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The touching tale of a troubled teenager who realises she is happier as a boy is one of the extraordinary stories in this week’s Inside Birmingham Children’s Hospital.

The transformation in the teen as he goes from Ellie to Alex and later Oliver is remarkable, captured by the cameras for the Channel 4 documentary.

At first it’s very hard to tell what’s wrong with 14-year-old Ellie Fitzsimmons as she walks into the hospital’s emergency department with her dad Gary.

More: The behind the scenes secrets of filming Inside Birmingham Children's Hospital

They laugh and joke as they wait, but then she admits to the staff that she is feeling low, that she wants to harm herself and she has attempted to kill herself before.

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“I don’t know what to do,” sobs the girl with blue hair and a nose ring.

“I don’t like it, it’s not who I want to be.”

It emerges that she has spend a year on an eating disorders ward and is on the autistic spectrum.

Her dad Gary says: “I’m very proud of her but she’s had a nightmare time of it.

“I really, really struggled with the self-harm, to begin to understand it. I remember being quite angry about it, at this unseen entity that could be doing this to my child.

“If somebody else had done this to Ellie, I would track them down and kill them. But what do I do with the knowledge that she’s doing this to herself?”

More: Your reactions to the documentary

Ellie says: “I want to change but I don’t know who I want to grow into. I’m stuck being this person I’m not comfortable being, but I don’t know how to change it.”

But when the cameras return to see the family after the teen has been having weekly therapy sessions with a psychiatrist, it’s a very different story.

(Image: PA)

Now called Oliver, he smiles: “This is where it gets kind of confusing. I am 98.7 per cent male. There you go.

“It’s something I’ve known for quite a while but I didn’t really know what was going on until recently. And now I’m like oh, that makes sense.”

More: Dad gives liver to son in first episode

Mum Jo says: “I probably knew that was coming more than you did,” and Gary replies: “I didn’t have a clue, hopeless.”

He continues: “I can imagine having something bottled up for a long long time and then finally somebody releasing that cork is a good feeling.

“You just have to be who you are. When you feel more at home in your own skin, it’s an immense relief. I’m mad and proud.

“I’ll miss the script I had running in my mind, at some point I will walk my daughter down the aisle and make this poignant speech and embarrass her on her wedding day.

“OK so I might not get to do that, but I have a healthy, well-adjusted, beautiful child who I can play a different script with.”

Inside Birmingham Children’s Hospital is screened on Thursdays on Channel 4 at 9pm