At the end of her second year of
medical school at the University of Ottawa,
Christy Haywood-Farmer went home for the
summer—and she never came back.
On class lists, in clerkship appointments and
in administrative files, Christy simply ceased
to exist. In her place was a young man named
Eric, who came to Ottawa from his family home on
a cattle ranch outside Kamloops, B.C. His
arrival was the result of an epic identity
struggle between the female body Christy was
born with and the man she believes she was meant
to be.
"I spent so much time during my second year
of medical school mulling over what was wrong
and experimenting with different things," says
Haywood-Farmer. "Finally, toward the end of the
year, I figured out what was going on."
The revelation was the culmination of years
of turmoil, self-doubt and uncomfortable
silence, said Haywood-Farmer.
"It's so hard to get any kind of mental or
emotional peace when you're in the wrong body,"
he says. "I thought that being a lesbian was the
answer to what I was feeling, but it wasn't. As
time went by, it became apparent to me there was
an itch that wasn't being scratched."
In the middle of medical school, when many
students struggle just to get enough rest, food
and study time, Haywood-Farmer took on the
challenge of a lifetime. The timing may have
been bad, but it was becoming nearly impossible
to perform even the most mundane tasks of a
dedicated medical student, and Haywood-Farmer
didn't have the energy to maintain the status
quo.
"It's not that I was imminently suicidal, but
over the long term that's the effect it was
having on me" he says. "I was hardly going to
class, I was barely scraping by. Your body just
resists the idea of being in your biological
sex."
For more than a year, Haywood-Farmer lived as
a man while still encumbered by the physical
traits of a woman. His morning routine included
a tortuous ritual of hiding his breasts by
strapping them to his chest.
"For several months before my surgery, I
would have a full-on panic attack every morning
getting dressed," he says. "It was so
emotionally difficult for me to go through every
day with breasts."
But there's no easy way to turn off 25 years
of socialization and waltz into life as a
different person. Adjusting to life as a man has
taken time, says Haywood-Farmer, who is only now
coming to grips with his own identity. Though
he's certain he made the right decision, there
was a period when he felt trapped between the
sexes and uneasy about taking his rightful place
in either gender. He's slowly letting go of the
lingering feeling that he's deceiving people by
not letting them in on who he once
was—including preceptors and patients.
"At first it was really difficult because I
felt almost like I was pretending to be someone
I wasn't," he says. "I felt like I was hiding
something huge from them."
But adversity also brings a hearty dose of
comedy, says Haywood-Farmer, who fondly recalls
situations and conversations that he would later
laugh about with his closest friends.
"I'd be sitting around the nursing station
and the nurses would be discussing their bras or
how hard it is to have big boobs. They'd turn to
me and say, 'Sorry to have this discussion.
Obviously you know nothing about this.' And I'd
sit there with my D cups strapped down to my
chest thinking, 'Yeah, whatever.' "
In April 2004, Haywood-Farmer shed the weight
of his femininity. Using $4,500 of his student
loan money, he underwent chest reconstruction,
effectively removing the breasts he had been
working so hard to hide.
"A med student already strapped to the gills
with loans can't really afford it, but it's
better to go into debt than kill yourself."
He doesn't worry anymore about wearing scrubs
without two T-shirts and a "strap-me-down sports
bra" underneath. "Now I can go to the locker
room and just change instead of furtively
scurrying to the bathroom stall—which men
never do," he says.
Genital surgery is available for female to
male transsexuals but it is rare, expensive and
subject to a myriad of complications.
Reconstructing a sexually functioning penis is
still largely the stuff of science fiction. For
now, Haywood-Farmer has no plans to go the extra
mile. "The way I see it, I'm pretty much done my
transition," he says.
Now in his final year of medical school,
Haywood-Farmer is considering his options for
the future. Though a career in family medicine
for gay, bisexual, lesbian and transgendered
(GBLT) people once seemed inevitable, he's now
leaning toward life in the emergency room.
