Local
‘I’m not going to cry about this’
Friends rally for Va. couple saving for prosthesis after cancer claims woman’s leg
Zunaira Khalid (left) and her partner Ebony Bates in their basement apartment in Khalid's parents' house in Chantilly, Va. The couple says they're lucky most of the medical expenses from the June cancer surgery that claimed Khalid's leg were covered by insurance but only a small percentage will be covered for the prosthetic leg Khalid needs. (Washington Blade photo by Joey DiGuglielmo)
Zunaira Khalid benefit
Thursday at Policy
6:30 to 10 p.m.
Go here to make a donation.
Things were going pretty well for Zunaira Khalid and Ebony Bates in December. They’d had rough spots large and small throughout their nine-year relationship such as years of separation while Bates went to college in her native Pennsylvania, some occasional minor clashes that are inevitable in cross-cultural romances and all the usual pings and pangs that come and go as young people figure out what they want and don’t want from life.
But by the end of last year Khalid, a 35-year-old aspiring doctor and native Pakistani Muslim who’s been in the U.S. since age 12, and Bates, a 29-year-old Washington, Pa., native, realized their lives were beginning to jell. In October Bates landed what she calls her “dream job” with a government agency. She declines to say which because she says it’s not terribly gay friendly.
And after years of dabbling in various fields, Khalid, who’d drifted after finishing medical school questioning if she really wanted to be a doctor, decided medicine was her calling and she was in the uphill battle of getting back into the rigors of a residency program. Since 2005, the couple has lived in the basement of Khalid’s parents’ sprawling Chantilly, Va., home.
The two had been without health insurance for years. Bates was in school most of the ’00s doing undergrad and graduate work and Khalid had been unemployed for years studying to pass an exam to get back into medicine. The two had met in 2001 working together at Dulles Airport.
By December, Bates had coverage through her job. It took some arm twisting, but she convinced Khalid they needed to buy her some too, just in case. They found a decent plan for a little more than $100 per month through Aetna Health Insurance, an extraordinarily fortuitous decision on Bates’ part that saved the couple from financial ruin when Khalid got sick in February with an aggressive form of cancer that resulted in her leg having to be amputated in June.
“We were to the point where we’d been committed for several years,” Khalid says. “It’s almost impossible to have any sort of relationship recognition in Virginia, so that was never really discussed, but after D.C. passed marriage in December and then Ebony got a job she was like, ‘Look, we have a little money now, let’s get you a health plan. I didn’t think it was big deal. I don’t really get the flu or anything acute very often. I was like, ‘I’m fine, I don’t need it,’ but she was really adamant.”
To Khalid, she and Bates both burdened with considerable student loan debt, it seemed like one more expense. But she acquiesced and had an exam in December and got a clean bill of health.
The first signs of the cancer came innocuously in February. Khalid noticed her jeans felt tight around her left leg and took a bit of effort to get on. When it persisted, she had it looked at and was diagnosed with a pulled muscle. Just give it time to heal on its own, doctors told her. When it didn’t, she returned and an ultrasound found a cyst growing behind her knee. A biopsy revealed the mass was an aggressive sarcoma that was spreading fast. The situation quickly grew dire. It had grown from the size of a golf ball when an initial ultrasound was done to the size of a baseball a month later when an MRI was performed on Feb. 27.
Doctors told Khalid and Bates they were going to do everything they could to save her life and save her leg. It quickly became clear how potentially serious the diagnosis was.
“I remember when they said they were going to try to save her life first but we can’t guarantee that, that was really jarring for me,” Bates says. “Here they were talking about the possibility of death and if we were lucky she would make it through. It was just a lot of bad news at once.”
Bates, under pressure at her new job and in a probationary period where she knew she had to perform at her best, decided she needed to come out to her boss and explain the situation in case the stress started showing up in her performance. She was only able to miss a few days of work throughout Khalid’s illness, a point that irks the couple who marvel at the provisions that would be available if they were a married, opposite-sex couple.
But the couple opted to focus on the positive — most glaringly that Bates had the foresight to insist on an insurance plan for Khalid.
