Child Regrets Transitioning Soon after Mastectomy & Hormones | Real Talk

foreign Cole decided that she wanted to be a boy at 13 she started puberty blockers and testosterone and only two years later she had a double mastectomy but at 16 she regretted her life-changing decisions the professionals who were meant to protect her actually encouraged the irreversible harm now she has to live with the decisions she made as a child for the rest of her life Brave Chloe is sharing her story because there are serious lessons to be learned from what has been done to her so Chloe thank you so much for letting me turn on the cameras here in my office we're having a fascinating conversation about your experience so welcome to prageru thank you for having me your story is so fascinating you started as a young girl who then decided that you were born in the wrong body you transitioned from being a girl to a boy and ultimately changed your mind and realized that so much was thrown onto your plate at a very early age and so I want to hear your story and how everything just got started I've got two older sisters two older brothers all half siblings from from both sides and they're all they're all they're older than me so I did have a bit of influence from from them growing up and you know because of my older sisters I liked wearing wearing dresses and skirts and pink and purple and things like that and playing with Barbies and brats but for my older brothers I also had a bit of a tomboyish streak like I I liked playing video games with them and I like playing with their Legos and toy guns and things like that at what point did you feel like you were a boy I am I am also on the Spectrum and growing up I did have some difficulties with socializing especially with other girls my age I didn't really fit in with them so much as I did with the boys and when I was younger this didn't really bother me but you know as I as I got older and I hit puberty and gone to middle school and socializing got more clicky and gender oriented I started to wonder like if there's something wrong with me and I didn't know like what was separating me from these other girls and why I was different from them when I was 11 I started using a started using social media is it from Instagram that you came up with the idea that you're possibly born in the wrong body as I started to use it more and more often I was being exposed to images of other young women who were they're very pretty very very idealized and oftentimes they wore a lot of makeup or skimpy clothing or they had like they're editing their photos or like they had plastic surgery and they were like fitting this ideal of like soft features soft faces thick curvy I started to wonder like why don't I look like this is there something wrong with me like you know I was I was kind of a a bit of tomboy and I was on the slightly more athletic side and I had like bigger shoulders not very developed tips or or breasts and I did have like a little bit of muscle in my body and it was like why can't I look like them I feel like I look like a boy more than anything and I started to feel like you know I'll never be pretty as a girl why bother maybe I just look better as a boy roughly around the same time I also started to see a lot of um lgbtq focused content especially of people identified as like non-binary or transgender especially and it was most often like other girls my age like aged 12 to maybe like their mid their mid-20s a lot of them were pretty tomboyish a lot of them were very nerdy and just didn't really like fit in with with other girls you were searching for kind of a social community and you found a home with them yeah and I wasn't really in like directly involved in the community but after being exposed to this content for some time I mean it was only natural that I started to Ponder like my own identity like who am I attracted to what is my gender identity my even a girl and you know because I never really fit in with other girls my age and I started to feel like maybe I'm just not a girl maybe I'm maybe I'm just a boy did you come up with the conclusion that you're a boy on your own yeah eventually yeah nobody really pushed me into it and then eventually we were around 11 or 12 when you concluded that you're a boy I was 12. so 12 years old and then you basically went to your parents and told them that that you're a boy now at first I decided to start the conversation by writing a letter and just leaving you on the table for them to read because I didn't really know how I would I would bring that up face to face and it would be I knew it would be like a big shock for them I was kind of anticipating a negative reaction so I kind of wanted to allow them some time to think about it they knew I was kind of a tomboy but they weren't really they never really foresaw anything quite like this and they they wanted to support me they wanted to get to the bottom of this and understand why I was why I was feeling this way and they decided that because they weren't really knowledgeable on this topic that they would take me to a therapist The A Team of real professionals who could who could help us out with this my first therapist you know he was like okay so all for all refer to you by this name that you prefer and call you their son call you boy and things like that and he never really addressed anything that was going on it was like he never really probed into like what was going on at home or was going out to school it was like he wasn't really doing anything and he actually I think he either got fired or transferred out of Kaiser and I had a new therapist and I was also referred to a gender specialist I think who did the diagnosis for gender dysphoria all right great so this confirms what I already know I already know that I'm struggling with these feelings um I already did a little bit of research on on transitioning online both on like social media and more I guess you'd say reliable sources like