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I wasn’t “born in the wrong body.” I was born female. But I didn’t like it. So I changed my appearance, at significant monetary, psychological, and physical cost, with plastic surgery and hormones. My sex never changed, though. Only my appearance changed.
Anyone going through this is in store for a brutal process. Yet we now have thousands of naïve parents walking their children into gender-treatment centers, often based on Internet-peddled narratives that present the transition experience through a gauzy rainbow lens. Many transition therapies are still in an experimental phase—as you will learn if you become sick during or after these treatments.
During my own transition, I had seven surgeries. I also had a massive pulmonary embolism, a helicopter life-flight ride, an emergency ambulance ride, a stress-induced heart attack, sepsis, a 17-month recurring infection due to using the wrong skin during a (failed) phalloplasty, 16 rounds of antibiotics, three weeks of daily IV antibiotics, the loss of all my hair, (only partially successful) arm reconstructive surgery, permanent lung and heart damage, a cut bladder, insomnia-induced hallucinations—oh and frequent loss of consciousness due to pain from the hair on the inside of my urethra. All this led to a form of PTSD that made me a prisoner in my apartment for a year. Between me and my insurance company, medical expenses exceeded $900,000.
During these 17 months of agony, I couldn’t get a urologist to help me. They didn’t feel comfortable taking me on as a patient—since the phalloplasty, like much of the transition process, is experimental. “Could you go back to the original surgeon?” they suggested.
Whenever you question the maximalist activist line on trans affirmation, you are directed toThe World Professional Association for Transgender Health (or WPATH)as a reference. But much of what you find there consists of vague phrases such as “up to doctor’s discretion.” Several lawyers suggested I had a slam-dunk medical-malpractice case—until they realized that trans health doesn’t really have a justiciable baseline. As a result, treatment often issubpar, as I have experienced first-hand.
Lupron, the hormone blocker some doctors seem intent on giving to kids like Tylenol, isn’t evenFDA-approved to treat children with gender dysphoria. (In 2001, the manufacturerpled guiltyto fraudulent sales practices with regard to its marketing as a prostate-cancer drug.) We don’t yet know its long-term effects off-label, despite the fact parents have been assured that its effects are safe and even reversible.
Here is what we do know:The long-term use of synthetic hormone therapyshortens lives. Specifically, these medications are associated with an increased risk of heart attacks, pulmonary embolisms, bone damage, liver and kidney failure, mental-health complications, and more. Almost a quarter of hormone-therapy patients on high-dose anabolic steroids (such as the testosterone taken by female-to-male transitioners) exhibit majormood-syndrome symptoms. Between three and 12 percent go on to develop symptoms of psychosis.
Continues quillette.com/2020/10/06/forget-what-gender-activists-tell-you-heres-what-medical-transition-looks-like/