I have tried my absolute best not to seek financial help online, especially when our collective focus should be aimed towards the welfare of our Palestinians, Congolese, and Sudanese brothers and sisters. I truly have considered countless options before resorting to asking for monetary assistance but I no longer have the means to keep myself alive and my little family afloat. Following my father's death almost three years ago due to colorectal cancer, I was diagnosed late last year with Stage 2A breast cancer.
There's an even elaborate explanation on the fundraising page that I will be attaching in this post. Please, take some time to read it. I am our family's breadwinner, and I am only asking for monetary assistance because I no longer have a job/source of income nor is my previous company willing to shoulder my medical expenses. I am left to fend for myself and I have used all of my savings to afford numerous physical/health examinations and the prescribed medication.
I am going to attach photos of how disfigured my right arm now is, the evident lumps/tumors on my armpits and if you want proof of how the cancer affected my breasts, please directly message me. I don't think I can explicitly share the photos here. But to put enough context, my left breast shrunk into at least 1/3 of its original size.
I am sincerely sorry for being a bother, but if you have the means to donate to my fundraising post, please do. I badly needed all the help I can get so I won't be summoned to court and would be able to afford surgery on time. If you cannot donate, please kindly share this post. If you have any other questions, please reach out to me through direct messaging. This is my only account (I will probably reblogged this on my side blog as well) so please, if you see someone using my photos, alert me. Thank you. Please understand, too, that I will take a bit of time to respond because I am struggling to grasp my phone/only typing using my left hand. Thank you, and please consider helping me.
We are trying to make a heartfelt appeal to gather enough monetary assistance for my niece, Alex, who is currently battling stage 2A breast
I am genuinely sorry for this. If I could only ask for your permission one by one, I would but I am afraid of the possibility that Tumblr may consider my plea as spam. I am reaching out because I am desperate.
I don't want to resort to asking for monetary assistance online but I was no longer allowed to get back to work because of how deformed my right hand is now and because of my declining health. If you could, please take some time to read my pinned post. If you can't donate, a reblog will be highly appreciated still. I need all the help I could get. If you want to be removed from being tagged, please message me directly, and I will immediately do as you like. I know that this may seem invasive but it is not my intention. I am just desperate, and have been running out of ways to keep myself afloat. I cannot offer something in return other than express my immense gratitude. I am sorry, and please consider helping me. Thank you very much.
for five years i thought i was on the NHS gender clinic waiting list and i found out at the start of this year that i wasnt. i got referred again but i am back to waiting 5 (or more) years. my mental health is failing and this is making it significantly worse.
i need to access a private diagnosis and referral. soon.
as of making this post, the campaign has been sat stationary at 3 donations totalling £35 (before gfm's fees) since the 17th of august 2024.
it had a great start, and for that i am so, so grateful. but 10+ days of nothing is really grating on me. it doesnt help that my physical health is degrading back to how it was pre 2019, and i have other (unrelated) things going on as well.
perhaps i havent been persuasive enough in the past, or perhaps the audience this has been reaching isn't aware enough of what situation im in, so here it is in far more detail:
(warning: clinical/medical talk, systemic transphobia, and vague mention of mental health problems)
[note: for some things, i link to resources found on the NHS website, the uk government website, official/legal gender clinics (both NHS and private), etc. this is so that you can do your own research.]
i am 24 years old (turning 25 in September), transmasculine and bigender. i first knew i was trans before i was 10 years old (though at the time i rejected the word "transgender" due to stigma, despite my descriptions of how i felt being a textbook case of gender dysphoria). i started identifying as nonbinary in 2014. my dysphoria causes me to be unable to look at myself in the mirror without feeling discomfort - even when clothed. i am seeking medical transition.
i am too disabled to work a "normal" retail/cafe/office job, even part time. i cannot stand up or walk for more than 5 minutes without severe pain in my back and legs. my joints are hypermobile (and getting worse) and lifting even a torso-sized box is difficult for me. this severely restricts my ability to work, which means it's hard for me to get money in a normal way.
asthma, hypermobility spectrum disorder (aka joint hypermobility syndrome), chronic folate deficiency/b12 anaemia (currently in remission), chronic iron deficiency anaemia (currently in remission), and fibromyalgia are my current formal diagnoses.
i am still under investigation (and thus, not getting treatment) for autism, adhd, ehlers danlos syndrome (specifically hypermobile type/hEDS), a migraine disorder of some kind (potentially EDS related), postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (aka POTS), and menstrual issues which i don't even know what doctors are thinking it could be at this point (menorrhagia and PCOS have been mentioned more than incidentally).
i'm not going to detail my mental health here, but the short version is that i am doing very very not good (due to dysphoria and other things), and i repeatedly experience such severe dysphoria multiple times a month to the point that i am getting very, very dangerously close to causing serious and debilitating harm to myself as a result.
i have only just gotten back on my painkiller (pregabalin) after more than a year of being denied it - because i was too fatigued and pained to wake up in time to call my GP and get an appointment within 10 minutes of the line opening. my current mobility aids are forearm crutches, a walking stick, a rollator (a zimmerframe with wheels) and use these every day. i also have wrist braces, a waist brace, compression socks, finger supports, and compression wraps. even with my medications and support items, i still cannot perform like an abled person.
