At 19 years old, Soren Aldaco found herself alone in an emergency room for 8 hours, with doctors reopening the wounds from a double mastectomy she had undergone just two weeks earlier.

Inserting a Q-tip in the hole they had to cut open, doctors aggressively knocked out blood clots, sewed surgical drains into her body, and expressed over three cups of blood that had pooled in her chest.

“At the time, I thought I was going to die,” Soren told Independent Women’s Forum. “I just remember being on zero pain meds at the time.” …

Now 21, Soren looks back on her medical transition with regret. Her traumatic medical complications opened her eyes to the ills of “gender-affirming care,” which she said enabled her to believe hormones and surgery could provide her with the sense of self she craved growing up. Detransitioned and now working to heal her complex emotions through mindfulness, Soren has become a vocal advocate against the “enabling” she sees happening within the gender medical industry.

[This story may be too intense for some people, especially the video, which features some of the catastrophic effects of Soren’s “top surgery.” However, it’s necessary to tell these stories to debunk the lie that the only choices parents have is “a dead daughter or live son,” or vice versa. It’s a tale of a cult-like descent into transgenderism with absolutely no effective reality checks along the way. Pay attention especially to Soren’s point about ADHD medication as a young child and the impact that had on her thinking regarding reality-bending pharmacology. — Ed]