@stillstanding sending you big hugs. Also thanks for your support of other members....
OK, here goes. First let me say that I am totally male, physically, mentally, genetically, emotionally, and stubbornly. My condition was hypospadias with chordee. Hah! My spell check doesn't even recognize the terms, they are so hush-hush. Yet it is estimated by some that one in every 300 live male births will have the conditions. (More about those stats later.)
Hypospadias is a condition whereby the urethra opens on the shaft of the penis, sometimes as far back as the testicles. Chordee is an unusual downward curl of the penis, caused by tighter-than-normal skin on the under side of the shaft, where the urethra normally should be. There are degrees of severity. Mine was "bad enough". I could not stand to pee without spraying the floor.
There is still debate over what causes the condition, ranging from hormonal or nutritional deficiencies in the mother, pesticides, or genetics. But that matters little for right now.
Compounding those problems was that I had other "anomalies" which could not stay hidden in my pants. One of those is congenital nystagmus, an uncontollable back and forth movement of my eyes, and very poor vision. Without glasses (another story) I was legally blind.
From the eye problem, I learned as a toddler what it was like to be ridiculed and bullied for being different. From that alone, I became fearful and horribly withdrawn. And I felt that if anyone learned about my hypospadias, I would be tortured as more of a freak.
These days, when a boy is born with hypospadias, doctors try to "repair" the problem sometimes within weeks of birth. But I'm an old man, having been born in 1946, when pediatric surgery was almost Medieval. My parents were poor anyway, so I didn't have even the first surgery until the summer before I started school at seven.
So I still have vivid memories of the terror and shame I felt, before, during and afterward. Surgery was meant to be in three stages with healing time in between, and I was not told at the beginning what to expect. Not even my parents fully understood that, much less the effect on me.
I'm OK, but I'm going to take a break here. I'll send this though, so I don't chicken out.