Melinda Summer
This is my personal story about gender dysphoria.In 2013, The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) changed the diagnosis of gender identity disorder (GID) to the more accurate gender dysphoria. They also reclassified it not as a mental illness but a mental distress, being filled with anxiety and depression.When I first heard the diagnosis of gender dysphoria, I knew in that name it identified what I had been suffering from my entire life. Apparently, I was not alone, and the world was suddenly thrown into hearing more about transgender people as so many began the process of becoming transgender. Some might term this sudden onset vocabulary.After decades working in the field of nuclear medicine technology, reading scientific papers, and going to symposiums about current research, I began to read about the causes of gender dysphoria, how it relates to intersex people (formerly called hermaphrodites), and, well, I was scared. The treatment is to become transgender to become happy and healthy. I read current treatment papers and any other research I could find, as well as social media, so I would know what to expect and dispel my fears. Transition is not fun or easy, especially as a person gets older. It is best to start as young as possible. For many decades, psychologists have known that a child usually knows what gender they are between the ages of four and seven. When the wrong puberty starts, without treatment many simply end their own lives. I want to stop that. Everybody wants to stop that, I hope.On a daily basis, I explain nuclear medicine technology to patients in a way they can understand. I hope to use this experience to explain gender dysphoria and transgender. Hopefully through education, more of society will understand us, not with pity, disdain, or hate but rather as individuals living our lives as happy and healthy as we can as three percent of the population.
