Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1020 | Botched: The Brutality of Trans Mastectomies | Guest: Soren Aldaco

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

Today, we sit down with Soren Aldaco, a 21-year-old woman and detransitioner who is suing her former doctors for a botched mastectomy and other medical malpractices. Soren began identifying as transgender at just 11 years old, began hormone replacement therapy at 17, and had a double mastectomy at 19. Soren was prescribed all these treatments despite numerous mental health conditions and traumatic life experiences. How did this happen? Soren discusses her entire story and the failures of the medical system that left her "permanently disfigured." Get your tickets for Share the Arrows: https://www.sharethearrows.com/ --- Timecodes: (02:30) Beginnings of Soren’s story (10:00) Internet indoctrination (29:10) Identifying as a boy (35:20) Support group & starting testosterone (49:24) Double mastectomy complications (01:03:59) Treatment issues & payment (01:07:26) Soren's lawsuit (01:12:35) Soren's faith journey (01:15:59) How to support Soren --- Today's Sponsors: Good Ranchers — Change the way you buy meat today at GoodRanchers.com with code ALLIE to claim your $100 off and free smoked brats for a year.  Get free shipping on all your orders and make this Independence Day one to remember.  Carly Jean Los Angeles — use promo code ALLIE50 for $50 off your order of $100+ at carlyjeanlosangeles.com. NetSuite — gain visibility and control of your financials, planning, budgeting, and inventory so you can manage risk, get reliable forecasts, and improve margins. Go to NetSuite.com/ALLIE to get your one-of-a-kind flexible financing program. Seven Weeks Coffee — try Seven Weeks Coffee today at SevenWeeksCoffee.com and use the promo code: ALLIE to save 10% off your order. --- Relevant Episodes: Ep 186 | Sex Change Regret | Guest: Walt Heyer https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/relatable-with-allie-beth-stuckey/id1359249098?i=1000456890365 Ep 857 | Is ADHD Real? | Guest: Dr. Roger McFillin (Part One) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-857-is-adhd-real-guest-dr-roger-mcfillin-part-one/id1359249098?i=1000624680025 Ep 858 | The Disturbing Origins of Adderall | Guest: Dr. Roger McFillin (Part Two) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-858-the-disturbing-origins-of-adderall-guest-dr/id1359249098?i=1000624797989 Ep 896 | From 'Trans Men' to Transformed by Christ | Guest: Laura Perry Smalts (Part One) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/relatable-with-allie-beth-stuckey/id1359249098?i=1000632613519 Ep 897 | A Detransitioner on the Lie of 'Trans Joy' | Guest: Laura Perry Smalts (Part Two) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/relatable-with-allie-beth-stuckey/id1359249098?i=1000632747460 Ep 963 | The Dangers of Gentle Parenting, SEL & Empathy | Guest: Abigail Shrier https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-963-the-dangers-of-gentle-parenting-sel-empathy/id1359249098?i=1000648254377 --- Links: Soren's X thread detailing the surgical complications: https://x.com/sorenaldaco/status/1635535612236242947 --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

In 2021, at age 19, Soren Aldaco underwent a double mastectomy as part of her gender transition. Shortly after the surgery, Soren 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. There are so many nuggets of wisdom for parents within Soren's story. Please share this episode with every. parent that you know, just a heads up. It is a graphic story. So if your kids listen to Relatable, just know that. But the details she shares are absolutely necessary to understanding the seriousness of what occurred and what is going on on a large scale. This episode of Relatable is brought to

you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to Good Ranchers.com. Use code Allie. Check out. That's goodmanchers.com. Code Allie. Soren, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. If you could tell everyone just who you are and what you do. So my name is Sorin Aldaco. I am a, first of all, a seventh generation Texan. But beyond that, I am a fourth year Humanities Honor student at the University of Texas at Austin. I'm a sister. I'm a daughter. And I'm also a detransitioner. Yeah. So, yeah. And I first. saw your story on X, this might have even been back when it was Twitter. It was Twitter. Yes, yes. And I saw your story where you talked about the complications that you endured after your double mastectomy, right? Yeah. 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? Oh yeah. Absolutely. Um, the double mastectomy was definitely a turning point for me six months after the double mastectomy I actually detransitioned medically and ideologically. And so it definitely has taken up a portion of my life. I'd like to say that I'm pretty functional. So it doesn't take up as much of my life as it once did. But yeah, no, it is a pretty significant thing to have happened to you at age 19. And I'm almost 22 now as of Monday. Wow. Happy birthday. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah. Okay. Before we get into that, let's back all the way up to your childhood. 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. So just tell us, take us back there. Tell us kind of how this all started. Yeah. So wow, that's a long way to go back. But I guess the easiest place to start is when I was born. My mom was a single mom. Her and my dad has some disagreements surrounding her pregnancy. And so I was born to her May 13, 2002. And we lived with my great-grandparents for a good period of time. Next door to my great-grandparents were my mom's mom and her stepdad. My mom's mom, my grandma had my mom at age 15. She's a type one diabetic. So thank goodness she had her so young because she wouldn't have been able to have a child. later on. But that definitely played a role of being raised by a single mom and also my grandparents.

Because my mom was a pharmacy tech, so she was working all the time. Her stepmom, my other grandmother, ran a daycare out of her home. So she knew kids inside and out. And I would spend the days with her and the nights with my grandparents off the Cedar Street. And at around age four, my mom met my stepdad online. And after a month of dating, he became disabled. He had a work injury. He slipped and he broke his back and they became married after three months. Wow. Yeah. And so I was really excited to have him be my dad, but being raised by a mom who was like chronically stressed out, depressed, had really bad postpartum depression. And then a dad who really wanted to be there, who really loved me. He had two kids of his own prior to this marriage.

But had a really hard time expressing that because of a spinal fusion. He now, I think, today has a five and a half level spinal fusion. I'm going to still getting surgeries. He's had like 20 minor and like five major, if I recall correctly, maybe six major at this point. It was really hard. And so I spent a good period of my time helping care for him, like doing chores for him. And so my mom's family, unfortunately, didn't like him very much just because disability

is a really hard thing and they had a different vision for her. And with her mom having such a hard time raising her, they wanted something better for her, right? And so we ends up moving in with his stepmom. And while we were living with his stepmom. Your stepdad's stepmom? Yeah. So my, sorry, my stepdad's mom. Okay.

So while living with my stepdad's mom, I endured some pretty awful things. They were raised in a time where like physical punishment was a lot more common. 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, you know, just my mom there. I was, I was like six years old. Okay. Yeah. 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. Oh, yeah. And 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 that I was made to do a lot of chores there. If I misbehaved, I remember one time they put me in the shower and I got sprayed with cold water. It was really tough. So those were punishments that you endured because you were being disobedient or you were.

you were being, as you said, too hyperactive. Too hyperactive. And it sort of culminated in at age seven, my step-grandmother, my stepdad's mom, pinning me down and backhanding me. And so we had a CPS case open at that point, moved back in. 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, right? And with a CPS case being open, the school found out that we had moved away from, we were zoned for my elementary school and obviously got very mad. So we moved back in town and I guess that period of my life was marked by taking on more responsibilities. My parents no longer having someone in the home and that's a huge thing I think

we're facing today is like these sort of, we were going from multi-generation homes to this sort of nuclear family and it was really tough for my mom being a working mother. Like she'd come home from work and 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. And so it made for this really, um, sort of stilted family dynamic where, very turbulent. Yeah, I was pitted against my stepdad in many ways. 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. And so, you were carrying a lot on your, on your shoulders. Oh, yeah.

