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Original poster

Horrific case report after genital surgery *TW distress*

157 replies

Faffertea · 23/04/2023 20:59

This link has been shared by @FOJN on the Marci Bowers thread but I feel the person involved deserves to be remembered and for the horrific injuries inflicted on them in the name of so called medical care to be known more widely so that when this house of cards finally falls these doctors are held to account.

If you read the journal article be warned there are graphic medical images at the end.

For those who cannot, this is a case report of the death of an 18 year old from complications after genital surgery. They died from overwhelming infection originating from their own bowel which was used to create a facsimile of a vagina after puberty blockers and cross sex hormones meant they didn’t have enough penile tissue to use.

Necrotising fasciitis is one of the worst post operative complications I have ever seen and this young person, just legally an adult had 60% of the body area of their skin and subcutaneous tissue removed to try and treat it.

The article lists serious surgical complications as 0.6% or roughly 1 in 200 patients. That’s about the same as the failure rate of a vasectomy and 5x higher than the most serious complication (perforation of the womb) when fitting contraceptive coils.

I am here in tears having read this case, knowing the suffering this young person will have been through. They deserve to be remembered.

OP posts:
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Datun · 24/04/2023 10:14

Jazz Jennings is a living example of this surgery.

I think jazz was 2 or 3 when their parents decided they must be a girl due to wanting to wear a tutu and being 'girly'.

Hormone blockers ensued, and as we all know, 99% of children on hormone blockers go on to cross sex hormones.

So there was jazz, a teenager, with the face of a girl, the breasts of a woman and the genitals of prepubescent boy.

Jazz's surgeon (was it Marci Bowers at this point?), acted surprised that not allowing Jazz's penis to develop meant they couldn't do the surgery. How can they fucking be surprised? How anyone be surprised? This surgery was the surgeon's specialty, ffs.

They put jazz through some horrific things in order to try and enlarge his penis. All to no avail.

Jazz was it on this pathway at aged two.

They eventually used part of the bowel, but Jazz had to go back for more and more surgeries.

Jazz has no sexual feeling, whatsoever. Is depressed, overweight, and mentally unwell.

Of course, it doesn't help that their entire life has been consumed by the American public as a reality TV show, either.

But the surgery, this dreadful, life damaging, butchering surgery was the inevitable end of Jazz's parents being unable to cope with an effeminate boy, gleefully egged on by the medical profession.

Based on a ideology rooted in fiction, and endorsed by the president.

MichelleScarn · 24/04/2023 09:53

The issue of informed consent is a tricky one because there is a need to balance two opposites -autonomy vs paternalism. As doctors are we here to give patients what they want even if it could harm them as long as they are informed of the risks (autonomy)? Or do we say as medical professionals we know best and refuse to do anything a patient wants if we don’t agree it’s right for them (paternalism)?

This is the crux is it not. I'm also sure (although it may have only been in USA) that there were patients who were suing medical professionals who did NOT agree to carry out these operations and to prescribe hormonal treatment, and that by not doing so they were at risk of being struck off from being allowed to practice medicine.

dimorphism · 24/04/2023 09:52

I've been in a situation where surgery has been cancelled on me because of a pre-surgery complication. I didn't get to choose, the doctors made the decision. At the time I was very keen to go ahead with the surgery and I would have definitely consented to go ahead at that point. However, on reflection, the doctors were absolutely right.

I don't think it's acceptable in any medical situation for doctors to abdicate the responsibility of fully explaining the risks vs benefits and of denying options to a patient if the risks very much outweigh the benefits.

In my situation, there had been people who'd died from this complication + surgery - not many but some. I could have the surgery later on with lower risk. Surely that applies to operating on genitals on a healthy body? There simply is not good data on risk vs benefit so surely the 'do no harm' idea should apply? The risk / benefit ratio needs to be very very clearly demonstrated to be on the benefit side. It's not as if there isn't a huge amount of evidence of the downsides - JJ had it all televised for all to see.

I think anyone going for this surgery needs to not just sign a form with lots of very small writing explaining in very dry medical language the risks but actually engage with the stories of some of the people who've had negative outcomes before they consent to go ahead. Plus also have extensive counselling beforehand to see if they truly understand the lack of evidence base. Because this is important. Unless it was life or death, I wouldn't consent to experimental surgery.

ArabeIIaScott · 24/04/2023 09:51

Record of the person who reported horrific care at the hands of Dr Sidhbh Gallagher. Discussions of graphic complications.

(This thread is back to front, the account from Rylan starts at the bottom.)

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20221119153555/twitter.com/testosteronejew" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20221119153555/twitter.com/testosteronejew/

Gallagher has also got a paper out of it. Given what is reported by this ex patient of hers, do we trust her claims about 'drainless' surgery?

