Ep 1020 ｜ Botched： The Brutality of Trans Mastectomies ｜ Guest： Soren Aldaco
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 12 minutes
Words per Minute
206.68996
Summary
In 2021, at age 19, Sorin Aldaco underwent a double mastectomy as part of her gender transition. Shortly after the surgery, she began to experience horrific complications which the clinic that performed her surgery ignored. Now, after detransitioning, she s suing the doctors involved for gross malpractice.
Transcript
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In 2021, at age 19, Sorin Aldaco underwent a double mastectomy as part of her gender
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Shortly after the surgery, Sorin began to experience horrific complications, which the
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Now, after detransitioning, she's suing the doctors involved for gross malpractice.
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There are so many nuggets of wisdom for parents within Sorin's story.
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Please share this episode with every parent that you know.
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So if your kids listen to Relatable, just know that.
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But the details she shares are absolutely necessary to understanding the seriousness of what occurred
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This episode of Relatable is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
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Soren, thanks so much for taking the time to join us.
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If you could tell everyone just who you are and what you do.
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I am a, first of all, a seventh generation Texan.
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But beyond that, I am a fourth year humanities honors student at the University of Texas at Austin.
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This might have even been back when it was Twitter.
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And I saw your story where you talked about the complications that you endured after your double mastectomy, right?
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And that, those complications and then the fallout after have kind of taken over a good portion of your life for the past few years, right?
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The double mastectomy was definitely a turning point for me.
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Six months after the double mastectomy, I actually detransitioned medically and ideologically.
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And so it definitely has taken up a portion of my life.
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So it doesn't take up as much of my life as it once did.
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But, yeah, no, it is a pretty significant thing to have happen to you at age 19.
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Okay, before we get into that, let's back all the way up to your childhood.
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Now that you kind of have this hindsight and you've detransitioned and you can look back to when you were little, identified as a tomboy, you can kind of see maybe the path that took you to transitioning.
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But I guess the easiest place to start is when I was born.
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Her and my dad had some disagreements surrounding her pregnancy.
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And we lived with my great-grandparents for a good period of time.
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Next door to my great-grandparents were my mom's mom and her stepdad.
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My mom's mom, my grandma, had my mom at age 15.
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So thank goodness she had her so young because she wouldn't have been able to have a child later on.
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But that definitely played a role being raised by a single mom and also my grandparents.
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Because my mom was a pharmacy tech, so she was working all the time.
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Her stepmom, my other grandmother, ran a daycare out of her home.
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And I would spend the days with her and the nights with my grandparents off of Cedar Street.
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And at around age 4, my mom met my stepdad online.
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And after a month of dating, he became disabled.
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Yeah, and so I was really excited to have him be my dad.
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But being raised by a mom who was like chronically stressed out, depressed, had really bad postpartum depression.
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And then a dad who really wanted to be there, who really loved me.
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He had two kids of his own prior to this marriage.
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But had a really hard time expressing that because of a spinal fusion.
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He now, I think, today has a five and a half level spinal fusion.
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He's had like 20 minor and like five major, if I recall correctly.
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And so I spent a good period of my time helping care for him, like doing chores for him.
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And so my mom's family, unfortunately, didn't like him very much just because disability is a really hard thing.
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And with her mom having such a hard time raising her, they wanted something better for her, right?
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So while living with my stepdad's mom, I endured some pretty awful things there.
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Or they were raised in a time where like physical punishment was a lot more common.
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And so me being very hyperactive, having been ripped away from my grandparents who had raised me and placed into this foreign home with a foreign family.
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So like very formative years, old enough to understand that there's something going on and young enough for it really, really to affect you.
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And have like, again, having to not take on the burden, but to definitely have to bear some extra weight in the family because my stepdad being disabled, like it was tough.
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If I misbehaved, I remember one time they put me in the shower and I got sprayed with cold water.
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So those were punishments that you endured because you were being disobedient or you were being, as you said, too hyperactive.
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And it sort of culminated in at age seven, my, uh, step grandmother, my stepdad's mom pinning me down and backhanding me.
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And so we had a CPS case open at that point, moved back in.
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Uh, my mom like swooped me up when she came home and found out what happened and took me out of there as a mom does.
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And, um, with a CPS case being open, the school found out that we had moved away from where we were zoned for my elementary school and, um, obviously got very mad.
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And I guess that period of my life was marked by taking on more responsibilities.
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My parents no longer having someone in the home.
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And that's a huge thing I think we're facing today is like these sort of, um, we were going from multi-generation homes to this sort of nuclear family.
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And it was really tough for my mom being a working mother.
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Like she'd come home from work and my, my stepdad would obviously want time with her because their husband and wife, but I was her child and I wanted time with her too.
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And so it made for this really, um, sort of stilted family dynamic where I was pitted against my stepdad in many ways.
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And not by any fault of ours, just, I mean, being disabled and having that happen and, you know, this sort of resentment, I guess, built over time because I didn't necessarily have that tender love and care that I think a lot of kids need.
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Um, and so, uh, you were carrying a lot on your, on your shoulders and there may have been even subconsciously this feeling of guilt.
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The thing was, I mean, I definitely felt that I remember around fifth or sixth grade.
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Um, I stopped asking my parents for lunch money, um, and they never told me like, they never told me no, like if I asked them for lunch money, but I definitely could tell like, okay, they're really tight for cash.
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I'd, I'd get little bits of lunch for my friends.
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I was getting fed, you know, but yeah, no, I could tell, I could tell that there was some extra weight just by me being there.
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Um, and I wanted to alleviate that, but I think part of what I really started to, um, act out more, uh, was around fifth or sixth grade around that same time period where I was really starting to take notice what was going on the home.
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Um, and I guess to go back just a little bit, I was around the time that I faced the abuse, um, by my step-grandmother, um, I was put on ADHD medicine.
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I was diagnosed with ADHD for being too hyper at school.
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Um, and no one really thought like, oh, maybe this kid has PTSD from the CPS case.
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Here's a medical solution to your psychological problem.
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Was it where the teachers saying, Hey, she needs to be on ADHD medication.
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We were not talking to my step-grandmother at this point, but I will say a few weeks after this, me being like seven years old at this point, I realized that she had forgotten to like, or she,
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And so I quickly forgave her and didn't really spend a lot of time with her after that.
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But I sort of, you know, was like, okay, I understand the bigger picture, which is so funny because I think from an early age, I sort of had this philanthropic view of the world that it was like bigger than me and my own pain.
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But I, I've always had those sort of, um, this sort of bigger picture view on things.
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Um, and so I guess going back to fifth or sixth grade, um, I got my first internet connected device.
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So that's the DS, but connected to the internet.
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Um, and I discovered the world of online art where I could do flip notes and sort of animate.
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And I, okay, this was like 2000, 2011, 2011, 2012.
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Like I got into like, I was really into the Phineas and Ferb fandom at the time, which is so funny because that's like a random Disney cartoon.
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So some of these things I might not even know because they were like, I was like in college.
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It was like Disney back when Disney was like kind of okay.
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Um, but yeah, I was really into art and I was really into the sort of like fanfare of being into something and having this community that you're into something with.
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And, um, that's where I started to get into some bad corners of the internet.
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I got into, um, this web comic where I was talking to a lot of older people.
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I remember the first anime convention I went to, they played spin the bottle.
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Like I was really into role-playing and it's actually a super healthy part of our development role-playing.
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Um, like imagination, playing house, things like that that little kids do.
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Kids play cops and robbers to learn what it's like to be brave and mischievous.
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And so, um, taking on the role of others, how we create a sense of self.
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And so it's really healthy, but I think it can, it's a vulnerable time.