"what about government benefits?" you may ask. well, the tory government we just kicked out started making it very, very difficult for disabled people to be taken seriously in their last year or two of power - especially people with invisible disabilities like me.
i'm gathering evidence for my claim for personal independence payment (aka PIP, a general disability benefit) but this is a long and arduous process. many people with invisible disabilities are denied this (some even after an appeal), so the only way to get a successful outcome is to manually submit medical records and detailed descriptions of your daily life. this is psychologically taxing, and takes a significant amount of time out of my day. furthermore, it takes 20 weeks on average to get a decision (source: Turn2us).
i've applied for employment and support allowance (ESA, a benefit specifically for disabled people who struggle to work), but it is not guaranteed that i will get it. in fact: if i do get ESA it is very likely i will be placed in the group where they expect you to apply for jobs and attend regular meetings, otherwise they sanction your claim. it takes 13 weeks to get a decision for ESA (from gov.uk)
so i cant work and any meaningful benefits claims are a while off, but this shouldn't be a problem, right? the NHS has gender clinics that i can go to for free, right?
in theory: yes. the NHS has multiple gender identity clinics. i was initially under the impression that i had been referred in April 2019, but i found out just a few days into 2024 that my referral never left my local GP. i did get re-referred after i found this out, however the NHS clinics have notoriously long waiting lists. a freedom of information request by the BBC found that:
The majority of clinics told us they would only provide data on how long patients they were currently seeing had waited. This ranged from just over 14 months in Wales, to between two to five years in Scotland, and more than five years in Northern Ireland. In England, patients receiving first appointments in November 2023 had waited an average of seven years, NHS data shows.
However, further analysis of NHS data by BBC News suggests some may now face longer waits due to growing waiting lists. The size of current waiting lists, together with the number of first appointments offered in 2023, suggest it would take at least 10 years to clear the current appointment backlog - provided there were no changes to service provisions or the size of waiting lists.
(source here, dated 20th March 2024 - warning: mention of suicide)
if you don't trust the BBC (and i don't blame you), here's the data directly from the clinic i have been referred to:
Number of people on our waiting list: 15,532
Number of referrals received in the month: 77
Number of first assessments offered in the month: 80
Total appointments offered in the month: 988
We are currently offering first appointments to people referred in December 2018
Most recent data from: June 2024. These numbers are provisional and may change as the data is validated.
lets analyse this ourselves: December 2018 to June 2024 is about 5 years and 6 months. if the clinic maintained the same rate of first appointments as it did during that period, a person referred in June 2024 should expect the first appointment to take place around December 2029. nobody gets treatment of any kind after one appointment with the NHS. the clinic does not report how long it takes for a patient to get a followup appointment, though Gender Construction Kit estimate a minimum of 10 months (i do not know where they got the 60 months for a first appointment stat from - they link to the same Tavistock page i did).
but lets look further: 15,532 people waiting for their first appointment. 80 first appointments offered in the month before this data was compiled (and this is post-covid appointment schedules!). if they continued at a rate of 80 first appointments in a month, it would take them about 194 months to get through the 15.5 thousand people on the waiting list as of June 2024. 194 months is more than 16 years.
if they received 77 referrals in the month before the data was compiled, i'm probably somewhere in the region of referral number 15,200-15,600 relatively speaking. with the latest data, i can expect to see an NHS gender clinic within 5-16 years.
"the tories no longer being in power probably means the NHS gender services will have an easier time" - except for the fact that we know this isnt the case: despite the Cass report's suggestions on banning blockers being put in place the day before the election, labour chose to extend the ban instead of review or cancel it.
while the Cass report focused on young people's care (and particularly on the topic of blockers), before it even released there were reports of GPs being suddenly less willing to issue a bridging prescription to adults. bridging prescriptions are an NHS scheme, where if you have been on the waiting list for an NHS gender clinic for more than three months and require a harm-reduction strategy, then your GP can prescribe you a low dose of hormones (source - warning: mention of suicide, self-harm, and self medication). bridging prescriptions are an official NHS strategy to help with the long waiting lists.
around the same time that patients were having trouble getting bridging prescriptions, reports of GPs being unwilling to uphold Shared Care Agreements began to circulate as well. Shared Care is where a clinician writes to a patient's NHS GP and asks that the GP handles the prescription under the clinician's recommendations. again, this is another NHS protocol to reduce the demand placed on the actual clinics.
i fully anticipate that my GP will not be willing to provide either service - i have actually already requested a bridging prescription from my GP and have been denied due to "administrative hurdles". my GP also has a track record of ignoring me, my problems, and my wishes.
so where am i at? i have an astronomically slim chance of seeing an NHS gender clinic within 5 years and i have no hope of asking my GP for a bridging prescription. my only option of being even remotely closer to my true self by the time i graduate university is to go for private healthcare. but i cannot raise the funds to achieve this on my own.
as detailed in my gfm, i intend to use Harley Street Gender Clinic to obtain my diagnosis, and The Gender Hormone Clinic to access the prescription.
i only need £575 to start this process.
£875 will cover me up to the end of my first month of hormones.
the full £3,000 is enough to cover me until i graduate.
This is a collection of links to various posts concerning fundraisers I've vetted and instructions on how to submit fundraisers to me. These are primarily ones for Ghazzan families although some fundraisers for Sudanese families are also listed (I'm more familiar with my own country's politics and dialect and am more capable of vetting fundraisers for Palestinians as a result).
I know that people do not like clicking on links, but please actually look through the posts / Google Sheet and choose a fundraiser to donate to. Please.
Instructions on how to submit a fundraiser. (for those not Ghazzan) Paused
تعليمات لتقديم طلب توثيق و نشر حملات التبرعات الخاصة بالغزاويين و عائلاتهم (للغزاويين فقط) فاتح!
Google doc list compiling vetted fundraisers.
List of fundraisers for my direct contacts from Ghazzah & Sudan. - PRIORITY.
Unvetted but highly likely legitimate fundraisers.
Additional fundraisers for various purposes - (TO BE UPDATED)
About the targeted harassment campaign against Palestinians on tumblr, from August 2nd to August 3rd 2024. Now extended to August 7th because of writing-prompt-s' accusations and slander (now only badjokesbyjeff)