actual medical resources all of it kind of said the same thing like transitioning was really presented as only means of treating gender dysphoria and I thought like it was the only way forward and that I was actually a boy you know I tried to talked to my parents about this I was like I really want to start taking hormones and go forward with like a medical transition and at first they did push back they were like they didn't really understand why I wanted to to do this so much and they're like you know you're you're quite young and we think that you should wait and so you're more confident and then they had another appointment with the medical professionals and they were told that I mean transition is really the only way forward and that if I wasn't allowed to go through with it I would have they said that I would be at risk of committing suicide was there anybody up into that moment that was kind of chaperoning you through this or was it basically you reading things online and forming your thoughts and your plan to write a letter to your parents to move with the transition I mean were you kind of like pushing this alone or how what role did the school play in your life um I was the only one pushing for this really um I was basically going off of my own research and I did have a little bit of influence from other transgender people but I wasn't like really interacting within the transgender community and I wasn't pushed into this by anybody I think one one thing that really struck me about other transgender people especially like the trans identified identified teenage girls my age was that they were people who had their own struggles like I did a lot of them had like family issues or they were being abused or like they they had like a single parent they're just like struggling to become what I thought then to be like the best version of themselves and with every milestone in their transition you know from starting on hormones and getting surgery they just they seem to become more more complete and more happy with themselves and I saw over time that like their families started become more I guess accepting of them and they they made friends who really seemed to care about them and have their backs and you know as a kid that kind of that wasn't really particularly close to anybody in her life and didn't really have any friends at school I was I was kind of touched by this and it was something that I really wish that I I had for myself when your parents and you were meeting with the health practitioners at Kaiser what was the experience once you started meeting with with these professionals I think the biggest issue was that there were a lot of things that they didn't tell me or my parents their their studies that suggests that there's a high rate of assistance amongst miners who identify as the opposite sex by the time they reach adulthood I mean the figures are anywhere from like a 60 to 90 rate of assistance and becoming comfortable with one's body and identity and sex and I didn't know about this I didn't even consider that as a possibility and it was never really brought up my parents asked about like the regret rates are basically like oh oh there's less than a one to two percent rate of regret and I mean they they cite studies that are pretty pretty faulty pretty poorly conducted and have a lot of a pretty high dropout rate so there really isn't like a whole lot of data on this in the first place but you know I was told like the science is there it's all done we've been doing this for for decades and it's fairly safe you know the first time a chronologist I saw actually was really the only the only physician to push back on this he said like you know you know you're one of the youngest patients I've seen um I don't know how this might go on to affect your brain development going forward so I think we should pump the brakes and wait a little bit but I never heard this from any other Medical Professional ever again it was like I was just immediately referred to another endocrinologist who after um I think it was two or three appointments um gave me my mom the consent forms to sign off on and you know these these consent forms they they do list like the side effects but they are they're pretty vague they're not very comprehensive and you know as I was I was 13 at this point and I mean teens and kids especially have a habit of thinking like oh I'm Invincible like nothing could happen to me and before before I started transitioning I was like a perfectly healthy kid I didn't consider what what could possibly happen to me really during those appointments my endocrinologist asked me are you aware that you may experience like vaginal atrophy or you're aware that this may affect your ability to conceive children as an adult and you know as a kid it was just like oh yeah yeah I know I've I've done my research and then you know when she when she told me about my the potential impact it might have on my fertility is like oh no I don't want to have kids because I was 13. I was a kid like how could I know a huge responsibility to put on children to make that decision right yeah I mean I was I was just a kid there was no way that I would have been thinking about that at the time so I'm just curious how fast does it go from you being 11 years old and thinking I'm born in the wrong body to you seeing therapists then taking hormones and then going into surgery I'd say it was maybe about half a year between me realizing that I felt like I was a boy instead of a girl and coming out to my parents and then what a month or two later I got diagnosed with gender dysphoria between the diagnosis for dysphoria and actually being put on hormones I think it was just another half a year give or take so it was pretty quick wow and then you went on the medication and what did that feel like so it started with the puberty blockers which they put me on for about a month before starting testosterone to basically clear out the production