After deciding to ‘detransition’ back to female, a lady who claims she was given the go-ahead to transition to male after just two and a half hours of counseling is coming out.
Sam, now 26, made the decision to pay for private treatment sessions when, at the age of 21, she started to have doubts about her gender identity and was informed that she would have to wait 2.5 years for an NHS appointment.
After researching online and self-diagnosing as a trans guy, she was first overjoyed to be allowed a private consultation. After just two hour-long sessions with a doctor, she was given the all-clear to start hormone treatment and have a double mastectomy.
After a double mastectomy and just two years of hormone therapy, she started experiencing health problems and decided she did not want to proceed with full gender reassignment surgery.
By the time her first NHS appointment arrived, she had begun to realize her error and had informed the physicians that she was now looking for assistance in changing back to a woman.
Sam is now speaking out in an effort to aid other gender identity strugglers and to alert them of the risks of moving through the procedure too rapidly without the right therapy care.
Sam, a resident of the Midlands, said that her life is about moving ahead and is now re-connecting with her natural body in the shape it is in.
She has long-lasting impacts from her adventure, but they don’t make her any less of a woman.
She still has regrets about the medical decisions she made throughout her transition, but she is focusing on embracing and appreciating her body for what it is today instead of what she thinks it might be tomorrow.
She does think that counseling should be a part of the transitioning process at all levels to assist recognize and examine any potential red flags that may arise.
She also believes that people should be provided more details so that their permission is properly informed.
It’s been a really tough road for her, and has lost a lot of friends along the way who thought she was somehow prejudiced against trans people.
She observed a community full of individuals who had transitioned and it had ultimately brought them happiness; looking back, she assumed it would be what brought her happiness too.
She now understand that she is not a trans guy, but did not receive adequate treatment to investigate what was actually going on with her and assist her realize that she do not have to conform to one of society’s prescribed gender standards.
Since she went through the procedure and afterwards regretted her choice, she believe she is in a strong position to offer a different viewpoint on what may be done to better support others who are struggling with their identity.
The trans community has put tremendous pressure on the business to move things ahead swiftly in light of the statistics around suicide. She was so terrified by this that she felt she had to act immediately to stop feeling that way.
Sam had had identity issues as a teenager, and in 2016, not long after turning 21, she found a transgender online group that spoke to her.
Sam said, during her teenage years, she bounced about between identities until she came across videos online about individuals who were transitioning for the first time and figuring out who they were.
She related to it a lot since she had a hard time defining who she was. She wasn’t particularly feminine or masculine, but wanted to experience the joy and freedom she saw in others.
So, in February 2017, she made the decision to visit her GP. He or she gave her a referral to a nearby NHS gender clinic, but there was a two and a half year wait.
She saved her earning and went privately as she felt it would speed up the process.
Sam was scheduled a June 2017 appointment at a private Gender Clinic to visit a specialist, but in May 2017, she made the decision to officially rename her.
At her initial session, she told the expert that she was actually identifying as non-binary.
But in the time between the first and second meeting, she came to the conclusion that identifying as a male would speed up my treatment and enable her to reach a goal she believed would make her happy.
Because she believed it would expedite her care and make living as a man simpler, she went on a path that, by the time she arrived at her second visit, had lead her to consider as male.
She made the choice to begin taking testosterone and to have surgery to remove the areas of her body that were used for sexual activity, particularly her breasts, which she found to be quite upsetting.
She was diagnosed with gender dysphoria which implies she could seek to start taking testosterone. It happened so quickly, yet there was such a sense of urgency because I was concerned and didn’t want things to become worse.’
Sam claims she was given cross-sex hormones after just two hour-long consultations at the clinic, which she started taking in December 2017.
Five months later, in May 2018, she was able to undergo a double mastectomy despite rules requiring the patient to have lived as a man for a year – by citing the date of her name change as when she began living as a man – despite the fact that she did so previous to any therapy – and was placed on the waiting list.
She was able to get the operation barely a year and nine months after she first encountered trans individuals, Sam explained.
She was overjoyed after the procedure as she bound her breasts for years. It was a tremendous relief.
The hormones responded swiftly, and within a few months, her voice had dropped and had grown body and facial hair, and even had a mini penis.
Her hairline also started to recede somewhat, and she felt a significant shift in her emotions. Although she used to be a very emotional person, testosterone seems to have muted the peaks of her feelings. Nothing made her extremely joyful, and nothing made her really sad.
She had gone from working in daycare to working in a highly male-dominated position dealing with trains, and nobody realized she had transitioned from female when she initially met them.
But, just two years after her surgery, by mid-2020, Sam was suffering from vaginal atrophy, a condition in which the female sex organ tissue begins to die off due to a lack of female hormones to maintain it functioning and healthy, leaving her in terrible pain and at an increased risk of developing cancer.
She was shocked when NHS physicians told her that the only option accessible to her was a hysterectomy – an operation she did not feel prepared for and made her realize she would never undergo full gender reassignment surgery.
She wasn’t ready to get a hysterectomy at the age of 24, she stated.
She was distressed because she didn’t feel sufficiently educated about the adverse effects of testosterone use.
She was suffering from impostor syndrome and didn’t feel like the other men she was with, and felt like she was always acting.
She began to wonder why she wanted to identify as a male.
She didn’t want to live with regrets, but was no longer happy living as a man.
She did further research and found a community of detransitioners, so she researched the femininity that she had hidden for all of these years and came to realize that she was female.
She stopped taking her hormone medicine against the advise of her physicians.
Although she still adore having a flat chest, if she ever have children, she won’t be able to nurse, and it has taken away the chance to learn how to embrace he womanhood, she added.
She don’t want to put her body through breast reconstruction, but understands she would have learned to appreciate her complete body.
She has also begun menstruating again, which took almost a year to return to after she stopped taking testosterone, she says, however she is left with extra body hair and a deeper voice.
She is sharing her story since it is vital to talk about these things with retrospect, detransitioners may help see red signs and assist others in choosing these critical decisions.
Her family has always been supportive of her, but she has seen that many of her pals have drifted away since she transitioned.
There appears to be a big focus in society on supporting trans individuals, almost to the point where what she did is perceived as anti-trans.
When she told her friends that she was transitioning to male, they were ecstatic and supportive.
However, once she stated that she would be reversing the procedure, she was treated with suspicion and isolation from many individuals she regarded friends.
The individuals who are important to her are here for her and she is in a lot better position today, looking ahead to the future.