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Um, and it's a vulnerable time that is really easy to take advantage of when you're like a 38-year-old pedophile on the internet.
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And so this is something that I think I share with a lot of people my age.
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Um, and I've talked about this before that I think this is going to be one of the next Me Too style movements is people my age.
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Um, and I'm 22 being groomed on the internet around ages 11, 12, you know, even as young as 9 or 10.
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And so that definitely made womanhood a very scary thing for me.
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And your parents, they didn't monitor at all what you were doing online.
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My stepdad, because of his disability, um, and him knowing that he wasn't able to look after me in the way that he wanted to, he was hypervigilant.
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And so it's like, I had sort of parenting myself on one hand, but being over-parented on the other hand.
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And so he'd put like parental controls on everything, but I was smart.
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And so I'd put parental controls on my own devices and convince my parents that they just forgot the password, like stuff like that.
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Um, but I mean, kids my age were the first digital natives.
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We know how to outsmart the millennials and the Gen X's and the boomers when it comes to tech.
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And that can be a great thing when it's helping grandma navigate Facebook, right?
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That can be an awful thing when you're 11 years old and you have this unfiltered access to chat rooms and social media.
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I mean, I remember, I think when I finally got out of it, there are some sane adults out there.
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I remember this gentleman, I was like, aren't I sexy?
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So having to do with like anime and role playing.
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Well, it evolved from anime and role playing to just general role playing.
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Cause I was just really craving that connection.
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No, this is on, this is, there's like chat room websites.
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The one that this happened on is actually still active today.
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Um, and I don't really know that because of the anonymity that there's really any way to hold these people accountable.
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But like I said, unfortunately, there's people out there who are sane who I was able to kind of listen to and have this moment of like, oh my gosh, I am 11.
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But around that age, being in the online circles that I was on, I was starting to be exposed to ideas of like other sort of predatory ideas.
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Um, around this age, I was still on the internet a lot.
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And I, in part of this role play came across, um, another girl, three years older than me, who was an amazing artist.
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Like I looked up to her because I was like, oh my gosh, you can draw realistically.
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I, not as artistic today as I once was, but definitely a little bit artistically inclined.
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And then eventually we started like, quote unquote, dating.
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And it was mostly just like we FaceTime each other a lot.
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Like it's like having a best friend, but through this sort of lens of LGBT, where, um, if you're attracted to anyone, uh, they're, they must be your girlfriend and they must be your boyfriend.
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So at this point, because back in my day, I guess it would have been like early two thousands that I was like 10, 11, I would not have known what it meant to be gay.
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I would not have known at nine, 10, 11, what LGBTQ was.
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So had you been already introduced to that idea or did you just find yourself sincerely attracted to this girl?
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So growing up, I was attracted to boys like pretty thoroughly.
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I was attracted to a little boy who looked like him.
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I had boyfriends all throughout fourth and fifth grade.
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But I think after, um, that experience being groomed online, um, men were just terrifying to me.
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Um, and also around that age in sixth grade, you know, the boys started getting more vulgar.
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Like I had boys who threatened to rate me, um, just awful things at school.
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Like the teachers, when they found out, they were like, no, like they shut it down real quick.
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But once that's happening, you have those thoughts in your head of what you're supposed to be.
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And you combine them with this idea of being sexy online.
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And like, what else are you supposed to think about yourself?
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So you're going through puberty and you're not only getting groomed online and you kind of realized when you were like 11 that, oh, I am kind of being preyed upon.
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And then at school, you're getting basically sexually harassed.
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And so I'm sure that there was a part of you that was like, oh, it is my femininity doing this.
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It is my female identity that is causing these men to prey upon me.
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And that can be a really kind of scary, uncomfortable feeling when you're just going through puberty.
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Um, every woman in my family has big boobs and for me, um, because my family was poor, like we didn't eat well.
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And so I gained weight faster than my peers and therefore started my period earlier than my peers.
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And that was really scary too, is just, I didn't look like the other girls in a lot of ways.
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My favorite shirt growing up said tomboy on it.
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And I was really proud of, um, of being my, my coach used to call me her dirt baby.
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Like I, I lived in the dirt and so that was really tough, but I think online going back
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to the whole flip note art thing, I would take these surveys and I've always loved talking
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about myself and not like a conceited way, but in like a wisdom way, like, here's what
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Let's share kind of like what we're doing right now, right?
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And, um, I used to fill out these little surveys that were just fun and games, but parts
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I think my first exposure to homosexuality was watching Glee when I was in third grade.
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And what's funny, what's funny about this was I saw Kurt, uh, the like main, like gay
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Cause it's this like really effeminate person with short hair.
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Um, and what I learned in a developmental psychology class recently is that kids at that age, if you
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show them a Ken doll and ask them what the gender is, they're going to say it's a boy.
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But if you put that Ken doll in a ballerina outfit, they're going to say it's a girl.
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Cause at that age, they have no concept of sex constancy.
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Their idea of boy and girl are stereotypes and that's much how I was.
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And so, um, growing up, like I started to consider like, would I be attracted to girls?
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And then with the whole online thing, it wasn't like a real attraction.
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Like it wasn't like I was physically attracted to them, like going through the, the, the show
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Um, it was more like, this is someone I want to be close to.
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And I think that's totally normal for girls and boys at that age to feel, you know, we
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only really are around people of our own sex at that point.
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It's normal to feel like to want to be close to them.
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You start talking to this girl who you said is about three years older than you.
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So she is 14, a little bit older, but still a child herself.
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And then tell us how that developed and then how that kind of led into questioning, not
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We'd role play our original characters together.
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And, um, all of a sudden one day she came back to me.
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Like, um, I was a part of a hunger games role play website that I actually really like.
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Um, and that's like long form where you're writing like a sort of like collaborative
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Um, you have like text based messages where you're sending like almost like a text message
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So we would draw and our character would say something.
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We'd kind of like create this scene and the person would reply and draw something and
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I can totally see how that would be really fun.
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For, and maybe even addicting to a child who is artistic and has found a new friend.
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That's how I learned about some of these more lewd concepts.
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Cause I was role playing with people older than me.
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Um, and some of them were only like 16 and that's not that old.
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I mean, even compared to me today, like I consider 16 year olds babies.
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And so, um, with her, she came out as transgender to me and was like, you know, I feel more like a
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boy, she remember she drew this picture where it's like a, uh, pink body, but a blue head.
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And it was literally like, I have a boy's mind and a girl's body.
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Like these very early concepts of feeling different, but acknowledging that your, your body's female.
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I mean, it made sense to me in the way that I talked about that.
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Like Kindle metaphor where I was like, oh yeah, like I like sports and I'm kind of like
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Like these super, like they're just stereotypes essentially.
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And so from that point I was like, you know, maybe I'm like non-binary, like maybe I'm like
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a Demi boy was what I said, which was kind of like, I'm a boy, but I know I'm not fully
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Well, through meeting this person and being in this online community, then you go on Tumblr
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and then you have this like, you know, no dearth of knowledge presented to you of like,
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I mean, that's, that was my life story is learning quickly.
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And, um, pretty soon I was identifying as trans, but again, it was more like a role play
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Um, but it didn't really translate over to my real life very well, other than wanting
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I wanted short hair for a different reason, you know?
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You said that it was more role playing, but when did it become public?
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So, um, in, so my childhood school district was K through six, seven through nine and 10
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And so when I reached seventh grade, which is shortly after when I began identifying as
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I actually transferred to a magnet junior high.
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So I was no longer with the peers I had grown up with.
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I was taking Arabic classes and I was in orchestra and I thought there's, there's this whole new
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So the time I went by Colin and, um, it was again, just friends calling me a different
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But the teachers were kind of like, no, like we're going to go by what's on the roster.
