by Alison Mau
What a mess.
The mesh was removed and MacBeth did his best to remake my stomach pouch as normal as he could manage. He also undid the stapling, and once again I gained weight.
As you’ll have no doubt noticed, I had became very practised at finding doctors who would agree to carry out my surgical wishes. I moved back to Australia and found another surgeon who was willing to operate.
The procedure was originally planned to take place in the surgeon’s rooms, with just pethidine and Valium to sedate me. I was told it was relatively risk free — a gastric balloon would be delivered to my stomach via a scope put down my throat. This way we would avoid costly, messy and painful open surgery.
The surgeon tried twice to get it done, but each time I had a reaction to the sedation (in the first instance a rather horrifying reaction which saw the skin of my arms peel right off) and eventually on 20 October the doctor decided to put me under a brief general anaesthetic while he inserted the balloon.
I’ll never forget coming to in the recovery room and taking my first waking breath. The pain was enormous, like a knife in the middle of my back right between my shoulder blades. I told the nurses, one of whom muttered something about ‘that complaining bitch’ to her colleague then told me it was just the balloon settling into place and to have a drink of hot water, then cold water, to help it settle.
I did as I was told and two hours later, they told me, was near death with pneumonia. The water had gone straight into my lungs.
I learned later the surgeon should have checked where the gastric balloon was sitting once he’d withdrawn the scope that sets it in place. This he apparently did not do. Thanks to the complicated state of my internal organs, the balloon had come to rest in my oesophagus. When he inflated it, it blew my oesophagus apart.
Within an hour I was back in theatre, where a specialist cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr Bennett, cracked open my ribs and found the organ hanging in shreds. It took him four and half hours to repair the damage the surgeon had managed to create in four and a half minutes.
When I next woke up, I had no idea what had happened and was terrified to find I was in Intensive Care, breathing through a tube. I held my breath for a moment, alarms began to shriek, and nurses rushed into the room. One male nurse came close to the bed and looked me straight in the eye.
‘You’d better get a lawyer,’ he said.
I couldn’t speak so I mimed weakly until he gave me a pad and pencil, on which I wrote:
Why?
‘Because that man nearly killed you.’
Whether I believed him or not at the time I can’t recall (probably thanks to the drugs) but a few days later, back on the general ward, I witnessed an encounter that erased any doubts I may have had. The surgeon who’d operated on me was coming into the ward to see me. As he reached the door, he was stopped in his tracks by Dr Bennett, the surgeon who’d repaired my shredded oesophagus.
‘If you go in there, I’ll cut your throat!’ Dr Bennett told him.
The surgeon was caught off guard and was obviously unaware I was listening.
‘It’s like knocking a child over,’ I heard him say.
‘You never plan to do it, do you?’
He’d admitted it. I found a lawyer, a very good one in fact. Russell Keddie1 had the top personal injury practice in Sydney and was, despite his later business troubles, an absolute darling to me in every possible way. I heard that the surgeon had botched a similar procedure just a few days later on another woman in his care, so that may well have helped our case. We sued, and I was awarded $100,000 Australian.
Money is all very well and good, but along with the physical scars there was also my mental state to consider. I was an utter mess for a long time afterwards, although I was loath to admit it.
In the haze after waking from that surgical disaster I remember feeling very frightened. I couldn’t talk and had no idea why there was a tube down my throat. The pain was immense and for the first week in the ward I did not sleep at all.
I’m not one to lie around in bed, so during the second week in hospital and still in a great deal of pain, I forced myself to take walks about the ward. I was so desperate to get home and start working that I insisted on leaving on 1 November, just short of two weeks after the operation.
Not a good idea as it turns out. Once home I was constantly nauseous and weak, and couldn’t work at all for more than a month in the end. I seemed to be constantly in tears, filled with an unquenchable rage, and couldn’t stand talking to anyone. I asked my flatmate to move out altogether.
I slept hardly at all and, when I did, most of my dreams were of violent car accidents.
Letter from Dr Peter Johnson, GP, Christchurch, to Russell Keddie, Keddie & Parters, Sydney, 18 September 1990
Dear Mr Keddie
RE: Mrs Elizabeth Anne Roberts
Elizabeth joined my practice on 07/03/89 shortly after returning to Christchurch. She has subsequently continued to experience significant ongoing health problems, directly as a result of a traumatic oesophageal rupture occurring on 20/10/87 during a routine dilation procedure. She continues to experience both difficulty and pain on swallowing. There is gross gastro-oesophageal reflux causing chronic retrosternal pain and persistent nausea with bouts of vomiting. Her diet is subsequently very limited and Elizabeth has difficulties in maintaining an adequate body weight. Long-term problems with mal-absorption are a possibility.
As a result of these chronic problems, Elizabeth has developed a reactive depression, requiring medication. She also has problems with insomnia, largely as a result of free gastro-oesophageal reflux when lying down, with an exacerbation of her chronic retrosternal pain . . .