The first treatment step was two debilitating rounds of chemo, which destroyed Khalid’s immune system and put her in the hospital at Washington Hospital Center in D.C.’s Pleasant Plains neighborhood for weeks at a time. The chemo took such a toll — Khalid’s doctor told her he’d never seen anybody react so aversely to it — that a third round would have been too much for her body to handle. It was also unsuccessful at shrinking the mass to a degree doctors felt was acceptable.
There were essentially three problems with the growth — it had grown around a nerve meaning removing the mass would likely have resulted in Khalid having no control of her leg. Secondly it was so close to the bone, operating would be difficult and would have required, thirdly, a new route for blood supply to the leg, another iffy proposition considering the mass’s location. Amputation became the only safe option.
“I just realized very quickly that was the best decision I could make,” Khalid says. “I’d kind of prepared myself for it emotionally when they first told me it was a possibility. That first weekend, Eb had to be in Pennsylvania for work and I decided to go with her. It was the best thing. She was busy with work stuff but I just shopped, hung out at the hotel and really had time to make my peace with it.”
Bates soldiered on at work and says a strong relationship with Khalid’s parents — she says they treat her as if she, too, were their daughter — helped tremendously.
“Anytime I thought about how hard it was to juggle this with work, I just realized how much easier I had it compared to what she was going through,” Bates says.
Khalid is doing well now. She gets around on a pair of crutches cushioned with zebra-patterned covers. She was up and walking with a walker the day after her surgery. And she can still drive since she only needs to use her right leg.
The pain, though, has been excruciating at times. Muscle in her leg was essentially “wrapped” around hollow bone resulting in cookie-cutter like pressure from the bone’s edges. Khalid also experiences “phantom” pain where it feels as if her leg is still there, causing both pain and itching sensations.
“Basically the nerves have been cut but up here,” she says, pointing to her head, “it thinks everything is normal. So the nerves are freaking out and they don’t know what happened.”
She’s also stumbled several times as she attempts to get around.
The couple’s biggest challenge now is affording a massively expensive prosthetic leg for Khalid. The Aetna plan they chose has been great at kicking in thousands of dollars toward her chemo and surgery expenses but comes up far short on the cost of the prosthesis. The couple says it will cover only about $2,000 of the estimated $40,000 to $45,000 cost.
Friends are rallying. D.C. lesbian event promoter Ebone Bell has set up a website seeking contributions. Another lesbian friend, Darcy O’Callaghan, is planning an event Thursday at Policy for the couple. Donations are being accepted here.
Khalid says she’s keeping the stiff upper lip she’s maintained all along.
“I just decided up front I’m not going to cry about this,” she says. “I refuse to cry and give into this. If I have cried, it hasn’t been because of this stupid cancer, but because I’ve been touched by the things people have done for me.”
District of Columbia
HIV/AIDS activists block intersection near White House
World AIDS Day provided backdrop for calls to fully fund PEPFAR
Upwards of 100 HIV/AIDS activists on Monday blocked an intersection near the White House and demanded the Trump-Vance administration fully fund PEPFAR.
Housing Works, Health GAP, Treatment Action Group, AIDS United, ACT UP Philadelphia, and the National Minority AIDS Council organized the protest that took place at the intersection of 16th and I Streets, N.W. The activists then marched to Lafayette Park.
(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)
(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)
Activists since the Trump-Vance administration took office in January have demanded full PEPFAR funding.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio Jan. 28 issued a waiver that allowed PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during the freeze on nearly all U.S. foreign aid spending. HIV/AIDS service providers around the world with whom the Washington Blade has spoken say PEPFAR cuts and the loss of funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which officially closed on July 1, has severely impacted their work.
The State Department in September announced PEPFAR will distribute lenacapavir in countries with high prevalence rates. The first doses of the breakthrough HIV prevention drug arrived in Eswatini and Zambia last month.
The New York Times in August reported Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought “apportioned” only $2.9 billion of $6 billion that Congress set aside for PEPFAR for fiscal year 2025. (PEPFAR in the coming fiscal year will use funds allocated in fiscal year 2024.)