And there may have been even subconsciously this feeling of guilt. Like am I adding a burden onto my mom? Am I making this more complicated? The thing was, I mean, I definitely felt that. I remember around fifth or sixth grade, I stopped asking my parents for lunch money. And they never told me, like, they never told me no, like if I ask them for lunch money. But I definitely could tell, like, okay, they're really tight for cash. And I just, I stopped asking for it.

I'd get little bits of lunch for my friends. So 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. And I wanted to alleviate that. But I think part of what I really started to act out more 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. I was really precocious. I was in the gifted program growing up. And I guess to go back just a little bit, I was around the time that I faced the abuse by my step-grandmother. I was put on ADHD medicine. I was diagnosed with ADHD for being too hyper at school. And no one really thought, like, maybe this kid has PTSD from the CPS case. It was just sort of like a one and done. Here's a medical solution to your psychological problem. Was it where the teacher's saying, hey, she needs to be on ADHD medication.

So it wasn't your step-grandmother. No, it was teachers-stained. We were not talking to my step-grandmother at this point. Though 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 was off of her meds at the time. And so I quickly forgave her and didn't really spend a lot of time with her after that. 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 in my own pain. Yeah. Which is so funny. So much to carry as a seven-year-old. But I've always had those sort of, this sort of bigger picture view on things. Yeah.

And so, I guess, going back to fifth or sixth grade, I got my first internet connected device. I got a DSI. So that's the DSI, but connected to the internet. And I discovered the world of online art where I could do flip notes and sort of animate. And I... Okay, this was like 2000. 11, 2011, 2011, 2012. Yeah, pretty, yeah, I was probably like 9, 10, 11 years old. And online, I got into fandoms. Like, I got into, like, I was really into the Phineas and Ferb fandom at the time, which is so funny. that's like a random Disney cartoon. I'm 10 years older than you.

So some of these things I might not even know because they were like, I was like in college at this point. It was like Disney back when Disney was like kind of okay. Yeah. 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. And that's where I started to get into some bad corners of the internet. I got into this web comic where I was talking to a lot of older people.

I remember the first anime convention I went to. They played Spin the Bottle. How old are you? I was like 11. Oh my goodness. Yeah, it was awful. And I remember I was really into role playing. Like I was really into role playing. And it's actually a super healthy part of our development role playing. Like imagination, playing house, things like that the little kids do. Kids play cops and robbers to learn what it's like to be brave and mischievous. And so taking on the role of others, how we create a sense of self. And so it's really healthy, but I think it can, it's a vulnerable time. 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. And so this is something that I think I share with a lot of people my age. 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. And I'm 22 being groomed on the internet around ages 11, 12, you know, even as young as 9 or 10. And so that definitely made womanhood a very scary thing for me. And your parents, they didn't monitor at all what you were doing online. Oh, they did. They totally did. My stepdad, because of his disability and him knowing that he wasn't able to look after me in the way that he wanted to, he was hypervigilant. So it's like I had sort of parenting myself on one hand, but being over-parented on the other hand. And so he'd put parental controls on everything, but I was smart. 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. And it wasn't like this big show of things. But I mean, kids my age were the first digital natives. We know how to outsmart the millennial. and the Gen X's and the boomers when it comes to tech. And that can be a great thing when it's helping grandma navigate Facebook, right?

That can be an awful thing when you're 11 years old and you have this unfiltered access to chat rooms and social media. Yeah. And so that was pretty awful. I mean, I remember, I think when I finally got out of it, there's some sane adults out there. I remember this gentleman. I was like, aren't I sexy? And he was like, no, you're a child. And I... So this is in like a chat room. This is in a chat room. So having to do with like... like anime and role playing. Well, it evolved from anime and role playing to just general role playing. Because I was just really craving that connection. Is this like on Tumblr or?

No, this is on, this is, there's like chat room websites. The one that this happened on is actually still active today. And I don't really know that because of the anonymity that there's really any way to hold these people accountable. It's awful. 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. Like, you're right.

I'm a child. I'm not sexy. and I snapped out of it. 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. Around this age, I was still on the internet a lot. I was still role-playing.

And part of this role play came across another girl, three years older than me, who was an amazing artist. Like, I looked up to her because I was like, oh my gosh, you can draw realistically, and it's so cute. Are you artistic? I am artistic. Not as artistic today as I once,

was, but definitely a little bit artistically inclined. And I looked up to her and became friends. And then eventually we started like, quote unquote, dating. And it was mostly just like we'd facetime each other a lot. Like, it's like having a best friend, but through this sort of lens of LGBT, where if you're attracted to anyone, they're, they must be your girlfriend and they must be your boyfriend. So at this point, because back in my day, I guess it would have been like early 2000s that I was like 10, 11. I would not have known. what it meant to be gay. I would not have known at 9, 10, 11 what LGBTQ was.

So had you been already introduced to that idea, or did you just find yourself sincerely attracted to this girl? So growing up, I was attracted to boys, like, pretty thoroughly. Like, I was attracted to my pediatrician. I was attracted to a little boy who looked like him. I had boyfriends all throughout fourth and fifth grade. But I think after that experience being groomed online, men were just terrifying to me.

And also around that age in sixth grade, you know, the boys started getting more vulgar. Like, I had boys who threatened to rape me. Just awful things. Just at school. Yeah, and they got in trouble. Don't get me wrong. Like, the teachers, when they found out, they were like, no. Like, they shut it down real quick.

But once that's happening, you have those thoughts in your head of what you're supposed to be, and you combine them with this idea of being sexy online. Yeah. And, like, what else are you supposed to think about yourself? So you're going through puberty and you're not only getting groomed online and you kind of realized when you're like 11 that, oh, I am kind of being preyed upon. This is not normal. I'm not sexy. People shouldn't be talking to me like this. And then at school, you're getting basically sexually harassed. And so I'm sure that there was a part of you that was like, oh, it is my femininity doing this.

It is my body, my figure. It is my female identity that is causing these men to prey upon me. And that can be a really kind of scary, uncomfortable feeling when you're just going through. puberty. Oh, it absolutely was. And I was quick to develop too. Every woman in my family has big boobs. And for me, because my family was poor, like we didn't eat well. And so I gained weight faster than my peers and therefore started my period earlier than my peers. And that was really scary too. It was just I didn't look like the other girls in a lot of weight. I played softball. I was a tomboy. My favorite shirt growing up said tomboy on it. And I was really proud of being my coach used to call me her dirt baby. Like I, I, I, I, I, lived in the dirt. And so that was really tough. But I think online, going back to the whole flip

note art thing, I would take these surveys. And I've always loved talking about myself and not like a conceited way, but in like a wisdom way. Like here's what I know about myself. Here's what I've learned. Let's share. Kind of like we're doing right now, right? We're sharing information. And I used to fill out these little surveys that were just fun in games, but parts it would be like, okay, what's your name? How old are you? What's your sexual orientation? I remember being so confused. I think my first exposure to homosexuality was watching Glee when I was in third grade. And what's funny, what's funny about this was I saw Kurt, the main like gay character on Glee. And I was like, Mommy, is he a girl? You know, is that a girl? Like, I don't understand because it's this like really a feminine person with short hair. And what I learned in a developmental psychology class recently is that kids at that age, if you show them a kendall and ask them what the gender is, they're going to say it's a boy. But if you put that kind doll in a ballerina outfit, they're going to say it's a girl. Because at the age they have no concept of sex constancy their idea of boy and girl are stereotypes and that's much how I was and so um growing up like I started to consider like would I be attracted to girls and then

with the whole online thing it wasn't like a real attraction like it wasn't like I was physically attracted to them like going through the the the show and the motions of puberty right um it was more like this is someone I want to be close to and I think that's totally normal for girls and boys at that age to feel you know we only really are around people of our own sex and at that point. It's normal to feel like to want to be close to them. So you're about 11 years old. You start talking to this girl who you said

is about three years older than you. Yeah, 14 and 11. Okay. So she is 14, a little bit older, but still a child herself. And then tell us how that developed and then how that kind of led into you questioning not just your sexuality, but your gender. Oh yeah. So like I said, we FaceTime a lot.

