Transgender Stirling man on mission to fundraise for surgery as he faces years on waiting list
For Stirling’s Ritchie Currie-Jenkins, taking to the skies to face his fears for a potentially life-affirming cause is just the latest step on a journey to confirm who he really is.The 29-year-old, who was born a woman, came out to his family and friends as trans just over a year ago after wrestling with his gender identity since the early years of adolescence.Since then, he has been on a desperate fight to secure the life-changing surgery and support that would allow him to live the identity that deep down he has always possessed – and always help others in Stirling grappling with their own situation.Ritchie’s latest goal is to secure private ‘top surgery’ which would remove some breat tissue and reshape the chest to create a more masculine appearance – but with surgical costs hitting a five-figure sum, he is scaling new heights to fund it.He will be overcoming a fear of heights to abseil down the 418-foot National Life Tower in Northampton next month.Causewayhead native Ritchie said: “I wanted to get this surgery on the NHS but to do so, you need to go through certain steps including being referred to a gender clinic which currently has a seven-year waiting list.“The clinic has actually advised GPs that they can provide bridging prescriptions and blood tests but a lot of GPs are refusing to do it and it’s down to individual practices.
Click here for more news and sport from the Stirling area. “I’m currently paying for my own hormones because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t get them – again you usually have to have two or three appointments at the clinic before you would receive them and there can be six- month-long gaps between appointments.“For the top surgery, you get put on a waiting list and again that’s about five or ten years on the NHS, that could be a 20-year wait all in to be eligible for everything.“I don’t want to wait 20 years for something that is so important to me, to feel like I am living in the right body.“It has had an impact on my mental health and it’s
