Progress Toward Surgery

If you know anything about transgender healthcare, you know there’s some fairly significant gatekeeping hurdles to be overcome. That’s particularly true of gender affirming surgery.

I posted a couple of weeks back my intention to seek such a surgery. If you missed that post, you can read it at your leisure. That day, I had met with the surgeon whom I had selected for my procedure. I had been planning this for some time prior to actually meeting the surgeon, obviously.

Today, I completed all steps necessary to submit my request to insurance for pre-approval. The surgeon’s office has everything they need to make that submission. That will likely happen next week. Then it becomes a waiting game. I have no idea how long it will take to get that approval. Once I get it, then there’s the wait for an opening in the surgeon’s schedule to contend with.

I don’t know what my copay will be, but given the quality of insurance that I have, and assuming it is approved as medically necessary, I anticipate that being well within my budget. You may have read that my out of pocket cost for the insertion of a medical device (implanted loop recorder) was $225 of the $27K+ total hospital cost. I have no reason to believe this would be significantly more.

It is a more consequential surgery, in that general anesthesia will be involved. The other was done under a local. There will be a bill from an anesthesiologist as well as the hospital and surgeon. But they should all be in network, so no surprise billing to worry about. The hospital system I use has their own health insurance. Once I have the pre-approval, I can find out what to expect in terms of out of pocket costs.

During the month of September, I intend to get the legal name and gender change paperwork started. I fully expect to start 2025 as legally Janet, with my legal gender being female.

Other ongoing items of interest? Next week, I have a colonoscopy scheduled. That’s always fun. I have new eyeglasses on order, due to arrive in a couple of weeks. I am getting progressive and transition lenses.

My journey continues.

Tags: eyewear, Gender Affirming Surgery, Healthcare, Name and Gender Change, trans, Trans Joy, Transgender