We'd roleplay our original characters together. And all of a sudden, one day she came out to me. What's involved in role playing online? Like, okay, so there's variants of that. Like, I was a part of a Hunger Games role play website that I actually really like.

And that's like long form where you're writing like a sort of like collaborative novel. So that's not what this was. You have like text-based messages where you're sending like almost like a text message back and forth. And that's another thing. But what we were doing was we were drawing. So we would draw and our character would say something. We'd kind of like create this scene.

And the person would reply. draw something and create the other half of the scene. So I can totally see how that would be really fun. It's so fun. And maybe even addicting to a child who is artistic and has found a new friend. But that's how I learned what kissing was. That's how I learned about some of these more lewd concepts because I was role playing with people older than me. And some of them were only like 16.

And that's not that old. I mean, even compared to me today, like I consider 16 year olds babies. But developmentally compared to an 11 year old. That's huge. Oh, it's night and day. Oh, it's night and day. And so with her, she came out as transgender to me and was like, you know, I feel more like a boy. She remember she drew this picture where it's like a pink body but a blue head.

And it was literally like I have a boy's mind and a girl's body. Like these very early concepts of feeling different. But acknowledging that your body's female, right? And I remember thinking, oh my gosh. Yeah. I mean, it made sense to me in the way that I talked about that like Kind doll metaphor. I was like, oh, yeah. Like I like sports.

and I'm kind of like assertive and loud like these super like they're just stereotypes essentially and so from that point I was like you know maybe I'm like non-binary like maybe I'm like a dimmy boy was what I said which was kind of like I'm a boy but I know I'm not fully a boy you knew those terms yeah well through meeting this person and being in this online community then you go on Tumblr and then you have this like you know no dearth of knowledge presented to you of like okay here are the 50 flags you know and so I mean I learned very quickly I mean that's that was my life story is learning quickly and this was no different. I picked up this knowledge like a sponge. I absorbed it. And pretty soon I was

identifying as trans, but again, it was more like a role play thing. It was more like a role I was taking on. But it didn't really translate over to my real life very well, other than wanting short hair, but I was a catcher in softball. I wanted short hair for a different reason. Yeah. Okay. So what happened from there? You said that it was more role playing, but when did it become public? When did you start talking about being trans? Yeah. So my childhood school district was K through six, seven through nine, and 10 through 12. And so when I reached seventh grade, which is shortly after when I began identifying as transgender, I was in a new school. I actually transferred to a magnet junior high. So I was no longer with the peers I had grown up with. I was taking Arabic classes and I was an orchestra. And I thought there's this whole new peer group. I want to go by a different name. So at the time I went by Colin, and it was, again, just friends calling me a different name, trying to get teachers too, but the teachers were kind of like, no, like we're going to go by what's on the roster.

Not like a mean way, but kind of like kids do silly stuff all the time. I'm not going to call you Skippy, you know. Yeah. And at that time, it was still, it just wasn't as mainstream. It wasn't really a political issue. And this was only 10 years ago. Yeah. This was only 10 years ago.

It was a really political issue in the same way. Yeah. This was before Target even had Pride mark. by the way, like there was nothing. And so going to this new school, like friends started calling me these new names. And I played with a few different names. But then what really happened was I was so I was going and so I was interested in this program that Duke University put on. It was the talent identification program. You would take your SATs in seventh grade. And if you scored well, you could take college courses over the summer or an equivalent to a college course. And I scored in like the 86th percentile at age 12. And I started, um, I started to, you to taking classes in seventh grade. And that was where I was able to be like a boy for three weeks. Like they didn't really question it. It's a university.

It's more liberal. Like a lot of these children come from liberal backgrounds. And also college is a very liberal space. And so taking these classes, it was like my ability to sort of slip away for those three weeks. And I think there was a confounding variable there of just being able to be out of the stress in my home. You know, I was like, oh, I feel so great.

I'm being accepted for my gender identity. But in reality, it was like, I feel so. great, I'm not having to make my dad Kool-Aid. Like, you know, it was, it was that confounding variable at play. Yeah. And so I took these courses over the summer for four years from the summer between seventh and eighth, eighth and ninth, ninth and tenth and tenth and eleventh. And so that was definitely a formative experience for me.

When I came back from that summer camp, I was like, okay, guys, like, I'm a boy. Like, I need to have this feeling. It's like addictive. Like, I need to have this feeling at home. I love being affirmed. Like, it makes me feel right. You know, it's what it just feels right. It's like that sort of like obsessive, compulsive, like it just feels right.

So were you dressing like a boy when you were there? I have short hair. Like I had short hair. I'd wear cargo shorts. I just looked kind of butch. Like it wasn't, I looked like a tall boy. You weren't like chest binding?

No, not until eighth grade. Not until eighth grade. And a friend's mom bought me my first test binder. And I only wore it occasionally. Wow. Yeah. And I only really wore it to summer camp. I didn't wear it a lot, like unless I was cosplaying.

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 cosplaying mom. Like I like cosplaying the boys. The boys are the more interesting characters, but just still true. Like a lot of the girls in anime are sexy and they have these big boobs and like they wear like little to no clothing. Whereas the boys are like leading adventures and like doing fun things and being like well-rounded human beings. And so I mean, I wanted to cosplay boys and that's how my mom was like, okay, like the binders, whatever, you know, which is fine. I mean, like if you want to cosplay a boy, like having a flat chest looks more realistic.

And I think from that point on, like it just became a mixture of me becoming more insistent on it. or about it, but then also my friends seeing how happy I was and I was coming out of my show, but I was also growing up. I was going through puberty, kids find a personality during this age. And so I remember in ninth grade, I buzzed my head, and that was like a big point, because at that point I still kind of had a fringe. It was nice to just be able to self-express how I wanted to at that time. And that's like the biggest thing, was just like if I hadn't have received so much pushback from school personnel, from my mom, for having short hair, for wanting to wear boys' clothes, quote-unquote.

I think it would have been a lot easier for me to envision myself as a girl doing these things instead of having to see being a boy as a prerequisite. So you said that there was pushback? Yeah, like my mom didn't want me to originally cut my hair shorter than my mid-neck. My grandma bought me boys' clothes because I wouldn't shut up about it. And she bought a lot of my clothes because, again, my family was not very well off. Your grandma, as your mom's mom. My mom's mom, yeah.