of the natural sex hormones out of my body to um make a way for the exogenous hormones and honestly it sucked like it sucked to be on it um alone once all like the the hormones were cleared out of my body I felt like kind of depressed I didn't have a whole lot of energy and I also started to experience hot flashes because it's basically like a like an artificial menopause they were pretty sporadic so I didn't really have any way of like predicting when they would happen other than like my whole body would get itchy and then all of a sudden like I would just the feeling would just like flare up and I would just be really uncomfortably hot and it was pretty distracting during class or whatever I was trying to focus on at the time and um I also started to get this feeling of pressure in my mid to upper back to my my neck and sometimes like I would if I like breathe in deeply enough I would hear like a like a loud crack that stopped happening once I was a few months on testosterone but since then I've also developed like some some joint pains like in my elbows my hands um my knees and um my back you know once I once I started on testosterone it felt great because you know I finally had hormones again in my body and like I had like my energy back and there's also just the feeling of you know like this is a big step in my life this is a big step in the right direction the physical effects started to come pretty quickly um I'd say after only about like a a week or two my voice started to drop pretty dramatically my features started becoming more squarish my body fat distribution started to change and I developed more muscle even my hair and my eyebrows really getting thicker it was just exciting to see all the changes and I felt like I felt confident in myself I felt like I looked good how are you doing in school throughout my my school years I did kind of struggle with school a little bit mostly just like folk like keeping my focus and organization and socially at this point in time I didn't really have a whole lot of friends at school because you know people at school were like noticing my my changing presentation and all the bodily changes and and the change in my voice and you know I was I was in Middle School so not everybody was one of the nicest about it how people reacted kind of varied by by sex like some of the girls were pretty mean to me over it and there was a boy who was kind of harassing me throughout the school year as well but most of the boys just didn't really care at all the girls seemed more interested in what was going on but there was an instant towards the end of the school year where um one of the boys who had been been bullying me that year had actually walked up to me while I was in a classroom and he he insulted me he groped my chest you know I was I was in shock but I kind of just brushed it off it was like nobody else in the class really seemed to either notice or care and so maybe it doesn't really matter that much and I should have you know because I wanted to be a boy it was like I just told myself to man up and get it over with and I I didn't really realize just how much that affected me and I knew that even if I wanted to speak out I really couldn't because if I brought it up to the school office I know I knew that they wouldn't really hold them accountable like they would probably just give him a slap on the wrist and then he would come back maybe like a like a few days maybe like a weak suspension and she could potentially do something worse to me so I felt like it wasn't really worth the trouble of speaking out about it and so I stayed silent but it did affect me pretty pretty strongly I I mean I I grew up with a really bad fear of being sexually assaulted because a lot of the girls uh I knew um when they were kids they were they were either assaulted or stalked or um abused by family members and I was I was terrified of having that same thing happened to me you know at the time I I wasn't I was only like 13 I wasn't very developed and I wore like blue shirts so I never thought like anybody would really notice that part of me but that incident just made me very very um very conscious of that part of my body and I wanted to hide it from the world and so I started binding I used a compression device called a binder which is basically like a looks like a tank top it has compression um Fabric in the in the chest and it's for the purpose of basically flattening the breasts and making for a more masculine or androgynous appearance about my first few binders shortly after that and values those for about two years before I got surgery would you wear them every day and what did that feel like yeah I wore them every time that I went out to school or in public um and you know I'd wear them for maybe about like six to possibly even 12 hours a day I would I would work out on them I would swim in them it wasn't very comfortable I mean it doesn't sound very comfortable it's not I mean some people I thought I thought it was just fine because some people get like really bad like breast pains or back pains or rib pains or otherwise from from wearing them but I never I never got that like you know I thought like it fits well I bought it from a brand that's supposedly one of the safer Brands so I I must be okay but it actually um it actually deformed my ribs over time you know because I I was I was still I was still developing I was still growing it's it's kind of a graphic way to describe it but the way they work they basically push the breast into the rib cage and I mean this causes all sorts of issues the effect wasn't immediate to wasn't immediately noticeable to me I didn't realize this until after my breasts were gone I was like hey what's what's going on with my my rib cage why is it like flaring out like that and I figured out it's because I use the binder while I was while I was growing at what point did you decide to go get surgery and how old were you I was I was 15 I was in my