Last we heard from Dr. Marci Bowers,
the woman behind the city labeled “the sex change capital of the
world,” was in World of Wonder's Sex Change Hospital, a six
part docu-drama that focused on the people going under the knife.
Tonight, Discovery Health turns the lens around to give us a look at
the doctor holding the scalpel.
In tonight's premiere presentation of
Discovery Health's Transgender M.D. we get a bird's eye view
of the life of Dr. Bowers, a world-renowned gender reassignment
specialist.
Bowers works out of the tiny town of
Trinidad, Colorado (pop. 10,000), where she is the only OB/GYN for
120 miles around.
The documentary also follows the sex
reassignment of Erin Sullivan, 32, a
San Diegan about to undergo surgery to become a woman. Robert
Nunnelly, Sullivan's father, has accompanied her on the journey.
“I
did not feel comfortable in my own body,” Sullivan says from inside
the living room of The Morning After, a recuperative house for
Bowers' patients. “I knew, essentially, that I would be making
myself in many ways a societal outcast, but in order to be true to
myself and in order to be myself I had to change.”
About
half the patients in Bowers' waiting room are female OB/GYN clients.
But the other half seek her out for the surgery that has made her the
“Barack Obama of gender.” Patients with whom Bowers can relate. She was once Dr. Mark Bowers, father of three.
The
humble Bowers shares with us the story she's most likely heard
hundreds of times: Her gender just never felt right. During the
winter of 1996 Mark made the difficult decision to tell his wife, Ann
Bowers, that he needed to change, and by 1998 she was calling him
Marci. The pair, however, remained friends – and married.
Today
Bowers' life revolves around her two families. A family in Seattle,
where wife Ann runs a clinic for her and raises their children, and
another in Trinidad, where she maintains her sex reassignment
hospital and partner Carol Cometto manages The Morning After house.
Ultimately,
we learn she has stitched together a fulfilling life focused on
improving the lives of her patients while remaining devoted to her
family.
Transgender
M.D. premieres tonight on Discovery Health.