And she and I have always been really close. Not as much in recent years because I feel like I put my family through the ringer. with my transition. But we're getting there. Like I'm going to see her later today, but she doesn't know yet. So shh. But yeah. And so around age, around ninth grade when I'm transitioning to high school, like the next year, I really started to embody this more. Some of my teachers started calling me by the name I wanted to go by. They started using he, him sparingly. Some of my peers were using he ham. So it was a very, very gradual thing. And how did you feel when people would call you, Colin, or would people would say he him? Yeah, well, I felt like it became a sort of regular thing, I guess. Like it was background noise, but I would notice when people used my given name or used

she her. But I like put up with it. Like my family used my given name. My family used she her. And it wasn't my favorite thing ever. But I also like didn't like, like it wasn't my favorite thing ever to interact with my family. Because I'm like a 13, 14 year old. And I have identity issues. My family is sort of dysfunctional. Like I don't think it was just the transgender thing. but the transgender thing was sort of the mask that everything else laid under. Okay, gotcha. So at this point, was there anyone in your life? Like, I know that you have talked about your mom and your stepdad and then your grandmother on your mom's side.

Were there any family members who were like, yeah, this is great. Or any friends who were like, yes, you are definitely a man and we support you. We should keep going in this direction. So a couple of my family members were like tolerant of it. Like they were like if she wants to make a rainbow purler bead thing at this birthday party, sure. And I had some friends who definitely like I had the friend whose mom bought me in the binder. I had a group of friends within that friend group who were affirmative of me, but more just because they loved me unconditionally, not because it was like an ideological thing.

But so and this is an important sort of not tangent, but an important. part of the story. I didn't meet my dad until I was 15 years old. When I was about 15 years old, I asked my mom like, hey, look, I know I've bugged you about this for as long as I've been sentient of it, but like, where's my dad? What's up with my dad? My stepdad had showed me pictures of my dad and his family previously, and it sort of came off like, okay, well, he has his own family. He doesn't want you. But after bugging her that night, you know, I was 14, 15. I was 15 at this age. or at this point, she was like, okay, fine, here's his last name, you know his first name go. And so I looked him up on Facebook.

I reached out to him and we connected. We did a paternity test and it came back positive. And I found out I had a little sister and a stepmom. And it was amazing in many ways because they were better off than my mom. And so they were able to provide me with things. Like I had one of my first, like, I hate to say this because I had a lot of real Christmases with like my mom and my, my grandma, especially. She really made the magic happen. But like this was the first time where I was with like.

like a mom and a dad and there was a Christmas tree and there was like traditions like Santa would drop off our PJs on Christmas Eve night, you know. And I think. So he kind of did. He embraced you. He embraced me in some ways. Yeah. And after a month of knowing them, I got into a fight with my stepdad, sort of the culmination of the tension that I felt amongst us and especially with him and I as we fought for my mom's attention. And I had like this huge panic attack, like a sort of pseudo manic episode that resulted in me going to the hospital. And in hindsight, I see this as, okay, you just met your biological father, you have all this beef with your stepdad, like obviously something is kind of come to a head, right? But when I went impatient, um, the focus was on my gender.

And not at first. I met with the psychiatrist, uh, who was named in my lawsuit, uh, Dr. Necalapu. And while I was seeing him and being interviewed by him, he asked me, you know, why is your name different on your door than on your sheet on your chart? And I was like, it's just a nickname. Like, it's just a nickname. It's just what I go by. And he was like, you know, like, are you sure? Like, I've heard of some people. And he's looking at me, right? I have like short hair and I'm wearing like a chest binder. And he's like, you know, there's some people who are uncomfortable with their gender. Like, does that sound, you know, does that sound relevant? And I was like, you know, I really want to talk about this. And he's like, but will you tell my mom? He's like, no,

I won't tell your mom. And so I told him like, yeah. I told him like, yeah. I kind of feel like a boy. Like that's why I go by this name. But I said, you promise you won't tell my mom because I don't want to talk to her about this until I'm an adult. And I leave.

And from what I understand, he went behind my back and he told my mom. I remember I was being discharged because it was like depressing in there. And I mean, that's the point. It's a hospital. It's mental hospital. But I was very, like I said,

precocious. And like I was 15. I was 15. Okay. Yeah. And I wanted to just like heal and move on. And I was missing my AP classes, you know? and there was like kids like trying to suffocate themselves with beach balls and it just wasn't a great fit

and so I was like I want to go home and so they were discharging me and as I was leaving they were like hey we're going to have a final meeting with your family um is there anything you don't want to talk about and I said the gender stuff like I don't want to talk to the gender stuff I was really adam about that and the nurse said I think they already know and I was like what do you mean she's like I think they already know and I go to his office and I'm like you told them and he's like yeah and that's when I find out like I my family knows I'm transgender now and according to um my dad and my stepmom my mom kind of sat them down and was like hey look I don't really know what's going on like I thought she was going to be a lesbian at most like I don't understand this wanting to be a boy stuff and so she was like please you know that's not really like do the gender thing let's not really do the new name and the new pronouns like I and she was scared like she didn't really know how to deal with it she don't want to confront it her and I didn't talk about it for another year but within that next year you know my dad and my stepmom they were very hesitant they were like yeah like we don't want to confuse your sister we how old was your sister she was like six like five or six yeah yeah but she kind of picked up on it like she knew that i was like gender non-conforming that they were using they them pronouns because they were trying to compromise like there's this new child they have in their life and they don't know anything about my history they didn't watch me grow up they didn't watch me sort of go through this period of depression and you know a really hard puberty like they get to see me at 15 and things

are at their worst but they're also at their best in many ways like i'm not that you know like i love year old cutting herself anymore right oh you had been cutting yourself yeah i'd been self-harming as a teenager and a lot of that i got from like tumbler and instagram like it wasn't my own idea of like yeah let me do this um it was just all part of like i'm a part of this community yeah i see this person it's like an idea it's like you know you have this feeling of stress and being able to focus all the pain into one point i think is a lot different than having it just sort of radiate through your person and your soul and your spirit you know um and so yeah at that point like i felt at home with my dad my stepmom because they were new.

But I was becoming increasingly alienated from my mom and my stepdad because they just didn't get it. They were more conservative. They, again, had watched me grow up. They just didn't get it. And so I invited all my family to go to this transgender support group I had found in Fort Worth, Texas, about a year later. And my mom went, and she was bugged out by it.

Like, she was like, this feels kind of cultish. Like, there was in this support group three different sections. there was a section for transgender children, there was a section for transgender adults, and there was a section for like significant others, family friends, and allies. And again, my mom, she just felt pressured to think a certain way.

And so she refused to go after that point. Like she was like, I love you. Like I cornered her in her car to come out to her to make her go to this thing. And she still kind of pushed back and was like, I love you. But like, I don't want to go to another one of those meetings. Like it's not healthy for me. But I convinced my dad and my stepmom to go

and they made fast friends with the people. people there. And I don't like I don't blame them at all because they were faced with this really difficult child and they're raising a freaking like five or six year old. Like that's hard enough in and in of itself. But to kind of be faced with this problem child and to have this solution presented, like I have a lot of empathy for that. And in the support group, there was a nurse practitioner who was named in my lawsuit, Perry, who was prescribing hormones to a lot of the people who would go to this group. There was a therapist who I didn't see, but who did virtually the same thing, like gave people referrals, talked to them about gender stuff. But in that support group,

like, it was, it was awful. Like, we would have in the kids group discussions over self-harm. We'd have discussions over, like, our relationships, our turbulent relationships. You'd have discussions over being furries, over being anime characters. Like, our identities were a little bit everywhere. And this is 2017. This is 2018. 18. Yeah, 2018, 2019. And, And I made a lot of friends in that group. Like there were some sane people and I'm sure like a lot of them have grown up to be somewhat functional adults. Like I had been acquaintances with some of them up until recently. But it was definitely like looking back on it a very dark place to be because there was this sort of air of acceptance and celebration.

