! I’m so grateful to Jade for setting this up, so grateful to my friends who’ve expressed their unconditional support, and so, so grateful to D, who’s been with me through thick and thin. It honestly feels quite horrible to be asking for so much, but, like my pal Rabeea said, I have to let people help me!! And I’m finally at a point where there’s nothing to do except admit it, I do need help. I want to be healthy again! I have so many things I wanna do, stories to tell, pictures to draw! I want to be able to give it my very best shot, and that starts with being healthy again. So, again, thank you so much for your time.

 

I’ve included some links to some of the things I’ve read while trying to navigate my convoluted health problems maze, just in case you want to learn a little bit more about any of it!

 

Love,

Vic

 

Links:

 

ROUX-EN-Y REVERSAL:

FUNCTIONAL REVERSAL

IRON DEFICIENCY

HYPOPHOSPHATEMIA AFTER IRON INFUSION

REACTIVE HYPOGLYCEMIA