YES I had my boobs removed and NO I don’t have cancer.
Katie Hood (they/them) is a movement teacher in training with a focus on the experience of bodies with chronic pain. As a certified dog trainer, they've spent 15 years teaching people how to elevate their relationship with their pets and looks forward to transferring those teaching skills to how to elevate their relationship with their bodies.
“...you mean you don’t have cancer?”
I remember my Doctor telling me that I qualify for the surgery.
I’m sitting in his office, 36 years old, offhandedly floating the idea of having top surgery by him; a casual lilt to my voice as I concede I know it would have to come out of my pocket and it’ll take years to save up for.
He stares at me blankly and asks, “Why would you need to pay for it?”
“Because people like me, nonbinary people not on hormones, don’t qualify for the surgery...right?”
“Who says you don’t qualify for the surgery?”
I leave his office with information packets, I call my mother and burst into tears as I tell her. It was like someone said to me, you’re valid. Your experience, what you feel about your body, it’s all valid.
* * *
I grew up in a small town where people who didn’t fall in line were mocked, harassed, and probably beat up but I lived a sheltered life so I didn’t know about those things. The things I knew about were that I was the only girl invited to the boy’s birthday parties. I was the only one they let play handball with them at recess until the other girls demanded to be included too. I was well into my teens when someone’s grandfather called me a boy and while my friend was mortified, cheeks burning, apologizing, I remember feeling pride for the mistake. Cool. I could pass as a boy.
I classified all of this as typical tomboy behaviour. There was no accessible information around gender identification. I had never heard the term nonbinary, never mind knew someone who identified as it.
A friend once commented to me in my late teens that my body seemed “cut off” from the neck down. At the time I was working through a childhood sexual abuse event and I chalked it up to that. I was developing a new relationship with my body as it healed from the traumatic memory. But now I see that comment differently. Never speaking the words, I now know the truth: I hated my breasts.
When I hit my 20’s, I tried to feminize my body. I briefly switched from sports bras to underwire but absolutely couldn’t tolerate them and ended up switching back. I tried to show my breasts off like I saw other women doing, but I never quite “got them”. I really longed for a pamphlet: Breasts: How Are They Used? Once being cast as a sexy character for a fringe show I wore a laughably cut shirt that I thought showed cleavage. It did if you brought opera glasses to the show.
In my 30’s I began to explore my gender identification more. I had begun to hear the terms of gender non conforming, gender fluid, and I started to lean more toward asymmetrical haircuts, wearing slacks and blazers (sorry to be cliche BUT IT’S MY TRUTH). Learning about binding, I briefly experimented with it, but I knew from the first time wearing a binder what I really wanted: to get rid of my breasts. Forever. One of those truths that you hold deep down inside, that your whole body vibrates with joy at the thought of.
I knew this truth, but I didn’t know how to act on it. Even as I supported a friend through their surgery, it still didn’t occur to me that I too could have gender confirmation surgery, until I offhandedly mentioned it to my Doctor that day. I can confidently say my Doctor saved me, bless him and his trans* informed care.
It makes for boring story telling, but the process and attempt to get surgery was long and arduous. I had initially chosen to have surgery done at the private clinic that most top surgeries take place at, but they had maxed out on their funding quota, which is when my Doctor told me a hospital had available bookings. We switched my funding and I was preparing for surgery a year and a half after my funding had been initially approved.
The morning of surgery, sure, I’m nervous, but I’m also confident. Elated. I had never had a single doubt. This is what I had longed for before I had words to articulate it. I am finally going to feel whole. My body will be my own, it will be how I have always wanted it to look. A smooth chest is within my grasp and I can hardly wait for it.
Until I meet my nurse at check in.
“So you’re here for a mastectomy, correct? Which breast are you having removed?”
“Uhhh, both? I’m having top surgery today!”
“...you mean you don’t have cancer?”
Lightly deflated I try to shake it off, “Oh, no, no, it’s gender confirmation surgery.”
And then when I’m given pain medication by another nurse, the big C is mentioned again.
“Oh, no, no, it’s gender confirmation surgery.”
“...you mean you don’t have cancer?”
And then post surgery, as we are getting ready to leave, the nurse hands me a bag full of random items and says, “You’ll need this for when the home nurse visits”, a bag labelled “double mastectomy” that is clearly meant for cancer patients. No one on my surgical team had indicated the need for all of these items, such as abdominal pads, saline solution, medical tweezers, and objects I still can’t identify.
I shrug it off, trying to be a good patient, making excuses for the behaviour. These surgeries probably don’t happen that often here. Most people go to the private clinic. They just don’t know. It’s fine!!
And then the call from the home nurse comes.
“So you’ve just had a double mastectomy…”
I have come to hate that phrase. It isn’t just a medical term. There are implications.
“I had top surgery.”
“...you mean you don’t have cancer?”
My patience is wearing thinner.
“No. It was gender confirmation surgery.”
“It says here on the file that you have cancer.”
On my medical file someone had assumed the only reason a person would get rid of their breasts, without being on transitional hormones or presenting “male” (whatever that means), was because of an invasive disease. Under no circumstance could a person want to change their body THAT RADICALLY just because of gender??? It’s outrageous! Outlandish! This point of view amongst the medical professionals surrounding me is really killing my glow up.
But, again, I try to see their side of things. How often do any of these people see gender confirmation surgeries and how often must they see cancer surgeries? So, I get it, I do, but the very surgery I have chosen to finally connect my body as whole, as one, is being used to other me again. Instead of feeling celebratory and excited, I find myself being defensive around medical professionals who aren’t on my immediate surgical team.
That’s when I realize I absolutely cannot tell people outside of my close circle about the surgery. My supportive friends, family, and some of my coworkers knew I was going in for surgery, and I had looked forward to announcing it on social media, my coming out of sorts. Introducing the true me, the me that was always there but is finally here. The daydream of posting pictures of progress, how I look in a shirt (I LOOK FLAT IT’S AMAZING), and being that friend that’s constantly posting shirtless pics of themselves is deflated by the idea of having to explain every few days to someone that no, I didn’t have cancer, you didn’t miss some big announcement.
So I make a close friends filter on instagram and call it a day. There is no big reveal. There is no living out loud as I had seen with some of my other friends. I so badly wanted to show other people that this is how nonbinary people can look as I had searched for people who shared my own path. Finding people who had had the surgery that would talk about it, never mind someone who had had the surgery but had chosen not to take hormones as well? Very very difficult. Obviously it didn’t matter to me whether people who had the surgery were on hormones or not, but I had just wanted a connection with someone who had walked the path before me. I wanted that role model that I never got to have when I was younger.
It isn’t until now, 17 weeks post gender confirmation surgery, that I accept if I don’t talk about it, then other people who may want to take this same path, will not know about it. We need to see ourselves, our stories, to know that there is no one way to be any gender, or no gender at all! Finally trumping the anxiety of having to explain to people that, no, I didn’t have my breasts removed because of cancer, is the memory of not knowing anyone like who I could’ve been at a much earlier age.
I am Katie Hood, I identify nonbinary, gender nonconforming.
I hated my breasts, I chose to have them removed, I’ve never known such joy in my body, and no, I don’t have cancer.