When a young child, not yet 5 years old, contracts smallpox after surviving the horrors of war, injustice, and hundreds of deadly nights, amidst the sounds of planes and tanks, this is not a passing or simple illness
Imagine your child contracting this disease?! I'm writing this because my brother Ahmed was diagnosed with it on July 30, 2024, and his cries and suffering broke my heart. We searched every pharmacy and couldn't find any medication to ease his pain.
And so a new chapter of suffering has begun, a suffering I don't want to become a habit. Some of the same pimples have started to reappear on my brother Ahmed's back, and I ask you to stand with us and donate. Instead of money coming in to buy food, we're now spending it on medicine and displacement expenses. Your donation, however small, is a candle in the darkness, especially after donations to our fundraising campaign completely stopped. Donate to us via PayPal or GFM
Vetted! shared by @/90-ghost (also here), #77 on @/gazavetters vetted list, shared by @/gaza-evacuation-funds, shared by @/el-shab-hussein!
I have been in regular contact with Mohammed for almost 2 years now. Please help him and his family!The money will reach him quicker if you can donate through Paypal, which is managed by my friend who regularly sends the donations to Mohammed.
Hello, among the hundreds of tragic stories, I am sharing my painful sto⌠Mohammed Khalil needs your support for Help Ahmed Khalil's family
Help support sanae harika by donating or sharing with your friends.
Hamza had a large family, including several young nieces and nephews. His brother and sister also suffer from a blood disorder, which makes a healthy diet very important.
In Gaza, food is still incredibly expensive and unstable, as well as medical supplies and housing expenses. When money is withdrawn or transferred, a lot of it is eaten up by fees. If you could help Hamzaâs family during this deeply awful time, theyâd be forever appreciative.
This is my new account. Unfortunately, Tumblr has banned my account several times because I live in Palestine. My family and I suffer from severe anemia and hereditary thalassemia. Any donation will save us from death.
Jonathan Joss was an Indigenous, gay man who was murdered on the first day of Pride month as well as Indigenous History Month. He died protecting his trans husband. Homophobia and racism arenât marks of the past, and this is a heart breaking reminder of that.
Praying for a safe journey back to the spirit world, Uncle â¤ď¸âđŠšđŚ
Today is the anniversary of the death of Jonathan Joss (King of the Hill, Parks and Rec). Jonathan Joss was an Indigenous, gay man who died protecting his transgender husband, on the first day of Pride month. Today we remember him and how he protected his family.
Zulu Imbenge baskets are woven entirely of recycled telephone wire in the heart of KwaZulu-Natal, a province of South Africa. In the 1990s, Zulu women began repurposing discarded telephone wires, weaving them into intricate patterns to create colorful and durable baskets while preserving traditional weaving techniques.
do not forget the patron saint of these weeks that we celebrate ourselves proudly and openly in the streets
her name was Marsha P Johnson, and we have her to thank for so much.
remember, the first Pride was a riot, and she was one of the brave souls who endured it to help carve the path which so many of us walk today. she helped found several activist groups regarding LGBT safety and wellbeing. and she was absolutely radiant, too.
Mohammed Abu Alwan is raising three young children alone after the killing of his wife in an IDF strike.
There is a continual need for funds to buy food, water, and medicine, but Israel's destruction of infrastructure in Gaza means that jobs are nearly nonexistence.
You can help this family stay alive through genocide by donating via:
so do people know that multiple trans people across the US have reported that their pharmacists have arbitrarily denied them testosterone prescriptions, either because "you need authorization" or "company policy" or, in states where its legal, because they don't feel comfortable giving it to them.
i wouldn't be surprised if its also common for this to happen with estrogen, i found one news story on a trans woman experiencing this, but looking it up there seems to be a LOT of cases of this happening with testosterone. which makes me suspect people feel empowered to do this with T in particular because of its criminalized status. regardless, i do not see this brought up much! and i think we should discuss it more, at the very least to prepare people in case they experience this, so they know how to handle the situation.
examples below the cut for length:
Walgreens says pharmacist was uncomfortable with injection method
For Tristan Martin, a 34-year-old trans man living in North Austin, that fear became a reality last week when a Walgreens pharmacist refused to fill his testosterone prescription.
