My scar is, it's more than a scar.
It's a scar and a hole.
And the story behind it is,
I have metastatic poorly differentiated thyroid carcinoma.
I was diagnosed with a cancer on my thyroid
at the beginning of 2020,
six days before the first lockdown.
I was told if I didn't have my thyroid removed,
my windpipe, my gullet, and my larynx,
I'd be dead within six weeks.
So, I had a seven and a half hour surgery,
and I ended up with a hole in my neck
that I now breathe through,
and all of my internal plumbing is very different.
And as you can see, I have to use a finger
to be able to speak because I have no larynx.
So what you can hear is my food pipe vibrating,
but it's still me, cause your voice comes from here.
It comes from this part of your face.
So yeah, basically it's cancer.
It's incurable, which sucks.
But by the same token, cancer gives you
a level of clarity you've never had before.
So, there is a little bit of me that's really grateful
for the opportunity of A, still being alive,
but B, seeing the world a lot more clearly.
What does this mean to me?
This, it means a couple of things to me.
It's an ending.
So, I was a musical theatre singer,
and even though I still have really good intonation
in my voice, I no longer have harmonics
because the stuff that needs to be there
to produce harmonic sound isn't there anymore.
So, I used to sing Sondheim musicals,
and I can't do that stuff anymore.
So, it marked an ending to a chapter of my life.
It also marked the beginning of something as well.
And it's the beginning of the last journey of my life,
because my cancer is incurable.
I have anywhere between three to five years,
which will be jam-packed full of amazing things,
but it marks a start of a journey
to whatever lies after what we currently call life.
- I was born with a cleft palate,
which means that the roof of my mouth was open,
and there was a gap, and also my lip,
and so when I was a baby, I had several surgeries.
I had my last one when I was eight or nine, I think,
and that's the only surgery I can remember,
but that's where my scar comes from.
When I was young, I mean, that was,
if kids were to bully me for something,
they would bully me for that.
So, at times, maybe that wasn't that fun,
but early on, I always actually quite liked my scar.
It makes me look unique, and now I really embrace it,
and I think it's an attribute rather than a negative, yeah.
I think it makes me look imperfect in a nice kind of way.
I'm proud of it.
- There was a fight between a lady and a man, two drunks.
And he started to really lay into the lady,
so we decided to break it up.
He lunged into me.
I didn't realise what he had done.
So, he lunged in, and I kind of punched him,
and kind of got into a little bit of a fight,
and then I noticed loads and loads and loads of blood.
I went like that to my face,
and as I touched my face I could feel my teeth
through my face.
And it was the biggest shock I could've ever felt.
And I went over to my car and I looked in my window
and I could see up my nose and into my mouth.
I will never be able to get that image
out of my head ever again.
And I just passed out at that point in time,
and then I had to have like 60 stitches throughout my face,
and I had to have it, five years later,
I had to have some plastic surgery on it
once it really healed and it was able to
go back into it again.
So, it's been a bit of a traumatic time with that,
but it is here now, it's part of me now.
- As you can see, I have two lovely,
big, like, scars across my chest.
I recently had top surgery, back in February,
so it's only been, like, four months.
Top surgery is basically chest reconstruction surgery,
like, it's getting, like, a male chest.
And, like, trans people, trans men, trans masc people get it.
For me, obviously, it just feels so many things.
It's like, it's freedom, first of all.
I like the gender euphoria that I just experience,
like, after getting this surgery.
It's just been, like, life changing.
Like, I can't even remember how I was just, like,
going through life before with how my chest was.
So, it's just like, a lot of, like, very special feelings.
And, like, basically I just wanna be, like, topless all day.
- I was going to this driving license course.
So, I took my motorcycle, and very close to my house,
there was this guy, a friend, coming down the street,
across the street, and I looked at him and waved,
and when I turned, I didn't realise
a car was going backward from a gate.
So, I crashed into the car, literally crashed in and out.
Yeah, and they broke my windscreen of the motorbike,
and the glass of the window of the car,
and I don't remember much.
I remember I stood up and said everything is OK,
then I find this puddle of blood.
I had 55 stitches on the face,
and this one, it's very close to the jugular,
but I was lucky.
- The story behind my scar...
I was age three, playing with my cousin,
running around the house,
and as we ran through the dining room,
towards the kitchen, somebody closed the door
to the dining room, which has,
it's just one big glass panel.
I went headfirst through the glass.
It lacerated my head here, and my neck here,
and I was kinda stuck between the glass,
so everybody in the house tried to get me out,
and then ran across the street to the doctor.
He came over, did emergency, kind of,
stopped bleeding as much as he could.
Went to the hospital, they spent hours
fishing out all of the glass
and stitching up my neck and my head.
And as they were closing my head,
they found glass deep near my spine,
and, yeah, it took a long time to clear it all out,
and finally stitch me up.