But also a lot of us were talking about things that had sort of once been quarantined to the internet and were now being spoken of in this very real way. And I think that that was a bridge for me in it going from being this sort of imaginary thing, having that medicalization that made it real. And then on top of that, going to the support group that made it real. And having a connection to a medical professional who prescribing hormones, like, that's the realest thing. This thing that I thought I wouldn't even get until I was 18 is now being offered to me at 16 or 17 instead. Abigail Schreier wrote the book, Bad Therapy, and she talks about how these, like, support groups for young kids can very often. make things worse because there's like a one-uping environment.

There's a normalization of things that were previously rightly stigmatized. And there is kind of this celebration of different kinds of fantasies and identities that can lead to harmful outcomes. And you're kind of saying that it seemed to push you in the direction of getting hormone treatment, as it's called, because you were presented with this person who would do it, right? and you said that you were 16, 17, 17 when you started testosterone? Yeah, I was.

And this wasn't my first experience with bad therapy, which I think is actually the title of her new book. Yeah. I had been in this sort of alternative charter school environment where we had an outpatient support group at the end of every school day. And that was where I was leading up to me being hospitalized. And this family friend of mine who I'd grown up with, like we were, she was literally in the hospital when I was born, we were a year and 13 days apart.

She had gone to the hospital around the same time. And her mom kind of pointed out like this is a trend. Like you both went to the hospital because it makes you look good to your classmates. And I mean, all things considered like, it was a very real distress that I was feeling. But it was misplaced. Like a lot of it was because of the environment. And I think both things can be true that it can be environmental and real. So yeah, no, definitely difficult.

That support group was. And that's like I said, where I met Perry. And around age 17, my mom, I'd met. So backtracking a little bit. at age 16, I had gone to an anime convention and I met this girl who was in the same cosplay as me. We were cosplaying the same character and we became quick friends. She's actually my current partner.

And we at the time hit it off because we were both trans men and we were both at the same homeschool but different state variations of it. We were both in Girl Scouts. And when we met and started. of talking online afterwards, it was very similar to that support group insofar that we were feeding off of each other. I would go to visit her because we were both kind of homeschooled. It was like an online charter, so school at home, but not quite homeschool. We'd go to visit each other every two weeks. I'd go to visit her, and then she'd come to visit me two weeks later,

and then COVID-19 happened. And I, for all intents and purposes, was stuck in Oklahoma. I didn't know what was going to go on back home. I didn't, frankly, want to be stuck. back home with the whole transgender tension with my mom, not being able to really leave the house because of lockdown. Not that Texas is very locked down, but you get what I mean. And so this girl and I, again, both identifying as boys at the time were making cosplays and staying up all day and getting into fights and just like, you know, everything that teenage girls do, except, again, we thought we were men. And she eventually, and she having a very bad home life, like was living with Godparents because her parents are just not great people.

She convinced her family to let her start testosterone. And I became very sad by that. I became very jealous by that. I wanted two to start testosterone. And while I previously kind of relegated myself to, okay, I'll start it when I'm 18 and like I'll be fine. And again, there was not, I think, the same suicide rhetoric as there is today regarding waiting until you're an adult to start these sort of interventions.

Today it's like kids aren't going to survive until they turn 18. But like I being one of those kids, like I would have been okay. okay, but because she was starting it at 17, I wanted to start it at 17. And so a week after she started testosterone, I guilt tripped my mom into allowing me to start testosterone too. And my mom at this point was terrified that she was going to lose contact with me, was thinking, well, she's going to start it when she's 18 anyways, and just sort of wanted to keep the peace. Yeah. And so I think that was a really, really tough decision for her. She didn't want anyone to know for a long time. I don't know that she really wants anyone to know today, but I don't think you can place blame on her. And

the way that some of these other parents, I think create identities for their kids at like ages two and four. Like my mom had this teenager who was a troubled teenager who had run away from home with the COVID pandemic. And, you know, I started testosterone and became very distant from her. So it kind of had the opposite effect because I was affirmed more in this transgender identity rather than challenged in it. I want to go back to one thing that might seem kind of like a tangent, but it's just a pattern that I see so often that very typically people who identify as transgender, either male or female, there is in their past some kind of heavy involvement in anime. Is it what do you think that is?

I mean, we've kind of looked at it on this show, but why do you think there seems to be a tie there? Well, this is a lovely question, Allie, because when I met you in person for that first time at the I side conference. Yeah. He'd a lot of things to say about pornography. And I think that that's the tie to anime and how anime is tied to the transgender movement is because anime is super pornographed. Like I was saying earlier, the women all have huge boobs, male, or skimpy little outfits, and the men are these like hypermasculine, like either they're hypermasculine or they're boys, right? And I think that's the connection here, is this hypersexualization. And when you take that into consideration with the rest of our society, anime is a more palatable way to interact with that.

It's the fantasy. It's the escape that a lot of these kids desire out of role-playing. But I think also, also, it's a little bit more close to some of these, like, sexual tropes that we see in the real world, at least compared to like regular cartoons. Like, there are a little bit more of that. It's like you have cartoons here and you have real life here. Anime is kind of a bridge between the two. Okay, gotcha. You started testosterone when you were 17 and then what happened from there? So I kept going. So after I started the testosterone, I kept going to the support group for a period of time before lockdown ruined that. I started testosterone two months before COVID lockdown happened.

So in January and then, you know, lockdown was in March. And while living with my girlfriend at the time, we were getting, I talked about us having fights before. They were more like teenage like fights. We were getting into like fights. Like we were getting loud and violent. I was keeping track. I have these videos in my phone still where I'd be like one day on tea, one week on tea, two weeks on tea.

Like I was keeping track of my testosterone changes obsessively. And that's where I think a lot of the root came down to for me was a sort of obsessive compulsive nature in 2018. So backtracking a few years. I underwent a neuropsych evaluation. And in addition to the ADHD that I've been diagnosed with since age seven, I was diagnosed with autism inspection disorder level one, major depressive, generalizing anxiety,

and also a DSM code that was social exclusion and rejection, which is actually a diagnosis that we've seen a lot of people who end up acting out. And sometimes more of the extreme ways, like school shooters, have. And obviously I wasn't violent in that way, but I was, like, I was lonely. And I was dysfunctional due to that loneliness and due to being that weird kid. I'm way more functional today. I'd like to think.

