Apple's Story

[Received Mar 2008]

Hey I’m Apple. I am 24 years old and I have 2 sisters who have AIS. One is 11 years older than me and she was diagnosed CAIS when she was 18. My younger sister and I were too young at that time to be tested. She is a year and a half younger than me to the day. So when I was about 16 and still hadn't had a period I also went to an OBGYN at the local Childrens Hospital in Mo. The doctor did some blood work and sonograms then told us that we had [what I now know to be] AIS. All they told us was that we had a small mutation in one of our genes and it caused our ovaries to "grow wrong" so we wouldn't be able to have kids and we had to get the non working organs removed because they could cause cancer. The doctor took x-rays of our hands and asked us questions like are we gay? Do we want to have sex with men? Have we ever felt like we weren't like the other girls? I thought that doctor was crazy.

I was kind of mad about not being able to have kids but at 16 I wasn’t really thinking about it too much. Plus I had a little sister so I had to set a good example. So my little sister and I had our surgeries the same day, back in April of 2001. And that was that. I did suspect something because we were so young. My sister and I had to have waivers signed because the video and pics were going to be published in a magazine that we couldn’t see. I also didn’t understand why I could never mention it my friends, family or boyfriend at the time. Nobody was supposed to know why we had surgery and that we had pics in a medical magazine. To this day I have never seen the pics or video but they were published.

When I was 18 years old I went to a local Community College and one of my classes was a speech course. I was being very lazy that day so I decided to do a topic about AIS for my class. I actually didn’t even know the name of it so I called the hospital and asked my doctor’s nurse what it was called. She was very reluctant and didn’t want to tell me. She did though, after trying to convince me that "it wasn’t a topic I should talk about with my class". So we hung up and before I could walk from the student break room to the computer lab my doctor called me. I was shocked. She told me that she wants to see me and again not to talk about it with my class.

I Googled the topic and to my surprise it was nothing like I thought it was. I came across tons of depressing web sites saying I wasn’t a woman, and I was an "it" or "they". They said we shouldn’t be allowed to get married, how if we have sex with a man or a woman it would be considered a homosexual act, and we will be looked down upon by God. As well as a bunch of stories of people telling sad and depressing things.

I just started crying and left school. I went to my Dad’s office and yelled at him and my Mom for lying to me. I told them I was going to tell my little sister the truth and I even wanted to commit suicide. I never did tell my little sister all of the things I read. Yeah, I know about how mad I was for being lied to for all those years but I didn’t want her to feel as bad as I did at that time. I felt like I wasn’t normal, a woman, or even human. I felt like I couldn’t have children so what was the point of having a life that I couldn’t share. My cousin came over, after my parents called her, and she stayed with me for a couple of days and talked me down. Then I went to a couple of websites and posted my story in a positive way. Slowly I got over it and kind of forgot about it then went back to being normal.

Almost exactly a year later in 2004 I got a weird letter that I almost deleted from a girl from Virginia with the same thing as I did. She'd read my story on that same website a year later and decided to contact me. Her name was H______. She was the only child and she didn’t have anybody to talk to about having AIS. We started emailing, then using I.M., then calling each other. From that day forward she is the best friend I have in this world and we have never met. I talk to her about God, and relationships, anything we could think of we have shared it and gone through it together. I love her as much as I do my own sisters, actually a little more. I honestly don't know what I would do without her. She is 1 year younger than I am and I look up to her for finishing college, surviving being teased, and for being an all around good woman. Thinking back on how I nearly deleted her email back in May 2004, I truly know God put her in my life for a reason.

I got married in August 2004. My husband at the time was just getting into the Navy and we moved from Missouri to San Diego. I decided not to tell him about my diagnosis because we were still young and shaky. I'm glad that I did. We were happy for a while then he wanted children. I don’t know, military men just want babies. Mind you that he already had a son, but he wanted more. To make that story short, he told me he wanted a divorce and I left him. He said he thought he could handle the whole "not having kids thing" but he couldn’t. He wanted a family and I couldn’t give it to him. He threw it in my face and it made me very depressed so I didn’t argue, I just gave him a divorce. Our marriage didn’t even last 8 months. H______ stood by my side and helped me get through the hard times. We literally talked on the phone from sun up to sundown and she was my backbone.

In 2005 that I decided to join the Navy. They denied me many times but they did let me in. It was 8 weeks to complete bootcamp. I was so proud of myself and so was my family. I was going to do something honorable my Dad said. I just wanted to succeed at something in life. I only made it to week 5, day 3, when my division had to go to medical and get our records rechecked. Then a captain who was a doctor said in front of everybody she didn’t understand my blood work. She said she knew I wasn’t pregnant and how she was baffled and asked me in front of my entire division if I was an XY? I held it together and answered her no. While people asked me "how do you even know what that is?" She called me to her office and I admitted that I was. She gave me some excuse about how we weren’t allowed to be in the Navy. She also said that my medical waiver I used to get in the Navy, I shouldn’t have ever gotten it approved. So they processed me out. I was crushed. Again, H______ was a great friend. I was so embarrassed. I couldn’t tell my family anything but I had a medical discharge because they didn’t know about my condition. So they thought I just "washed out"(meaning I couldn’t handle it).

I moved to Dallas and began dancing in a club. NO I’m not proud of that, but I did. After I got tired of that I moved to Virginia with a friend and started nursing school. I am still here in Va. and I graduate as an LPN this June. My family is so proud of me and I am happy with myself. I am seeing a great understanding man and I have a job that I love. I see now that life works itself out.

I have been wanting to join the group for a while so I decided to do it now. H______ has told me great things about the people she’s met. I have been honest and I hope to gain some friends and knowledge from the group. Hopefully God can grace me with the strength to help another young girl like myself through her hard times.

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