During the last two years I have seen her a total of 33 times. She needs to be seen at least monthly with exacer-bations of retrosternal pain and for regular surveillance. Her long-term prognosis is poor with the risk of further oesophageal stricture. She is unable to work and will almost certainly remain a long-term sickness beneficiary.
Yours sincerely
DR PETER JOHNSON
Things were only slightly improved when I was able to go back to work. I’d always got on brilliantly with my dressmaking clients, that was one of the best things about my business, but the sociable part of my personality appeared to have vanished. I had little energy or drive, and even less patience. The clients all seemed to be so demanding. Before the surgery I could make up to fifteen garments in a week; now I was barely getting through four. My reputation was suffering — clients were warning their friends away, telling them they shouldn’t come to me for clothes because ‘she’s always sick’.
The worst physical symptom was severe gastric reflux. My mouth would suddenly flood with a watery, foul-tasting acid. I would lean over the toilet and watch it pour out. There was no hope of eating anything on those days, and the reflux was often accompanied by sharp pain in the centre of my chest. There was no predicting when it would happen — sometimes I would be out with friends at dinner and have to rush to the ladies room. At times I could go for a week without severe symptoms; at times I’d be laid low for four days straight. I had to sleep propped up almost vertically on pillows to prevent the acid rising in my throat.
The doctors told me I should go back and have my oesophagus dilated, but I couldn’t face the thought of another hospitalisation. The very thought of surgery terrified me.
No interest in food, or sex, or anything that I had once enjoyed, I would go over and over the experience in my head, unable to rid myself of the terror. I kept myself groomed and well presented as I always had, but inside I felt anxious, jumpy and defenceless. I’d never actually hated my body before, not even when I was obese, but now I certainly did.
Keddie’s law firm asked an independent Sydney doctor for a full report ahead of my court case in 1988. His diagnosis: post traumatic stress disorder. He said psychiatric
treatment would not help; my problems were caused directly by the complications of the surgery. Instead, he told them, I faced a gradual recovery over the next two years. Another doctor consulted at the time claimed the prognosis was poor — I would almost definitely remain a long-term sickness beneficiary.
Eventually my health and my life returned to something resembling normality — I could eat and sleep a little better with each year that passed. It’s hard to say that there were any truly good things that came from the experience, but this much at least is true: I never again struggled with my weight.
* * *
1 Russell Keddie was a partner at Sydney’s largest personal injury law firm. According to media reports in 2008, the firm was found to have grossly overcharged as many as 100 injured clients, and Keddie was struck off the legal roll. After selling the business for AU$32 million in 2011, Russell Keddie declared himself bankrupt a year later, leaving former clients a total of AU$22 million out of pocket.
20
THE LEGAL BATTLE
Letter from J.L. Wright, Registrar-General, to Miss P. Webb, 8 May 1975
The Secretary for Justice,
WELLINGTON
Attention: Miss P. Webb
GARRY ALEXANDER ROBERTS
In the light of the decision of McMullin, J. herein dealing with the application by Vanessa Williams, I seek your advice as to what steps, if any, I should take about the above named.
In September 1969 an application was received from solicitors in Christchurch asking for the sex of the above named to be changed on the birth registration. The child had been registered as Garry Alexander and the name was changed by deed poll to Elizabeth Anne. At the time the application was received, this office had no knowledge of the sex change operations which have since occurred and been brought to our attention, and the matter was dealt with as a hermaphrodite. The sex was changed from male to female and a certified copy of the registration, so amended, supplied to the solicitors. It subsequently came to my knowledge that Elizabeth Anne had been married in Australia and returned to New Zealand, where she and her husband sought to adopt a child. The application was refused. During the course of the seminar attended by Miss Webb and me, the allegation was made that despite the view expressed at that time, a registration entry had been changed after a sex change operation. I am now aware that this is the case referred to.
In the light of the Judgment of McMullin, J. and of the information which has come to my attention, I am satisfied that an error was made in making that correction. I consider that I am bound by the terms of the Act to remedy the situation and record correctly on the appropriate registration, the fact that the child whose birth is registered is a male. I appreciate that I could do this without further comment, but the fact remains that sooner or later it will come to someone’s attention, possibly Elizabeth Anne’s, and we may have to answer for it. In the past, Elizabeth Anne has gone to the newspapers and no doubt could again. It also could raise the whole question of the validity of the so called ‘marriage’ which was performed in Australia. Could we please discuss the position.
J.L. Wright
Registrar-General
It’s strange to look back and know that what could have become a major human rights incident, with national and international ramifications, was triggered by the actions of a nosey mother-in-law.
The letter above is dated 1975, which shows that officialdom had first twigged to what they saw as their ‘error’ (changing my birth certificate) only six years after my sex-change operation. I never knew the letter existed. It only came to light in 1992, when my lawyers dug it up. Whatever the return correspondence from the Secretary of Justice was at the time, it buried the issue for sixteen years.