Like I can look you in the eyes and I can communicate well. But I still have a lot of burnout. And I struggle to conceptualize like social norms. So you were saying that you were getting in these fights with your girlfriend. Y'all were both on testosterone at the time. Yeah. Do you think that the testosterone, which, you know, increases sex drive and makes people more aggressive? Do you think that that played into the increasing violence?

and the anger that you were feeling towards each other. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I do think that it contributed to all of these things. I know that for me, like I went from, I mean, because of the sexual abuse that I endured, having like no sex drive to the first time I ever had sex, like, crying because I was just so dissociated and scared and, like, you know, like didn't know how to be in my body to having sex like every day. And it was definitely this lustful thing driven by the testosterone.

because my girlfriend and I's relationship wasn't emotionally intimate. Like we connected over our trauma and our shared life experiences, and that's part of what I think keeps us so close today. But it was definitely the sort of dissociated interaction. And I can say that like up until that point, I never really had anyone that close. Like I had friends here and there, but the relationships would always end up disastrous

because I couldn't let people get close. I don't know how to get close. Oftentimes the people I was attracted to, whether that be in friendship or otherwise, couldn't let people get close, didn't know how to get close. And so, yeah, the testosterone was awful. And that's ultimately what led to us separating later that year was the testosterone induced sort of rage. And again, you're being dissociated from your body because you're pumping your body full of hormones that your body doesn't typically have at that level.

Yeah. And really can't handle in a healthy way because the female body's not supposed to have that much testosterone. No, absolutely not. And we, I mean, we experienced that. Like, even today, both of us have detransitioned. We have a no dearth of consequences from being on the testosterone. Like I know she still suffers a lot with vaginal atrophy. For me, that's gotten a lot better, but I struggle with a lot of pain. Like I had to, and this might be a little TMI, but to be more intimate with you, like I had to go, when I went to go get my pap smear for the first time, because I'm 21 years old, right? I found out that I had like cysts on my clitoris because of the testosterone. And that was never disclosed to me as a possible complication.

And I thought, like, I was like, what the heck are these? And my doctor at first was like, I don't really know. And I went in. And she went on forums and found out that other transgender people were getting this complication. She couldn't even find it in medical literature. She had to go into forums online. Oh, okay. It's like medical forums where doctors kind of share what's going on with their patients.

But I was like sitting here like it's so common that it's on, it's discussed on a medical forum in several spots, but not common enough for it to be disclosed in my informed consent. Right. Right. And like my informed consent was awful for the record. Like informed consent, but like what does that mean to someone who has this sort of issue with impulsivity that I had who struggles with like comprehending like complex instructions like I do? Really wasn't consent at all in my opinion. Yeah. And talk about your double mastectomy because you started on the hormones when you were 17. You got your breast removed when you were 19. Yes. Okay. So tell us about that. Why did you feel like you had to do that? And then what was that experience like during and after?

So after I separated from my girlfriend, I was starting college. And I wasn't really, I didn't take like a gender theory class. I know some people do. I didn't. But I was in this environment at this point, right, had my name and my gender marker changed or my name my sex marker changed. and it was starting to become more real to me having been in that in that support group the idea of getting a mastectomy because there was 15 year olds who had mastectomies in that support group and I remember at the time feeling very envious of them just as I'd been envious of my girlfriend but also kind of amazed that this was a possibility like it's not just some random person who's really lucky on the internet it's like someone that is in my community where I'm from you know less than 30 minutes away from me And so because of COVID-19, I was getting stipends from the school that were supposed to use for living expenses, but I was living at home. And so all of a sudden, I had like, you know, like 5K.

And it became very real to me in this, the possibility of getting a surgery. And I was also seeing a therapist at the time who had a trans ex-husband. She's actually also named my lawsuit, Barbara Wood. And she, I felt like affirmed me without any sort of question. And it even seemed at times that there was this projection of her failed marriage onto me and my relationship because she was a lot of who coached me and leaving my ex was sort of making my ex out to be this like big scary narcissist. And my ex had some mental illness. Don't get me wrong. Like she definitely struggled because she came from a bad background was also trans identified and had all the baggage that came with that.

but she was projecting this like 40, 50 year old man onto my 17, 18 year old female partner. It's a totally different ballgame. 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. And there were some external motivators. Like some people in my life were sort of sharing forums with me of people getting top surgery. 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. It was nice to think about being able to just like go topless. And that's something that a lot of women I've spoken to who are in this sort of fight have talked to me about whether 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. So that's a pretty common, a pretty common struggle. But 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. And although I was seeing one of his trainees, one of the people he had trained Dr. Ashley DeLeon, who was also named in my lawsuit, this was his clinic and his practices. And we all kind of know at this point what Dr. Crane and his practice is like. So I met with Ashley Dayleon over the phone,

and I had talked about some of my goals. Like I didn't want, like I wanted to have, more rounded scars so it would look more natural. 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. And a lot of them, it was really interesting, had flat chest, right? But they had these more rounded scars and they would wear like more feminine clothing. So in hindsight, I see them now, and this is a very interesting parallel as not appearing so

much like a man, but appearing like a prepubescent girl or a boy. 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. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. 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. Oh, yeah. And also being able to maybe get back some of that childhood that you wish you had gotten for longer.

Like I think for me, I mean, being sort of parentified and a caregiver for my stepdad and then also being sexualized that young age, like I didn't get the childhood that I needed until I met my dad and my stepmom. And that's something that I'm so thankful for in them was I was able to grow up alongside my sister. 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. I really got to be that child that I wish I had gotten to be when I was younger through them. Yeah. Okay. So you got the double mastectomy or you did the consultation that she said was $200. And then you got the double mastectomy.

Tell me like what that experience was like. Yeah. So I went down to Austin to backtrack just a little bit. A week before my double mastectomy, I went in for my pre-op appointment. And I didn't wear a binder or a bra. I just wore like a really big, a really big polo shirt. And I went and I actually remember. I walked around Austin downtown afterwards.

I thought I was going to go straight there and straight back because I'm not wearing anything to hide my chest. But I actually felt really comfortable. And that's kind of where I was talking about like not having to wear that brawl was sort of liberating. But so just a little side note. Yeah. But then when I went down to Austin for my mastectomy, everything was normal that morning. I put on my two knee braces and my compression socks because my legs were like torn apart from the testosterone. It felt like.

Wow. I didn't know that that was a. Yeah. I was at that point in my life. this is maybe a big thing to gloss over. I was on like 11 different medications. I was on some pretty serious inseds. I'd been on like three different kinds at that point.

I was on medicine for my thyroid. I was on medicine for anxiety, medicine for depression, medicine for ADHD, I think. And you had been on the medication for ADHD for a long time. But I had stopped taking it in junior high. So I resumed taking it in 10th grade. And that's actually when a lot of my feeling my mental illness came to a head was around when I started taking stimulants.

once again, which is so funny. That's so funny. That's another thing that, yeah, we've discussed some, which is controversial to talk about, 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, when, in fact, as you pointed out, it could have been a response to the turbulence of your childhood. Or even just being a child. Yeah, just being a child. That can, lead people down this pipeline of medicalizing all kinds of emotions on the spectrum of human feeling. And yeah, that can have some really, really adverse outcomes and does for a lot of young people.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I know that it did for me. And so for whatever reason, maybe related to these medications, maybe not, we don't really know. I bled really badly after my surgery. 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. And my stepmom who was taking care of me, bless her during this time. Um, and I became very concerned. And we sent photos or we like contacted the emergency line for the clinic.

And we're like, we see some pretty bad bruising. Um, you know, what's up with this? And they asked to send photos. And Dr. Santucci, who is also named in my lawsuit, called me and he was like bruising is normal like it's a normal side effect um and he knew that i was obsessive compulsive and so he was like just keep track of how the color changes which was actually a really great piece of advice because that's what i did and so when i went to my post stop appointment and they took off the bandages and they removed the bolsters that were keeping my nipples pressed on to my chest um i remember the nurse saying i've never seen bruising like this before but she didn't go get a doctor.

