Sex-change reconciles 25-year-old to his female self

“The man was completely normal physically, without any oddity in his behaviour, mannerisms or voice. But apparently, he was feeling trapped inside the wrong body,” said Dr Rajeev B. Ahuja, head of the department of burns and plastic surgery at the Lok Nayak Hospital who performed the marathon eight-hour sex-change operation yesterday.

According to Dr Ahuja, the candidate was close to becoming a mental wreck due to his condition when he approached him last year. But that’s not what prompted the doctors to pick up their scalpels and play God. The man was first made to go through a process of psychiatric and psychological evaluation for one whole year and was selected for the crucial surgery only after the experts certified him to be a true case of transsexualism and fit for sex change.

The doctors now plan to follow up the operation with hormonal therapy, silicon implants and electrolysis to remove unwanted hair and provide secondary feminine features. The prominently overgrown Adam’s apple will also be taken care of by another minor operation and the services of a speech therapist will be sought to `improve’ the voice.

Dr Ahuja had, about two years ago, performed a similar operation on a transvestite born with ambiguous genitalia and turned him into a male by providing an organ carved out of his own skin.

The procedure is now common abroad, where transsexualism is viewed as a malady, and those affected have a right to ask for treatment just like any other physical or psychiatric ailment. Social taboos attached to the subject, however, compel the estimated 15,000 such persons in India to lead a life of misery. Only a fraction of that number have gone in for sex-change. Dr Ahuja claimed that in the latest case, the procedure used by him has never before been used in the country. According to him, only five to six persons have approached him so far from all over the country with a request for a sex-change operation.

“But the intense screening process generally puts them off midway,” he said. The cases wherein a person strongly believes that he or she is trapped inside a wrong body should be viewed separately from transvestite born with ambiguous genitalia.