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31192877/

rylan ☻ (@testosteronejew) / Twitter

genderqueer gentleman, transfeminist, polyam, poet

https://web.archive.org/web/20221119153555/https://twitter.com/testosteronejew

dimorphism · 24/04/2023 09:42

NecessaryScene · 24/04/2023 08:36

Part of the problem is that people are distorting the technical/medical "quality of life" scale.

The original concept was that "perfect health" = "1.0".

To say that "having a vagina" improves a man's quality of life requires you either to let the scale go above 1.0 - he's better than healthy - or to claim that a man without a vagina is somehow not healthy.

This is really based on substituting the technical medical meaning of "quality of life" for the everyday one, where having a Mercedes rather than a Daewoo improves your quality of life.

The Health Service is supposed to be looking specifically at health. Not consumer desires. A man is not "unhealthy" if he is not a woman.

This is important and doctors should not be allowed to get away with this distortion.

ArabeIIaScott · 24/04/2023 09:35

And I hope this person is added to the list of the 'Trans Day of Remembrance'. I also very much hope there will be no more cases like it. Ever.

We don't know enough about the risks of any of these procedures. Puberty blockers - off label drugs for prostate cancer, used to treat children. Cross sex hormones. What risks of heart disease?

And we see surgeons like Sidhbh Gallagher operating on morbidly obese children who are covered with self harm scars. I haven't forgotten the patient who suffered horrific necrosis after their surgery from Gallagher, either.

Remember all of this is cosmetic surgery which creates enormous profit.

TinaYouFatLard · 24/04/2023 09:35

It’s monstrous.

Another famous young person I’ll call JJ had this revolting surgery. I remember watching the episode when the doctor explained about the lack of penile tissue meant traditional vaginoplasty would not be possible. JJ and their parents were shocked - nobody had ever told them. I believe JJ has needed four corrective surgeries since.

ArabeIIaScott · 24/04/2023 09:21

If Channel 4 want to show young people bodies, they should be showing them these pictures.

WickedSerious · 24/04/2023 09:21

nilsmousehammer · 24/04/2023 08:58

how it looked and felt no different to the old fashioned ones

The mind boggles as to what experience this could possibly be based on.

That's what I was wondering,it's not as if any of them had an actual vagina removed in order to allow the creation of a new and improved one.

happydappy2 · 24/04/2023 09:18

Having viewed the images, which are like something out of a horror movie. Pictures like this should be displayed on every notice board in schools promoting transgender ideology, all the LGBTQ + celebratory months etc. this is the stark reality of when surgeries go wrong, which they do. Not fluffy glittery unicorns & pink & blue striped flags.

loislovesstewie · 24/04/2023 09:12

I didn't question how they knew. Too much information, even for me. But I did think that it really was a case of the person conning themselves, rather than admit that it wasn't great.

Original poster
Faffertea · 24/04/2023 09:11

*how it looked and felt no different to the old fashioned ones

The mind boggles as to what experience this could possibly be based on.*

Pure delusion. A surgically created facsimile of a vagina will never be the same as a natal one. It’s is human’s attempts at recreating nature. If we’re talking specifically about the procedure here where the colon is used then we’re talking about 2 different types of tissue with different natural bacterial environments. The vagina is self cleaning, it has a delicate bacterial balance to help it do so and cells lining it produce secretions to do thus too. Any women who had had thrush knows what it’s like when that microbiome balance is disrupted.

The cells lining the colon, while similar are not the same. They do produce secretions too but the intestinal flora (naturally occurring bacteria) are different- pre-dominantly e.coli- so it is not self cleaning and will smell different. My understanding is they also require frequent dilations because the body is trying to close what is essentially a surgical cavity.

OP posts:
Mischance · 24/04/2023 09:06

All surgery carries infection risk.

This person was far too young to be making this huge decision for unnecessary and life-changing surgery - technically an adult but no surgeon should have agreed to this. I presume it was private surgery, so a profit motive.

I know someone who has had this surgery - much older and able to make their own decisions - but there were infections post-operatively which were utterly miserable. The whole thing involves inserting a form into the created vagina daily to keep the new orifice patent. Sounds totally grim to me.

In addition I have a GC who is soon to be 18 and is wanting gender reassignment surgery, so it is a source of great anxiety to me.

Original poster
Faffertea · 24/04/2023 09:05

The issue of informed consent is a tricky one because there is a need to balance two opposites -autonomy vs paternalism. As doctors are we here to give patients what they want even if it could harm them as long as they are informed of the risks (autonomy)? Or do we say as medical professionals we know best and refuse to do anything a patient wants if we don’t agree it’s right for them (paternalism)?