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I'm not like a mean way, but kind of like kids do silly stuff all the time.
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And at that time it was still, it just wasn't as mainstream.
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This was only 10 years ago and it wasn't really a political issue in the same way.
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Um, this was before Target even had pride march, by the way, like there was nothing.
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And so, um, going to this new school, like friends started calling me these new names
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But then what really happened was I, so I was going and I was, so I was interested in this
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You would take, uh, your SATs in seventh grade.
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And if you scored well, you could take college courses over the summer or an equivalent to
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And I scored in like the 86th percentile at age 12.
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And, um, I started taking classes, uh, in seventh grade.
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And that was where I was able to be like a boy for three weeks.
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Like they didn't really question it because it's a university.
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Like a lot of these children come from liberal backgrounds.
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And so taking these classes, um, it was like my ability to sort of slip away for those three
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And I think there was a confounding variable there of just being able to be out of the
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You know, I was like, Oh, I'm, I feel so great.
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Like, you know, it was, it was that confounding variable at play.
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And so I took these, uh, courses over the summer for four years from the summer between
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seventh and eighth, eighth and ninth, ninth and 10th and 10th and 11th.
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And so that was definitely a formative experience for me when I came back from that summer camp.
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It's like that sort of like obsessive compulsive.
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So were you dressing like a boy when you were there?
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And a friend's mom bought me my first chest binder and I only had one and I only wore it
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And this was a lot of how I got my parents to be kind of okay with it was I was like, I'm just
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The boys are the more interesting characters, which is still true.
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Like a lot of the girls in anime are sexy and they have these big boobs and like they
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Whereas the boys are like leading adventures and like doing fun things and being like well-rounded
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Um, and so, I mean, I wanted to cosplay boys and that's how my mom was like, okay, like
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the binders, whatever, you know, which is fine.
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I mean, like if you want to cosplay a boy, like having a flat chest looks more realistic.
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And, um, I think from that point on, like it just became a mixture of me becoming
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But then also my friends seeing how happy I was and I was coming out of my shell, but
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Um, and so, uh, I remember in ninth grade I buzzed my head and that was like a big point
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because at that point I'd still kind of had a fringe.
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Um, it was nice to just be able to self-express how I wanted to at that time.
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And that's like the biggest thing was just like, if I hadn't have received so much push
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back from school personnel, from my mom, for having short hair, for wanting to wear boys
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Um, I think it would have been a lot easier for me to envision myself as a girl doing these
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things instead of having to see being a boy as a prerequisite.
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Like my mom didn't want me to originally cut my hair shorter than my mid neck.
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Um, my grandma bought me boys clothes cause I wouldn't shut up about it.
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And she bought a lot of my clothes cause again, my family was not very well off my mom's mom.
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Um, and she and I have always been really close, not as much in recent years cause I feel like
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I put my family through the ringer with my transition, but we're getting there.
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Like I'm going to see her later today, but she doesn't know yet.
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And so around age, uh, around ninth grade when I'm transitioning to high school, like the
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next year, I really started to embody this more.
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Some of my teachers started calling me by the name I wanted to go by.
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And how did you feel when people would call you Colin or would people would say he, him?
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Well, I, um, I felt like it became a sort of regular thing, I guess.
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Um, but I would notice when people used my given name or use she, her, but I like put up
00:25:28.100
Like my family used my given name, my family used she, her, and it wasn't my favorite thing
00:25:31.880
But I also like, didn't like, like my, it wasn't my favorite thing ever to interact with
00:25:36.040
Cause I'm like a 13, 14 year old and I have identity issues.
00:25:40.980
Like, I don't think it was just the transgender thing.
00:25:43.580
Um, but the transgender thing was sort of the mask that everything else laid under.
00:25:47.940
So at this point, was there anyone in your life?
00:25:51.800
Like, I know that you have talked about your mom and your, uh, stepdad and then your grandmother
00:25:58.720
Were there any family members who were like, yeah, this is great.
00:26:02.740
Or any friends who were like, yes, you are definitely a man and we support you.
00:26:10.380
So, um, a couple of my family members were like tolerant of it.
00:26:15.100
Like they were like, if she wants to make a rainbow, um, perler bead thing at this birthday
00:26:22.080
Um, and I had some friends who definitely like, I had the friend whose mom bought me the binder.
00:26:26.080
I had a group of friends within that friend group who were affirmative of me, but more just
00:26:31.280
because they loved me unconditionally, not because it was like an ideological thing.
00:26:34.660
Um, but so, and to, this is an important sort of not tangent, but an important part of the
00:26:40.380
I didn't, I didn't meet my dad until I was 15 years old.
00:26:43.820
Um, when I was about 15 years old, I asked my mom like, Hey, look, I know I've bugged you
00:26:48.380
about this for as long as I've been sentient of it.
00:26:53.740
Um, my stepdad had showed me pictures of my dad and his family, um, previously.
00:26:58.580
And it sort of came off like, okay, well, he has his own family.
00:27:01.980
So, but, um, after bugging her that night, you know, I was 14, 15, I was 15 at this age,
00:27:09.100
um, or at this point, she was like, okay, fine.
00:27:15.600
I reached out to him and we connected, we did a paternity test and it came back positive.
00:27:20.320
And I found out I had a little sister and a step-mom and, um, it was amazing in many
00:27:26.680
And so they were able to provide me with things.
00:27:28.640
Like I had one of my first, like, I, I hate to say this cause I had a lot of real Christmases
00:27:33.700
with like my mom and my, my grandma, especially she really made the magic happen.
00:27:38.120
But like, this was the first time where I was with like a mom and a dad and there was
00:27:41.480
a Christmas tree and there was like traditions, like Santa would drop off our PJs on Christmas
00:27:51.980
Um, and after a month of knowing them, uh, I got into a fight with my, my stepdad, sort
00:27:58.060
of the culmination of the tension, uh, that I felt amongst us.
00:28:02.600
And especially with him and I, as we fought for my mom's attention and I had like this huge
00:28:08.200
panic attack, like a sort of pseudo manic episode that resulted in me going to the hospital.
00:28:13.040
And in hindsight, I see this as, okay, you just met your biological father.
00:28:18.060
Like, obviously something has kind of come to a head, right?
00:28:22.660
But when I went inpatient, um, the focus was on my gender and not at first I met with
00:28:29.560
the psychiatrist, uh, who was named in my lawsuit, uh, Dr. Nekalapu.
00:28:33.980
And while I was seeing him and being interviewed by him, he asked me, you know, why is your name
00:28:40.100
different on your door than on your sheet, on your chart?
00:28:50.220
Like, I've heard of some people and he's looking at me, right?
00:28:52.640
I have like short hair and I'm wearing like a chest binder.
00:28:55.420
And like, he's like, you know, there's some people who are uncomfortable with their gender.
00:28:58.100
Like, does that sound, you know, um, does that sound relevant?
00:29:01.820
And I was like, you know, I really want to talk about this.
00:29:03.980
And he's like, I was like, but will you tell my mom?
00:29:07.440
And so I told him like, yeah, I kind of feel like a boy.
00:29:12.240
And, um, but I said, you promise you won't tell my mom because I don't want to talk to
00:29:19.780
And, um, from what I understand, he went behind my back and he told my mom, um, I remember
00:29:25.400
I was being discharged cause it was like depressing in there.
00:29:28.900
It's a mental hospital, but I was very, like I said, precocious.
00:29:36.080
And I was missing my AP classes, you know, and there was like kids like trying to suffocate
00:29:40.800
themselves with beach balls and it just wasn't a great fit.
