On Kindness, Cruelty, and Healthcare

My Experiences with Doctors Post-detransition

“Turn left in 8.5 miles”

The robotic GPS voice broke my reverie. Brown and white cows grazed in the fields as I passed. Wildflowers sprouted in ditches, and mile markers were punctuated by political signs. I was on my way to a new family physician. The office was located forty-five minutes outside of the city I live in. It wasn’t exactly convenient, but this was the closest doctor I had found who fit my criteria: they took my insurance; there was no evidence on their website supporting gender “affirmation” medicine.

I thought I had gotten lucky the day I first called my insurance and found a family physician, top of the list, kind eyes, and only seven minutes from my house. Then I googled her. “Dr. Blankety Blank. they/them” the website said.

How can someone study medicine for the requisite number of years and come out confused about whether they are male or female? I don’t understand. Or maybe I do. She is not confused, but motivated. Motivated to embody an ideology and equally motivated to profit from the money available to those doctors who do so unquestioningly.

Back on the road, I felt my blood pressure rising as I recalled that disappointment, so I tried to redirect my attention away from that topic and began to take note of the kinds of political signs I passed on the way to the office, just to see if I was in enemy territory.

I wasn’t always like this. I had naively approached the very same doctors who had eagerly cleared a path for my transition, and told them it hadn’t worked out. I never expected the reactions I got from them.

The doctor from Planned Parenthood became very dismissive and defensive the minute I said, “ I think I’m having some atrophy issues from the hormones I was taking”

“Well, that’s why they are controlled substances now, isn’t it?” she hissed, unable to contain her contempt for me. As if her practice hadn’t been the one supplying me with it months earlier!

I was surprised, still operating under the assumption that the doctors had been genuine when they said they wanted to help me while offering me transition. It would take three or four more experiences of such poor treatment for me to fully understand that their intention had never really been to learn the truth about symptoms.

Years later, when I was pregnant with my first child, I would attempt to secure prenatal services in the state of Oregon. I would be asked my medical history and *pronouns * in the same breath, while being advised on my pregnancy by a pink-haired nurse wearing a Pride pin. My pronouns? Was I not participating in the most womanly thing a woman can do? It frustrated me that my doctor was so clearly taken by the cult I had just escaped that she needed to refer to women as “pregnant people”.

So here I was, driving to a doctor forty-five minutes away, praying this one is a typical conservative country doctor whose politics alone might spare me from having the gender nonsense foisted upon me again.

I arrived at the little red house, turned doctors’ office, and entered the waiting room. A giant cross took up most of the waiting room wall, another good sign, in my experience with this whole ideological battle. Christian doctors were typically in the demographic of those who questioned the gender insanity.

Called back to the little examination room, I stumbled through the reasons I was there, and when we reached the medical history part, I couldn’t help but cry. I told her I had taken a medication for years that had affected my health in numerous ways, and I was trying to figure out how to fix the damage.

“What medication was that”

“Testosterone.”

She furrowed her brow, trying to understand why a 19-year-old girl would be prescribed testosterone.

“ I was part of the wave of young women who were experimented on. They diagnosed me with gender dysphoria and said this treatment would help,” I offered in explanation.

She put her clipboard down.

“It’s amazing you were able to have your daughter,” she said after a beat.

“ Yes. By the grace of God.” I said.

“I am so sorry that happened to you.” She looked at me sincerely.

Finally, the appropriate response from someone. She was kind and considerate with the rest of the visit and went out of her way to help me get labs and refer me to a gynecologist who she knew personally was not likely to be a believer in the gender madness.

I left with a renewed sense of hope about doctors.

Now, not two months later, I am connected with yet another wonderful doctor, Dr. Katy Hurd, who is specifically trying to support de-transitioners.

At our first Zoom session, she said, “I am so sorry about the harm that has been done.” That simple acknowledgment after years of doctors dismissing my experiences and telling me my health issues were my fault healed something I didn’t know I needed healing.

She listened to me for over an hour as I explained my medical history and my current concerns. She took time to understand my symptoms and to look for solutions to some of the shared problems survivors face. Dr. Hurd pointed out that, in her experience, many of the women and girls who sought testosterone were already suffering from PCOC (polycystic ovary syndrome). We are uncertain whether that was the case in my story, but I think it matters to survivors like me to hear that not all of our health issues may be traced to wrong-sex hormone use. Simultaneously, it is important to acknowledge the harm where it was done.

Dr. Hurd is opening a clinic for people who have been on hormones or had surgeries related to gender and have been harmed by them. After years of disappointment, and having finally met some doctors who truly believe in “do no harm,” I find my defensive shield against all physicians has begun to soften.

Dr. Hurd helped me connect with a local endocrinologist who has been able to help me begin to untangle the mess of health complications caused by testosterone, along with other health issues that might have existed regardless of my use of “t”.

It was shocking how new and different it felt to be listened to, first by Dr. Hurd, and then by the specialist she connected me with. There are still physicians who honor their Hippocratic Oath to first do no harm, and are horrified by the ways medicine has hurt vulnerable people.

I am excited to learn that Dr. Hurd is embarking on this much-needed mission to help those of us who have been harmed by gender medicine, and perhaps lost faith in medicine entirely. It will be monumental to have doctors who fundamentally know a little of what de-transitioners have survived and how to help us.

Elizabeth is a 31-year-old mom who lives in the USA. She transitioned at 19 while at university and then ceased transition at 25. She attributes her detransition to a spiritual encounter with her Higher Power after praying every day to do God’s Will instead of her own. As she approaches more years out of the cult than in, she hopes to share her journey of finding peace with other survivors of the Gender Medicine industry

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