The Current - Born without an ear, she grew up feeling like a puzzle to be solved

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

Kate Gies was born missing an ear, and underwent more than a dozen surgeries by the time she was 13. In her new memoir, It Must be Beautiful to be Finished, she writes about growing up feeling that her body was always something that needed to be fixed — and why she finally said enough was enough.

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And if you don't think it will make a difference, we have the science to prove it does. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, it's Matt here. Thanks for listening to The Current wherever you're getting this podcast. Before we get to today's show, wonder if I might ask a favor of you if you could hit the follow button on whatever app you're using There is a lot of news that's out there these days We're trying to help you make sense of it all and give you a bit of a break from some of that news, too So if you already follow the program, thank you And if you have done that maybe you could leave us a rating or review as well

The whole point of this is to let more listeners find our show and perhaps find some of that information that's so important in these really tricky times. So thanks for all of that. Appreciate it. And on to today's show. Atresia Anosha. It is a medical label that most of us probably have never heard of before, but one that has been attached to Kate Gies since the day she was born. The day she came into the world world missing one of her ears. That

label and that reality led to Kate having 14 surgeries as a child and teenager and led to the feeling that her body was something that needed to be fixed. She writes about all of that in her new memoir, It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished. Kate is with me here in our studio. Kate, good morning. Good morning Matt. Congratulations on your book. Thank you so much. Can we begin with the very beginning, which is the day that you were born? What do you know about that day when your parents realized that you had been born with

one ear? Yeah, so the birth itself was like relatively ordinary. I was the second child and I came out into the world and my mom had no idea that something was wrong and the doctors took me away. Kingston, Ontario had never seen a missing ear before. So I spent four days on a neonatal ward and they were trying to figure out so many different things, whether I could see, whether I could hear, whether I'd ever be able to walk. On that day too, the doctor came and spoke to my parents and of course one of the first things out of his mouth was asking my mother if she drank during her pregnancy, which she didn't.

I think it was a day or two before a plastic surgeon came to my mom's hospital room and said, oh, actually, this is a missing ear and I'm a plastic surgeon and we can fix this before she enters school and nobody's going to have to know. Your parents wondered from the very beginning, you read about in the book, what your life was going to be like. Yeah. What do you know about that? I mean, what do you know about what they were concerned about? I think they were concerned that having this problem,

this quote unquote problem, was going to ostracize me and kids would bully me and I think ultimately they wanted other people to love me as much as they did and they were afraid that this thing might preclude that or make it more difficult for me. How old were you when the first idea of a surgery came up? Good question. I think that like two days after I was born. A couple of days.

Yeah, yeah. There was this idea of a plastic ear, right? Yeah, the very first plan when I was in Kingston was to take a plastic ear or like the sort of almost formed into an ear and take some skin from my buttocks and put the plastic ear under it and then displace it and put it all on that side of my head. And I do remember, I remember that first visit with my plastic surgeon in Kingston and seeing

this like, oh my gosh, it did not look like an ear. And just wondering like, ooh, how is this gonna work? You thought this was in some ways gonna, or at the very least change your life, right? Like this would be, this would be, yeah? This would be the thing, yeah. And you wanted to take like the bandages off to see what it would look like.

Yes, so the first time the plastic was inserted, I think that was when I was four, there was a lot of pipe, there was a lot of, oh my gosh, now you have an ear. And so I went to the doctors, the plastic surgeon, to get the bandages removed. And in my four-year-old brain, thinking it was going to look just like the ear on the other side of me, and I was horrified. What do you mean? It looked like it was red, it was puffy, it had like blue stitches all around the side

of it. It looked like a Frankenstein ear. It looked like some sort of monster gripped to my head. What is this? It this, that ear was rejected by your body. Yes, it was. And so, I mean, this is the beginning of what's a long kind of journey through this process.

You have a second one that's put in. Also rejected. What was the deal that you were trying to make with your ear? You talk about, you know, you're working through as this process is unfolding, these deals that you were trying to make with your as this process is unfolding, these deals that you were trying to make with your body? I was trying to make deals with my ear that it would stay in me, especially that second

time when I'd already had that experience of it being rejected. So I was like, you know, I'm going to send you healthy food so that you stay in me. I'm going to get a lot of sleep so that you heal properly. I'm gonna, you know, I had a song that I sang to it. Yeah. Do you remember what the song was? Yes, it was Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, except it was Hold On, Hold On, Little Ear. And I used to sing that to the ear in the hopes that it would stay inside me. How much did you understand about what you were going through?