00:29:45.460
And as I was leaving, they were like, Hey, we're going to have a final meeting with your
00:29:49.060
Um, is there anything you don't want to talk about?
00:29:50.760
And I said, the gender stuff, like, I don't want to talk to him about the gender stuff.
00:29:59.340
And I go to his office and I'm like, you told them?
00:30:01.800
And that's when I find out, like, I, my family knows I'm transgender now.
00:30:06.880
And according to, um, my dad, my stepmom, my mom kind of sat them down and was like,
00:30:12.300
Hey, look, I don't really know what's going on.
00:30:14.920
Like, I thought she was going to be a lesbian at most.
00:30:17.760
Like, I don't understand this wanting to be a boy stuff.
00:30:20.080
And so she was like, please, you know, um, that's not really like do the gender thing.
00:30:25.220
Let's not really do the new name and the new pronouns.
00:30:28.200
Like she didn't really know how to deal with it.
00:30:30.120
Her and I didn't talk about it for another year, but within that next year, you know,
00:30:34.540
my dad and my stepmom, they were very hesitant.
00:30:36.200
They were like, yeah, like we don't want to confuse your sister.
00:30:46.060
Like she knew that I was like gender nonconforming, that they were using they, them pronouns because
00:30:51.340
Like there's this new child they have in their life and they don't know anything about my history.
00:30:56.520
They didn't watch me sort of go through this period of depression.
00:31:01.620
Like they get to see me at 15 and things are at their worst, but they're also at their best
00:31:06.660
Like I'm not that, you know, like 11 year old cutting herself anymore.
00:31:13.300
And a lot of that I got from like Tumblr and Instagram.
00:31:15.160
Like it wasn't my own idea of like, yeah, let me do this.
00:31:18.020
Um, it was just all part of like, I'm a part of this community.
00:31:23.560
It's like, you know, you have this feeling of stress and being able to focus all the pain
00:31:27.100
into one point, I think is a lot different than having it just sort of radiate through
00:31:30.360
your person and your soul and your spirit, you know?
00:31:32.480
Um, and so, yeah, at that point, like I felt at home with my dad and my step-mom because
00:31:40.900
Um, but I was becoming increasingly alienated from my mom and my step-dad, um, because they
00:31:51.300
And so, um, I invited my, all my family to go to this transgender support group I had found
00:31:57.500
in Fort Worth, Texas, um, about a year later and my mom went and she was bugged out by
00:32:02.680
Like, she was like, this feels kind of cultish.
00:32:04.680
Like there was in this support group, three different sections.
00:32:10.020
There was a section for transgender adults and there was a section for like significant
00:32:16.740
And, um, again, my mom, she just felt pressured to think a certain way.
00:32:24.800
Like I, I cornered her in a car to come out to her, to make her go to this thing.
00:32:27.980
And she still kind of pushed back and was like, I love you, but like, I don't want to
00:32:33.980
Um, but I convinced my dad, my step-mom to go and they made fast friends with the people
00:32:39.000
Um, and I don't like, I don't blame them at all because they were faced with this really
00:32:43.240
difficult child and they're raising a freaking like five or six year old.
00:32:49.100
Um, but to kind of be faced with this problem child and to have this solution presented, like
00:32:54.080
Um, and in the support group, there was a, um, nurse practitioner who was named in my
00:33:01.000
lawsuit, Perry, who, um, was prescribing hormones to a lot of the people who would go to this
00:33:07.280
There was a therapist who I didn't see, but who did virtually the same thing, like gave
00:33:10.880
people referrals, talk to them about gender stuff.
00:33:12.980
But in that support group, like it was, it was awful.
00:33:15.660
Like we would have in the kids group discussions over self-harm.
00:33:19.840
Um, we'd have discussions over like our relationships, our turbulent relationships.
00:33:23.860
We'd have discussions over being furries, over being anime characters.
00:33:27.300
Like our identities were a little bit of everywhere.
00:33:37.740
Like there were some sane people and I'm sure like a lot of them have grown up to be somewhat
00:33:42.300
Like I had been acquaintances with some of them up until recently, but it was definitely
00:33:47.500
like looking back on it, a very dark place to be because there was this sort of air of
00:33:52.640
acceptance and celebration, but also a lot of us were talking about things that had sort
00:33:58.260
of once been quarantined to the internet and we're now being spoken of in this very real
00:34:04.340
And I think that that was a bridge for me, um, and it going from being this sort of imaginary
00:34:09.580
thing, having that medicalization that made it real.
00:34:13.140
And then on top of that, going to the support group that made it real.
00:34:15.840
And I having a connection to a medical professional who prescribed me hormones, like that's the
00:34:20.560
This thing that I thought I wouldn't even get till I was 18 is now being offered to me at
00:34:34.340
Abigail Schreier wrote the book, Bad Therapy, and she talks about how these like support
00:34:42.620
groups for young kids can very often make things worse because there's like a one-upping
00:34:50.920
There's a normalization of things that were previously rightly stigmatized.
00:34:56.080
And there is kind of this celebration of different kinds of fantasies and identities that can lead
00:35:04.640
And you're kind of saying that it seemed to push you in the direction of getting hormone
00:35:10.880
treatment as it's called, because you were presented with this person who would do it.
00:35:14.820
And you said that you were 16, 17 when you started testosterone.
00:35:17.960
And this wasn't my first experience with bad therapy, um, which I think is actually the title
00:35:22.960
Um, I had been in this sort of, um, alternative charter school environment where we had an outpatient
00:35:32.600
And that was where I was leading up to me being hospitalized.
00:35:35.580
And this family friend of mine who I'd grown up with, like we were, she was literally in
00:35:39.200
the hospital when I was born, we're a year and 13 days apart.
00:35:42.000
She had gone to the hospital around the same time.
00:35:43.880
And her mom kind of pointed out, like, this is a trend.
00:35:46.380
Like you both went to the hospital because it makes you look good to your classmates.
00:35:49.700
And I mean, all things considered, like it was a very real distress that I was feeling,
00:35:55.700
Like a lot of it was because of the environment.
00:35:57.520
And I think both things can be true that it can be environmental and real.
00:36:03.280
That support group was, and that's, like I said, where I met Perry and around age 17,
00:36:08.200
um, my mom, uh, I, I'd met, so backtracking a little bit at age 16, I had gone to an anime
00:36:15.520
convention and I met this girl who, um, was in the same cosplay as me.
00:36:21.260
We were cosplaying the same character and we became quick friends.
00:36:26.040
Um, and we, um, at the time hit it off because we were both trans men and we were both, um,
00:36:33.100
we were both like at the same homeschool, but different state variations of it.
00:36:38.420
Um, and, um, when we met and started talking online afterwards, um, it was very similar
00:36:48.160
to that support group insofar that we were feeding off of each other.
00:36:51.220
Um, I would go to visit her because we were both kind of homeschooled.
00:36:58.860
Um, we'd go to visit each other every two weeks.
00:37:01.100
I'd go to visit her and then she'd come to visit me two weeks later.
00:37:03.440
And, um, then COVID-19 happened and I, for all intents and purposes was stuck in Oklahoma.
00:37:09.620
I didn't know what was going to go on back home.
00:37:11.580
And I didn't frankly want to be stuck back home with the whole transgender tension, um,
00:37:15.940
with my mom, not being able to really leave the house cause of lockdown.
00:37:19.120
Not that Texas was very locked down, but you get what I mean.
00:37:22.160
And so this girl and I, again, both identifying as boys at the time were making cosplays and
00:37:28.660
staying up all day and getting into fights and just like, you know, everything that teenage
00:37:32.040
girls do, except again, we thought we were men.
