hello everyone...this is my introduction

[confusedindian]

hi people,
I am so glad I have found this site. I finally have a place where people understand what I am talking about and the pain I am undergoing. I have been reading through the intros and posts from you people and it is a nice feeling that there a quite a number of people with conditions like me who lead their lives freely and happily.
Now let me start my story. I was born male(46 XY) with a single testis and completely normal penis. But when I entered puberty at around 12, i started growing like a girl. I developed proper breasts, wide hips and rounded milky thighs. Though I liked them a lot, those feminine features made my teen age years very embarrassing and difficult.
I was always confused as to where I belonged. I was never sure if I am male or female. I was aroused only by girls(I later found that I like MTF transsexuals as well) adn never by guys.
I was so scared of transitioning(to female) as it is almost impossible to live as a transsexual in India and lead a decent life(i.e. legally there is no provision for transitioning and the society is so pissed off that it doesn't accept anything out of normal. transsexuals generally live in streets and beg for a living). i convinced myself that i am male and I continued my life. By 20, I had developed a sparse beard, very little body hair, no muscles at all and a very small penis(although it works fine :mrgreen: ).
When the pain of hiding my breasts became unbearable, at 21 I took a decision to undergo mastectomy. Till date I am not sure if I had done the right thing. But life has moved on since.
Now at 22, I wanted to find out what is the cause for all this. I went to a number of endocrinologists to identify the issue and none of them seem to know more than diabetes. Finally I was lucky to find a pediatric surgeon who was an expert in dealing with intersex people. He ordered a USG and they found an undescended gonad near my prostrate which they are not sure if it is an ovary or testis. Also it was found that I am virile("occasional non-motile spermatozoan" was the exact words :(). Also I had high T and estradiol higher than the high end of the reference range. LH and FSH were at the high end of reference range. Also I had high DHT. So the doctor concluded that i could have a very mild form of AIS and suggested that I could start taking T. i decided to take it and now for the past 1 month I am under T hoping to fit in what is considered "normal". Deciding to live as Male is an easy decision for me now, as I never could even be half female as i have already lost the chance of growing breasts(thanks to my rash decision to undergo mastectomy).
Though my life has been painful all along I never hated myself. I always liked the "me" I was naturally made. What makes me sad are the things that i have to do to fit in what other people think as "normal".
Once again I am very happy to be here and hope i will have a good time with you people here :)

[Dianne]

Welcome!

There are many strange stories here and people who have led unusual lives.

It is good you have such peace with yourself - you are blessed!

[galens47]

Hello ConfusedIndian,

Welcome! Thank you for sharing your story.

Cheers,

Galens47

[spacegirl]

confusedindian, namaste.

[Kailana]

welcome to BLO, I am glad you have found a happy place. comfortablility with yourself can make a great deal of difference in a persons life. Really hope the T helps.

[confusedindian]

thanks all you guys

Welcome!

There are many strange stories here and people who have led unusual lives.

It is good you have such peace with yourself - you are blessed!

thanks Dianne. i have been reading through the posts for some time now and I have managed to find some peace of mind here.
It is just that I am "happy" about my body. But I am definitely not peaceful. It has just been very difficult to cope up with all the hiding. hopefully i can find my peace in future.

confusedindian, namaste.
'Hello' Spacegirl. Going a little off topic here, "namaste" is a foreign word for me as well as I am a non Hindi speaker. May be it is a little shocking, but that s the way India is. By the way, it is "vanakkam" in Tamil, my native language.

welcome to BLO, I am glad you have found a happy place. comfortablility with yourself can make a great deal of difference in a persons life. Really hope the T helps.

thank you. i have seen you speaking in an youtube video. you were brave in coming out and i was glad for you. Though I know it will help me find peace if I come out, i don't think i possess the guts to do that.

[Kailana]

its not so bad, and honestly peaceandparty had been asking me to do so for several months eventually I broke down and did, and then I found that I couldn't stop.

I really hope you find BLO a usefull support and educational forum.

best wishes always

[Aseras]

Be careful about taking hormones. If your levels are up, or ok, and you have some fertility you are risking damaging all of that by taking exogenous hormones, especially to the testicular portion. If you ever want to have kids as a male I would stop as quickly as possible or look into banking some semen while you have it. Testicles atrophy and shut down when they are not used and it doesn't come back if it is taken over a long enough period of time ( 6 months to a year ). Ovaries just seem to go to "sleep" and wake up fine. There are plenty of doctors who will spoon feed "men" testosterone.

Did your doctor try doing a HCG trial or anything else to see what happens?

What do you want?

[confusedindian]

Be careful about taking hormones. If your levels are up, or ok, and you have some fertility you are risking damaging all of that by taking exogenous hormones, especially to the testicular portion. If you ever want to have kids as a male I would stop as quickly as possible or look into banking some semen while you have it. Testicles atrophy and shut down when they are not used and it doesn't come back if it is taken over a long enough period of time ( 6 months to a year ). Ovaries just seem to go to "sleep" and wake up fine. There are plenty of doctors who will spoon feed "men" testosterone.

Did your doctor try doing a HCG trial or anything else to see what happens?

What do you want?

