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"Long term surgical results of female children show adequate sexualidentification, reproduction, intellectual functioning and acceptable genitalia."
The above quote is copied from the "Pediatric Surgical Update" from this CAH Website.
After reading some entries on the Main Message board where the parent is ecstatic about how well the surgery went (I think the parents mean that their child's vital signs are good, that they are healing physically. And their child still loves them.), I need to venture a comment and I invite the comments of other CAHers who might read the quote above.
"Acceptable genitalia" means acceptable to the team of people (parents, surgeons, endos) who manage the child. Remember that the child is not on the team. She will later be alone in discovering that though the equipment fools her partner, she may not be able to feel enough to match her friends' descriptions of sex. Psychologically, she may not be able to sufficiently recover from the string of private intrusions and alterations which she has logged in her psyche as surely as an orphan logs abandonment. We know that infants learn from music, toys, smiles, etc, etc. They also learn from mommy asking them to show themselves to strangers. Sorry to be graphic, but put yourself in their place.
All the while, the parent hopes that the child is happy and well-adjusted. The parent can feel like he/she did a good job. This is not realistic and once more leaves the child-soon-to-be-adult out of the picture.
So for this type of problem, I would like to remind parents to seek help for their kids when they become sexually active. You can't really go to therapy for them. You can't be privy to their private sexual lives. The last piece of your job is to bring the whole subject up again, let it be real in them and get them to some help. Long term, the alternative is that they may hate themselves for decades, have no sexual response and not know why. When they are small you are in charge of their bodies, but as adults they need a different kind of help.
Most parents don't want to open it up again. They just hope for the best. Would you have this type of courage?
