Excerpt taken from ‘Becoming Luke‘. Thoughts on transitioning, health, and discovering craft.

A true (and honest) journey about the mental and physical changes and health a transitioning person goes through to fully embrace who they are, and to love the skin they are in.

“On the 16th of September 2021, I had my top surgery consultation with Mr Antony Fitton at the Nuffield Hospital in Plymouth.

My consultation went so much better than I could have ever imagined! Mr Fitton was absolutely lovely, as was the whole of the hospital team, and now, I am ten times more excited about my top surgery than I was before after meet Mr Fitton.

From the very first moment, Mr Fitton was incredibly friendly and inviting and put me at ease. He started the appointment by asking me simple questions such as my date of birth and occupation. I told him that I was at university, and we were then talking about my course whilst he was filling out some other pieces of information, this really helped me feel more relaxed and showed me that he really cares about his patients.

We then started talking about my transition; he was curious about things like how long I’d known I was trans for, and how my journey had been so far.

At no point did I feel as though he was asking these questions to be judgemental or to decide whether I was doing something wrong.

Instead, I felt that he wanted to be able to understand what led me to be sat with him, discussing my hopes from this surgery.

Now I was really happy that he got the examination of my chest out of the way at the beginning of the appointment, as it was obviously something I had been dreading. It was no way near as bad as I had expected.

Mr Fitton is just so considerate and understanding of how difficult it is to have your top off in front of him. He didn’t touch my chest at any point, he just simply measured from the top of my shoulders down to my nipples and took a photo for his records.

It honestly only took a minute or two, and he spoke to me about my university course the whole time so that I wouldn’t be focused on what he was doing.

Mr Fitton is really organised and had a checklist of things to talk about for the rest of the appointment. He explained what happens during the surgery and drew it out at the same time so he could be sure that I understood exactly what the procedure is. During this, he also explained how he decided where to place my nipples which I found interesting, as he uses a combination of your measurements and the structure of a cis man’s chest to decide where your nipples would be naturally.

We then discussed all the risks and complications that are a possibility of top surgery, such as dog ears, hematomas and seromas. I liked that he then explained why they happen and how they’re fixed, as I felt at ease that if anything were to happen, I knew exactly how it would be dealt with.

I loved that he was proud that he’s done a large number of top surgeries, has never lost a nipple and can’t remember the last time one of his patients developed a seroma.

He was also proud about how he’s never had an issue with symmetry and is very precise with nipple placement; joking that he always stands back to check that he’s got them just right.