And everyone was just very awkward. I don't know if the air was anxious or what. 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. And I remember they were trying to reassure me, but they too, I could tell they were concerned. And so we went home. And per the advice of Dr. Santucci, I began to keep track of my chest. I took photos every day.

I noted how the color changed. You posted some of these photos on Twitter. Yeah. And despite him saying they should be getting lighter, they should go from purple to green to yellow to gone. They were getting darker. They were going from purple to dark purple to black in some spots. And I reached out to the nurse, the nurse line, again, by email. And I told them like, hey, the bruising is getting worse.

She said it was going to be getting better. I looked up the bruising that was now appearing in my flanks that wasn't present on my post-stop appointment, and I found out it was called Gray Turner sign. It's indicative of—oh, pardon me. It's indicative of abdominal bleeding. And she said, as if she had not even read my email with a hint of care, breathing should be getting better. Let us know if it's not, even though that's exactly what I had messaged her to say. And so at that point, I continued taking photos.

And then it kind of came to a head later that month when I was becoming feverish and the bruising, like I felt like I had breasts again. The bruising was so bad and the swelling was so bad. Yeah. And again, my sides were like plum purple. Like my sides were like bad. Yeah. And so I call the helpline again. It takes me like an hour and a half, if I recall correctly, to get a hold of anyone.

At several points, I felt forgotten. despite my sort of distress. And when I finally got on the phone with 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? What's wrong? And I told him, like, you know, I'm immunocompromised.

At the time I was having all these health issues, I was seeing a rheumatologist. And we didn't really know it was wrong. I told him I'm immunocompromise. And he goes, what do you mean by that? And I said, I just have some health issues. Like I have like a gluten intolerance and like these things that were just kind of unidentified

that usually points to an, an autoimmune disorder. And he was like, no. Immunacompromised means like HIV or AIDS. And so that was his first sort of disregarding of me. But afterwards, he was like, okay, well, whatever, send me photos. And so I send him, I go to send him the photos and I go, what's the phone number? And he goes, is it not right in front of you?

And there was a caller ID. So I go, no, it's not. Can I please have the phone number? I send them to him. And he says, and this is the most incredible thing. I don't see what's wrong here. what's wrong here? And at that point, I'm kind of hysterical.

Like, I'm like, what do you mean? Like, it looks like I have boobs again. Like, it's bad. And I go, I want to be seen. And he asks, what do you mean by seen? I'm thinking he probably thinks I mean like seen and validated. But I mean, no, I want to be seen in the clinic. Right.

Something's wrong. Right. He goes, I guess I can get you in tomorrow. Yeah. I can get you tomorrow. If you want to come down to Austin. I'm at this point, I'm like, I'm expecting in my ideal, like, come down to the hospital. We get you checked out right now.

You know, but no. I'm just kind of like an afterthought. If he can squeeze me in, I believe is what he said. Right. And so I hang up. I go in to tell my mom, and I'm like, again, very, like, hysterical at this point. But getting more calm and more confident. And I told my mom, I'm going to the hospital.

I'm going to go to UT Southwestern in Dallas. I know they have a surgeon who performs these kind of surgeries there and hopefully I'll get taken care of. And so that's where I go. I spend eight hours in the hospital there in the ER because no one wants to take my case. The in-house top surgeon doesn't want to take my case. and ultimately breast oncology agrees to take my case, but not until like 6 a.m. And so that was probably one of the best group of women or people period that I've ever worked with. They were so kind.

They were like baffled at how it got to this point because I had a drainless surgery. And if anyone knows anything about mastectomies, they're not drainless. But I believe that drainless has taken off in the transgender community specifically because it's less real than a drain mastectomy or a mastectomy with drains. Because with the mastectomy with drains, you have to like unscrew the blood. That's pulled and you have to dump it out. Whereas with the drain free, ideally, you're just bandaged up and then you're unbandaged and you're good to go. There's not a lot of fanfare.

There's not a lot of graphic. And that's actually why my girlfriend didn't get a mastectomy herself was because she couldn't deal with the blood. That drove her away. But for me, I was so dissociated from my body. It didn't, like, it didn't faze me. Yeah. So when they eventually saw me, the breast oncologist, they cut open my scar.

cars. They drained as much liquid as possible and they stuck a Q-tip in there. And of course, my chest was numb, but I'm like wide awake for all of this and knocked out all the blood clods. And then they had me for the next week bind foam blocks to my chest and I had to go across my chest and just push the blood out. And so I would stand in the shower, watch the blood go down my leg. It was pretty graphic. Okay. This is after your ER experience, like after you go in there and the breast oncologist team helps you out. Yeah. So after that is. They drains in. I was about to say, so they were like, yeah, you need drains to get the blood out.

And it's actually, they're called pinrose drains. They're one of the, if I recall correctly, oldest forms of drains there. Like, they're like archaic. Yeah. And that's all it took to get my chest flat. Like I literally walked to the hospital and there's photos of me actually on my X thread where I'm like smiling and my chest is like flat. I have the drains kind of peeking out.

And the reason I'm so ecstatic is because for the first time since my surgery, my chest is actually flat. And it's like night and day. Like there's no questioning that my chest was not supposed to look. Well, A, supposed to look like any of this because I should have been intact. But B, supposed to look like how it did prior to me going to the ER. Like, again, I looked like I had boobs again. I remember I think the worst comment I ever got on X was someone calling me zombie tits.

So, I mean, I take them as they come. But, I mean, that's kind of what they looked like. So a little bit more about like your back and forth with this center. They made you sign something. They made you sign the like the settlement agreement because you asked for compensation. for your ER visit, right? Yeah. Because it was so much money and obviously it was because of their dereliction that you had to go back in and get these drains.

And so what was that like? Like at the crane center, were they helpful at all to you or not really? No, not at all. It was awful, actually. So if they had just treated me from the moment I had messaged them about my complications, it would have just been like a $20 out of pocket fee, right? Going to the ER though, it was thousands of dollars, thankfully my end. insurance covered part of it so it was only $400 out of pocket but yeah I did ask them like hey look

I'm really disappointed by how you guys handled this you've been evading me for a long time now and it came to this really nasty ugly head and so I did ask them to compensate me for the ER visit for my my co-pay for my I think my co-insurance lecture was called it anyways to compensate me for what I had to pay out of pocket for my ER visit and they were trying to get me to sign a non-disparagement agreement so I couldn't do like what I'm doing today and talk to you about what happened to me. And of course, I, being smart was like, okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, what have you done to make sure this isn't going to happen to anybody else?

Like, I want to know what you learned about, like, what you learned from the situation. And they ghosted me after that. They did not get back to me. I wouldn't sign their paperwork. And I still have not, like, I have not, I get emails from them occasionally inviting me to transgender support groups, like Zoom links. But, like, otherwise, I haven't heard a damn thing. Wow.

Oh, my goodness. So how much was all of this? How much was the mastectomy and then everything after, even the parts that were covered by insurance? So, wow, I think, so for me, and this is a whole other can of worms, I haven't even gotten the opportunity to open yet. But initially they wanted me to pay self-pay in order to, and pardon me if the details are blurry, because it's been a while since I had to think about this.

