Thank you for checking out my story.

I'm Thea, and I'm a non-binary trans femme. I live with my wife and son, and am a Carer to both of them. I initially came out as trans to my wife in 2020 and publicly in 2021.

Transitioning is a long journey, with a lot of challenges along the way. One of those is accessing gender affirming care. The NHS waiting list is currently 5 years! And yet gender affirming care is vital for the health and wellbeing of trans people.

I initially transitioned socially (ie changing my outward appearance via clothing) and then in 2024 I finally managed to self-fund some care privately. It was such a relief. However it cost a LOT of money and took us a long time as a family to save up and justify that cost.

So imagine my distress when my current provider changed their systems, increasing the costs *and* making it more difficult to access treatments. I am now facing potentially running out of my medication and dealing with the fallout from that.

I have the option to switch to another provider, but it is going to cost at least £1,000 simply to set up with them, and then I need to continue self-funding the medication and treatments they recommend. This will continue until I can finally access care on the NHS.

Having to pay to switch providers is an unexpected cost, and will wipe out so much money that could be spent on my family. So I decided to set up a crowdfund so that anyone who can help support this switch can do so. Every little helps and I appreciate you all so much.

Thank you.