Zaya’s Gender Reassignment
Donation protected
Hi! My name is Zaya and I am a 19 year old transgender woman of color. I have been transitioning for about a year and a half now & I am nearing the end of my journey. For the past 5 months, I have been preparing myself to undergo gender reassignment surgery along with a breast augmentation. I need both of these surgeries to defeat my gender dysphoria & finally be able to feel comfortable in the body I’m in. When I first reached out to a surgeon to undergo these operations, I contacted my insurance company to see if they will cover any part of these surgeries. While on the phone with insurance, the representative assured me that a transgender health package was included in my insurance plan & that 80-100% of my surgery costs would be covered. I wrote this information down & sent it to my surgeon’s office where they confirmed that my surgeries will be covered. Flash forward a few months & my surgeries had finally been fully approved by my insurance company. I was given a quote & a surgery date. Originally, I was told I would only have to pay about $3,000 out of pocket for both surgeries after insurance. We chose February 1st as the day that I would finally become my full self. I was so happy knowing that I was finally going to be free of all the dysphoria that I experience with my body & it wouldn’t be a financial burden. However, a bomb was dropped. After my surgery was already scheduled & planned, the surgeon’s office called me to say that there had been a “mistake” regarding my insurance. Apparently, whoever was representing my insurance policy was looking at the “wrong plan” & they “never noticed” that my policy doesn’t actually include the transgender health plan. So after months of phone calls, emails, scheduling, and being told multiple times that insurance will cover my surgeries, it turns out it was all a lie. I finally had a surgery date, and then suddenly I was told my insurance will cover 0% of my surgeries. So for months my insurance had been looking at the WRONG policy, falsely leading me to believe my surgeries would be covered. I called them trying to argue against this, but they told me that there’s “nothing they can do” The only way I can get these surgeries now is if I pay for them entirely myself. I am a financially stable person, but I planned my surgery costs thinking that insurance would cover a majority of it (since that’s what I’d been told from the get go) I did not account for the fact that I could be paying for the full surgery on my own because I was told multiple times that I won’t have to. This whole thing has put a huge road block in front of my journey, and I’m feeling defeated. My situation could be worse, but I can’t keep living in the body I was born in for much longer, my mental health is deteriorating day by day due to my dysphoria. Any donation amount helps. I appreciate any and everything, thank you.
Organizer
Zaya Perysian
Organizer
Grand Rapids, MI