Detransitioner Chloe Cole holds a body brace that she used while she was taking hormonal treatments, in Northern California on Aug. 26, 2022. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times
The Texas Supreme Court is weighing whether a young woman can still sue a psychologist who approved her breast removal surgery.
Soren Aldaco, the woman at the center of the case, was only 19 when she had the surgery, and suggested to The Epoch Times that regret from such acts might not come for years.
“If you’re a 13-year-old on puberty blockers, you might not realize you’re infertile until you’re 26 and you just got married and you’re trying to have kids,” she told The Epoch Times on Feb. 26.
Aldaco’s story is like those of many others who spent years “transitioning” as a teenager, only to change their minds later in life.
The issue is garnering national attention due to the growing number of lawsuits filed against health care practitioners who have performed such procedures. Aldaco’s case came before the court only weeks after a jury in New York awarded $2 million to Fox Varian, a young woman who sued her former surgeon and psychologist under similar circumstances. Following that verdict, two major medical groups said they would no longer endorse so-called gender surgeries for minors.
Jonathan Hullihan, general counsel at Remnant Law Firm in The Woodlands, Texas, told The Epoch Times that while the New York verdict was a “watershed moment,” the statute of limitations remained a significant obstacle.
The Arguments
Aldaco has alleged that her therapist, Barbara Rose Wood, committed fraud and negligence when she signed off on a referral letter in February 2021 approving a double mastectomy, also known as “top surgery.” Like others in her situation, Aldaco ran up against a statute of limitations that could invalidate her lawsuit depending on how the court interprets state law.
The court’s upcoming decision depends on when the nine justices think the statute of limitations—which is two years in Texas—started running. State law holds that claims must be “filed within two years from the occurrence of” the alleged wrongdoing, or from when a medical treatment at issue is completed.
During oral arguments on Feb. 11, Aldaco’s attorney, John Ramer, told the justices the countdown for that two years should begin from the date of the surgery in June 2021, or from her last therapy session with Wood, around May of the same year.
Wood’s attorney, William Newman, said the court should start from February, when the referral letter was given to Aldaco.
“I think the case law is clear, that the statute would run from the date of the negligent advice, not from the date of the subsequent surgery,” he told the court.
Justice J. Brett Busby seemed skeptical of that defense.
“Well, I can’t sue somebody just because they’ve lied to me,” he told Williams. “I can’t bring a medical malpractice claim against somebody who gave me bad advice that I never took, right?”
The court’s eventual decision, along with others, could offer hope for individuals like Aldaco, as lawmakers at the state and federal levels work to change the statute of limitations.
Another detransitioner, Prisha Mosley, announced on X that she had appealed the dismissal of her lawsuit following North Carolina’s decision to extend the statute of limitations to 10 years.
Prisha Mosley is a detransitioner who appealed the dismissal of her lawsuit following North Carolina’s decision to extend the statute of limitations to 10 years. Courtesy of Independent Women’s Forum
A similar measure was backed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, who said the department “heard from far too many families who have been devastated by mutilative medical procedures that fly in the face of basic biology.” Estimates of regret have varied, and the Department of Health and Human Services said in 2025 that the “true rate of regret is not known and better data collection is needed.”
Some have criticized attempts to penalize physicians through measures such as extending the statute of limitations.
“The targeting of physicians through these legal penalties impedes them from practicing evidence-based medicine and blocks patients from accessing standard of care treatments,” Madeline G. Chin, then a research fellow at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, said in 2023.
Years-Long Process
Aldaco’s suit alleges that the letter contained multiple false statements about the “persistent” nature of her gender dysphoria. In reality, her feelings about gender “had been in a state of fluctuation” for some time.
“I got given surgeries and hormones, etc., where I really just needed a functional home life and some coping strategies,” she said. “On a personal level, I think that we’d be really surprised to find out how true that is for so many cases.”
Aldaco’s issues began at a young age, when she struggled with her identity and to fit in with peers. Early puberty induced mental distress that caused her to reject her feminine body and wonder if she might be happier identifying as male. She settled on a fluctuating, nonbinary identity.
“Importantly, between 11 and 15, I very much saw it as a roleplay identity. … There wasn’t a lot of cohesion to it,” she said.
As a teen, she would show up to school dressed in male clothes and wearing a chest binder; the next day, she would wear a flower crown and a dress.
Meanwhile, her psychological problems grew: At age 15, she had a manic episode and was hospitalized at the Mesa Springs psychiatric hospital in Fort Worth, Texas.
She told a psychiatrist there, Sreenath Nekkalapu, that she was uncomfortable discussing gender. But he “relentlessly pressed her on the topic by prompting her with trans-related questions and affirmations,” Aldaco’s lawsuit states.
She told The Epoch Times that the psychiatrist did not plant the transgender idea in her head, but he “fertilized it.” She said she explicitly asked him to keep their conversations private; she was having trouble with her family, and she still wasn’t sure she agreed with his diagnosis.
He told her parents anyway, Aldaco alleges in her suit. That led to pressure to conform to expectations of the therapist and her parents, all of whom believed she was transgender, even though she was still uncertain.
Hormones and Surgery
Next came cross-sex hormone treatment at age 17, prescribed by a nurse practitioner she met at a support group. The drugs caused a host of serious side effects, including heart palpitations, thyroid disease, and joint pain. But rather than changing the dosage, he referred her to other health care professionals to treat the symptoms.
One of those specialists suggested the hormones might be at fault, but Aldaco said she was so “gaslit” at the time that she “wrote off the doctor as being a bigot who was behind the times and merely pushing an agenda.”
“I was very dissociated from my body. … I was smoking a bunch of weed and I just had all these mental health issues,” she said. “So I just really didn’t pick up on the way my body was falling apart, even though I was on like 10 different medications and wearing knee braces and riding around in a scooter.”
The next year, “still not feeling entirely comfortable with her gender identity, but still disliking the way her breasts looked on her body,” she began exploring the idea of breast-removal surgery. She contacted a clinic in Austin and was told she needed a letter recommending the surgery.
After the surgery, she was hit with an “intuitive understanding that something was horribly wrong.”
Complications followed, including “pools of blood forming subcutaneously within her torso” and “her nipples literally peeling off of her chest.”
In an emergency follow up surgery, drains were stitched in to allow fluid to escape; Aldaco learned later that this is normally done during the initial procedure.
About six months after the surgery, she fully realized her “transition” was a mistake. She now says she’s a woman.
Attorneys for Nekkalapu, Perry, and Wood did not respond to requests for comment.
Darlene McCormick Sanchez contributed to this report.
