© Niyazz/Shutterstock
He will never forget the noise. Lying on the hospital trolley being pushed towards the operating theatre, he heard nothing but a primal wail. He looked back to see his younger sister sobbing, traumatised by the enormity of what he was about to do.
Andrew*, born male, was minutes away from an operation that would make him a woman. Psychiatrists said he had a female brain in a male body. Gender reassignment surgery was the only way to ease the mental torment he'd endured since adolescence.
But as the wheels squeaked towards the operating table he was struck by an unshakeable thought: "It's not right." He remembers telling the surgeon: "I think I'm doing the wrong thing, it's not right, I think we've got to stop it."
The surgeon stroked Andrew's face, telling him it was natural to feel frightened before an operation. He protested again, insisting it felt wrong. Then it went black. When he woke up he was sure the surgery had been cancelled. The romantic tales he'd read of transsexuals who awoke post-surgery feeling "reborn" convinced Andrew the operation had been halted, because he felt no different.
"Then I remember lifting up the sheets and putting my hand down and feeling it all bandaged and packed. I just started bawling my eyes out and screaming I remember saying to myself, you f-king idiot, Andrew, how could you be so bloody stupid?"
Twenty years after surgery that left him feeling like a "desexed dog", the grief can still overwhelm him. Now 42, Andrew tells The Sunday Age the operation he had as a confused 21-year-old has shattered him.
Comment: I'm a pediatrician. How transgender ideology has infiltrated my field and produced large-scale child abuse