Help Amias get top surgery
Donación protegida
My surgery is scheduled for August 19th! With your help, I've paid for the surgery and hotel room, and I should have enough saved to get through recovery without too much stress. Thank you all so much for your help!
Hi! My name is Amias, and I'm a transgender man raising money for top surgery. I'm engaged, and it's important to me that I get surgery before my wedding. I'd love to get surgery by the end of 2019.
Cost Breakdown
The surgery itself is $5900. $500 of that is a non-refundable deposit paid in advance to book a surgery date. I need the rest for other costs:
- Gas and car maintenance to get to the surgeon's office (a 10 hour drive)
- A place to stay for a week (between $400 and $700, depending on timing)
- Pain medications and antibiotics for recovery
- Food and rent while I recover
That's what brings us to the grand total of $8000. If I save that much, I'll be in good shape to take all the time I need to recover, and have the resources I need to stay healthy.
Q: What is top surgery?
I'm transgender. When I was born, the doctors and my parents looked at my body and went "that's a girl." They were incorrect. I'm a guy. I've been on hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for two years, bringing my blood level of testosterone to the level a cisgender (non-transgender) man would typically produce without medication. Top surgery is the next step in my personal journey to align my body with my gender identity.
What trans people refer to as "top surgery" is medically referred to as a "double mastectomy", usually with some other terminology attached to indicate that it's a procedure done for a transgender man or nonbinary person, rather than to a woman. (Example: "male double incision mastectomy for gender transition".) I'll be undergoing a double incision mastectomy with free nipple grafts. The doctor will open my chest to remove breast tissue, removing a whole lot of skin as well, and clean me back up leaving two incisions sewn shut along the pectoral line. Because the breast tissue is removed, I will end up with a flatter chest, and my skin will be much closer to the pectoral muscles. I'll look more like your average cis guy.
Q: Why get top surgery?
I've been binding my chest regularly for five years or so now. While I'm not in urgent physical pain most of the time, binding does increase my average pain level, and it's limiting. I can't do nearly as much as I'd like while binding, but having obvious breast tissue is limiting in a similar way. I don't feel safe or comfortable in public unless I'm binding or wearing bulky clothing, which means that when I go to work, the grocery store, or even the gas station, I feel unsafe unless I'm binding or wearing several bulky layers. That gets hot and unpleasant pretty quick. Top surgery would let me wear a single layer of clothes that actually fit me. I'd look better and feel better.
I often make do with sports bras and slouching, which is terrible for my back and for my brain. I'm constantly worried about how my clothes sit on my body, and whether someone's going to pay just a little more attention than they do on average. My coworkers don't know I'm trans, and I'd like to leave it that way, but it's difficult and stressful to maintain this situation. Top surgery would make me feel much safer and more confident.
Also, because of the way my body has reacted to the testosterone I take, I pretty much get gendered male on sight. If I have visible breast tissue, it puts me at significantly higher risk for harassment or physical violence. I don't have any problems with being visibly trans in principle, but in practice, it's job-threatening and more than a little unsafe in a conservative area. Top surgery will make me less likely to get yelled at in gendered locations like pools and bathrooms, and keep me safer in public in general.
Q: Why in 2019?
I'm engaged, and my fiance Charlie and I would very much like to get married soon. Charlie's recovering from his own top surgery, and that was a necessary (and more urgent) step for us to take too. Could I get married without top surgery? Yes. But I want to feel like I look my best at my wedding, and if I have to wear a binder for that, it's going to very seriously limit the time I can spend at the event and the reception. I really want to be able to spend every second of that day happy, with my friends and family, and feeling like my full self. But I also want my wedding to be fairly soon, rather than some distant decade in the future.
Q: Why crowdfund? Couldn't you just save up yourself?
Again, I would like to have this happen in 2019, and that's just not an amount of money I can save on my own in that short of a time. If I were to save alone, I wouldn't be able to have surgery for several years. I need your help. I'll be putting everything I can into it myself. Every little bit gets me closer to my goal!