Bipartisan opposition in the U.S. Senate prompted the Trump-Vance administration in July withdraw a proposal to cut $400 million from PEPFAR’s budget. Vought on Aug. 29 said he would use a “pocket rescission” to cancel $4.9 billion for HIV/AIDS prevention and global health programs and other foreign aid assistance initiatives that Congress had already approved.
“Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, has defied the appropriations authority of Congress, slashing the budget for the program despite full funding enacted by lawmakers, stealing $1.6 billion despite the direction of Congress that PEPFAR be fully funded,” notes a press release that detailed Monday’s protest. “As a result, lifesaving treatment and prevention programs have closed across dozens of sub-Saharan African countries, while Vought has refused to release money ringfenced by Congress to save lives.”
Monday’s protest coincided with World AIDS Day.
The White House has not publicly acknowledged World AIDS Day. A State Department directive the New York Times obtained last week mandated employees and grantees “to refrain from messaging on any commemorative days, including World AIDS Day.”
“Trump thinks by banning commemoration of World AIDS Day, he can hide from the death and destruction that he’s causing around the world,” said Health GAP Executive Director Asia Russell in Lafayette Square. “But we’re here to say, we can see him. We see him stealing medicine, stealing support services, stealing HIV testing, stealing life-saving care from communities all around the world suffering and dying without access.”
The Clinton Health Access Initiative in a report it published last month said more people with HIV or are at risk of contracting the virus because of “HIV treatment and prevention cascades” during the first half of 2025. Specific figures include:
• 3.4 million fewer adults tested for HIV
• 24,000 fewer infants tested for HIV
• A 22 percent decline in new HIV diagnoses due to a reduction in testing among the most vulnerable, highest-risk people
• An 8 percent decline in people living with HIV receiving CD4 tests to diagnose advanced HIV disease
• 2,000 fewer infants and children with HIV started on life-saving medication
• A 37 percent reduction in PrEP initiations for people at risk for HIV
• 26,000 fewer infants and children on antiretroviral medications
• A 5 percent reduction in adults starting antiretroviral medications
• A 10 percent increase in people living with HIV disengaging from treatment
The Clinton Health Access Initiative also said more children around the world will die “due to undiagnosed and un- or under-treated HIV infection” if “these trends persist.”
The Human Rights Campaign Foundation in its 2025 Annual LGBTQ+ Community Survey notes more than 20 percent of adults said “policies the federal government have made accessing HIV prevention and treatment care more difficult in the last year.” The report indicates 30 percent of respondents identify as LGBTQ.
The Comings & Goings column is about sharing the professional successes of our community. We want to recognize those landing new jobs, new clients for their business, joining boards of organizations and other achievements. Please share your successes with us at [email protected].
Congratulations to RODRIGO HENG-LEHTINEN on his new role as Trevor Project Senior Vice President of Public Engagement Campaigns. On accepting the position, he said, “My mission has long been to stop LGBTQ, and especially trans, people from being perceived as political footballs and start getting us seen as real people – your friends, your families, your neighbors. Now I get to focus on that 100% at The Trevor Project.”
Prior to this, he was executive director, Advocates for Trans Equality (A4TE), where he co-led the merger of two national transgender rights organizations, NCTE and TDLEF, to create the new organization. He had served as executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, leading that organization through a period of growth, restoring organizational size and stability. He had served as deputy executive director prior to that. Previously he served as vice president of Public Education, Freedom for All Americans, where he led a successful campaign for transgender nondiscrimination protections in New Hampshire. He oversaw a full range of legislative lobbying, field organizing, and communications strategies and oganized a leadership coalition, established structure, and divided roles for key committees of 17 state and national partner organizations and local activists.
Heng-Lehtinen conducted English-language interviews with outlets such as The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, and Politico. He planned a Transgender Leadership Summit for the Transgender Law Center and served as Development & Donor Services Assistant, Liberty Hill Foundation. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Latin American Studies from Brown University.
Local
D.C., Va., Md. to commemorate World AIDS Day
Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle will hold a Mass, candlelight prayer vigil
The D.C. area will observe World AIDS Day on Dec. 1 through a variety of community events.
Established by the World Health Organization in 1988, World AIDS Day aims to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and honor the individuals affected by the epidemic. The global theme for 2025 is “overcoming disruption, transforming the AIDS response.”
