Facing life in wrong body leads to botched castration

[Dave (imported)]

>>>>This article appeared in today's newspaper (Post Gazette, Sunday, Sep 28, 2003 - - - It enlightens the previous story. I think the reporter is realloy quite compassionate.<<<<<

Facing life in wrong body leads to botched castration

Sunday, September 28, 2003

By Ann Belser, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

http://www.post-gazette.com/localnews/2 ... 0928p5.asp

Catherine Watson's desire is so simple. "I just want to be normal," she said.

Normal, however, is an elusive goal for her, and for many others like her.

Watson, 45, of McKeesport, was born a boy. By 9 years old, she said, she knew her gender was wrong and started to dress in girl's clothing. She switched schools and her records from male to female. She never matured as a man: She has neither a protruding Adam's apple nor facial hair, but she did still have male sex organs.

Her desire to remove those last vestiges of her masculine identity led her to botched castration surgery performed in her home two weeks ago by a man who passed himself off as a doctor. He has been charged with aggravated assault for the incident which nearly killed her.

The often-frantic drive by transsexuals for a sex-change operation is well-understood by Randi Ettner, a psychologist in Illinois and the author of the book "Confessions of a Gender Defender: A Psychologist's Reflections on Life Among the Transgendered."

"I think everybody who has this condition feels desperate," she said.

Dr. Sheila Kirk, the research director of Persad Center, a counseling service that caters to gay, lesbian and transgendered clients, said the fact that Watson was able to overlook clues that the man who performed the surgery was not who he said he was shows how anxious she was to have the procedure done.

"This is an individual who needs to be looked at with a measure of concern and consideration," Kirk said. "She's not ... trying to do anything but put herself in a better place."

Transgendered people typically know as children they are in the wrong bodies, but when they start to act as the person who they really feel they are, they are usually shamed back into their gender roles, Ettner said.

"It's a terrible, terrible, constant, horrible, shameful secret," she said. It also leads to isolation and loneliness.

"They cannot have a best friend, because you tell your best friend everything," Ettner said. "It's just torture to feel so different."

Ettner describes Watson as a primary transsexual: Someone who knew at a very early age that her body did not conform to her self-image.

For Watson, one of the most upsetting aspects of the recent ordeal is that she has been referred to as a man in the police report and news accounts.

"I'm legally a female," she said. Her name has been legally changed and her driver's license reflects that she is a woman. She will not say the name that her parents gave her when she was born a boy, saying that he is gone and she is Cathy now.

Watson grew up in California. Her sister, Terri, was a hermaphrodite who committed suicide when she was 28 years old.

According to Watson, the two girls and their mother had been abandoned by their father, who told them he didn't want to live with "a bunch of freaks." Her mother remarried and had two other daughters from whom Watson is now estranged.

She was working, most recently as a waitress and pizza delivery person, but has lost both those jobs. She's afraid she will not work again as long as people recognize her from this experience.

She's just under 5 feet, 10 inches tall, and slightly heavy at 187 pounds, with long, strawberry blond hair and glasses. To help with her appearance, she has had makeup tattooed to her lips, eyes and eyebrows.

She had previously scheduled sexual reassignment surgery at a Pittsburgh hospital, she said, but did not have enough money to cover the full $17,000 fee.

Then one morning in July, she caught sight of herself, naked in the mirror, her body not matching the person she knew herself to be.

"I broke down. I started crying," she said. "I didn't want to live like this anymore." She put a notice on an Internet bulletin board seeking anyone who could help her.

Doug Lenhart answered her plea.

He told her he was a doctor, she said, who was licensed in Kansas but not in Pennsylvania.

"I wanted this so bad," she said. "He got me totally at ease."

Watson said he gave her his home telephone number and she talked to a woman who said she was his wife.

First she thought she was going to a day surgery center, then a hotel, then he told her he would perform the procedure in her home, she said.

"As far as I knew, he was a doctor, just not licensed in Pennsylvania," she said.

He took her money, $200 with the promise of $600 later in payments, she said. "I almost backed out of it, but he offered me something that I needed."

On Sept. 12, they set up a makeshift operating room. Watson sat in her dining room on a club chair that had been draped in plastic. The surgical tools were laid out on a table.

Lenhart numbed the area and started to cut. "I kept going in and out of consciousness because of the pain," she said. She also was bleeding profusely.

That's when her partner, who was there to support her, called for an ambulance. Lenhart, she said, grabbed his stuff and left before the police or an ambulance could arrive.

She spent the next two days at UPMC Presbyterian.

"It never would have crossed my mind that this man would lie to me and tell me he was a doctor," she said.

McKeesport police have charged Lenhart with aggravated assault, reckless endangerment and unauthorized practice of medicine. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for Oct. 6.

Lenhart's attorney, James Wymard, did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

For transsexuals contemplating any level of sexual reassignment surgery, cost can be a huge factor, Ettner said.

"If you're a transsexual, you have to be a rich transsexual. You have to have electrolysis. You have to have [psychiatric] therapy. You have to have surgery, and all of these procedures are cash dependent," she said. The surgery is not covered by health insurance because it is deemed to be cosmetic surgery. For some transsexuals, it can add up to $45,000.

The International Foundation for Gender Education, based in Waltham, Mass., estimates there are nearly 2,000 sexual reassignment surgeries performed each year.

Watson still wants to complete her sexual reconstruction. She also wants her life to calm down.

"I want to heal. I want this to be over with. I want the final surgery."

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Ann Belser can be reached at abelser@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1699.

[Bboy]

Does anyone know if the unnamed "internet message board" is the Archive??? I have never heard anyone say one way or the other.

[trixie (imported)]

well it only goes to show how carefull we must be, what horible man . tho he dont deserve to draw breath, he really left her to die, i can only say how i feel she needs a friend , but who would you! trust after that, trix

[Paolo]

Yeah, well, every single member - except maybe ONE - of the modern day medical community is just as much to blame for this at the "cutter" himself. If these overpaid fools would LISTEN to their patients and not think they're worth so much money in bills, maybe things like this wouldn't happen.

But then Lexus and Cadillac stocks would drop.

I think I'll go over next door tomorrow at work and slug Doc right in the mouth just for good measure.

[luvpain (imported)]

Yeah, The medical community needs to change their act and get things in gear.

I'm still dealing with insurance for a forced stay in Hospital. I still can't agree to pay $335 to a ER Doctor that didn't do anything but ask me questions for less than 15 minutes and call me insane when I had a bad reaction to some medicine.

[sag111 (imported)]

I have to agree with Paolo for the most part the medical comunty has not and will not listen to thair patients.Why is it that only one doctor in the country will listen to us and help thoes in need of castration.Why do thay make people like the one in this artical seek unqualified people to help them when thoes same doctors turn thair backs on them and call them nut cases.I feel it is because thay feel everyone should be like everyone else but that is just not so we are all diffrent and need to be adressed for who we are and have the medical help that somany of us need.Ifeel luckey for i found a doctor who listened to me and has given me the castration drug i so despretly needed .

Rite now i cry for my transgendered sisters who are in the hell that thay cant find an answer to.And i put the blame on the medical profession that keeps them thair and every botched castration should be on the hands of the medical comunity.Will thies doctores ever listen i realey dont know for all i can do at thas point is pray that somsday thay will .Until that day i say shame on thoes that could help but wont.