Father of Six Admitted to Hospital for Kidney Stone Told He's Actually a Woman
A Colorado father of six, who was admitted to the hospital for a kidney stone, received life-changing news when the nurse came back with test results revealing he was actually a woman.
Stevie Crecelius, formerly named Steve, of Denver was happily married to his wife and working as a photographer when he discovered that he was born intersex and that he possessed both male genitalia and internal female sex organs.
"I had a kidney stone and we're in the emergency room," Stevie told Fox affiliate KDVR. "The nurse is reading the ultrasound and says, 'Huh, this says you’re a female.'"
Stevie said she was shocked, but not so surprised by the diagnosis because she had felt a little different all her life.
"It validated everything I had always felt inside," she said.
"When I was about 6 years old, I started having these feminine feelings, but that was in the '60s. Wearing my mom's makeup, I thought I looked pretty," Stevie told ABC News.
Stevie said she felt liberated when the nurse told her the news.
"It was very liberating. I had spent so much energy after the age of 13 constantly evaluating how people looked at me and acted towards me," she said, according to ABC.
She decided to begin living as Stevie, instead of Steve, and as a woman.
Stevie said that her wife and their six children accepted her new identity right away and were supportive.
"We told them individually. Some were in person and some weren't," Crecelius said to ABC. "Every one of them said, 'We don't care one way or the other. We love you for who you are and you're still my dad.'"
Stevie's wife, Debbie, even took her to buy her first bra.
"You know, when I first saw you, I said to myself, 'He runs like a girl,'" Debbie had told Stevie.
Now, five years after Stevie found out she was intersex, she lives happily as a woman, takes hormones and is still married. However, she has no plans to undergo gender reassignment surgery.
"I didn't sign on for this, but who signs on for anything?" Debbie told KDVR. "She's the same person she was as a he on the inside."
"Intersex" is a word used to describe people who possess both sexual external genitals and internal organs, like testes and ovaries, and a person with this condition may have male genitals as well as fallopian tubes and ovaries.
"The condition used to be called hermaphroditism, meaning that person can’t be identified as male or female," Stevie said to ABC.
More than 1,500 babies are born intersex every year, according to the Intersex Society of North America.