Transgender issues had been in the news at the end of the 1980s with the case of the gorgeous Caroline Cossey. An English model and Bond girl, she was breaking ground internationally as the first transgender woman to challenge English and then European law for the right to be recognised and marry as a woman. That fight would take her seven years. At the time no one knew, publicly anyway, that New Zealand had already broken that legal ground by granting me an official change in gender in 1969. But while Caroline was battling Margaret Thatcher and the European courts, back here in New Zealand, my fiancé Craig and I were planning our wedding.
By way of introduction, Craig was a big burly man with scant appetite for work, but a penchant for enjoying the fruits of other people’s labours. Looking back I realise we had little in common; in fact, after we parted I was asked what I had enjoyed about out relationship. I had to think for a long moment, before replying: ‘We liked the same music.’
Nevertheless, there I was in 1997, writing a guest list, planning a menu and making my wedding outfit, with no idea there were people actively trying to make sure the occasion never took place.
It was twenty past one on the Friday afternoon before our wedding day when the phone rang. I was at home, flat out sewing for clients, mainly stuff for the Christchurch races and a couple of brides. The policeman, polite as anything, said, ‘Ms Roberts, could you come down to our office and have a wee chat?’
‘Why?’
‘Oh, just come down and see me at the Community Constable’s office, if you would. I’ll tell you then. And can you bring your husband-to-be with you?’
‘He’s at work.’
‘Can you get him to meet you there?’
‘Alright.’
When we arrived at the station together, Craig’s mother, Merle, was sitting in the foyer. When she caught sight of him she jumped up, crying, ‘Oh, your solicitor’s been saying, “Poor Craig, poor Craig!”’
The policeman took us into a meeting room and sat us in a semicircle. It seemed Merle couldn’t wait a moment longer to get her point across, but she couldn’t bring herself to talk directly to me either, so she talked across me to the police officer, just as if I wasn’t there.
‘Now, you tell her that I say . . .’ she would say, and that went on the whole way through the interview. The policeman asked me when our marriage was going to be, what time and where it was taking place, so I told him.
He said, ‘I think you’ll find there’s a few problems.’
‘Really? What are they?’
Merle butted in: ‘You tell her that I’ve already been to Interpol about her. This marriage can’t go ahead.’
I didn’t know Interpol even operated in New Zealand. It appears she’d been to them, Inland Revenue, and the Registrar-General in a desperate attempt to stop us getting married. While I could barely believe that was true, the policeman confirmed it.
‘They’ve been in contact with us as well.’
I don’t know what she’d said to all those government departments, but I suspect it would have been along the lines of ‘My son shouldn’t be marrying this man that’s dressing up as a woman.’ Craig told Merle he didn’t care what she thought, it had nothing to do with her. Her reply was as it had always been.
‘It’s just WRONG. What would God think?’
The policeman asked Craig and me to pop outside for a moment please, and when he came out he looked perplexed.
‘Look, I’m really sorry, there’re a lot of things I didn’t know about here. And I can’t get involved in this.’
‘Well, I don’t see how it involves you anyway, whether we get married or not.’
‘I don’t think you should.’
He was just doing the Community Constable thing, trying to smooth things over and keep the peace, because Merle was absolutely beside herself with grief about the wedding.
‘Why not? We are getting married. We don’t need your permission. Craig’s in his thirties, I’m much older, and we’ll do what we like. If Craig doesn’t want to marry me he doesn’t have to, he’s under no pressure at all.’
‘I just think it would be easier if you didn’t. If y
ou do, there could be problems.’
I don’t know whether he meant there would be people coming to disrupt the function, or that the police would swoop in and arrest everyone, but obviously something was going on. Craig and I started quietly making plans to marry in Melbourne, and made the Christchurch gathering into a simple celebration ahead of our overseas marriage.
Well, bugger me, if the letter from the Registrar-General didn’t arrive the following Monday. We made a mistake back in 1969, it said, and you must not marry, as we’re changing your sex from female back to male.
I don’t remember being angry — I was so accustomed to people treating me this way that I just swallowed hard and thought, well, here we go again. Then I went straight to a solicitor.
I hadn’t counted on the media getting involved. I’m not sure to this day who called Television New Zealand, but before I knew it a reporter for the Holmes programme was on the phone, asking for an interview. I thought perhaps they could help; what harm could it do? So I agreed. One of my dressmaking clients, Raewyn Idione-Dunne, had offered us her lovely Christchurch home for the upcoming wedding party, and kindly agreed to host the filming as well.
In the interview I told the story of my earliest memory, refusing to wear the Prince Charming costume at that kindergarten party when I was four, when the Cinderella dress, blue and sparkly, was so much more me. I told the reporter David Lomas that I had never felt truly right as a boy or a man, that people would point the finger and comment in the street because I didn’t look completely right, and that everyone seemed to assume I was gay.
‘I wasn’t homosexual. But because I behaved as I did, people assumed that I was in fact homosexual. And I’m not. Homosexuals and transsexuals are totally different people. We really are very different people. And the surgery really was not an easy thing to get. We had to convince psychiatrists, psychologists and endocrinologists and it was a very long process.