00:37:34.720
And, um, she eventually, and she having a very bad home life, like was living with godparents
00:37:42.980
Um, she convinced her family to let her start testosterone.
00:37:55.380
And while I'd previously kind of relegated myself to, okay, I'll start it when I'm 18 and
00:38:00.160
And again, there was not, I think the same suicide rhetoric as there is today regarding
00:38:05.540
waiting until you're an adult to start these sort of interventions today.
00:38:08.420
It's like, kids aren't going to survive until they turn 18.
00:38:10.560
But like I being one of those kids, like I would have been okay, but because she was
00:38:16.980
And so a week after she started testosterone, I guilt tripped my mom into allowing me to start
00:38:23.560
And my mom at this point was terrified that she was going to lose contact with me, was
00:38:28.040
thinking, well, she's going to start it when she's 18 anyways, and just sort of wanted to
00:38:34.600
And so I think that was a really, really tough decision for her.
00:38:37.460
She didn't want anyone to know for a long time.
00:38:39.000
I don't know that she really wants anyone to know today, but I don't think you can place
00:38:42.020
blame on her and the way that some of these other parents, um, I think create identities
00:38:48.920
Like my mom had this teenager who was a troubled teenager who had run away from home with the
00:38:55.380
And, um, you know, I started testosterone and became very distant from her.
00:39:00.080
So it kind of had the opposite effect, um, because I was affirmed more in this transgender
00:39:06.000
I want to go back to one thing that might seem kind of like a tangent, but it's just a pattern
00:39:10.680
that I see so often that very typically people who identify as transgender, either male or
00:39:18.660
female, there is in their past, some kind of heavy involvement in anime.
00:39:27.640
I mean, we've kind of, um, we've kind of looked at it on this show, but why do you think there
00:39:34.860
Well, this is a lovely question, Allie, because, uh, when I met you in person for the first time
00:39:38.840
at the ISI conference, you had a lot of things to say about pornography.
00:39:42.280
And I think that that's the tie to anime and how anime is tied to the transgender movement
00:39:50.060
Like I was saying earlier, um, the women all have huge boobs and they all wear skimpy little
00:39:54.900
outfits and the men are these like hyper-masculine, like either they're hyper-masculine or they're
00:40:01.620
And I think that's the connection here is this hyper-sexualization.
00:40:06.000
Um, and when you take that into consideration with the rest of our society, anime is a more
00:40:12.660
It's the fantasy, it's the escape that a lot of these kids desire out of role-playing.
00:40:16.420
But I think also, also it's a little bit more close to some of these like sexual tropes that
00:40:24.640
we see in the real world, uh, at least compared to like regular cartoons.
00:40:30.280
It's like you have cartoons here and you have real life here.
00:40:37.620
So you started testosterone when you were 17 and then what happened from there?
00:40:43.360
So I started, I kept going after, so after I started the testosterone, I kept going to
00:40:48.620
the support group for a period of time before lockdown ruined that.
00:40:52.260
Um, I started testosterone two months before COVID lockdown happened.
00:40:56.220
So in January and then, you know, lockdown was in March and, um, while living with my, my
00:41:02.680
girlfriend at the time, um, we were getting, I mean, I talked about us having fights before
00:41:16.740
I have these videos on my phone still where I'd be like one day on tea, one week on tea,
00:41:23.380
Like I was keeping track of my testosterone changes obsessively.
00:41:26.540
So, and that's where I think a lot of the root came down to for me was, um, a sort of obsessive
00:41:34.740
So backtracking a few years, I underwent a neuropsych evaluation.
00:41:39.160
And in addition to the ADHD that I've been diagnosed with since age seven, I was diagnosed
00:41:43.620
with autism spectrum disorder, level one, major depressive, generalized anxiety, and also,
00:41:48.180
um, a DSM code that was social exclusion and rejection, um, which is actually a diagnosis
00:41:53.680
that we've seen a lot of people who end up acting out, um, and sometimes more of the
00:42:00.300
And obviously I wasn't violent in that way, but I was like, I was lonely and I was dysfunctional
00:42:07.820
due to that loneliness and due to being that weird kid.
00:42:11.300
I'd like to think like, I can look you in the eyes and I can communicate well, but, um,
00:42:15.540
I still have a lot of burnout and I, I struggle to conceptualize like social norms.
00:42:19.880
Um, so you were saying that you were getting in these fights with your girlfriend.
00:42:26.500
Do you think that the testosterone, which, you know, increases sex drive and makes people
00:42:32.120
Do you think that that played into the increasing violence and the anger that you were feeling
00:42:39.580
And, um, I, I do think that it contributed to all of these things.
00:42:44.500
Um, I know that for me, like I went from, I mean, because of the sexual abuse that I
00:42:49.860
endured, having like no sex drive, um, to the first time I ever had sex, like crying because
00:42:55.480
I was just so dissociated and scared and like, you know, like didn't know how to be in my
00:43:02.340
Um, and it was definitely this lustful thing driven by the testosterone, um, because my
00:43:07.800
girlfriend and I's relationship wasn't emotionally intimate.
00:43:10.840
Like we were, we connected over our trauma and our shared life experiences.
00:43:14.160
And that's part of what, um, part of what I think keeps us so close today, but it was
00:43:19.420
definitely the sort of dissociated interaction.
00:43:21.480
And I can say that like up until that point, I never really had anyone that close.
00:43:25.480
Like I had friends here and there, but the relationships would always end up disastrous because I couldn't
00:43:32.720
Oftentimes the people I was attracted to, whether that be in friendship or otherwise,
00:43:36.180
couldn't let people get close, didn't know how to get close.
00:43:41.500
And that's ultimately what led to us separating later that year, um, was the testosterone, uh,
00:43:49.740
And again, you're being dissociated from your body because you're pumping your body full of
00:43:53.160
hormones that your body doesn't typically have at that level.
00:43:56.000
And really can't handle in a healthy way because the female body is not supposed to have that
00:44:02.200
Um, and we, I mean, we experienced that like, even today, both of us have detransitioned.
00:44:06.580
Um, we have, uh, no dearth of consequences from being on the testosterone.
00:44:10.540
Like I know she still suffers a lot with vaginal atrophy for me.
00:44:14.080
That's gotten a lot better, but I struggle with a lot of pain.
00:44:16.800
Like I had to, and this might be a little TMI, but to be more intimate with you.
00:44:20.540
Like I had to go, when I went to go get my pap smear, um, for the first time, cause I'm 21
00:44:26.240
I found out that I had like cysts on my clitoris because of the testosterone.
00:44:31.260
And that was never disclosed to me as a possible complication.
00:44:34.800
And I thought like, I was like, I was like, what, what the heck are these?
00:44:38.020
And my, my doctor at first was like, I don't really know.
00:44:40.320
And I went in and she went on forums and found out that other transgender people were getting
00:44:47.460
She had to go into forums, into forums, medical forums.
00:44:51.940
It's like medical forums where doctors kind of share what's going on with their patients.
00:44:55.280
But I was like sitting here, like it's so common that it's on, it's discussed on a
00:44:58.500
medical forum in several spots, but not common enough for it to be disclosed in my informed
00:45:03.280
And like my informed consent was awful for the record, like informed consent.
00:45:07.100
But like, what does that mean to someone who has this sort of issue with impulsivity that
00:45:11.560
I had, who struggles with like comprehending like complex instructions like I do, really
00:45:33.300
And talk about your double mastectomy because you start, you started on the hormones when
00:45:45.680
And then what was that experience like during and after?
00:45:49.840
So after I separated from my girlfriend, I was starting college and I wasn't really, I
00:46:04.760
Um, but I was in this environment at this point where I had had my name and my gender
00:46:10.200
marker changed or my name, my sex marker changed.