Martin says his pharmacistâs explanation for not filling his prescription was that she was uncomfortable with the doctorâs instruction that the medicine be administered subcutaneously, meaning as a shallow injection under the skin. But, as Martin explained to the pharmacist, heâs taken the same meds for four years, with the same method, and never heard such an objection. Plus, Martin said that the pharmacist was only being asked to provide the testosterone itself, not the equipment necessary to administer it. He later attempted to reach Walgreensâ pharmacy department and store manager to ask about the situation but wasnât able to reach anyone and never got any calls back.
A store employee told the Chronicle they could not address the dispute. Tristanâs wife, Hayden Martin, said she received an apology from a Walgreens regional healthcare supervisor, after the supervisor contacted her on May 23. âHe said there was absolutely wrongdoing and that itâs going to get figured out,â Hayden said. âHe said he was going to reach out to the higher-ups and heâs going to let me know by Friday what happens.â
Hayden Martin told us she was able to contact the pharmacist in question two days after the refusal to fill the prescription. âShe would not give a reason as to why she felt the doctor was wrong,â Hayden said. âAnd she said, âIâm not comfortable filling it for âher.â So automatically the assumption is that itâs just an issue of her not being comfortable with the fact that itâs testosterone for a trans man. So I, of course, asked her if this was the reason â because heâs a trans man â and she got very defensive and denied it. And then I tried asking for her name and her license number and she said, âWell, thatâs not important information.ââ
Walgreens Pharmacist Denies Gender Affirming Meds, But Other Options Exist
Recently, one of our readers, who wishes to go unnamed, sent us the following email:
On the 24th when I went to pick up my testosterone prescription at the Walgreens on Lomas & Carlisle, I was asked by the pharmacist why I took it, and when I told him it was gender affirming, he told me he wouldnât fill it going forward⌠I want other trans+ folks in our neighborhood to know that this is not a safe pharmacy (I donât regret reacting by sobbing loudly in the middle of a Walgreens, but I donât want anyone else to have to go through that), and I want all our cis neighbors to know that this is a thing that is happening.
We reached out to the Walgreens location, and the person who answered (and who we will keep anonymous) confirmed that there is a pharmacist on staff who refuses to fill prescriptions for gender affirming medication due to their beliefs. However, they clarified that other pharmacists at the location would fill a gender affirming prescription if they were on duty, or the prescription could be filled at other Walgreens locations. Unfortunately, they were not able to provide further information as to the pharmacistâs name or when their shifts might be.
A year after KC investigation, another trans customer turned away from Costco pharmacy
The cityâs Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity Department launched an investigation in October 2022 after a Star report about five transgender and nonbinary people who said they were denied their prescribed testosterone at the pharmacy. Costco denied the allegations. [...]
Dave, whose name has been changed in this story to protect his identity as a transgender man, was grocery shopping at the Linwood Boulevard Costco on Monday when he decided to pick up some syringes.
Dave has used insulin syringes for years to take his prescribed testosterone â their thin needles make his regular injections less painful.
These small syringes donât require a prescription, making them easy to obtain â and Costco offers a bulk pack of 100 at a nice discount compared to other pharmacies.
At first, the transaction was painless: Dave asked for a pack of syringes and an employee asked him his preferred size and gauge. But when he mentioned that he uses them to inject testosterone, the tone of the conversation shifted abruptly.
âThey got weird about it,â Dave said. âThe pharmacist, I guess, overheard and she came out and sheâs like, this wonât work for testosterone.â
Dave explained that he has used these syringes for his testosterone injections for years â and has even bought the same syringes at that Costco pharmacy before for the same purpose.
Insulin syringes are regularly used to inject low doses of testosterone. But despite being an over-the-counter product, the pharmacist insisted that Dave needed a prescription before she would sell them to him.
âSheâs like, well, we wonât sell it to you unless you have your doctor call it in,â Dave recalled. He stepped aside to call his doctorâs office, but they were closed for Mondayâs holiday. âI didnât feel like arguing (with the pharmacist). So I just left.â
An assistant general manager at the Linwood Costco said Wednesday that he was not aware of the incident and couldnât comment on it.
A pharmacy employee said that she and her coworkers are not authorized to speak to the media. A request for comment from Costcoâs corporate office was not immediately answered.