In the UK there has been a long history of paternalism and I’d argue for many women there still is by some doctors. However, we have moved away from this towards a concept of shared management and a balance of risks vs benefits. So where an intervention is likely to be of more benefit than harm, and as long as a patient is fully informed of the potential risks we tend to fall down on the side of autonomy.

This is changing in the UK with more and more people seeing the NHS as being there to provide what they want, when they want and medical professionals are there to facilitate that, not offer them their medical expertise or opinion. That is much closer to the model of the US in which healthcare (at least for those wealthy enough) is consumerist. If I am paying Dr A for their services, then I expect to get what I want. After all, the customer is always right. That fundamentally shifts the relationship between doctor and patient. Throw into this that sadly in medicine there will always be doctors who are not in it for altruistic reasons but to make money, make a name for themselves or because it gives them one of the few legal routes to exert huge amounts of power over another human and you have the situation we have now with so called “gender affirming” care and other cosmetic surgeries. And that’s before you throw the people with nefarious intent pushing these interventions into the mix to create “best practice” guidance with no evidence base (looking at you WPATH). Add in the online voices telling these kids and their parents it’s transition or die and you can see why they go for it.

I think there are echoes here of Kiera Bell’s case. Can someone consent to a procedure without being able to actually comprehend what it is they are giving up and what it is they are risking?

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ToBeOrNotToBee · 24/04/2023 09:05

Utterly barbaric.
And this is happening to kids. Funded by our taxes.

What the fuck.

nilsmousehammer · 24/04/2023 08:58

how it looked and felt no different to the old fashioned ones

The mind boggles as to what experience this could possibly be based on.

AlisonDonut · 24/04/2023 08:56

Surely there will be a reckoning about all this one day?

RoyalCorgi · 24/04/2023 08:46

I notice that this is quite an old case - the date on it is 2017. I wonder what happened to this young man's family - did they sue the doctors for negligence? Did they give permission for those horrific pictures to be used in a medical journal? It makes me sick to think that these doctors' reaction on the death of a patient is not some soul-searching about the wisdom of carrying out such an operation but "At least we can get a paper out of this."

loislovesstewie · 24/04/2023 08:42

I had quite a heated discussion elsewhere with several trans women who had neo vaginas. They all boasted about how wonderful it was, how it looked and felt no different to the old fashioned ones and how happy they were. Half the problem is that those who have had dreadful experiences are shouted down, no one gets to hear about the failures, the lack of sensation, or any medical issues. And making a neo vagina out of the bowel? I mean are the two types of tissue really similar? I really don't think that they are. People are having very complicated surgery without knowing or understanding exactly what can go wrong. I suspect that where the patient is paying no medical professional will be telling all of the truth including what can go wrong. BTW I've seen some neo penises as well, grim, and the last thing I would want.

NecessaryScene · 24/04/2023 08:36

Part of the problem is that people are distorting the technical/medical "quality of life" scale.

The original concept was that "perfect health" = "1.0".

To say that "having a vagina" improves a man's quality of life requires you either to let the scale go above 1.0 - he's better than healthy - or to claim that a man without a vagina is somehow not healthy.

This is really based on substituting the technical medical meaning of "quality of life" for the everyday one, where having a Mercedes rather than a Daewoo improves your quality of life.

The Health Service is supposed to be looking specifically at health. Not consumer desires. A man is not "unhealthy" if he is not a woman.

zen1 · 24/04/2023 08:30

God, this is sickening. How can this type of surgical intervention possibly be seen as a valid ‘treatment’ for gender dysphoria? I can’t bring myself to look at the photos, but my DS’s are around that age and the thought makes my blood run cold.

RIP poor boy.

FannyCann · 24/04/2023 08:27

I noticed that too @RoyalCorgi
I didn't know about the treatment for MRKH mentioned above, the only other circumstance I can think of is post cancer treats I think anyone who has had cancer treatment that ended in loss of the vagina would have other concerns and medical issues that creating a new vagina and messing with the bowel is probably low on the list and unlikely to be recommended.

Chersfrozenface · 24/04/2023 08:26

RoyalCorgi · 24/04/2023 08:05

Was anyone else struck by the disingenuity of this statement? "The absence of a functional vagina has a negative effect on the (sexual) quality of life of biological women and transgender women."

An absolute refusal to admit that this is nothing to do with biological women. It's all about performing a mutilating operation on an adult male.

As @FOJN has pointed out, the procedure has been used (and I think was first used) in some actual women who did not have a vagina.

The numbers are bound to be tiny but the fact that it is used in women has been leveraged in an attempt to normalise intestinal vaginoplasty in men.