Transgenderism is defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as a person who identifies with or expresses a gender identity that differs from the one that corresponds to the person’s sex at birth. Transgender adults account for 0.6 percent of American adults. That means there are about 1.4 million people in the United States who identify as a gender other than the one assigned to them at birth.

Ezra Grey is one of them, and a senior at Central Kitsap High School. He is in band, Gender Sexuality Alliance (GSA), Enviro Club, and Knowledge Bowl. He leads an active life despite chronic illness and enjoys volunteering, snowboarding, and babysitting.

He will be starting testosterone when he turns 18 in February. He will be changing his gender legally around the same time.

A lot of people supported him when he came out. His friends already suspected that he was male before he came out.

“I wasn’t really surprised. We all really knew,” says his friend. senior Anthony Hill.

“We had a bet on it,” says another friend, senior Brandon Rodriguez. “It was actually pretty funny.”

The first person Ezra told was his older sister. He told her on accident, not knowing what being transgender was, simply expressing his feelings. It was she who helped him “follow the lingo.” His mother and younger sister were less supportive at first. They were confused but have since come around and are now “super cool with it,” Ezra explains.

Some people were less supportive. When he had first come out, another student in band pressured Ezra to “prove” that he was male by showing his chest and genitals to to the student. When Ezra went to report it, the counselors told him that they couldn’t do anything about it unless it happened again.

Ezra says that there are a couple of people that continue to give him a hard time about his gender. He has, on multiple occasions, found homophobic slurs drawn on his truck, and once someone put a dildo on his truck’s antenna after a Halloween party.

Besides being discriminated against for being gay and transgender, Ezra is also challenged by multiple chronic illnesses, including asthma, ADHD, Grave’s disease, Tourette’s syndrome, and Pots syndrome.

Graves disease is an immune system disorder that results in the overproduction of thyroid hormone. Ezra has a subset of the disease that also affects the lymph nodes.

The doctors had to remove his lymph nodes due to cancer.

This surgery did not solve all of his problems, though. The doctors have still yet to find the correct dosage for Ezra’s thyroid hormone replacement.

“It takes a long time to find the proper dose you need, so it’s been about a year now since they started trying to replace my thyroid properly, and I’m still hypothyroid [sic], and hypothyroid feels really bad,” says Ezra. Hypothyroidism causes extreme fatigue and cold sensitivity, among other symptoms.

Pots syndrome, which is actually an acronym for Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, is a disorder that affects the autonomic nervous system, and prevents the heart from properly regulating heart rate. Ezra’s symptoms include nausea, vomiting, migraines, and frequent fainting. He now uses a wheelchair to get around to help prevent the fainting.

Ezra’s medical journey is not over. Besides the other chronic illnesses, his doctor’s recently noticed during a small Electroencephalography (EEG) that there were abnormalities in his brain function that looked like “baby seizures.” He will have to go in for further testing in the future, but as of now his doctor believes he may be developing Epilepsy.

“Ezra has a lot of physical and mental problems, and just being able to get through that everyday makes him really strong,” says Rodriguez.