Luka Hein, from Minnesota, was given the operation at 16 and claims the surgery has left her with daily pain, while the hormone drugs may have robbed her of the chance of becoming a mom.
A lawsuit Ms Hein filed today in Nebraska accuses the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) gender clinic of malpractice and seeks financial damages.
The suit claims her doctor then said: ‘I guess this is just part of your gender journey.’
‘I was essentially just brushed aside,’ Luka told DailyMail.com
She has since decided to ‘detransition’ and live as a woman.
But the treatments have allegedly left her with permanent scars, a deep voice and erratic hormones.
She also claims she has pain in her joints, lumbar spine, hands, wrists, elbows and pelvic area as a result of hormone therapy, adding she will not be able to breastfeed and may be infertile.
Luka is the latest so-called ‘detransitioner’ to take legal action against her doctors in lawsuits that could prove pivotal in America’s heated debate about transgender rights and medical procedures, especially those on children.
Luka said her ordeal began in 2015, when the divorce of her parents turned the then 13-year-old’s world upside down.
She was forced to split her time between two households, and her life became ‘chaotic.’
Luka struggled in school and suffered anxiety and panic attacks. She lost her appetite, started self-harming and talked of suicide.
She was diagnosed with depression and generalized anxiety disorder and given antipsychotic medication.
In 2017, Luka was groomed online and preyed upon by an older man from another state who persuaded her to send him sexually explicit pictures.
Traumatized by her online encounter with the older man, Luka wondered whether it would be best to have no breasts at all.
Sex-change surgeries carried out across US annually have nearly tripled in recent years. About 48,000 patients underwent such surgeries during the five years studied, with about 13,000 procedures done in 2019, the peak year, and 12,800 in 2020.