0UCH S0LDiER!!

OMG:: TRUE ST0RY

AN EX-SOLDIER was so desperate to become a woman he performed a DIY sex change operation on himself.

When Roland Mery, a 61-year-old, married, father-of-four from Newport, was told he had to wait two years for gender reassignment surgery he decided he had no option but to do the job himself.

Telling his wife of 23 years, Julie, that he had a headache, Roland took some painkillers and headed for the family bathroom. Using a home-made surgery kit, he removed his genitals, losing two pints of blood in the process.

But for Roland, this drastic action was his only way of setting himself free.

“From the moment I walked down the stairs after I did it I just felt right. I had repressed my feelings for so long,” said Roland, who is considering changing his name to the more feminine-sounding Rolande.

“I had worked out exactly how I would do it and rehearsed it many times. It proved to me afterwards that your brain and emotions can overpower you so much. I had rehearsed the whole thing over and over. So when it came to actually doing it, the pain wasn’t an issue anymore.

“My priority was to just get rid of it all, but I obviously had to be very careful.

“When I was taken to the Royal Gwent Hospital afterwards, the doctor told me I had actually done quite a good job!”

Whilst Roland was being ferried to hospital in an ambulance, the Mery family bathroom was turned into a crime scene. At first, traumatised wife Julie was suspected of attacking her husband. But when police entered the bathroom, it became clear that he had planned it all himself.

Although Roland had eventually plucked up the courage to admit to his stunned wife that he longed to become a woman, 51-year-old Julie had not believed his claims that he would resort to such drastic action.

It was not until Roland appeared on the stairs in a blood-stained shirt, clutching a towel between his legs, that she realised the full extent of his desperation.

“When he came down the stairs he was absolutely white. I thought he was dying,” said Julie. “He yelled: ‘Ring 999 Julie, I’ve done it!’

“I wanted to go to the hospital with Roland, but I couldn’t because my home was being treated as a crime scene. There were forensics and police in the bathroom and they thought I might have done it. But when they went upstairs, what they saw told them Roland had planned this himself.

“I had just got over cancer and don’t know how I would have coped if it wasn’t for my family, they were very supportive.”

Since the age of four, Roland knew he was different from the other boys.

“At the time you don’t know what it is,” he said. “I always liked to play hopscotch with the girls and was always shunned. My mates at school would ask what was wrong with me. I was one of the boys, not one of the girls.

“Once I asked my parents if I could have a doll’s house, but my father and brother found it very strange and said that was for girls. That really hurt me.

“I think that was the start of me going into myself and getting very shy around certain people.”

walesonline.co.uk