TransMed

It's A Sure Bet:
Fantasy Can Be Hazardous
To One's Health


by Sheila Kirk, M.D.


For some, the gender role transition process is like a visit to the race track. If you take a few chances, you can win big by having the body you have always wanted without all the delay, bother, and expenses the gatekeepers put you through.

Everyone who goes to the track wants to win and a few lucky ones do. If we lose two or three races in a row, many of us stop betting and head for home. Some, however, keep betting and keep losing. The racetrack, the tables in Vegas, and transition shortcuts are all alike - no matter how sweet winning seems; the odds are against you.

Those who want so desperately to transform their body rapidly, extravagantly and with fantasy in control, are betting against the house. Many transsexuals, in my experience, do not know what they should about short cut approaches to transformation or they refuse to accept the information. Many "dare devil" and experiment - and lose.

For instance, I know that many MTF individual use hormones without supervision. They buy them from black market sources or use someone else's medication. Many who are under credible medical supervision double and triple the doses prescribed. "If some is good much more is better" is their view! Some refuse testing, skip appointments and actually play games with the regimen and the physician that has instituted it. Space does not permit a full enumeration of the dangers involved. An incomplete list includes: heart attacks, elevated blood pressure, liver disease, and phlebitis (which can send blood clots into the lungs). Any of these can cause disability or death. To use these medications without good monitoring is foolhardy and the "bets you place" with this approach are going to be lost.

Another foolish "trip to the window" is the use of silicone. Consider the hoopla surrounding silicone-filled breast implants, the tremendous number of news articles, TV shows, the law suits, the turmoil and the controversy. One would expect any sane individual to have grave reservations about using silicone at any time and in any way. Yet, some of us are asking for silicone implants (and receiving them). Worse yet, some ask for free silicone injections for face contouring, breast and hip augmentation, and leg shaping. Free silicone is NOT a safe OR a reliable technique. The intended effect disappears in time and the place where the silicone is put may not be the place where it stays. If, as studies show, silicone may cause immune system disease, why do many of our sisters go blindly to this approach?

Sadly I know of eight different individuals who have had so many surgical procedures on face and body that collectively their operations number 63 and the collective cost amounts to just short of a half million dollars. What's it all about!? Why do some want the biggest breasts and the most prominent derrieres? One post-op girl told me as she spoke about her third facial surgery that "she didn't just want to be a woman, she wants to cause a ten car pileup." Is this fantasy or farce? Who really wins here? The surgeon? The problems with healing and with loss of function when it takes place can be terrible.

Lest you believe that I have turned my face away from our community - I have not. However I must constantly be the voice that educates and summons you to reality. Sensible and efficient hormone use with capable supervision is wonderful. Planned and considered surgery with reality and reason is ideal. Patience to travel the transition road and an earnest desire to anatomically become a woman or a man with full attention to what should be in the mind and heart and not just changes to the body, is the only way to do it. Then you will be a winner. Then you will collect your bets. Then you will beat the house.


Sheila Kirk, MD is a Transgender Medicine Specialist, board-certified in Obstetrics and Gynecology and in practice in Pittsburgh, PA. She is a well-known author and leading authority on transgendered medical care and research. Dr. Kirk provides international and national consultations and referrals to the TG community and health care professionals who assist in their care.

She can be reached the following ways:

    E-mail: SheilaKirk@aol.com
    Phone: (412) 781-1092 Fax: (412) 781-1096
    mailing address: Sheila Kirk, P.O. Box 38114, Blawnox, Pa 15238-8114

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