Erin Armstrong was just 20 years old when — during an ordinary bike ride — she felt a shooting pain in her chest. It was 2005 and Armstrong, a transgender woman, had recently begun taking hormones as part of a male-to-female transition.
But it wasn’t going exactly as planned. She had been to a doctor in Utah, seeking a hormone prescription. But Armstrong recalls that the doctor said she’d never seen a trans patient, wasn’t familiar with hormone therapy, and wasn’t able to help.