Hi Aseras,
Thanks for the nice suggestions. I had a semen analysis done and the result was "occasional non-motile spermatazoan seen". So i guess I can have no children and so there is no concerns about E fighting with Testes.
There was no HCG trail that was done. Actually they did not do a fully conclusive diagnosis for a PAIS - something like a chromosome test to determine if the Y chromosome is actually twisted(!!). They correlated my secondary female characters, hormone profile, chromosome tests(which came as XY) and semen test to deduce that I have PAIS.
The doctor suggested 250mg of T every week coupled with tamoxifen for me to get secondary male characters. I went on and took it for 3-4 weeks. Now I have stopped it for 2 weeks as I am not sure what I want. Also partly I was scared by the possible infections and side-effects from injectable steroids.

Q: What do you want?
A: I am still not sure what I want. I like being female more, but staying as male is more convenient. If i do all the compromises and stay as male I am not sure if in future i will be able to find a partner. It is much more complicated transforming in a country like India. As of now I will probably choose Male. BUt still i ahve not come to a definite conclusion.

thanks for your care..I am feeling more peaceful in the 2-3 days since I came here...thank you all

[Aseras]

"occasional non-motile spermatazoan seen" is good enough for IVF, even without sperm asipration or extraction. If you keep taking testosterone it's going to shutdown whatever testosterone your body does make on it's own, and if you take an estrogen blocker like tamoxifen that is going to halt any sperm production at all as the sertoli cells are regulated by estradiol and are also the mother cells that produce the sperm.


Really, if you ever imagine yourself fatheirng children you might want to reevaluate things. you are young now, are you sure in 10-15 years you'll be ok with sterilizing yourself now? already you regret the mastectomy, and that's only been a year.

Freezing/banking sperm is expensive, but it's an option you should consider. Once you shut it down with hormones for a period of time it is very hard or impossible for it to come back.

the doctors don't tell you all the consequences of your treatment. I know because I have been burned by ine and caused many problems, and taking testosterone for several years is one of my biggest regrets myself. Be sure you really know what you are getting into.

[confusedindian]

Hi Aseras,
Thanks a lot for such a useful information. This is a life saver for me. And yes, this would have been my 2nd stupid decision(1st being mastectomy) had you not told me this in time. I never knew about consequences of taking testosterone/tamoxifen. The stupid doctor didn't even care about letting me know the consequences. I have never managed to find a good doctor here. i wonder if this is the case elsewhere.
I now have a serious issue. If I choose to be male, i have to live with the secondary female characteristics? is there no other go? I doubt very much if I will ever get a partner with my physique. Life is back to confusion now :P

[fraulein_Maria]

I doubt very much if I will ever get a partner with my physique. Life is back to confusion now :P

>>> there is no need to despair. you say you like women..... well, most of us are not as obsessed with physical appearance as the opposite sex (that's not a complaint, just an observation) A good woman will not much care what you like physically (male/female) as long as you look healthy and well groomed (clean hair, face and teeth).

Beyond that, a smart woman wants to know if you can support her and her potential children. If you can't yet, but are on track in school or a career to be able to in the future, this will usually satisfy her.

And now the reason why women don't say "i do" after the first date....

Its important for them to KNOW YOU. To know she can count on you... that's why being late for a date is such a disaster.

Natal women are usually fussier about men for good reason..... they are usually fertile and assume you are aswell. Keep that in mind, and you will have fewer unpleasant surprises.

Good luck :)

[The Female Eunuch]

ConfusedIndian wrote:I have never managed to find a good doctor here. i wonder if this is the case elsewhere.

Hi ConfusedIndian,

I have had trouble finding doctors who are good enough, but at times I have had good doctors.

You may be interested to know that some of the worst doctors I have had have been Indian. I've also found that the best ones have been New Zealanders of the Maori and Pakeha ethnic groups (the two main ethnic groups in New Zealand), so I assumed I was just finding it easiest to relate to doctors who are culturally most similar to me, and that Indians would find Indian doctors best. But the other possibility that has occurred to me is that maybe Indian medical schools are not as good at educating doctors on how to treat patients with rare chronic conditions. So maybe you're in the worng country, or maybe it's just coincidence.

cheers,
Caroline

[confusedindian]

ConfusedIndian wrote:

Hi ConfusedIndian,

I have had trouble finding doctors who are good enough, but at times I have had good doctors.

You may be interested to know that some of the worst doctors I have had have been Indian. I've also found that the best ones have been New Zealanders of the Maori and Pakeha ethnic groups (the two main ethnic groups in New Zealand), so I assumed I was just finding it easiest to relate to doctors who are culturally most similar to me, and that Indians would find Indian doctors best. But the other possibility that has occurred to me is that maybe Indian medical schools are not as good at educating doctors on how to treat patients with rare chronic conditions. So maybe you're in the worng country, or maybe it's just coincidence.

cheers,
Caroline
It is more to do with the mindset of the people I guess rather than education. The Indians are not ready to accept a third sex exists and it is as simple as that. Even though they read it in their text books they still have a very hard time accepting it. i was lucky to find a head doctor at AIIMS (government run hospital that treats our prime minister and president. Though it treats for free it has a very long queue and there is no appointments. The doctor let me see him bypass the queue and see him but after that i never managed to meet him. We really got to do some crowd reduction in India :interesti ). If found that it was very hard for their mind to accept that these conditions really exists. Every doctor I saw wanted atleast a hypospadias to call it PAIS.
You are lucky to get people and doctors who accept us better :)