From the age of 7, Jayden Thai knew he was different. But his differences didn’t make him stand out academically or athletically.

“[In] the second grade, I remember being pulled out by my teacher, saying that I can’t return to school until I start wearing girl’s clothes,” he said. “It was the first time I realized there’s something wrong with me.”

He added: “The world saw me as a girl. What I saw was … I didn’t know what I saw. I just know that it was not that.”

Confused and ashamed, Thai spent the next 16 years struggling to find a sense of self that fit. It wasn’t until 2012, when Thai came out as transgender, that he began to feel whole. A few months later, he says he knew it was time to change his outer appearance to match his inner person.

But little did he know that his journey would mean confronting a medical system ill prepared and often unwilling to embrace transgender patients.

In fact, a Web search reveals just how few American doctors specialize in performing complicated surgeries to change physical and sexual characteristics as part of some people’s gender transitions. TSSurgeryGuide.com lists fewer than 30 physicians who offer sexual reassignment surgery, mostly located on the coasts.

While a few more surgeons might not have been listed, that number is probably in the ballpark, according to medical professionals who told America Tonight that people who are transgender are dangerously underserved by the medical system, especially when it comes to surgical specialties.