Yeet Teat Fund: Help Wives Beat Cancer & Dysphoria
For decades my wife Judith (she/they), a magnificent artist & nonbinary lesbian jock, has endured debilitating back pain & dysphoria due to her large chest.
Right as we were finally on the verge of taking the plunge into top surgery, my tits tried to out-problematic Judith’s by developing breast cancer. We caught it early (stage 1) but we had to act fast because it was an aggressive (grade 3) tumor. As such, I (Natalie) just had surgery 2 weeks before Judith.
Our insurance is...there. It’s not great, but is there. I love my day job making art & advocacy opportunities accessible to adults with disabilities, but the income and benefits are low in my sector. We have to pay 20% coinsurance for everything. To put that into perspective, I have already paid $3,000 just to the facility that hosted my surgery. My surgeon bills separately. Our insurance yearly maximum out of pocket is $13,000.
Judith’s surgeon Dr. Hazen is the only local, not-fatphobic surgeon that had any familiarity working with non-binary folks desiring androgynous rather than masculine results. She’s outside our insurance, so only the hospital fees are definitely covered. We applied for a gap exception, and it was approved to cover over half of the $7,000 fee.
We spent $2,500 on diagnostics in late 2019.
We WILL be paying the $13,000 maximum for 2020 by March.
$2,000 more for Judith’s surgeon; the gap exception is partial coverage.
We have also missed income. We are missing at least two conventions where we sell our art as Gay Breakfast Studio, and I am on unpaid Family Medical Leave because I already exhausted all my sick days just fighting for a diagnosis and treatment.
Missed days of work: About $3,000 after surgery and radiation complicated by Hypermobile Spectrum Disorder / Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome.
Two canceled conventions: $4,000-7,000 in missing income. We hope to run a new enamel pin Kickstarter to make up some of that gap, but nothing is guaranteed.
In total we are looking at 20,500 to $27,500 in expenses and missed income.
Our friends and family have asked us to make this gofundme in the absence of an American universal healthcare and social safety net. Many thanks to everybody who has encouraged and helped us. We love you!
