Hi, my name is Zephyr and I'm a 23 yr old transgender man. As of writing this, I'm six months on testosterone and finally (slowly) starting to feel a real connection to myself, but I'm coming to terms with the fact that I'm still miserable in my own body. If I could get this weight off of my chest (*pause for pity laughter*) my life could feel more like my own and my quality of life would improve in a way that I can't even describe.

Both my husband and I have our day jobs, but we are both disabled and can't simply work more or harder to achieve this goal while taking care of our bodies. We both have chronic pain from a connective tissue disorder called hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (hEDS), and I personally live with Gastroparesis and Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS). These conditions will not prevent the surgery from occurring, but it does impact the number of hours we can work per week to make money. We get by, but we are not able to actively save any significant amount of money towards this life changing surgery.

I've already had several conversations with insurance, my doctors, and my therapist, and I've had my surgical consultation already - confirming me as a good candidate for double incision top surgery. As we're coming down to it, I just need some paper work to go through and then the surgery can finally get scheduled... but that means it'll have to be paid for.

What's the money for?

I'm fortunate to say that surgery shouldn't be crazy expensive through my insurance, but I will still be facing a bill of approx. $2150. The rest of the money would be the bare minimum to make it possible for me to take extra time off of work to heal and allow my spouse to take a limited amount of time off of work to stay with me for the initial healing period to make sure I'm taken care of - a necessary precaution with my pre-existing physical disabilities.

If you've read this far, you probably have some understanding of how world changing a surgery like this could be. It's hard for me to ask for anything, but I also have to accept that I'm not going to be able to make this goal completely on my own. I've put some money away allowing me to keep my goal as low as possible, but I'll be honest - I need help and I can honestly say that any support I may receive to achieve this goal will change my life in an incredible way. Thank you for reading.