Treatment in India includes everything from pick-up at the airport to the drop-off back at the terminal five or six weeks later with an entirely different body. It also usually, in times when Covid is not on the rampage, includes a tourist trip to destinations such as the Taj Mahal.
“As I was already out when I underwent the surgery; it hasn’t made a big difference in how I interact with people around me, but for me personally, it just allows me to feel ‘correct’,” Isabella told RT.com.
“Having male genitals was a constant reminder that I was born ‘wrong’ and I also would constantly limit myself in what I could do and what I would wear, as I feared anyone else seeing.
“After surgery, I no longer worry about clothes being too tight and I am excited to be able to use the changing room like any other woman.
“As to why I chose to go to India, it was partly because of the price but definitely also because of the surgeon.”
Patients are only accepted after a minimum of a full year of female hormone treatment and a thorough psychological evaluation for gender dysphoria, essentially meaning they feel the opposite sex to that into which they were born.
But the recovery from surgery doesn’t take all that long and it doesn’t hurt as much as it used to. Patients are usually up and walking in four to seven days. And the results of the modern technique, pioneered by Dr. Kaushik, called Sigma-lead, can be remarkable.
In his two decades in the field, Dr. Kaushik has operated on around 10,000 transgender patients and carried out over 16,000 operations. The youngest was aged 19, the oldest in their late 60s. Some come for corrective surgery on less effective procedures carried out elsewhere, and not all get the full change.
Around 20% of Dr. Kaushik’s patients are from outside India, and he’s recently operated on people from the US, Europe, and Australia. At least a thousand foreigners have been through his doors. He operates on two or three patients most days.
Accurate figures for how many people have travelled to Asia for gender surgery don’t exist but, if Dr. Kaushik’s busy clinic is anything to go by – and there are many such clinics across India, Thailand and the Philippines – it must be in the thousands. There are at least 100 doctors qualified to carry out gender surgery in Thailand alone.
The Olmec trans-specific clinic in Delhi was only inaugurated in 2019 to help deal with the demand, and Dr. Kaushik operated on a dozen foreign patients in December 2021.
“We are looking forward to further expansion,” said Dr. Kaushik.
Indeed. The demand is only going to increase, especially as the cultural stigma decreases.
“If someone is male externally but female internally, psychologically, it is a constant demand from the mind to have the female gender,” he told RT.com. “Only surgery will satisfy this and make them happy. This is a fact, this is the reality.”
And for people who undergo the treatment, it’s a matter of turning their bodies into how they’ve felt most of their lives.
“It is very hard to imagine how it feels without being transgender, but if you imagine someone deliberately calling you a different name than your own every single day, it sort of comes close,” Isabella told RT.com.
“I am not hurting anyone by being who I am, I am simply looking for acceptance to be allowed to be who I am. And to be allowed to be happy.
“I finally feel complete. After a journey of more than 10 years, I can finally be at rest with myself. I am happier, much less stressed and very, very hopeful for the future.”
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
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