It was when I was in junior high school that one of my mother’s doctors spoke to me in our living room about my professional plans. I was still thinking about being a doctor then, and I said so. He asked me why, and I told him that I wanted to help people. He replied, “You could be a garbageman and help people.”

I hadn’t yet read Camus, so I really had no idea how to respond. I watched him drive off in his diesel Mercedes, and realized that some doctors really are just in it for the money.

My mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the 1970’s, after a lifetime of other severe health problems. My early memory is swathed in the accoutrements of medical care: wheelchairs, respirators, catheters and my favorite: the suction machine that cleaned out my mother’s trach tube. Daily exposure normalized everything, as it tends to do, but the Normals in the neighborhood and in the church could get really nasty with their fearful behavior. I remember once my mother complained of being accused of faking her disease. Of course, this accusation came from people who made a practice of calling Jews “Gentiles,” so they were capable of anything.

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is one of those unpredictable conditions with mysterious origins and devastating effects. It progressively deteriorates the nervous system. Famous people live with it: Richard Pryor, Annette Funicello. It might be hereditary. It’s physically and financially devastating, and it doesn’t go away.

And neither did the doctors. They were everywhere, like Subway sandwich shops. You can’t swing a dead cat in my childhood biography without hitting a doctor. Few of them were as condescending as Dr. Garbageman, but that’s small consolation. I shudder to think of how she was treated one-on-one. But somehow, 25 years after being diagnosed, she still manages to keep going.

I’ve always been certain that part of the fear my mother has about my own transition is that it means that I’m going to be subject to the same kind of abusive medical atmosphere which has plagued her. It’s certainly concerned me – and it’s not like transsexuality immunizes you to MS.

What’s more, the origin of “gender dysphoria” is as mysterious as that of MS, and it’s going to stay that way until it starts pulling in the research dollars. I understand that you can’t become a neurologist these days without learning something about MS, but physicians can get through med school without ever thinking about transsexuals. Meanwhile, the multitude of transsexuals train their physicians, but never get or give Continuing Medical Education credits. Perhaps that day is coming, someday, but only through the collective efforts inspired by the recent Trans Health Conference in Philadelphia.

This phenomenally progressive conference convened for the third consecutive year in March, bringing together health care providers, patients, advocates, allies and activists to discuss the issues that get under our collective skin.

One of my favorite parts about queer and trans conferences like this is that for a weekend, I get to forget that I’m such a freak. The session content is almost irrelevant; I could sit in the bar all day and night soaking up the atmosphere. This conference was blessed not only with great content, but the absence of an on-site bar in the Friends Meeting House where the conference sessions were held. So not only did I find that I had Friends in Pennsylvania, but sponsors, too. And maybe even a doctor.

One of the most common themes I heard during the conference was that many of us, once we find doctors willing to treat us, are helping to train those doctors. This is great, of course, because each new doctor is one more open-minded health care provider; but the downside is that many of us would really prefer to benefit from the studies of an expert. I know I’d love to have a doctor who can tell me more about the effects of hormone treatment than I know already. And when I win the lottery, I might get one.

Taking the next best thing, however, is the best I can hope for, and it is through this conference that the next best thing will be made evident: doctors who are committed to studying this phenomenon, and taking it, and me, seriously.

I didn’t get to see the Liberty Bell or its crack, but my mental image of it has been serving me as emblematic of this conference. Silent all these years, imperfect body or not, it’s time it started making some noise. It occurs to me that one of the reasons “health” was never included in the list of Thomas Jefferson’s inalienable rights was that the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness is pretty much contingent upon the condition of one’s health.

The Trans Health Conference was far from single-minded in its assessment of the issues which concern trans populations as a whole, because the health concerns of even the most marginalized populations can easily serve as bellwether for the population as a whole. Skyrocketing costs, hospital overcrowding and the atrophy of PPOs into HMOs hack away at our ability and rights to choose health care providers. Along with the progressive loss of reproductive choice for women comes the loss of self-determination for all of us.

Health care is part of the bottom line everywhere you look these days, whether it’s nursing the victims of terrorism and war, or gay couples who need access to partner health care benefits. Whether it’s concerns about the affordability of prescription medications, the legality of “alternative” medications, the availability of medications when epidemics like this winter’s flu hit, or about the primetime advertisment of prescription drugs. The abyss of health insurance, the improbable “privacy” measures of HIPAA – it’s easy to caught up in this labyrinthine big picture. By learning to advocate for ourselves we can make the most effective changes. It’s worked for the various MS advocacy organizations, and it is working for us; and it will continue to do so as long as we retain the right to freely assemble.

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For more healthy brain activity, read more of Rahne at www.xantippe.com!