sophomore year by this point um by the time I entered High School I was already on testosterone for long enough nobody really even knew that I was transgender to save for people that I went to elementary school with or people who I was a bit closer to um but you know after like a few years of using the binder it it really sucked and I wanted to stop I wanted to be free of that and I really truly believed that I was a boy that I was just like any other boy my age and I wanted to look like other boys and be able to like take my shirt off without without worrying what is the process from making a decision that you don't have want to have the breasts anymore to actually go into surgery so did you meet with a pediatrician or do you go directly to a surgeon how does that work so I first talked about this with um my therapist I believe I was referred to another gender specialist who then um sent me to a gender affirming surgeon when I had an appointment with the surgeon you know I was when I was waiting in the office they had like pictures of of post-op results of their uh they called it Top surgery it's really a double mastectomy it was you know it was all like people who were pretty well healed like they're All Things Considered like they're the scars and everything looked looked just fine and and it seemed like they were doing a lot of them I mean was it like oh they're a whole bunch of people here yeah there's a lot of pictures up it kind of reinforced this idea that it was just like part of the process and just a lot of people are doing it yeah yeah um you know after after that appointment with the surgeon he was like Hey you may want to attend this uh this Top surgery classroom that takes place in the hospital building and I said okay and I went to I went to it it was basically for uh miners and their parents to attend to learn more about Top surgery and all the different kinds of incisions and how it works and I was just gonna ask you that were there a lot of other minors there getting Top surgery or breast removal yeah um it kind of shocked me um attending that class actually because as soon as I sat down I like looked around the room and I noticed there were maybe like 12 to 15 other other girls in there and I noticed like pretty young and most of them look to be much earlier in the process than I was I don't think most of them were even on hormones yet and they were already considering surgery that was kind of a shock to me but it was also well I guess I'm not the only one yeah I guess that's the feeling that they kind of want to give to you right and so you spoke with your parents and together you decided to move forward with the with the surgery and once you had the surgery what were you happy then what was it what you were hoping to achieve I remember the day of I was I was pretty excited like it was uh it was a big step for me and um I remember being rolled into the operating room and I was I was pretty nervous I still felt like I still felt pretty confident about it you know it was like I didn't have any doubts about it and so after after it happened but there was like a like a young male nurse in the back of the room um preparing something and I saw him like look back at me and he looked very very concerned kind of like what am I doing how how old is that kid that's a kid right there I didn't really understand what his face meant at the time but yes you look back now and you remember the original doctor and some of the nurses looking at things and thinking that it's strange and now it's kind of coming back to you yeah I was I was pretty confident that this was going to work out for me and I was looking forward to and when I woke up and all the medication were off and I was ready to move around and go home it was like I feel great like I'm so happy you know by this by this point it was it was a major surgery on the part of my body so I lost a considerable amount of my range of motion I couldn't even lift my arms up um until like two or three months after the fact and after that period I had to get my stitches taken out and it was like you know the surgery had severed a lot of nerve endings and and blood vessels so the sensation was not quite right it was very numb but I could still feel like everything that was happening and it made me physically sick having to deal with that I mean I got very I got really nauseous when they were doing that we had to stop Midway through and then once I got home and I had to start bathing again I I also it also meant that I had to start taking care of these incisions and wounds on my chest and it was hard just to take my shirt off take the compression of ice off and okay remove and reapply all the dressings and just see what was underneath I could barely look at myself the the post-op period has been pretty rough and I don't think it's anything that any 15 year old should have to go through frankly but I also missed out on a few events and social opportunities like parties and group outings and stuff like that and I just couldn't leave the house because I was basically disabled I wasn't really in a state to be going out on my own like that and it really sucked and I started to feel the sense of isolation and during my next school year you know Kevin covet came up and they started doing um all the lockdowns and distance learning and stuff like that and that really reinforced the feeling of isolation that was already there tenfold and you know I started to withdraw because I wasn't really interacting with the outside world and I couldn't really go out and um I started using the internet a lot more often I started like being exposed to like these images of other women again and subconsciously I started to realize like I miss looking feminine I miss looking pretty and didn't realize at the time but I was starting to regret my transition I didn't like the way that testosterone was making me look anymore and I wished for a more feminine form and I secretly started to buy