Hi! My name is Amias, and I'm a transgender man raising money for top surgery. I'm engaged, and it's important to me that I get surgery before my wedding. I'd love to get surgery by the end of 2019.
Cost Breakdown
The surgery itself is $5900. $500 of that is a non-refundable deposit paid in advance to book a surgery date. I need the rest for other costs:
- Gas and car maintenance to get to the surgeon's office (a 10 hour drive)
- A place to stay for a week (between $400 and $700, depending on timing)
- Pain medications and antibiotics for recovery
- Food and rent while I recover
That's what brings us to the grand total of $8000. If I save that much, I'll be in good shape to take all the time I need to recover, and have the resources I need to stay healthy.
Q: What is top surgery?
I'm transgender. When I was born, the doctors and my parents looked at my body and went "that's a girl." They were incorrect. I'm a guy. I've been on hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for two years, bringing my blood level of testosterone to the level a cisgender (non-transgender) man would typically produce without medication. Top surgery is the next step in my personal journey to align my body with my gender identity.
What trans people refer to as "top surgery" is medically referred to as a "double mastectomy", usually with some other terminology attached to indicate that it's a procedure done for a transgender man or nonbinary person, rather than to a woman. (Example: "male double incision mastectomy for gender transition".) I'll be undergoing a double incision mastectomy with free nipple grafts. The doctor will open my chest to remove breast tissue, removing a whole lot of skin as well, and clean me back up leaving two incisions sewn shut along the pectoral line. Because the breast tissue is removed, I will end up with a flatter chest, and my skin will be much closer to the pectoral muscles. I'll look more like your average cis guy.
Q: Why get top surgery?
I've been binding my chest regularly for five years or so now. While I'm not in urgent physical pain most of the time, binding does increase my average pain level, and it's limiting. I can't do nearly as much as I'd like while binding, but having obvious breast tissue is limiting in a similar way. I don't feel safe or comfortable in public unless I'm binding or wearing bulky clothing, which means that when I go to work, the grocery store, or even the gas station, I feel unsafe unless I'm binding or wearing several bulky layers. That gets hot and unpleasant pretty quick. Top surgery would let me wear a single layer of clothes that actually fit me. I'd look better and feel better.
I often make do with sports bras and slouching, which is terrible for my back and for my brain. I'm constantly worried about how my clothes sit on my body, and whether someone's going to pay just a little more attention than they do on average. My coworkers don't know I'm trans, and I'd like to leave it that way, but it's difficult and stressful to maintain this situation. Top surgery would make me feel much safer and more confident.
Also, because of the way my body has reacted to the testosterone I take, I pretty much get gendered male on sight. If I have visible breast tissue, it puts me at significantly higher risk for harassment or physical violence. I don't have any problems with being visibly trans in principle, but in practice, it's job-threatening and more than a little unsafe in a conservative area. Top surgery will make me less likely to get yelled at in gendered locations like pools and bathrooms, and keep me safer in public in general.
Q: Why in 2019?
I'm engaged, and my fiance Charlie and I would very much like to get married soon. Charlie's recovering from his own top surgery, and that was a necessary (and more urgent) step for us to take too. Could I get married without top surgery? Yes. But I want to feel like I look my best at my wedding, and if I have to wear a binder for that, it's going to very seriously limit the time I can spend at the event and the reception. I really want to be able to spend every second of that day happy, with my friends and family, and feeling like my full self. But I also want my wedding to be fairly soon, rather than some distant decade in the future.
Q: Why crowdfund? Couldn't you just save up yourself?
Again, I would like to have this happen in 2019, and that's just not an amount of money I can save on my own in that short of a time. If I were to save alone, I wouldn't be able to have surgery for several years. I need your help. I'll be putting everything I can into it myself. Every little bit gets me closer to my goal!
Organizador
Amias Shipley
Organizador
Minocqua, WI
