‘Let’s get Melody the surgery already’ : Creating a symphony of gender-affirming collective care.

TLDR: MB Health sucks and won’t fully cover out of province gender affirming care, but also has astronomically long wait times for local surgery (2 years, 9 months, and counting) that mean trans people experience extreme healthcare harms that are not experienced by cis people. Melody is one of those people. We found an out of town option that is timely (November 9!) but costly (over 16K). If you know Melody you probably love them so donate and/or share here. Anything helps and means the world.

_______ 

If you know Melody, you know that they are a composer, musician, artist, grass dancer, and land-based baddie with a heart of absolute gold. You know that they show up, share what they have, and are a mentor and good relative to so many of us in the various communities that they are a part of. Melody is a council member on the Grand Council Treaty #3 LGBTQ2S+ Council advocating for Two-Spirit people in Treaty #3 communities, a valued violist and composer within the Indigenous classical community where they support a growing number of other Indigenous composers and creatives, a dedicated manoomin harvester who has taken many out in their canoe, a grass dancer whose gifted their own regalia to other Two-Spirit dancers, a passionate educator teaching the next generation of music scholars, composers, and producers and much more. They also insert queer joy into our lives with their Halloween and Pride photo shoots (they are very queer, if you didn’t know) that they create with their Métis femme partner in being gay and doing crime, Erin. 

And, if you know them, you may also know that the last few years have meant change and challenge for them, especially when it comes to their gender and seeking the affirming care that they need to be able to move forward with their life. 

As they have come to connect with themselves and with their true gender, they have also been seeking gender-affirming care from the healthcare system to get to a place where their gender dysphoria is not keeping them from being who they want to be in the world. This last year in particular has been tough and navigating a healthcare system that is racist, transphobic, and fatphobic on top of navigating gender dysphoria is no joke. It has meant that Melody has retreated and is in a liminal space where they are held back by lack of access to care. And for a Leo, not being the ‘front of the room’ extrovert that they naturally are, is not easy. Feeling isolated and alone is unacceptable for a genderqueer with an August birthday, and that is a fact.

For those who don’t know, seeking gender affirming care in MB can be very challenging - even with a femme partner hitting the phone and with hecking good advocacy skills. And while Melody has Erin and is connected to a primary care doc who has supported them very well, access to timely top surgery has been next to impossible. 

When Melody initiated care for top surgery in January of 2026, they were told the wait for surgery would be 8 months. To date, they have not been contacted by the surgeon for even an initial consult. When they called the surgeon’s office in August, they were told that the wait time for top surgery had expanded to a minimum of 2 years to simply access a surgery date. This wait has become untenable for Melody, as it would be for anyone. Waiting for nearly three years to access an initial consult for surgery is far longer than established surgical benchmarks (I’m a nurse and a nerd so I looked it up). And, when moving forward in the world is contingent on that surgery, asking people to wait that long is harmful, in all the ways. Throughout this process, there has been a single surgeon currently practicing in Manitoba that is willing to provide top surgery for Melody - many plastic surgeons refuse care to people with BMIs higher than 35, despite receiving provincial funding. Manitobans with lower BMIs have access to a wider range of surgeons for top surgery.  This is a discriminatory practice that disproportionately impacts First Nations people such as Melody, who had rotator cuff surgery under anesthesia in 2021 at a BMI over 35 with zero complications. Quite simply, if your medically-necessary surgery isn’t related to gender-affirming care, you receive it whether or not you are fat. 

What is really important here is that the care that our friend/colleague/relative needs urgently is not available in the province, and is not covered if they access it out of province. Basically landing them in a rotten, catch 22 of a healthcare nightmare.

Now enter some gay ass healthcare and all of us:

Melody has found a gender-affirming surgical option that is run by queer people and they have a surgery date for them on November 9 (yeah, like a few weeks from now). The clinic team is kind, competent, and they understand the kind of care that Melody needs. The surgeon is specialized in trans surgical needs, and offers the inverted-T mastectomy technique that isn’t (to our knowledge, as we can’t get a consult here) offered in Manitoba. Unfortunately, the clinic is in Toronto, Ontario and the surgery is not (currently) covered by MB Health. You can rest assured that Melody’s advocacy will be coming in hot as soon as they are recovered from surgery. For now, Erin and I have finally convinced them that we should *maybe* just do one thing at a time, starting with life-saving and affirming surgery, lol). 

So the nuts and bolts are as follows:

The cost of surgery is approximately 16 thousand dollars, plus travel for Melody and Erin to recover a week post-op before traveling home. Honestly, that is a heck of a lot of money to come up with even for those of us who get a regular paycheck. We are hoping that this request for community support will help offset those up front costs and keep Melody and Erin from maxing out credit cards just to get the healthcare that should be covered by the province. Some may know Melody as a professor at the University of Manitoba - much to our dismay, the health insurance benefits provided to full-time faculty do not presently cover gender-affirming care. Melody submitted their quote to Canada Life and was soundly denied, and their union representative said there’s not presently much we can do to challenge our employer insurance. Melody is a Status Indian, but NIHB, like other insurance companies, won’t cover travel expenses to Toronto when a more local surgical option is available (two years from now). While Erin’s employer insurance covers gender affirming care, they will not cover this surgery because it is out of province. We’re very good at advocacy and covering our bases, and insurance companies are determined not to provide or pay for trans healthcare. 

Now, in the event that MB Health or insurance eventually comes through (a long shot, but worth fighting for), funds raised here will be kept in community and used to support other Two-Spirit folks seeking gender affirming care here in Treaty 1 and Treaty 3 (Melody’s Anishinaabe homelands in northwestern Ontario). If that happens, we will keep you all updated and transparent about what happens to any funds not used here for the main request for support (i.e. get this surgery paid for).

If you have made it to the end of this, you clearly love Melody and are someone that cares a great deal, so please consider sending anything you can and/or sharing this with your networks. We know that we are living at a time where finances are tight, so no pressure, and also we know that without each other we can’t survive - the paradox is real. So thank you in advance for offering your care, kindness, and cold hard cash to our friend who is there for all of us in so many ways (and full disclosure, feels very complicated feels about this ask- luckily they have some pushy femmes in their corner). We love you. We love Melody. The world is hard, but we have each other and that is enough.

If you’re unable to contribute financially and know Melody and/or Erin personally, please feel to reach out with local support in Toronto and Winnipeg.