like makeup and skirts and women's clothing again I would just like wear it like in my room without anybody really knowing I wouldn't tell anybody about it because I was so ashamed of myself it was it was a hard thing to admit but I didn't really fully realize my regret with my transition until 11 months after my my surgery I was in a lot of distress by this point I wasn't really performing well at school I was starting to not really even attend my online classes so my parents decided to put me in a different program for school one of the one of the lessons I had was on like Child Development child psychology and um maternity and I learned that breastfeeding was not only a means of feeding your child but it's also one of the main ways that as a mother you bond with your kid and I mean I never really thought about this before this was really the first time that I ever really thought about being a parent even because you know I was I was a kid when I consented all this and I wasn't really focused on things like that you know I was worried about like swole or fitting in or getting my getting my assignments in but I never really Salt Lake about how being a parent would look for me one day deep down I had like a maternal Instinct that wasn't really wasn't really fostered at all because I was being socialized as a boy I believed myself to be a boy and I was developing like a boy because I was on cross-sex hormones I started to realize like what I really what was really taken from me wow I realized one day that I really regretted my entire transition every single step of it from the hormones to the blockers and the surgery the surgery especially because that was the most um irreversible part about it and I didn't really know what life would look like for me um going forward because I knew that much of my transition was going to be irreversible I didn't even know like if I was ever going to look like a woman again and I just didn't know what to do with myself I just broke down crying and I called a friend of mine to talk about it and I wanted to talk to my mom about it I couldn't bear to do that face to face though because I didn't want her to see me with like the tears shimming down my face and the stress side that I was in I had a lot of Shame and guilt about this because I mean it was a thing that I was invested in for so long and everybody around me knew me as like they're their son or their brother or just a boy and I didn't even I no longer look like a woman I didn't know it was it was hard to admit that I was that I was wrong and especially when everybody else around me supported me I didn't know what to do I I just I just I just stopped taking the hormones and I just kind of stayed confined to my room in my bed it did help that my my mom and dad would come to my door to check in on me and like bring me food and stocks things like that it was it was comforting and I think that was one of the biggest things that kept me going they supported you no matter what and you know I didn't really have any friends in person by this point but the lockdowns and distance learning had basically like torn apart all my friendships and the only friends I really had anymore were online and I would talk about my my feelings online um about my about regretting my transition how I hated how how it made me look and how it made me feel I was kind of shocked because I was actually met with a lot of hatred from other transgender individuals your friends online were transgender individuals part of a transgender Community yeah I had friends who were kind of all over the board a lot of people who straight gay transgender conservative liberal and so when you told them that you regretted what you were doing what was their reaction I mean I had a few friends who actually saw this coming and they felt guilty for not speaking up a lot of my other transgender friends I think this kind of it's kind of like awoken like a new fear in them because most of my friends who identified as transgender were either like very early in the process like they were only socially transitioning they weren't on any hormones yet or they were just starting with hormones so seeing somebody like me who transition young and was so far into it I think that that was kind of terrifying for them and there was also like a little bit of a little bit of jealousy because of that I think and some people decided that they just couldn't handle these feelings and that they would talk me over the I was told things like oh you weren't a kid you knew exactly what you were doing to yourself you were informed this wasn't like a this was an experiment you weren't wronged you did this to yourself they told me that if I if I kept talking about this then it would make everybody else uncomfortable and it wasn't bringing any benefit to anybody it would just damage the community of real transgender people with real dysphoria and I stopped speaking out about it but during that period of time though I was also starting to naturally question like what happened and challenged my own views and I was also interacting with other people online who either desisted or they stopped transitioning after a medical transition or they're in the middle of like questioning their transition and I realized like this isn't as uncommon as I thought it was and this is a very real thing that's happening and now that I'm going through it myself I'm being silenced and that's not okay I realized what was going on and I stopped getting into the to the pressure of other people when I started speaking about it again at first on my social media and to friends and family and eventually um I decided to start speaking out on on Twitter publicly in what ways were you being silenced and what are you doing to kind of push against that it was mostly social pressure from other transgender people and even some some individuals who call themselves like gay or trans allies people who had never been through the process telling me