When summer break started, all I wanted to do was drain my bank account by buying the clothes I’d finally be able to wear. My bottom surgery was set to take place in the following weeks, and I was ready to take on the world.

Now, as summer winds down, I count my vials of estrogen in desperation, praying they will keep me covered if I ever find myself without gender-affirming care.

The week before my appointment, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles canceled my surgery. The next month, it shuttered its Center for Transyouth Health and Development entirely, stressing that President Trump’s executive order prohibiting gender-affirming care for patients under 19 would put its resources at risk.

“Don’t panic,” my parents told me when they first read the headlines. “It will still be open on your surgery date. Nothing is for certain.”

They were right: nothing was for certain.

After all, the hospital had yet to contact us. I was already 19. The executive order wasn’t supposed to apply to me.

The next morning, I got a call from my surgeon. Despite my age, CHLA had canceled my surgery. When I reached out for more details about the scope of cancelations, I received no response.

Just like that, it was over.

My mom and I scrambled to find a new care team. We eventually found one at UCLA. I was heartbroken to have lost my surgery, but at least I would be able to keep my hormones.

However, when Chancellor Julio Frenk announced that the federal government paused almost $600 million in research funding, I felt the world close in on me. Soon after, the UC announced it would participate in conversation with the powers responsible for these devastating cuts.

Did that mean my health care was up for negotiation?

After all, elite institutions such as Brown University, Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania sacrificed the rights of transgender students over much less money.

UPenn announced July 1 that it would follow the Department of Education’s interpretation of Title IX laws, ban trans women from its women’s athletic programs, separate locker rooms on the basis of sex assigned at birth and send individual letters of apology to female swimmers who lost their records, titles or recognitions to trans athletes.

Even after this betrayal, UPenn’s president, Dr. J. Larry Jameson, claimed in a July 1st letter to the UPenn community that university leaders maintain a “commitment to ensuring a respectful and welcoming environment” for each of their students.

Unless UPenn opts to block transgender people from attending altogether, it’s hard to see how it can make good on such a “commitment.”

Brown’s July 30th agreement with the Trump Administration traded trans students’ equal access to dorms, bathrooms and other separated spaces to restore roughly $50 million in frozen federal research funding. However, many students were not aware that this agreement would apply not only to sports but also the entire campus, according to The Advocate, an American LGBTQ+ Magazine.

It’s one thing to discard trans students’ rights like it’s nothing. It’s another thing entirely to tell them nothing about it.

In an Aug. 8 statement, UC President James B. Milliken criticized the Trump Administration’s settlement demands, which include a $1 billion payment and several blows to transgender rights at UCLA, stating that such an agreement would “completely devastate” the UC and “inflict great harm” on its students and Californians in general.

I wish that I could take this as a sign that my university will fight for my equal access to education and essential health care, but I worry the pushback has more to do with money than morals.

If, hypothetically, the UC were able to negotiate a fine it found more reasonable, would it accept Trump’s mandate to ban trans women from university housing and end gender-affirming care at UCLA Health?

Would it accept the mandate to destroy trans lives?

In an email to the UCLA community, Chancellor Frenk emphasized UC leaders’ “commitment to do everything we can to protect the interests of faculty, students and staff.”

Part of me wants to scrutinize this wording and use it to convince myself that I’m safe.

“Everything we can” does actually mean everything, right?

The rest of me is more cynical.

So, I’d like to remind my university’s leaders that words have power.

Trans care providers in this city are dwindling in number. Transparent messaging could be the difference between people such as me having time to find care elsewhere and being stranded without it.

When Chancellor Frenk says he’ll work to “protect the interests” of students, I hope he knows there are Bruins like me whose lives depend on it.