Gustavo Solis

The Desert Sun

Before Jennifer Sweet transitioned, she was a pastor in Tennessee.

Growing up, she felt like a girl trapped inside a boy’s body, but her family didn’t understand. They forbade her to play with the other girls and pushed her to be more masculine. So she sought refuge in church.

“I felt that the closer I got to God, the (farther) away I would get from what I was now calling, thanks to them, a perversion,” Sweet said.

She ended up becoming a minister but could not deny who she was. So she kept it hidden.

“Here is your minister who on the outside is talking about being holy and righteous," Sweet said. "All the while, inside, she’s a she.”

When she came out, she lost her job and her friends in Tennessee. Sweet also learned how difficult it can be for doctors to treat transgender men and women.

“No one would touch me,” said Sweet, who now lives in Palm Springs with her wife Candice. “They would say, ‘we don’t take care of your kind,’ like old fashioned ‘your kind.’”

Sweet moved to the desert two years ago in part because she had transgender friends in the area and because of the desert’s reputation of being a welcoming place to transgender people. But even in the desert, she initially found it difficult to locate doctors willing and able to treat her.

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Though the desert has become an attractive place for LGBT individuals seeking refuge, specialized health care needs and concerns over discrimination can make things difficult for the Coachella Valley's transgender community.

Health needs for transgender men and women go beyond hormone therapy or gender reaffirming surgery. Transgender men who have ovaries need to see a gynecologist. And only therapists can diagnose gender dysphoria, which is required for insurance to cover medical expenses.

Treatment of mental illness is also a consideration. About 40 percent of transgender men and women attempt suicide at some point in their lives, compared with 4.6 percent of the general public, according to a study by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and UCLA’s Williams Institute.

Transgender people are linked to healthcare in a way few groups of people are. From finding doctors willing to treat them, therapists who call them by their preferred name or insurance providers willing to cover gender affirming surgeries, being transgender means constantly having to navigate through a sea of complicated healthcare obstacles.

“You have to be a medical expert,” said Nick Reoh, who is originally from San Diego and now lives in Yucca Valley. “You just learn there is no way around it.”

Reoh saw 10 therapists before finding one willing to treat him and call him Nick instead of his birth name, Michelle.

Once he started receiving hormone therapy and after he had gender affirming top surgery to remove his breasts, Reoh noticed medical issues he suffered since he was a child improve.

Growing up, Reoh had agoraphobia – a fear of public places that can make people anxious to leave their homes – to the point where he’d throw up every morning at school.

“I haven’t been on anti-depressants since [the surgery],” Reoh said. “I can deal without them now, whereas before I couldn’t.”

In Palm Springs, a growing transgender population hasn’t always attracted healthcare providers. Because of the lack of resources, people will leave the desert for healthcare access.

“People will just leave the valley period to go to a larger city like San Diego or LA,” said Tobi Sherman, who helps connect hospitals and health clinics with transgender patients. “If they can get established there, they’ll stay there because it’s easier, there’s more doctors, it’s a lot easier to blend in in a bigger environment.”

But that is slowly changing in the Coachella Valley.

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In 2014, Borrego Health began making aggressive efforts to provide transgender healthcare. Since then, they’ve held sensitivity trainings for administrative staff, had psychologists study with experts in Europe, opened a specialty clinic in Desert Hot Springs and hired a local activist to help connect them to the transgender community.

“This is a hugely under-served demographic of individuals who, because of who they are and what they may look like ... they have a great difficulty in getting care at all, let alone care that’s responsive to their specific needs,” said Dr. Glen Grayman, chief population health officer and regional medical director for Borrego Health.

Earlier this year, Borrego Health began giving patients new sign-in sheets with seven different choices for gender identity instead of male and female. They also include a section for patients to write their preferred name.

Their goal is to have all of their Southern California clinics undergo training and have their Desert Hot Springs clinic be staffed by transgender men and women.

Similarly, Eisenhower Medical Center has increased its transgender-focused healthcare. About three years ago, after being invited to a human rights campaign event, the hospital began adding transgender services like gender affirming surgery to their employee benefits plan.

