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>> Hi, I'm Dr Devin O'Brien Coon,
I'm a plastic and reconstructive surgeon
and the medical director of the Johns Hopkins Center
for transgender health.
With me today I have one of my patients,
Johnny Boucher,
who's going to talk with me about his experiences
here at the center as a patient
and generally his experience going through the process.
It's an interesting story for how you made that decision
to even get the surgery.
>> I remember, the moment that stands out
to my heart, that sounds sentimental,
but the moment that really stands out to me
in the first consult
was when you said let's rank these priorities,
because you had thought about
what the possible priorities were.
What were you thinking on your end
about as you said, rank sensation,
sexual use, aesthetics and standing to pee.
Were those the four?
>> Yeah I think there are two levels.
The first one is, especially for bottom surgery,
it's a process, it's a journey,
it's not you show up, you get it, you go home.
That's what top surgery is, but that's not what this is.
So you have to know like, does the patient know that?
Are they prepared for this?
Are they going to be mentally and financially
and everything able to endure this journey?
>> I really appreciated the education
that is taking place here for the nursing staff
because a lot of people when they say,
how was your outcome?
What was your experience like?
They're not really asking how healed you are.
How are your scars?
How aesthetic is your outcome?
They're asking were you mistreated
when you were in the hospital?
How much did you have to suffer through?
Not just physically, but psychologically?
Did people objectify you or sensationalize you?
And I could tell that education is going on here.
I had someone in the ICU say, pardon?
Um, would you happen to be a gender?
Or, or a gender queer?
And she said the words like
maybe it was the first time she'd ever said them out loud,
but she had been studying
because she wanted to affirm a wide variety of genders here
and make me feel safe.
>> You know, before we started doing surgery
we had almost a year of education.
We were trying to open up the general hospitals more,
you know, part of the goal of the center is to
be system-wide and even go out
into the other Hopkins Hospitals
and they're not all gonna do Phalloplasties,
but they're all going to have people come into the ER
with a heart attack who might be trans.
>> I'm so curious, how did you get into this?
Because this is a sensational subject.
And unless you have background with transgender folks,
you're going to be knee deep
in all of our multifaceted community issues.
>> I think the reason I got interested in it
initially it was because
I liked the patients that we were...
>> Oh you like us,
okay, that's it, if I could really boil down
to why I like this place, you like us.
>> Yeah, I think people, human beings can tell
if you like them and it's not, it's not like
you can't fake it, you know, there's a natural tendency
to root for the underdog and want to help the people
that you think aren't getting sort of a fair shake
by the medical system.
So I think that the education thing is really important
because I would imagine that
that's the only way it's going to change in the future.
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