Dave called the Missouri Pharmacy Board Tuesday and was told that syringes only require a prescription if they bear the label âfor Rx only,â which his syringes didnât.
Beyond that, he said he was told that the state gives pharmacists discretion over what they choose to dispense, as long as they donât violate federal anti-discrimination laws.
On a Saturday night two years ago, Stann Fransisco was driving back home to New Mexico after visiting their parents ...
âCriminalization has made it easy for pharmacists to deny my [testosterone] prescription, which has happened to me many times,â Artemis McGettigan, a trans student in Dearborn, Michigan, told Filter. â[Pharmacists] have told me in the past that âItâs corporate policy, theyâre not allowed to fill that type of prescription ⌠but I knew that was false because other CVS locations, for example, were able to fill it.â A CVS media representative told Filter that its policies âdo not prohibit our pharmacies from filling testosterone prescriptions.â
CVS Pharmacist refused to fill my T
I have been on T for coming up on 3 years. Iâve never had any problems with any pharmacy Iâve gone to. I recently had to switch pharmacies and for over two weeks this pharmacist at CVS has given me the run around. âI need to talk with your doctor about why you need itâ (which Iâve never had happen before). And then the next day would say âI need prior authâ. Itâs been so long without my T that my period came back today and I am freaking out. So I sent a very frantic message to my doctors office. They called me about an hour later telling me the pharmacist sounded fishy and said âIâm not comfortable filling this prescription.â Ok? Your job isnât to judge my prescription your job is to give me the medication my doctor decided I needed. The doctors office was nice enough to transfer everything to a different CVS close by and even apologized for not getting the pharmacists name. We did call to get his name. My partner is very nice and called corporate to file a complaint and the corporate pharmacist on the phone said that they do have grounds to deny a prescription only if there is not enough info or itâs fake. So they reported it as discrimination. Unfortunately I canât take legal action or I would. Sorry this is more of a rant than anything. This should be illegal and nobody should work in healthcare if theyâre going to gate-keep health. I truly hope this man gets fired. Iâm trying to file a report to the state board of pharmacists because he can have his license revoked for discrimination. Thanks for listening.
My pharmacy tried to deny me my testosterone
So I called in my prescription on the 2nd and they told me that it would be ready on the 5th. Itâs the 8th today so I called and asked if it was ready yet and the pharmacist told me I needed prior authorization and that my insurance wouldnât cover it. Thing is, my insurance has covered it for the past two months, which is when I first started T. The pharmacist told me to call my doctor and get the authorization so I did and my doctor said that thereâs no issues on her end, no authorization needed, and that my insurance still covers my prescription so sheâs not sure why he would say that. I end up calling them back and end up speaking to the lady who took my original prescription and she was like âOh my god. I donât know why he said that to you. Iâm seeing a refill request but nothing that requires an authorization. Iâm gonna send this in today and it should be ready by Fridayâ. I think itâs hilarious too that when I told him my name, he was like âoh youâre (my grandparentâs names) granddaughter!â
CVS for years refused to sell me the needles I need for my T injections (prescription was not required, but they lied and said one was), would say they were out of stock (not when I see the box right there), loudly asked why I need my T when other patient convos were done quietly or not at all, deliberately gave me insulin needles (I need much larger) or sometimes only 1 needle for a multi-dose prescription. (Even for 1 dose, you should have at least 2 needles -- one to draw with and one to inject.) They also "dropped" my vial a few times.
Any one of these could be ignorance/accidents, but these each happened multiple times from 3 locations.
If your clinic does its own dispensing, I highly recommend switching to that for your prescription. If you are worried about needles, get your provider to include the needle info on the scrip. And if you *really* have issues with the needles, buy them in bulk online.
Progress does not happen on its own. Neither does a better world. It comes with work and combat and organization and sacrifice. It's not comfy. It doesn't appear just because you visualize it. Anyone selling you anything short of *building* a better world is feeding you an opiate. It does not just materialize.
Remember, your enemy has been working and planning for centuries. Stop playing by their rules. Stop living up to their expectations. Live by your own. Chase your desires. Fight for the better you want instead of waiting for it to magically happen all on its own.