"I like crisis," he says. "The encounter is
so intense."
An activist at heart, Haywood-Farmer is
dedicated to improving health care not only for
gay and lesbian patients but also for the
often-forgotten and much-misunderstood
transgendered population to which he belongs. He
could do that by being their family physician,
but he sees a greater need for change in the
encounters trans people have in the ER.
Transsexuals often avoid the stress of the
emergency room, says Haywood-Farmer, and are
often dissatisfied with their experiences.
"Almost every trans person I know has been in
a situation where they've been vulnerable in
emerg and then treated like shit," he said. "I
have a huge role to play in terms of sensitizing
emerg staff to those issues."
Educating his fellow professionals about the
unique needs and vulnerabilities of GBLT
patients won't be easy, but Haywood-Farmer has a
head start. He is developing a GBLT curriculum
for family medicine and already gives a lesbian
health lecture in Ottawa every six weeks.
"I finished the obstetrics and gynecology
rotation and I didn't hear the word lesbian
once," he says. "I went to the director and
said, 'We've been learning about vaginas for six
weeks and I haven't seen a single lesbian, so I
think there's a problem.' "
A small research and teaching hospital is
where Haywood-Farmer would like to land, and
when he gets there he'll start his career by
investigating ways to make Canada's emergency
rooms more welcoming to transsexual and other
GBLT people.
"The shame and misery that comes is because
of societal attitudes and government barriers to
treatment. That's what makes people miserable,
not the fact that they're transsexual," he says.
"A lot of trans people would only go to
emergency if they were bleeding to death. I want
to change that."
His own experiences with peers and school
administrators have been nothing but positive.
Once he informed University of Ottawa staff of
his wishes and plans, he became Eric in every
way. He stood up on the first day of his third
year, told his class what he was doing and left
it at that. The students—even the ones he
expected to rail against the change—were
either overwhelmingly supportive or predictably
silent.
"I've never had to explain anything to anyone
and I've never had to protest anything," he
says. "It was remarkably good."
And his preceptors didn't get the chance to
know the difference. Though he informed fellow
students of his transition, he kept his
supervisors in the dark.
"Coming out has to serve a purpose. If I'm
talking to someone about GI surgery it's totally
irrelevant," says Haywood-Farmer. "Just as I
have no interest in what their genitals look
like, I really don't care for them to know what
mine look like."
Throughout his time in the hospital, there
have only been two occasions when Haywood-Farmer
felt compelled to disclose his history to
patients. They were both transsexual men who
were in obvious discomfort. In one case, a man
who was in the middle stages of transitioning
from female to male came into the emergency
room.
"He was on testosterone, hadn't had any
surgery, looked very masculine and still had a
female name legally," says Haywood-Farmer. "It
was obvious this was a very difficult encounter
for him and I think it relieved him to know that
he had someone who would stick up for him."
There's also been a change in the way he's
treated by patients who don't know his history
and see a very young-looking doctor-in-training.
Though he's 26 and taking testosterone, he has
yet to sprout facial hair.
"I have a little teenage 'stache going on and
a little prickly patch under my chin," he says.
"I'm slowly catching up to my 19-year-old
brother. Puberty's taking its time. . . . People
think I must be the smartest kid ever. I get
called Doogie Howser at least five times a
day."
The last two years have been made easier by
Haywood-Farmer's partner, an Ottawa lawyer. They
met three years ago when she was a student. He
likens their relationship to that of Bill and
Claire Huxtable, a married doctor-lawyer duo
from the groundbreaking TV hit The Cosby
Show—one of the first to show a black
couple as successful and wealthy professionals
living the American dream.
"I find myself in the same position," he
says. "We have feelings just like everyone else,
we have fun just like anyone else and we have
sex just like anyone else. We can be medical
students and doctors and lawyers. All of those
normal things are ours, too."