Washington
DC Health will host a World AIDS Day event at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library from noon to 9 p.m on Dec. 1. Attendees can expect live performances, free food and free HIV testing.
The all-day event will also feature community resources from DC Health, DC Public Library, DC Health Link, Serve DC, and the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs.
The Lily and Earle M. Pilgrim Art Foundation is partnering with Visual AIDS, a New York-based non-profit that uses art to fight AIDS, to reflect on World AIDS Day with a film screening on Dec. 1.
The David Bethuel Jamieson Studio House at Walbridge in Mount Pleasant will premiere “Meet Us Where We’re At,” an hour-long collection of six videos. The free screening highlights the complexity of drug use in intersection with the global HIV epidemic.
The videos, commissioned by artists in Brazil, Germany, Nigeria, Puerto Rico and Vietnam, showcase the firsthand experience of drug users, harm reduction programs, and personal narratives. The program intends to showcase drug users as key individuals in the global response to HIV.
In addition to streaming the videos, the event will include an evening potluck and conversation led by Peter Stebbins from 6-8 p.m.
The Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle will hold a 5:30 p.m. Mass and candlelight prayer vigil at 6 p.m. in honor of World AIDS Day on Dec. 1. The event is open to all and includes a subsequent reception at 6:30 p.m.
The Capital Jewish Museum is hosting a speaker series on Dec. 2 from 6:30-8 p.m. that explores the response to AIDS within the Jewish community. Speakers include LGBTQ psychiatrist Jeffrey Akman, physician assistant Barbara Lewis and Larry Neff, lay service leader at Bet Mishpachah, a synagogue founded by LGBTQ Washingtonians. Heather Alt, deputy director of nursing at Whitman-Walker Health, will moderate the event.
The program is free for museum members. General admission is $10 and Chai tickets, which help subsidize the cost of general admission, are $18. Tickets include access to LGBT Jews in the Federal City, a temporary exhibition that collectively explores Washington, Judaism, and LGBTQ history. The exhibition is on view through Jan. 4, 2026.
Virginia
Alexandria Mayor Alyia Gaskins and local residents will commemorate World AIDS Day on Dec. 1 at the Lee Center.
The event, which is free to attend, will include music, choir performances, educational moments and more. The commemoration will be held from 6:30-8:30 p.m.
Maryland
The Frederick Center will host talks, tabling and a raffle in honor of World AIDS Day. The Frederick County Health Department will conduct free HIV testing.
The event, which is free to attend, will be held on Nov. 30 from 1-4 p.m. The Frederick County Health Department always offers free, walk-in HIV testing on Tuesdays and Fridays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
The Prince George’s County Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority will host a community day of awareness in honor of World AIDS Day on Dec. 6 from 1 a.m. to 2 p.m. The free event will feature free, confidential HIV testing, private talks with medical professionals and health workshops.
The event will be held at Suitland Community Center in Forestville and will include breakfast and snacks.
Damien Ministries is commemorating World AIDS Day on Dec. 1 through the grand opening of the We the People Community & Wellness Collaborative. The event, held at 11:30 a.m. at 4061 Minnesota Avenue, N.E., is free to attend.
Damien Ministries is a faith-based non-profit committed to supporting those with HIV/AIDS.
Begin Anew, a Baltimore non-profit that provides education, outreach and resources to improve public health, wellness and economic stability, is hosting its 4th Annual World AIDS Day Community Celebration on Dec. 1 alongside community partners.
Hosted at the University of Maryland BioPark from noon to 3 p.m., the program will feature keynote speaker Jason E. Farley of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. The celebration will also dedicate awards to local heroes focused on fighting HIV/AIDS and promoting health equity.
The free event includes lunch, live entertainment and networking opportunities with health advocates and partners.
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Colombia anunció la inclusión de las categorías ‘trans’ y ‘no binario’ en los documentos de identidad
Faith leaders denounce anti-transgender attacks
Tokyo court upholds Japan’s same-sex marriage ban
White House halts World AIDS Day recognition amid HIV funding cuts
Comings & Goings
Impulse Group DC to host fundraiser
Calendar: November 28-December 4
India’s Jharkhand state works to improve trans people’s access to health care