like you're being a Turf you're being a transphobe you're bigoted you need to start there like dismissing you or something at first they're the most tolerant people in the world and suddenly they're like so intolerant because they don't like what you're saying yeah yeah and so you've taken on a big responsibility now to try to help others through the pain that you went through I just think you're I mean you're so amazing it's hard to believe that you're you're 18 now yeah you're 18. uh it's just hard to believe you're so young but you've taken on a big a big responsibility and through the adversity and pain that you went through you found strength which I think is so incredible I mean first of all you're beautiful because I'm just going to say that and secondly you're also beautiful inside because it takes a lot of courage to do what you're doing I know you're getting a lot of heat and pressure and so just tell me what are you hoping to achieve now with with this new Journey that you're going on the system that's in place right now the affirmative care system it's very one size fits all there's never like any regards to any alternatives to transitioning or treating dysphoria and that's what leads to cases like mine they're not really considering like any comorbidities like I didn't even know that I was autistic until after I stopped transitioning and over the course of my transition I actually developed more psychiatric issues there needs to be a better assessment for who transition would work out for and who might not and I really don't think that it's something that children can consent to I mean it's something that affects pretty much every area of your life I mean even in ways you wouldn't even think of even if they did give me like the full picture of what could happen to me I wouldn't really have been able to really fully comprehend what it what it all meant I didn't really have the mental faculties or life experience to be able to make that kind of decision it affects every area of your of your health from you know your your General Health to very productive health and your your sexual function children just aren't really equipped to be able to do that kind of thing and you're suing Kaiser yes tell me a little bit about the lawsuit I'm suing for negligence and medical malpractice what they did to me was was wrong and it's most certainly not for children and on top of that I wasn't fully informed of the full extent of how transition could could affect me how can we help you how can the people who are listening help you I think the most important thing to do is to just keep spreading the word about what's going on how are you funding this lawsuit it must be incredibly expensive to sue Kaiser um I do have a I do have a donation fund set up it's like a GoFundMe or something it's on my my attorney's website I believe another part of what I'd love to know is there's the court of law and there is the court of public opinion and you're doing both right you're suing them in the court of law but you're also speaking about your experience and can people follow you you have like an Instagram I do have Instagram and YouTube but my main platform is Twitter buyer's name is CH triple o c o l e and are you planning on going back to school I do want to go to college I am taking one class right now but I do want to take more classes and I think I want to eventually go on to get a degree I'm not really sure what uh I mean I just don't really know what I want to do yet there's there's so many questions for an 18 year old now I mean what you're already doing is so much bigger than what any 18 year old would do and I like doing it yeah you and I had a conversation just before we sat down as we were walking in here and I think it's one that's really worth sharing with people out there and that is when you're a young girl but even a grown woman you can't expect to look at yourself all the time and feel like you're everything you're hoping you would see right especially in the age of social media exactly I mean I look in the mirror and I'm critical of myself and and and so this this idea that you can look at yourself and just see everything you're hoping that you would see as you see on social media and and then live in this kind of you know alternative virtual reality it is no wonder why Young Folks are struggling like that and so the idea that people are turning immediately to surgery or changing their gender is so dangerous and I just I want anybody who is listening to us to know that from both of our experiences uh mine a little longer than yours none of us can always feel like we're everything we're hoping that we would look for and that is not even something that we should strive towards which is Strive towards being happy with who we are with the gifts that God has given us and this Whirlpool that you stepped into because you are looking at yourself and you were looking at the images on social and saying well you know I want to look like that and if I don't look like that I'm therefore not a woman is so wrong there is no woman out there not even a supermodel who looks at herself and says I'm this perfect looking being you know nobody feels that way and so if you're listening to this conversation I want you to know that nobody ever feels like they look perfect and that is totally fine because we don't need to look perfect and we should certainly not think that we need to change our gender because we don't look like some avatar on social media yeah I think one of the biggest faults of our role today is that we've become very focused on vanity rather than things that really matter like our contributions to the world around us and our communities and our families exactly well I want to thank you so much for your openness and your courage you're incredible you're just incredible and so thank you so much and I hope you give a lot of courage to other young women out there thank you so much for having me here thank you [Music]