00:46:13.680
And, um, it was starting to become more real to me having been in that, in that support group,
00:46:23.320
Cause there was 15 year olds who had had mastectomies in that support group.
00:46:26.180
And I remember at the time feeling very envious of them just as I'd been envious of my girlfriend,
00:46:31.220
but also kind of amazed that this was a possibility.
00:46:34.500
Like it's not just some random person who's really lucky on the internet.
00:46:37.780
It's like someone that is in my community where I'm from, you know, less than 30 minutes away from me.
00:46:42.900
Um, and so, um, because of COVID-19, I was getting stipends from the school, um, that were supposed to use for living expenses, but I was living at home.
00:46:51.960
And so, um, all of a sudden I had like, you know, like 5k and it, um, became very real to me in this, the possibility of getting a surgery.
00:47:02.360
And I was also seeing a therapist at the time who, um, had a trans ex-husband.
00:47:09.120
Um, she's actually also named in my lawsuit, uh, Barbara Wood.
00:47:13.080
And she, um, I felt like affirmed me without any sort of question.
00:47:17.800
And it even seemed at times that there was this projection of her failed marriage onto me and my relationship.
00:47:25.740
Because she was a lot of who coached me and leaving my ex, um, was sort of making my ex out to be this like big, scary narcissist.
00:47:34.540
Like she definitely struggled because she came from a bad background, was also trans identified and had all the baggage that came with that.
00:47:40.120
But she was projecting this like 40, 50 year old man onto my 17, 18 year old female partner.
00:47:49.080
Um, and so having this sort of blind affirmation and this sort of tokenization as a transgender person, and then all this money, like all that sort of came to a head of like, okay, well, I'm going to start looking into this.
00:48:01.360
Like some people in my life were sort of sharing, um, forums with me of people getting top surgery.
00:48:06.740
And I was like, oh my God, look at all these people, like all these people with flat chest and me having big boobs and having bound for so long and bound my breasts for so long.
00:48:15.360
Um, it was nice to think about being able to just like go topless.
00:48:19.920
And that's something that a lot of women I've spoken to who were in this sort of fight have talked to me about where they're like, if I had known that I could just be a woman and not have to wear a bra, I would have been like, I would have been so happy with myself.
00:48:30.640
Um, so that's a pretty common, a pretty common struggle.
00:48:33.260
But, um, at that point I said a consultation, their consultation was $200, which is like insane, even within the community because so many surgeons offer free consultations, but this is Dr. Crane and Dr. Crane's clinic.
00:48:43.880
Um, and although I was seeing, uh, one of his trainees, one of the people he had trained, Dr. Ashley DeLeon, who was also named in my lawsuit, um, this was his clinic and his practices.
00:48:54.560
And we all kind of know at this point what Dr. Crane and his practice is like.
00:48:58.720
So, um, I met with Ashley DeLeon over the phone and I had talked about some of my goals.
00:49:05.620
Like I didn't want, like I wanted to have, um, more rounded scars so it would look more natural.
00:49:10.800
And I had some of these ideals, like some of these photos of young women who had gotten mastectomies that I found on the internet.
00:49:16.860
And a lot of them, it was really interesting, had flat chests, right?
00:49:19.720
But they had this, these more rounded scars and they would wear like more feminine clothing.
00:49:23.920
So in hindsight, I see them now, um, and this is a very interesting parallel as not appearing so much like a man, but appearing like a prepubescent girl or a boy.
00:49:37.420
Right. And so with what I know about my own experience with sexual trauma and that of countless people in my generation, it strikes me as very peculiar that a lot of the people who fit the category I did didn't want to get bottom surgery, but wanted flat chest and a boyish physique.
00:49:57.960
And so just trying to kind of dissociate from your femininity because you feel like your femininity has been the source of your problems, of your victimization, of your trauma.
00:50:06.620
Oh yeah. And also being able to maybe get back some of that childhood that you wish you had gotten for longer.
00:50:12.520
Like I think for me, I mean, being sort of parentified and a caregiver for my stepdad and then also being sexualized at that young age, like I didn't get the childhood that I needed until I met my dad and my stepmom.
00:50:22.980
And that's something that I'm so thankful for in them was I was able to grow up alongside my sister.
00:50:27.380
I was able to be that kid who got at Christmas, who got to play with slime, who got to like play in the yard and like, you know, film movies on my sister's iPad.
00:50:35.700
Like I really got to be that child that I wish I had gotten to be when I was younger through them.
00:50:42.180
So you got the double mastectomy or you did the consultation that she said was $200 and then you got the double mastectomy.
00:50:51.660
So I went down to Austin to backtrack just a little bit.
00:50:54.900
A week before my double mastectomy, I went in for my pre-op appointment and I didn't wear a binder or a bra.
00:51:00.080
I just wore like a really big, um, a really big polo shirt and I went and I actually remember I walked around Austin downtown afterwards.
00:51:07.620
I thought I was going to go straight there and straight back cause I'm not wearing anything to hide my chest, but I actually felt really comfortable.
00:51:12.340
And that's kind of where I was talking about like not having to wear that bra was sort of liberating.
00:51:20.120
But then when I went down to Austin for my mastectomy, everything was normal that morning.
00:51:24.500
I put on my two knee braces and my compression socks cause my legs were like torn apart from the testosterone.
00:51:30.720
It felt like, um, I didn't know that that was a, yeah, I had, I was at that point in my life and this is maybe a big thing to gloss over.
00:51:42.000
I'd been on like three different kinds at that point.
00:51:47.460
I was on medicine for anxiety, medicine for depression, medicine for ADHD, two different medicines for ADHD.
00:51:52.460
You had been on the medication for ADHD for a long time.
00:52:00.520
And that's actually when a lot of my, I feel like my mental illness came to a head, um, was around when I started taking stimulants again, which is so funny.
00:52:07.840
That's another thing that, yeah, we've discussed some, which is controversial to talk about.
00:52:13.140
And I'm not anti-medication altogether, but yeah, medicalizing a lot of normal childhood behaviors, being precocious, being hyperactive, maybe not being able to sit still for very long.
00:52:24.680
When in fact, as you pointed out, it could have been a response to the turbulence of your childhood.
00:52:36.980
People down this pipeline of medicalizing all kinds of emotions on the spectrum of human feeling.
00:52:44.220
And yeah, that can have some really, really adverse outcomes and does for a lot of young people.
00:52:52.220
And so for whatever reason, maybe related to these medications, maybe not, we don't really know.
00:53:00.900
Um, a few days after my surgery, I noticed bruising around, I noticed bruising around my, um, the top of my bandages and sort of on the sides of my bandages.
00:53:12.580
And my stepmom, who was taking care of me, bless her during this time, um, and I became very concerned.
00:53:18.680
And we sent photos or we like contacted the emergency line for the clinic.
00:53:22.620
And we're like, we see some pretty bad bruising.
00:53:27.800
And Dr. Santucci, who was also named in my lawsuit, called me.
00:53:35.640
Um, and he knew that I was obsessive compulsive.
00:53:37.920
And so he was like, just keep track of how the color changes, which was actually a really great piece of advice.
00:53:44.460
And so when I went to my post-op appointment and they took off the bandages and they removed the bolsters that were keeping my nipples pressed onto my chest.
00:53:55.360
Um, I remember the nurse saying, I've never seen bruising like this before, but she didn't go get a doctor.
00:54:05.260
Like, I don't know if the air was anxious or what.
00:54:07.460
It was definitely a swirl of emotions for me, but there was another transgender person in the room, part of the staff of the clinic.
