Help Ronan fund his top surgery
Donation protected
Hi! I’m Ronan, and I’m a trans man trying to raise money for top surgery, also known as reconstructive chest surgery.
This is a procedure I’m in desperate need of due to the shocking state of NHS trans healthcare right now. NHS guidelines state:
“The maximum waiting time for non-urgent consultant-led treatments is 18 weeks from the day [the] service receives your referral letter.”
The current wait time for a first appointment at a gender identity clinic (before treatment is even considered) is one and a half to five years. I got my referral back in January 2018 when the estimated wait time was 51 weeks, and am still waiting for a first appointment date. As things stand on the NHS pathway, it will be roughly three and a half years or more on top of the wait I’ve already had before I can get this life-changing surgery. Because of this, it’s become clear that I need to take my transition private for the sake of my mental health and quality of life.
At the moment I wear a binder to flatten my chest whenever I leave the house, and at home too if I’m going to be interacting with anyone. The recommendation for binding safely is less than 8-10 hours at a time, with a couple of days without binding each week. Like most people, I’m generally awake for more than 10 hours five days a week. This means that by the time I’ve gone to uni or done anything else with my day, I usually end up isolating myself in my bedroom because it’s too hard on my body to bind any longer.
Binding on its own is pretty damaging in the long term, but the chest compression combined with my asthma means breathing can become difficult if I have a busy day. I can’t stress enough how much this is not simply a case of me disliking my body and being impatient about changing it - I’m in a constant battle between my mental and physical comfort all day, every day. As time goes on and I continue binding while waiting for top surgery, my chances of developing long term back problems will increase. My ribs will deform from the constant pressure on them. The skin on my chest will become less elastic from the strain put on it daily, impacting my eventual surgery results. I can’t begin to put into words how much this surgery would change my life for the better - right now I feel like I’m waiting for my life to really start. If you aren’t trans then I know this might be difficult to understand; if you are then I know you won’t need this explained to you.
I really hate to be asking for money and if there was any way I could afford this on my own I absolutely would, but as things stand I don’t feel like I have any alternative. I’m going to be funding as much of the cost as possible myself, but it’s an expensive procedure and as a full time student my resources are limited. I don’t have an exact price for the surgery yet, but will find out during a consultation I have booked for mid-April.
A breakdown of costs:
Surgery referral from a private gender clinic: £150
Consultation with the surgeon: £100
The surgery itself: an estimated £5,975-7,500 based on others’ experiences with my preferred surgeon
Any extra money will be donated to other trans people’s crowdfunders and LGBT charities.
Thank you for giving me a chance if you’ve read this far. Any amount donated, no matter how small, will be appreciated more than I can put into words. If you can’t or don’t want to donate, I’d be grateful if you considered sharing this page. Any help at all is appreciated immeasurably.
Thank you.
Sidenote: If anyone wants to donate less than the £5 minimum or doesn't want to go through gofundme, my paypal is paypal.me/ronanmcdaid
This is a procedure I’m in desperate need of due to the shocking state of NHS trans healthcare right now. NHS guidelines state:
“The maximum waiting time for non-urgent consultant-led treatments is 18 weeks from the day [the] service receives your referral letter.”
The current wait time for a first appointment at a gender identity clinic (before treatment is even considered) is one and a half to five years. I got my referral back in January 2018 when the estimated wait time was 51 weeks, and am still waiting for a first appointment date. As things stand on the NHS pathway, it will be roughly three and a half years or more on top of the wait I’ve already had before I can get this life-changing surgery. Because of this, it’s become clear that I need to take my transition private for the sake of my mental health and quality of life.
At the moment I wear a binder to flatten my chest whenever I leave the house, and at home too if I’m going to be interacting with anyone. The recommendation for binding safely is less than 8-10 hours at a time, with a couple of days without binding each week. Like most people, I’m generally awake for more than 10 hours five days a week. This means that by the time I’ve gone to uni or done anything else with my day, I usually end up isolating myself in my bedroom because it’s too hard on my body to bind any longer.
Binding on its own is pretty damaging in the long term, but the chest compression combined with my asthma means breathing can become difficult if I have a busy day. I can’t stress enough how much this is not simply a case of me disliking my body and being impatient about changing it - I’m in a constant battle between my mental and physical comfort all day, every day. As time goes on and I continue binding while waiting for top surgery, my chances of developing long term back problems will increase. My ribs will deform from the constant pressure on them. The skin on my chest will become less elastic from the strain put on it daily, impacting my eventual surgery results. I can’t begin to put into words how much this surgery would change my life for the better - right now I feel like I’m waiting for my life to really start. If you aren’t trans then I know this might be difficult to understand; if you are then I know you won’t need this explained to you.
I really hate to be asking for money and if there was any way I could afford this on my own I absolutely would, but as things stand I don’t feel like I have any alternative. I’m going to be funding as much of the cost as possible myself, but it’s an expensive procedure and as a full time student my resources are limited. I don’t have an exact price for the surgery yet, but will find out during a consultation I have booked for mid-April.
A breakdown of costs:
Surgery referral from a private gender clinic: £150
Consultation with the surgeon: £100
The surgery itself: an estimated £5,975-7,500 based on others’ experiences with my preferred surgeon
Any extra money will be donated to other trans people’s crowdfunders and LGBT charities.
Thank you for giving me a chance if you’ve read this far. Any amount donated, no matter how small, will be appreciated more than I can put into words. If you can’t or don’t want to donate, I’d be grateful if you considered sharing this page. Any help at all is appreciated immeasurably.
Thank you.
Sidenote: If anyone wants to donate less than the £5 minimum or doesn't want to go through gofundme, my paypal is paypal.me/ronanmcdaid
Organizer
Ronan McDaid
Organizer
England