I mean, one of the things you read about in the book is that for a long time, you felt like you had no choice in terms of what was happening to you. How much did you understand about what was going on? That's such an interesting question because from my earliest memories of like being two or three, this was always something that was going to need to be fixed. And from my earliest memories of like being two or three, this was always something that was going to need to be fixed. And so it didn't, it didn't, I didn't think of it as a choice.

It was just- It was never good enough just to be that it had to be something that was going to be fixed. Yes, yeah. It wasn't something that was not gonna happen. It never dawned on me as a choice and it's funny throughout all the surgeries and I've talked to my mom about this, we never talked about it, about whether or not it was just, let's get through this. Do you know whether your mother felt like she had any choice

in this? I don't think she felt choice either. We've had a lot of conversations about that. I think, you know, we still live in a world where mothers get blamed for, you know, the way children come out, but also the way they're raised. And I know that she just wanted the best for me. And I think at the time there was a lot of pressure from the medical community to say, this is the best. And none of us knew, you know, there's 14 surgeries in total. It was supposed to be like two or three. And the reason that it's 14 in part is because doctors

keep thinking that, you use that word fixed, doctors keep thinking that they can fix this. Yeah. That we just need to do one more thing and then this will fix it. We need to do one more thing and I get that this isn't working, but if we do this, this will fix it.

And I think, you know, in talking to my mom about it too, it's kind of like this idea of momentum where, you know, we've had these five surgeries and then they all failed. And of course I was left with scars and displaced skin still there. And it was sort of this idea of like, well, we can't stop now.

What do you remember about how doctors talked to you at that time? For the most part, doctors didn't talk to me. They talked to my mom. I was sort of like the patient. And I did have this doctor who I had, like, I thought I had a pretty good relationship with. He was always asking what I was up to. And then this one day he brought in a resident with him who, student doctor, and my doctor's whole

demeanor changed. And I think like that scared me the way he was talking. He was using these big scientific words to talk about me and, you know, touching parts of my body that, you know, had had surgery or needed fixing and was listing all of these things that had gone wrong. And like, it was scary. Like it just felt like, what am I? There's a line in the book in which you talk about how in some ways just felt like, what am I? There's a line in the book in which you talk about how in some ways you felt like you were

under a glass jar or something like that. It's almost like you're a specimen in some ways. Yeah. I talk about in the book about this idea of splitting, so that I have two bodies. There's the one in a moment where a doctor is just using reductive scientific language, touching my body, like there was no idea of consent. And then there's this other sense of body as well, I'm this kid who, you know, the sun, I feel the sun on my skin and I make puppets out of my knees. And, but they were very different. So I guess it was a kind of splitting

when I'm in the doctor's office. Like I just did not feel like a human, I think essentially. You had 14 surgeries and you write about anesthesia in the book. For people who have never gone through surgery once, I mean, being knocked out is a terrifying kind of thing. For somebody who goes through this time and time again, how do you think about this? The thing about surgery for me, and I think this baffled the doctors around me,

because they'd be like, well, you've been through this before, you've been through this before. because they'd be like, well, you've been through this before, you've been through this before. I got more scared every single time. The worst part of having an operation was going into the ER, OR, you know, it smells weird. It's sort of has this very kind of foreign rubber antiseptic smell. It's cold. Yeah. And the feeling of going under. I, at the time, I mean, before ever having like altering substance like drinking or anything, it was a very scary feeling. And I used to watch TV shows where they'd have someone go for surgery and then they dream the whole time. And I'm like, that's not what it is. Like you kind of blip out of existence. You're a kid as you're going through all of this.

And I mean, one of the things that you mentioned earlier, that your parents and your mom was worried that perhaps you'd be bullied or be made fun of. How much of that happened when you're going through this? It didn't start happening until grade eight, which I think is kind of the worst time to be alive anyway, because you are, you know, like all of a sudden bodies and hormones and what things look like become very important. There were blips of it here and there before that, but like the real bullying started in

grade eight when I came back to school with a huge bandage that covered both ears because one ear was being pushed back while the other one was still being worked on. They gave me the nickname Stumpy, which I think was something about a stump on the ear. Um, there was, there were boys in the class who just absolutely hated me. And I didn't understand, like, I mean, I, and I think I did understand why. And I think like, I felt I deserved it. And then the other thing that happened is I did not tell my parents about it. I think there was part of me that I'm like, uh, I want to make sure my parents think I'm okay.

But there were many nights crying at home in the book I write about holding my breath until I pass out because I just felt like unhuman. I felt like an abomination. You also wanted to, I mean, just do normal things, like be able to wear earrings. Yeah. Why were earrings so important?

