Sex Reassignment Surgery: When things go wrong
The Bilerico Project
Filed by: Amy Hunter
June 6, 2010 10:00 AM
http://www.bilerico.com/2010/06/sex_reassignment_surgery_when_things_go_wrong.php (http://www.bilerico.com/2010/06/sex_reassignment_surgery_when_things_go_wrong.php)
Just before I walked into the surgical suite, I signed the waiver.
I slumped to the floor of the shower that morning in Trinidad Colorado, water and reality raining down on me. Bewilderment and terror replaced hope, which swirled toward the drain along with the feces and the blood. Emergency surgeries there, four more at home in Kalamazoo and another in Denver have all failed.
Chronic pain, heavy narcotics addiction, and bouts of deep depression are the hushed legacies I have battled. Left with a possibly permanent colostomy and a painful, fibrous lump between my legs where a vagina should be, it is nearly impossible not to revisit the devastation daily. It is now two and a half years later.
Stories like this scares the willies out of me. Not about the SRS, but the complications of any surgery. Things can and due happen daily.
I feel very sorry for the lady, and it is a damn shame that she can't get someone to help her. What happened to "First do no harm".
But you pays your money and takes your chances.
It sounds like a lot of people have tried to fix it with no success. Like she said, the prognosis for natal women with fistulae isn't terribly encouraging either, although it's better than it is for trans women.
Her story does illuminate all the things our system is lacking. There's just nothing in place to handle complications in trans women. But there's no telling if, in an ideal world with board-certification and SRS surgeons having major hospital privileges and an end to transphobia among the medical community, she would have fared any better. Complications unfortunately sometimes do happen, and sometimes they're horrifying, and sometimes they just can't be fixed.