“Sometimes in the shower I realize they’re gone. I just have these scars.
Camille Kiefel, 32, had her healthy breasts removed in 2020 to align with her non-binary gender identity. She says her doctors approved the operation after two Zoom meetings, overcoming a range of mental health issues.
Now that Camille is mentally better, she realizes that her operation was a mistake. So, two and a half years later, she is suing her social worker, therapist and the gender clinics they work for — Brave Space Oregon and Quest Center for Integrative Health — seeking up to $850,000 in damages. .
As a child, Camille never thought about her gender identity. But when her best friend was raped by a parent in sixth grade, she said she became acutely aware of her femininity. Around this time, his father also gave well-meaning advice that backfired.
“My dad told me about how men talked about girls, because he wanted to protect me and get me to dress more conservatively,” she told the Post. “But it made my anxiety worse. This all really pissed me off. I remember that I was even afraid of being alone.
From then on, she began to dress more androgynous. “I didn’t want to show off my curves. I had a lot of discomfort around my breasts and hips.
But the idea that she might not be a woman didn’t occur to Camille until she enrolled at Portland State University, where she majored in gender studies. and was introduced to alternative views on sex and gender.
By the time she reached her mid-twenties, she adopted a non-binary etiquette and used she/they pronouns. Throughout this time, she struggled with a host of mental health issues, including anxiety disorders, social anxiety, PTSD, major depressive disorder and ADHD.
In the depths of the pandemic in 2020, Camille, then 30, was still struggling and believed gender-neutral senior surgery could alleviate her mental health issues. “I was so dysfunctional and just wanted something that was going to help me,” she recalls. “I thought I would be happier.”
She was referred to a large gender clinic in Oregon, where she spoke to doctors via Zoom twice — once in May and once in July, each time for about an hour. And it was everything it took. She said she had never seen anyone in person before having her breasts removed on August 28. (Brave Space Oregon and Quest Center for Integrative Health did not respond to requests for comment.)
Complications were almost immediate. She said she had difficulty swallowing and scopolamine poisoning from a patch on the back of her ear meant to treat nausea, which caused her pupils to dilate for months after the operation. .
Suddenly, she declared that the doctors who had approved her operation and validated her feelings had left her on the floor. “The doctors took me seriously until the surgery, but after I developed all these complications, I noticed that they stopped taking me seriously,” Camille said. “I was alone at that time.”
And, while she hoped the procedure would help her mental health, she wasn’t so sure when she saw the end result: “I remember when the doctor took the bandages off, I felt a little mixed.”
In the months that followed, Camille got her mental and physical health in order and identified as a woman again. She said she now sees the situation from a more stable perspective.
“There’s nothing to transition to as non-binary,” Camille said. “There is no third gender there. It’s just based on the feeling that it would be a good choice for you. It’s designer surgery but I didn’t think of it at the time. . . It’s a weird Frankenstein operation they’re doing.
In retrospect, she noticed how negligent her doctors had been when they approved her procedure. She told them about the trauma she went through when her friend was raped and her emotional struggles. Yet she was still given the green light to remove her breasts.
“Doctors are also under this gender ideology, so there’s this kind of idea that you can have a mental illness and be trans,” she explained. “It’s almost like confirmation bias and they haven’t really looked into it.”
His love life was also impacted. Recently a partner broke up with her when they found out she had no boobs. And, although Camille would like to have children one day, she will never be able to breastfeed.
“I’m still sad about that,” she said. “It’s depressing what happened. I had this drastic surgery, and now I will always face the consequences.
Camille is represented by Jackson Bone LLP in her legal battle in Oregon State Court and is supported by the feminist organization Women’s Liberation Front.
She hopes taking the case to court will prevent history from repeating itself.
Many people “who shouldn’t have these surgeries are having these surgeries,” she said. “There are underlying health issues that are overlooked. People like me fall through the cracks.
#Detransitioner #suing #doctors #removed #healthy #breasts