But they wanted me to pay self-pay while they fought to get an, in-network exception for my mastectomy. So they were out of network, but they said they have like a 90% success rate, if I recall correctly, for getting insurance to cover it like it were in network instead. And so I went ahead with that. I paid the $5,500 out-of-pocket self-pay, and they said they would reimburse me when they got coverage. Well, they couldn't convince my insurance, even after an appeal, even after two appeals, if I remember correctly, to cover me in network. And so ultimately, they ended up reimbursing me, I think, only like $700, even though my out-of-pocket maximum was $4,500. And again, I paid them $5,500. So I should have at least gotten $1,000 back because that was

the max. I was just to pay out of pocket. But what they ended up doing was they charged my insurance $21,000. And then deducted my co-insurance from what I had paid self-pay. Wow. Insane. There's a lot of money to be made at centers like this and very little financial incentive for them to follow up with you and help you or help their patients after their surgeries were botched. So tell us about the lawsuit. Yeah. So I am working with Campbell Miller Payne out of Dallas, Texas. The first lawsuit to be formed to fight these cases specifically. and it's been a really hard fight, but a really good one, like a one that really, I think, soothes the soul. So the lawsuits focus is the psychiatrist from my inpatient visit, the nurse practitioner who prescribed me hormones, the therapist who treated me during this time and authored my mastectomy letter, and the doctors involved with the Crane Center,

as well as the facilities that each of these individuals worked for. And the therapist who authored your letter to say that, yeah, she needs to get a mastectomy. Are you suing her for basically not doing her job thoroughly enough? Essentially, yes. She lied throughout the letter that she wrote for me. And that letter on which she lied is what ultimately opened the gate for me to get the mastectomy, yes. Okay, gotcha. And then everyone else is kind of being sued for just not doing their jobs thoroughly.

Yeah. I mean, that's the reason for a lawsuit like this. Yeah, I mean, it's medical malpractice. The hormone provider did not provide me with adequate informed consent, should not have given me the hormones to begin with. And the surgeons, I mean, we just talked about this in depth. Like, they really dropped the ball. Not just in giving me the surgery, but doing such an awful job with the aftercare and with being aware of how my body. was reacting to this very invasive procedure.

Yeah. Oh, my goodness. And what's the latest in the lawsuit? So early on in the case, the judge ordered that everyone stopped working on the case for a period of 60 days to give one of the new defendants time to catch up. During this period of 60 days, an important procedural deadline came and went. And one of the defendants, Perry, the nurse practitioner, argued that because the deadline had passed that the case needed to be, dismissed. Now, the judge, having ordered the 60-day abatement period, didn't really know how to rule on this. And so he dismissed the case in order to get some guidance from the appellate court. Now, with Wood, similar to Perry, the judge needed guidance from the appellate court on how to calculate the statute of limitations for a novel case like mine where the awareness of the negligence came considerably after the negligence occurred. So in both situations, it's just a procedural dismissal. And as soon as we get a judgment and some guidance passed down from the appellate court,

everything should resume without a hitch. Okay. Gotcha. Wow. And what is your feeling? Are you hopeful about this? Yeah, I'm hopeful. Like, I'm not in it for the money.

Like, I'm in it because I know that there are countless others like me. I know people who are like me who either their statute of limitation has run out or they want to stay private because of some of the backlash that I faced, you know, they would face the same. And so I'm doing it for everyone but me in many ways. Like I already have peace in myself. I don't need the courts to prove to me that what happened to me was wrong. But it sure does help make the world a better place. And I was a Girl Scout for so long.

It's like part of our promise and our law. Well, I'm hopeful and I'm prayerful about it. And I'm thankful for you. because, you know, you didn't have to do it, would have been easier for you probably in a lot of ways just to say, that's, you know, in the past. I don't need to be involved in this anymore. Oh, yeah. It would have been way easier, but I don't think that what's right is always the easy thing. You know, the right thing isn't always the easy thing. Right. Yep, that's very true. And you mentioned the couple times that we've talked,

you mentioned that you've been reading your Bible recently, and that's kind of a more recent development I'm right? Yeah, no, it absolutely is. I was raised non-denominational Christian, and the church was an awful place for me. Like, it was loud and very political. And it, I think, did a good job meeting people where they're at. But for me, I have always been very no BS, like very spiritual, more than I am religious. And so recently, I've gotten back into prayer. Like, I actually read Matthew recently. Like, I was in adoration with my friend recently committed to the Catholic Church, or that's not the right way to say it, recently confirmed in the Catholic Church. And I read it while I was in there and it just like really touched me. Like I didn't, this is going to get kind of dorky. Like I didn't realize like

how awful like Judas was. Like I know he's like bad, but I didn't like realize that he sold Jesus for like 30 silver. Like it's just like I don't know. I get like I have this very like childlike curiosity about God. And I don't really know where I fall in terms of the label that I want to use, but I definitely follow Jesus. And I definitely, like, I believe in God and I believe that what I'm doing is godly. And I believe in, like, living a virtuous life. And, well, the, the cool thing is, is that we are actually called by Jesus to have a childlike faith. And so there's definitely no shame in that. There's, you know, that's a good thing. That is an honorable thing to have a child like curiosity about scripture. And you'll see that the more you read scripture, the more questions

you have. Oh, yeah. Yes, the more understanding you have. But also, the, the, more curiosity that you need to be satiated because, I mean, God is limitless and his word has so much in it. And so I'm excited for you. And do you have, do you have a Bible? I do. I have a couple of them. I think I have a King James version and then I think I have an American Standard version, but I've been reading it on my phone lately because then I can read it anywhere. Like I think that's the best thing. I definitely have Bible apps on my phone. I'm going to get you an ESB study Bible because it like changed my life. That's what I've been reading on my phone.

Oh, you have a ESV version. Oh, I love that. Okay, you got to get the study Bible because for me, it just answered so many questions. I can read a verse. And I'm like, wait, what the heck does that mean? That sounds like really weird word choice. And then I can go down to the notes. Yeah, that was my thing.

I was trying to figure out the ages and Genesis. And I have like so many theories. Yeah. No, it's great. I just love the Bible so much. And I love that you're reading the Bible. And it's very clear that the Lord is speaking to you and is. using you and your courage is contagious and I hope it just lights a fire that changes things

for the better. So thank you so much and God bless you. And is there any last thing that you want to say before we close out? Not really. Just thank you for having me on. I am happy to be here and I'm happy to be having conversations with such a diversity of people and like true diversity, like ideological diversity. Because I think that that's how the best things happen in life. And I'm is by surrounding yourself with as much knowledge as possible. That's why I'm reading the Bible. It's why I've, you know, I've grown in my faith recently. It's just like I think part of having faith is having faith in man, like having faith in people.

And I think that's how you find faith in God. Well, is there any way that people can support you? I can support this lawsuit. I mean, if you see me, say hi. I don't really have a social media presence. I have a Twitter or I have an ex, but I don't like, I don't really. use it because I'm not a social media girlie. But I don't know.

Just like keep me in your prayers and your thoughts and just do the right thing. Like be open to people. Like don't be scared of transgender people. Talk to as many transgender people as you talk to detransgender people because I think that we like knowledge really is power and the more empathy you have, the more compassionate you can be. And I think that and I've said it before, compassion doesn't always mean letting people walk all over you.

sometimes the compassionate thing is setting firm boundaries. So, yeah, just be a human. Well, thank you so much, Sorin. I really appreciate it.