Jazz Jennings, the 18-year-old star of
the TLC reality show I Am Jazz, says in a new interview that
she worried about how complications with her gender confirmation
surgery would affect other transgender teens.
The fifth season of I Am Jazz,
which premiered last month, documents Jennings' gender confirmation
surgery, which took place in June. Her team of doctors has described
Jennings' surgery as “the most difficult case” that they have
encountered.
“To undergo the surgery and have this
major complication, it was pretty much a nightmare,” Jennings told
LGBT glossy The Advocate. “You know, any time you have this
big operation, you want it to go perfectly. And at first, everything
was going great, it was amazing. And then, about a week later, once
I got the dressing packing catheter removed, everything kind of went
downhill and I experienced wound separation.”
“So it was really intense, but what I
had to do in that moment was adopt the mindset of my future self. I
knew that as gloomy as things seemed in that present moment, that in
the future, things would get better, and that I would be fully healed
one day doing cartwheels and splits and everything that I was able to
do before. And look at me now. Now, I'm here.”
“We definitely had concerns to how
the transgender community was gonna respond to the surgery episode.
Specifically, with the complication that I ended up enduring. I
worry that it would make kids and families fearful, and, of course,
we don't want to incite any fear in anyone. But it's the truth of
what happened to me and I did end up experiencing this really fluky
thing. It's a very rare complication but I hope people can learn
that no matter how hard it may seem in that moment, that if you stay
strong, you can get through it.”
“I think [that] by sharing my surgery
experience, people can really see that I'm just a normal girl, living
my life, wanting to go through with this because this is my choice,”
she
added. “We are are humanizing the transgender experience. I
am just a girl that happens to be transgender.”