A new lease of life for a hermaphrodite

Wasbir’s (name changed) gender ambiguity robbed his “boyhood” for the last 14 years as this young boy from Rameswarpur village in Howrah district didn’t know what to do as he was, till the surgery, as much a “boy” as a “girl.”

 The initial years for him had not been much of a trouble as he played with the kids in the neighbourhood normally. But shortly after 12, he began bleeding from his penis. Worried parents took him to the doctor for a routine examination.

After the bleeding didn’t stop and the infection got worse, he was taken to hospital where doctors discovered that the boy had ovaries, uterus and breasts and the young fellow was actually “menstruating.”

When medical experts at  SSKM thoroughly checked him, they were amazed to find this to be a rare case of a true hermaphrodite which would require a very sophisticated surgery. Even as the experts began preparing for the surgery, they faced another dilemma.

Would Wasbir be “turned” into a man or a woman? A counselling was arranged and after some sessions and “a closed-door” discussion with him, doctors were convinced that his preferences, psychologically, were more of a man than a woman.

On obtaining the consent of Wasbir and his mother that he should be a “man,” a medical board was constituted at the SSKM  Hospital comprising experts from gynaecology, general surgery, cardiology, urology, endocrinology, plastic surgery and radiology who all assured Wasbir that his pangs would shortly be over as post-surgery, he would be a complete man.

“First, we removed his females organs like ovaries and uterus in a phased manner and later,  testes were removed from inside the abdomen to prevent malignancy in future,” the medical super Dr Debashis Bhattacharya told Deccan Herald here on Tuesday. “And his breast were amputated on last Friday.”

However, Bhattacharya conceded that Wasbir would have to bear with one setback rest of his life. “He can’t be a father."