Born in the wrong body

A Providence doctor is on the leading edge of a new approach to transgender kids

By DAVID SCHARFENBERG  |  October 26, 2012


http://providence.thephoenix.com/news/146479-born-in-the-wrong-body/


THE DOC "I make no assumptions about who you are," Forcier says.


Dr. Michelle Forcier can't remember his name. But she remembers his face: a boy, 14, trapped in a girl's body. He was anguished. Hated what he was becoming.

"This kid," says Dr. Forcier, "just wanted to be himself."

She could suppress his period — that regular, bloody betrayal of his core identity; a birth control shot would do the trick. But she had little else to offer.

The physician felt she had failed her patient.

Dr. Forcier was running a clinic in Raleigh, North Carolina at the time. It was 1998. Before medicine really knew what to do with these kids. Before the Internet connected doctors to emerging protocols — and frightened teenagers to one another.

Fourteen years later, everything has changed.

Another step forward.

Ah, I was just about to post that same article.