00:54:15.780
Um, and I remember they were trying to reassure me, but they too, I could tell they were concerned.
00:54:21.840
And so we went home and, um, per the advice of Dr. Santucci, I began to keep track of my chest.
00:54:30.320
I noted how the color changed and posted some of these photos on Twitter.
00:54:35.800
Uh, and despite him saying they should be getting lighter, they should go from purple to, uh, green to yellow to gone.
00:54:45.320
They were going from purple to dark purple to black in some spots.
00:54:48.700
Um, and I reached out to the nurse, the nurse line again by email.
00:54:52.520
And I told them like, Hey, the bruising is getting worse.
00:54:56.460
Um, I looked up the bruising that was now appearing on my flanks that wasn't present on my post-op appointment.
00:55:00.980
And I found out it was called Gray Turner sign.
00:55:10.740
And she said, as if she had not even read my email with a hint of care, bruising should be getting better.
00:55:20.380
Even though that's exactly what I had messaged her to say.
00:55:22.740
And so, um, at that point I continued taking photos and then it kind of came to a head, um, later that month when I was becoming feverish and the bruising, like I felt like I had breasts again.
00:55:35.440
The bruising was so bad and the swelling was so bad.
00:55:39.660
Um, and again, my sides were like plum purple, like my sides were bad.
00:55:46.320
It takes me like an hour and a half, if I recall correctly, to get ahold of anyone.
00:55:54.540
And when I finally got on the phone with the doctor, that same doctor who had coached me so kindly prior to my post-up appointment, Dr. Santucci, he was kind of like, what do you want?
00:56:04.860
Um, and I told him like, you know, I'm immunocompromised because at the time I was having all these health issues, I was seeing a rheumatologist and we didn't really know what was wrong.
00:56:12.460
Um, I told him I'm immunocompromised and he goes, what do you mean by that?
00:56:16.680
Like I have like a gluten intolerance and like these things that were just kind of unidentified that usually points to.
00:56:23.780
And he was like, no, uh, immunocompromised means like HIV or AIDS.
00:56:30.380
And so that was his first sort of disregarding of me.
00:56:33.340
But afterwards he was like, okay, well, whatever, send me photos.
00:56:36.660
And so I sent him, I go to send him the photos and I go, what's the phone number?
00:56:46.080
I send them to him and he says, and this is the most incredible thing.
00:57:07.240
I'm thinking he probably thinks I mean like seen and validated, but I mean, no, I want to
00:57:14.720
I can get you tomorrow if you want to come down to Austin.
00:57:16.360
And I'm at this point, I'm like, I'm expecting in my ideal, like come down to the hospital.
00:57:21.700
You know, but no, I'm just kind of like an afterthought.
00:57:23.440
If he can squeeze me in, I believe is what he said.
00:57:26.040
And so I hang up, I go in to tell my mom and I'm like, again, very like hysterical at this
00:57:37.940
I know they have a surgeon who performs these kinds of surgeries there and hopefully I'll
00:57:43.140
I spent eight hours in the hospital there in the ER because no one wants to take my case.
00:57:48.760
The in-house top surgeon doesn't want to take my case.
00:57:51.740
And ultimately breast oncology agrees to take my case, but not until like 6 a.m.
00:57:57.160
And so that was probably one of the best group of women or people period that I've ever
00:58:02.880
They were like baffled at how it got to this point because I had a drainless surgery.
00:58:07.480
And if anyone knows anything about mastectomies, they're not drainless.
00:58:11.120
But I believe that drainless has taken off in the transgender community specifically because
00:58:15.180
it's less real than a drain mastectomy or a mastectomy with drains.
00:58:19.260
Because with a mastectomy with drains, you have to like unscrew the blood that's pulled
00:58:24.080
Whereas with a drain free, ideally you're just bandaged up and then you're unbandaged
00:58:32.780
And that's actually why my girlfriend didn't get a mastectomy herself was because she couldn't
00:58:38.200
But for me, I was so dissociated from my body, it didn't faze me.
00:58:44.600
So when they eventually saw me, the breast oncologist, they cut open my scars.
00:58:50.580
They drained as much liquid as possible and they stuck a Q-tip in there.
00:58:54.940
And of course, my chest was numb, but I'm like wide awake for all of this and knocked
00:59:00.280
And then they had me for the next week bind foam blocks to my chest and I had to go across
00:59:06.780
And so I would stand in the shower, watch the blood go down my leg.
00:59:10.280
Okay, this is after your ER experience, like after you go in there and the breast oncologist
00:59:20.820
So they were like, yeah, you need drains to get the blood out.
00:59:23.880
And it's actually, they're called Penrose drains.
00:59:25.800
They're one of the, if I recall correctly, oldest forms of drains there.
00:59:33.500
Like I literally walked to the hospital and there's photos of me actually on my X thread
00:59:36.520
where I'm like smiling and my chest is like flat.
00:59:41.060
And the reason I'm so ecstatic is because for the first time since my surgery, my chest
00:59:46.100
Like there's no questioning that my chest was not supposed to look, well, A, supposed
00:59:49.120
to look like any of this because I should have been intact.
00:59:51.260
But B, supposed to look like how it did prior to me going to the ER.
00:59:58.000
I remember, I think the worst comment I ever got on X was someone calling me zombie tits.
01:00:02.520
So, I mean, I take them as they come, but I mean, that's kind of what they looked
01:00:19.140
So, a little bit more about like your back and forth with this center.
01:00:25.560
They made you sign the settlement agreement because you asked for compensation for your
01:00:32.120
Because it was so much money and obviously it was because of their dereliction that you
01:00:43.280
Like at the Crane Center, were they helpful at all to you or not really?
01:00:50.800
So, if they had just treated me from the moment I had messaged them about my complications,
01:00:54.820
it would have just been like a $20 out of pocket fee, right?
01:00:57.820
Going to the ER though, it was thousands of dollars.
01:00:59.740
Thankfully, my insurance covered part of it, so it was only $400 out of pocket.
01:01:03.040
But yeah, I did ask them like, hey, look, I'm really disappointed by how you guys handled
01:01:13.820
And so, I did ask them to compensate me for the ER visit for my co-pay, for my, I think
01:01:21.080
But anyways, to compensate me for what I had to pay out of pocket for my ER visit.
01:01:24.240
And they were trying to get me to sign a non-disparagement agreement.
01:01:27.720
So, I couldn't do like what I'm doing today and talk to you about what happened to me.
01:01:32.900
And of course, I, being smart was like, okay, whoa, whoa, whoa.
01:01:36.980
What have you done to make sure this isn't going to happen to anybody else?
01:01:40.040
Like, I want to know what you learned about, like what you learned from this situation.
01:01:47.440
And I still have not, like I have not, I get emails from them occasionally inviting
01:01:52.060
me to transgender support groups, like Zoom links.
01:01:54.940
But like, otherwise, I haven't heard a damn thing.
01:02:01.520
How much was the mastectomy and then everything after?
01:02:09.420
I think, so for me, and this is a whole nother can of worms.
01:02:12.940
I haven't even gotten the opportunity to open yet.
01:02:15.140
But initially, they wanted me to pay self-pay in order to, and pardon me if the details
01:02:21.660
are like blurry, because it's been a while since I had to think about this, but they
01:02:25.460
wanted me to pay self-pay while they fought to get an in-network exception for my mastectomy.
01:02:31.220
So, they were out of network, but they said they have like a 90% success rate, if I recall
01:02:36.160
correctly, for getting insurance to cover it like it were in-network instead.
