A girl set to become Britain's youngest sex-change patient
 

Long read

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/ar...e-patient.html

Let's have an executive summary :D

Ok H you lazy bastard, here's an edit:
(Why am I doing this, it's Saturday night, I should be out dating! and yes SSL that was a long article)

- For most mothers, their daughter's 16th birthday is marked by such traditions as a party, preparing for a school dance, or maybe even allowing them to go on holiday with their friends for the first time.

For Elizabeth Thornton, however, the year brought with it a rather different set of demands. First, she was asked by her daughter Sarah to refer to her as 'Alex'. More recently, she found herself shopping not for a glamorous evening gown, but for a breast restrictor designed to flatten and hide her daughter's breasts.

Today, instead of looking forward to moments like her youngest daughter's wedding and the birth of her first child, Elizabeth is contemplating a series of operations that Sarah is determined to put herself through, including a double mastectomy and a hysterectomy.

Now aged 17, Sarah is believed to be the youngest person in the country awaiting a female-to-male sex change operation. She has been living as a teenage boy for the past year, and has now been given the go-ahead by her GP and her psychiatrist for the £106,000 procedure.

Sarah hopes to have the surgery within the next 12 months. This, she says, is the only way she can hope to live the rest of her life with any degree of sanity or happiness.

'When, last November, Sarah told me that she wanted to have a sex change, I nearly choked on the cup of tea I was drinking,' says Elizabeth, 'I honestly thought this was some sort of teenage fantasy, and neither my husband nor I took her seriously at all.

'Then, two weeks later, the psychiatrist that Sarah has been seeing for some time, because she has been so depressed, phoned me on her behalf.

'Vincent and I had been struggling for years to understand what was at the root of Sarah's depression, but we had never considered she might actually feel that she was trapped in the wrong body.

'She wasn't living her life; she merely existed. She didn't have a job and had very few friends. She was depressed and spent most of her day in bed. If the answer lay in supporting her as she changed sex, well that would be what I, as her mother, had to do.'

'From a very young age, Sarah was a very different child to her elder sister,' says Elizabeth. If I put her in a dress, she used to pull it off and stamp on it.

But in those days, I used to feel proud of the way she tumbled around, without a care in the world, and was just tomboyish.'

She began to insist on being identified as a little boy, and asked her friends to call her 'Lee'.

By now, she had reached an emotional low, and frequently punched holes through doors and walls. She also started self-harming, and once more tried to kill herself with an overdose of flu tablets.

'When Sarah told me she was gay, I wasn't that surprised,' says Elizabeth. 'She was terrified that we were going to hit the roof, but we'd had our suspicions for a while.

Sarah says that by now she was battling more than ever to find any happiness in her life. As her body developed, she found it increasingly difficult to look at herself in the mirror. Even now, she describes herself as being 'cloaked in a costume that is not my own'.

'I had always thought that it was wrong to say I was a lesbian, because I'd never felt as though I was a woman attracted to women. Now I understood that, in fact, I was attracted to women simply because I should have been born a man.'

'In desperation, I went to speak to my psychiatrist and told her that I wanted to change my entire body, and that unless my parents listened to me, I thought I'd kill myself.'

'Thankfully, my psychiatrist was supportive and agreed to speak to my parents on my behalf.'

For Sarah's parents, though, the future feels very uncertain.

'Her father and I don't like looking at what the future holds. Neither of us can envisage Sarah as a man. All we can do is take each day is it comes, and do our best to be there for our daughter as she embarks on her journey to become our son.'

Summary:

17 year old Sarah Thornton is believed to be the youngest person
in the country awaiting a female-to-male sex change operation.
That means a double mastectomy and a hysterectomy and much more.

For a whole year, She has been living like a teenage BOY, often using a breast restrictor designed to flatten and hide her breasts! She doesnt want to be called Sarah, but Alex! Sarah expects the surgery within the next 12 months. This is the only way she can hope to live the rest of her life with any degree of sanity or happiness.
The Psychiatrist has given her parents a green signal.
The Cost will be: £106,000

Before coming to terms with her daughter's GID problems and accepting her sexuality, her mom felt like:
'All I could think was if you're not happy, change your hair, change your dress sense or, at the most, consider cosmetic surgery. To change something as drastic as your sex - well, it was beyond what I or my husband could understand.'

Sarah's state before : 'She wasn't living her life; she merely existed. She didn't have a job and had very few friends. She was depressed and spent most of her day in bed. If the answer lay in supporting her as she changed sex, well that would be what I, as her mother, had to do.'

God bless Alex. :)

Good for Alex!! Fine strapping young man!