The entire Eisenhower staff undergoes LGBTQ training every year. Last year, the Center started converting restrooms to unisex, and a new LGBTQ section on their website lists gay and trans-friendly doctors in their network.

Eisenhower’s next step is hiring a transgender liaison to connect the hospital with the transgender community and identify greater needs.

In the last few years, access has grown to a point where transgender patients are able to choose from different providers, said activist Thomi Clinton, who works with Borrego Health.

The Desert Aids Project is also expanding their transgender care.

They've hired three healthcare providers with decades of experience treating transgender patients. They include Daniel Parker, a clinical psychologist who has competed a training course with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), David Scott, a psychiatrist who has been treating transgender patients for 10 years and a WPATH member, and Patric Schine, who has a doctorate in nursing practice, owned a private practice in Phoenix, and developed "Trans 101 for Providers: A Lecture on Medical Transgender Care."

“Truly, we are reaching a point here where you get to choose where you want to go and that’s living authentically,” she said. “You get to pick your doctor, (so) why shouldn’t I be able to pick my doctor?”

Transitioning now is a lot different than transitioning 20, 10 or even five years ago.

Transgender people over a certain age lived most of their lives in the closet. Some lived in a time when the term transgender was not widely known — a time when they couldn’t type ‘transgender’ on a Google search bar or browse hundreds of YouTube videos of trans men and women going through their transitions.

For people who grew up in the 50’s and 60’s, their first example of a transgender person was Christine Jorgensen. Jorgenson, a World War I veteran, flew to Denmark to have a gender-affirming surgery and was plastered all over national tabloids with headlines like “G.I. Becomes Blonde Bombshell” before landing back in the U.S.

Jorgenson eventually returned to the states and fell in love. But she could not get married because of the name on her birth certificate. Her fiancé lost his job when the marriage plans were announced in the press.

Transgender men and women who grew up as recently as the 1980’s recall living secret lives.

Candice Sweet, Jennifer Sweet’s wife, grew up in Hemet and lived a stereotypical male life. She was in the basketball team and would chime in when teammates talked about some of the cheerleaders in school.

“I remember walking in and there’s all the cheerleaders and one of the guys says something about Debbie, oh God, Debbie’s hot in that skirt, or whatever,” she said. “I remember thinking, of course I didn’t say it, 'Yea but she’s cuter when she put her hair in pony tails.' Then I think to myself, boy I sure would like to wear that. But I knew enough to know not to say anything like that.”

Some transgender women who grew up during this time got married and had children. It wasn't until the advent of the internet that Sweet and others like her got a chance to be part of the transgender community. It was online, in their middle age, where they found a place to be themselves.

Today, children are starting to identify themselves as transgender and parents are talking with therapists and doctors about the best ways to move forward. Younger children can delay puberty to avoid developing biological sexual characteristics.

As doctors get more familiar with treating trans patients and society gets more educated about trans people, transitions will become easier. Physicians from both Eisenhower and Borrego notice that doctors coming out of medical school are more aware of transgender health issues than previous generations.

Outside the healthcare industry, transgender men and women are more visible than ever. As people see more transgender characters on television or see more activists grace magazine covers, awareness has increased and made it more socially acceptable to come out.

Allison Annalora, a singer who performs throughout the Coachella Valley and will perform during this weekend’s Trans Rally, a part of the Pride Parade, is more hopeful than ever. She grew up in the late 50’s and was told she’d be put in a mental hospital with the rest of the crazy people when she told people she was a girl.

In her lifetime, Annalora has seen same-sex marriage become legal, openly gay politicians be elected into office and transgender characters on hit television shows.

“If this much has happened in my lifetime, then I have such great expectations for the little children we are raising now,” Annalora said. “When they become adults, none of this will be an issue. There will always be pockets of racism and bigotry because you can’t change everybody, but I see the world as a whole going, ‘Oh I get it now.’”

Reporter Gustavo Solis can be reached at 760 778 6443 or by email at gustavo.solis@desertsun.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @journogoose.