I’ve just been looking through the posts I’d missed, all discussing this “Zoe” person.
Wow,
OK, a few items from my medical history.
I had bleeding every month at about age 12 through my urinary tract. The diagnosis at the time was a recurrent urino-genital tract infection. On the balance of probabilities, I believe this diagnosis was correct, as the ultrasounds showed no sign of any cervical structure connected to the urinary tract. I’m rather glad of that, as the next test would have been reverse-flow analysis of the urinary tract, which is what is used in such cases. We cannot completely dismiss the possibility that such a structure did at one time exist, but it is unlikely.
At age 20, I had “anomalous tissue” removed from my abdomen. I went in for gallbladder surgery, but while I was there, they opened me up from crotch to sternum, and removed a number of structures. Leaving me with what looks exactly like a radical hysterectomy scar.
If ovarian tissue was removed, as seems possible, it would almost certainly have been dysfunctional. I noticed no change to my hormonal balance, so if there were ovaries there, they weren’t working at the time. Unfortunately the records were misplaced, as is extremely common in such cases, “to spare the patient anguish”.
It is also possible that the structures were a cluster of soft tissue sarcomas, as I was led to believe at the time. Yet I had no follow-up radiation therapy, as was standard in such cases.
So, did I have working ovaries, womb and cervix? Perhaps. Again, on the balance of probabilities, I think not. Probably either atrophied tissue, or mere clumps of cells. But I can’t say for certain. Certainly there was no vaginal opening.
On the balance of probabilities, I think the tissue removed was merely cancerous, but could very well be wrong.
A friend of mine who lives in Germany, and was the first person to get her birth certificate amended in the UK even before the recent Gender Recognition Act, had PMD syndrome. She looked male, and had fathered a child. When she had her sex reassignment surgery, the surgeons found a cervix, womb, and a single ovotesis, similar to the one she had in her scrotal sac. They also found a teratoma, an encysted foetus due to self-fertilisation. The child had no chance of life as there was no vaginal opening, and had been partially re-absorbed.
Persistent Mullerian Duct syndrome (PMDS) leads to “true hermaphroditism”, but ones which are doubly fertile are extremely rare, one in several million. My friend’s case is the only one on record where a “virgin pregnancy” happened.
Moving right along to my own situation… after the surgery in 1980, I went to a Fertility Clinic in 1985. As the result of a simple androgen series (blood test of hormone levels) and an external physical examination, I was diagnosed as a mildly intersexed male, with PAI syndrome. PAIS can only be diagnosed by an external exam even now. PAIS-1 is the lowest grade, resulting in a male appearance but with anomalies. PAIS-7 or CAIS, Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, is the most common form, and results in an ultra-feminine body, as the patient is totally immune to the effects of male hormones. She could be injected with enough testosterone to turn the Dallas Cheerleaders into the Dallas Cowboys, and it would have zero effect. Such women have vaginas, but no cervic, womb or ovaries. They do have two testes internally. Miss Teen USA 1991 had CAIS - such women look like supermodels, ultra-feminine as I said.
In 2005 I had a female puberty in fast-forward. My natural hormonal levels changed to female norms, but the body changes were far too fast to be accounted for merely by hormone levels. Something odd was happening at the cellular receptor level. I lost 1/3 of my body mass in 3 months, changed shape, my eye colour changed (a result of high levels of oestrogen, it happens to some pubescent girls), and various skin conditions I’d had since puberty cleared up overnight. The metabolic stress was severe, and it’s possible that the condition is usually fatal.
After MRI scans, blood tests, genetic tests, ultrasounds, etc etc my medical team revised the diagnosis. In such cases, the labels “male” and “female” are approximations, but it was decided that the most accurate diagnosis was “severe androgenisation of a non-pregnant woman”, and treatment was commenced on that basis.
It’s nearly 4 years on, and after more tests than I can count, all known possibilities have been excluded, including the weird combinations such as having both (masculinising) CAH syndrome with (feminising) CAI syndrome, a 1 in 200,000 chance.
I do not have any of the standard, well-known Intersex conditions, but as 1 in 3 cases of Intersex are “idiopathic”, meaning “we have no idea why this has happened”, this is not that unusual.
Both my parents families hail from neighbouring villages in Derbyshire, England, one of the few places on the planet with no free iodine in the environment. Centuries of evolutionary pressure has led to a genepool full of interesting mutations to the thyroid and other glands, and my relatives on my mother’s side appear to have the same kind of mutation as a gene pool in Milano, Italy. They have fatally high cholesterol levels, but no ill effects from that. I’ve certainly inherited that gene ( ApoA-I Milano ). I also have a very high chance of having the CCR-25a mutation, which would make me immune to Bubonic Plague, Smallpox, HiV, Nile Valley, Ebola, Marburg, and a few others. I have no wish to try the experiment though.
Our best guess, and guess it is, is an as-yet unidentified mutation or combination of mutations that has caused this. But we really don’t know, and even a $100,000 complete genetic workup would be unlikely to find it.
I have no idea what sex agangbern would assign to me under these circumstances.