01:02:41.760
I paid the $5,500 out-of-pocket self-pay, and they said they would reimburse me when
01:02:47.680
Well, they couldn't convince my insurance, even after an appeal, even after two appeals,
01:02:51.980
if I remember correctly, to cover me in-network.
01:02:56.240
And so, ultimately, they ended up reimbursing me, I think, only like $700, even though my out-of-pocket
01:03:05.720
maximum was $4,500, and again, I paid them $5,500.
01:03:09.720
So, I should have at least gotten $1,000 back, because that was the max I was just pay out-of-pocket.
01:03:14.240
But what they ended up doing was they charged my insurance $21,000, and then deducted my co-insurance
01:03:30.400
There's a lot of money to be made at centers like this.
01:03:33.880
And very little financial incentive for them to follow up with you and help you or help
01:03:40.880
their patients after their surgeries were botched.
01:03:47.300
So, I am working with Campbell Miller Payne out of Dallas, Texas, the first lawsuit to be
01:03:57.600
And it's been a really hard fight, but a really good one, like one that really, I think,
01:04:08.060
So, the lawsuit's focus is the psychiatrist from my inpatient visit, the nurse practitioner
01:04:16.100
who prescribed me hormones, the therapist who treated me during this time and authored
01:04:21.460
my mastectomy letter, and the doctors involved with the Crane Center, as well as the facilities
01:04:27.960
And the therapist who authored your letter to say that, yeah, she needs to get a mastectomy,
01:04:35.640
are you suing her for basically not doing her job thoroughly enough?
01:04:42.660
She lied throughout the letter that she wrote for me, and that letter on which she lied is
01:04:51.500
what ultimately opened the gate for me to get the mastectomy, yes.
01:04:56.520
And then everyone else is kind of being sued for just not doing their jobs thoroughly, right?
01:05:02.260
Yeah, I mean, that's the reason for a lawsuit like this.
01:05:06.880
The hormone provider did not provide me with adequate informed consent, should not have given
01:05:14.060
And the surgeons, I mean, we just talked about this in depth, like they really dropped the
01:05:18.860
Not just in giving me the surgery, but doing such an awful job with the aftercare and with
01:05:24.940
being aware of how my body was reacting to this very invasive procedure.
01:05:32.440
So, early on in the case, the judge ordered that everyone stop working on the case for
01:05:38.800
a period of 60 days to give one of the new defendants time to catch up.
01:05:43.000
During this period of 60 days, an important procedural deadline came and went, and one of
01:05:49.580
the defendants, Perry, the nurse practitioner, argued that because the deadline had passed,
01:05:56.920
Now, the judge, having ordered the 60-day abatement period, didn't really know how to
01:06:03.260
rule on this, and so he dismissed the case in order to get some guidance from the appellate
01:06:09.300
Now, with Wood, similar to Perry, the judge needed guidance from the appellate court on
01:06:16.500
how to calculate the statute of limitations for a novel case like mine, where the awareness
01:06:23.740
of the negligence came considerably after the negligence occurred.
01:06:28.600
So, in both situations, it's just a procedural dismissal, and as soon as we get a judgment
01:06:34.540
and some guidance passed down from the appellate court, everything should resume without a hitch.
01:06:48.600
Like, I'm in it because I know that there are countless others like me.
01:06:53.500
I know people who are like me who either their statute of limitation has run out or they want
01:06:58.360
to stay private because of some of the backlash that I've faced.
01:07:03.080
And so I'm doing it for everyone but me in many ways.
01:07:08.040
I don't need the courts to prove to me that what happened to me was wrong, but it sure
01:07:21.820
And I'm thankful for you because, you know, you didn't have to do it.
01:07:25.640
It would have been easier for you probably in a lot of ways just to say, that's, you
01:07:35.120
But I don't think that what's right is always the easy thing.
01:07:39.720
You know, the right thing isn't always the easy thing.
01:07:44.120
And you mentioned the couple times that we've talked, you mentioned that you've been reading
01:07:49.220
your Bible recently, and that's kind of a more recent development, right?
01:07:55.140
I was raised non-denominational Christian, and the church was an awful place for me.
01:07:59.960
Like, it was loud and very political, and it, I think, did a good job meeting people where
01:08:08.420
But for me, I have always been very no BS, like very spiritual more than I am religious.
01:08:19.960
Like, I was in adoration with my friend, recently committed to the Catholic Church, or that's
01:08:25.780
not the right way to say it, recently confirmed in the Catholic Church, and I read it while
01:08:31.400
I was in there, and it just, like, really touched me.
01:08:33.220
Like, I didn't, this is going to get kind of dorky.
01:08:35.180
Like, I didn't realize, like, how awful, like, Judas was.
01:08:38.860
Like, I know he's, like, bad, but I didn't, like, realize that he sold Jesus for, like,
01:08:44.800
I get, like, I have this very, like, childlike curiosity about God, and I don't really know
01:08:48.940
where I fall in terms of the label that I want to use, but I definitely follow Jesus,
01:08:52.080
and I definitely, like, I believe in God, and I believe that what I'm doing is godly,
01:08:56.460
and I believe in, like, living a virtuous life.
01:08:58.940
Well, the cool thing is, is that we are actually called by Jesus to have a childlike faith,
01:09:09.200
That is an honorable thing to have a childlike curiosity about Scripture, and you'll see
01:09:13.700
that the more you read Scripture, the more questions you have.
01:09:16.700
Yes, the more understanding you have, but also the more curiosity that you need to be
01:09:24.060
satiated, because, I mean, God is limitless, and His Word has so much in it, and so I'm
01:09:36.940
I think I have a King James Version, and then I think I have an American Standard Version,
01:09:40.920
but I've been reading it on my phone lately, because then I can read it anywhere.
01:09:48.440
I'm going to get you an ESV study Bible, because it, like, changed my life.
01:09:55.620
Okay, you've got to get the study Bible, because for me, it just answered so many questions.
01:10:00.360
I can read a verse, and I'm like, wait, what the heck does that mean?
01:10:02.700
That sounds like a really weird word choice, and then I can go down to the notes.
01:10:07.320
I was trying to figure out the ages in Genesis, and I have, like, so many theories.
01:10:13.140
I just love the Bible so much, and I love that you're reading the Bible, and it's very
01:10:17.580
clear that the Lord is speaking to you and is using you, and your courage is contagious,
01:10:24.080
and I hope it just lights a fire that changes things for the better.
01:10:27.760
So thank you so much, and God bless you, and is there any last thing that you want to say
01:10:39.520
I am happy to be here, and I'm happy to be having conversations with such a diversity of
01:10:44.920
people, and, like, true diversity, like, ideological diversity, because I think that that's how the
01:10:49.240
best things happen in life is by surrounding yourself with as much knowledge as possible.
01:10:53.060
That's why I'm reading the Bible, that's why I'm reading the Bible, it's why I've, you
01:10:57.140
know, I've grown in my faith recently, is just, like, I think part of having faith is
01:11:00.980
having faith in man, like, having faith in people, and I think that's how you find faith
01:11:07.500
Well, is there any way that people can support you, like, and support this lawsuit?
01:11:18.000
I have a Twitter, or I have an ex, but I don't, like, I don't really use it, because
01:11:20.800
I'm not a social media girly, but I don't know, just, like, keep me in your prayers and
01:11:25.760
your thoughts, and just do the right thing, like, be open to people, like, don't be scared
01:11:31.180
Talk to as many transgender people as you talk to de-transgender people, because I think
01:11:35.960
that we, like, knowledge really is power, and the more empathy you have, the more compassionate
01:11:42.620
you can be, and I think that, and I've said it before, compassion doesn't always mean
01:11:47.600
letting people walk all over you, sometimes the compassionate thing is setting firm boundaries,