NY Doctor ‘Too Confused by Trans Man’s Gender’ to Mention He Has Cancer

Posted by Kevin Farrell on Aug 9, 2012 in Health | 6 comments

After noticing a lump in his chest, Jay Kallio visited a doctor for an examination. But rather than provide Kallio with care and compassion, the doctor drove their appointment off the rails.

Jay, it turns out, was born Joy Kallio, but has been undergoing hormone therapy for six years. That Jay now identifies as a transgender man, despite never seeking gender reassignment surgery, was a point that the doctor was unable to get over. The flabbergasted doctor remained so fixated on Jay’s gender that he failed to tell Jay he had breast cancer.

Jay eventually made the gruesome discovery months later after a lab technician accidentally spilled the beans. At that point, the window for chemotherapy to treat the cancerous lump had passed.

Though Jay was eventually able to secure the medical care necessary to beat back his cancer, he was first rejected by multiple medical care professionals running the gamut from nurses to doctors and even hospital housekeeping staff.

The good news is that under the Affordable Care Act championed by the Obama administration, this – all of this – discriminatory nonsense has now been made illegal.

Still, it couldn’t have been easy for Jay, or any of the countless other transgender Americans that statistically face rabid discrimination by the medical community, to go through this.

Never again.

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