I mean, to go into my childhood head, I think there was a subconsciousness there that I wasn't aware of, but one day my dad and I were at a garage sale and I just saw a pair of these clip-on earrings and I'd always wanted my ears pierced, but that was never really an option. And so I bought them and you know, my parents were so lovely about it, encouraging. And I was a dramatic kid.

These earrings were like four inches and dangly. And of course I could only wear them on one side. Probably there was some sort of subconscious way of trying to compensate for something. Although like wearing one dangly earring, of course, made it all look more. But I was obsessed. I was obsessed with earrings. Behind every statistic is a person, a family, a story. This year alone, over 30,000 Canadians will hear the words, You have breast cancer. Breast Cancer Canada is driving groundbreaking research across the country

because every discovery brings us closer to understanding, treating, and one day ending breast cancer. You can join the progress. Donate today at breastcancerprogress.ca. And if you don't think it will make a difference, we have the science to prove it does. I'm Dena Temple Reston, the host of the Click Here podcast from Recorded Future News. Twice a week, we tell true stories about the people making and breaking our digital world. And these days, our digital world is being overrun by hackers. Like I was just targeted by a nation state. And they range from reflective. It's a crime, bro.

And I live with that every day. To ruthless. Do you feel guilty about it? No, not really. Click here for a record of future news. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts. Pete Slauson When you were, what, 13, you have another surgery that is scheduled, or at the very least being thought of and discussed, and you say enough. Anna Slauson Yep.

Pete Slauson What led you to that? Why did you say that enough was enough? Anna Slauson I was, I think, like, the real answer is I was tired. like, the real answer is I was tired. I don't think I was thinking about it in terms of the larger idea of I shouldn't have to have these surgeries. It was, I was tired, I was sick of missing school, I was going to be entering high school, I didn't want to miss class. I was tired of this body being constantly revisioned, but also literally in a constant state of repair and healing. I just couldn't do it anymore. It was a conversation with my mom on the way, the train trip up to Toronto, and I had no idea if I was even allowed to say no. And her response

is okay, because she was tired too. What did the doctor say when you said that? He said, I don't want to do this anymore. He was less enthused by that idea. There was this negotiation of him being like, oh, well, at one point you said you wanted an earring, maybe we can pull the ear out. And I said, no, I don't want to do that. And I think he was surprised. At the time, my memory is eventually he said, okay, and then skip ahead probably a month or two, I had a new skip ahead probably a month or two. I had a new pediatrician, this woman, and she said, oh, I got a message from your plastic surgeon and I don't like to keep things from my patients. I'm going to read it to you. And in that letter, he was trying to get my pediatrician to push me to have more surgeries and specifically on my face.

And you know, he said, you know, Kate's face is very symmetrical. You know, I think you should inform her that it's a good idea for her to start having surgeries to make her more symmetrical. And I remember just feeling gutted by that and feeling hurt, feeling betrayed. And my pediatrician's like, what do you want to do? And I said, I don't want to do anything. And she's like, that sounds good to me. And she put it in a file and we never spoke of it again. and I never went back. What do you think, part of the book is about what you went through as a teenager, but this is the kind of thing that has trailed through your life or through much of your life.

What was the impact, do you think, of what you went through on you as you got older? Yeah, I think there were many echoes of this trauma throughout my life. That's how you see you got older? Yeah, I think there were many echoes of this trauma throughout my life. That's how you see it as trauma? Yeah. Yeah. I didn't at first. I didn't because when I would think of trauma,

I would think of sexual abuse and war and like car accidents and all those kinds of things. And then I read a book and I did some research and medical trauma is a real thing. It definitely felt like trauma for me and the echoes of it, I think like the underlying main thing was I didn't trust my body. My body was something that I never felt good in. My body was something that could flip on me at any second. And I think because I was constantly having to look after scars and because throughout the surgeries,

there were so many infections, so many things that didn't work, my body did not feel like a safe place for me. You write that it was, you felt like an adversary in some ways, that your body was an adversary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like an enemy to me in that sense. And I was constantly having to appease it in whatever way, like walk on eggshells around it. I mean, one of the things, you have a boyfriend and one of the things you do is what, you hide your ear from him for like two and a half years.

Two and a half years. Why did you do that? That's a long time. I know. I know. I think thinking back on it, it's really bonkers that I did that or was able to do that even. But something had to drive you to do that, right? Jennifer Oh, yeah. I absolutely, there was so much shame in me that I absolutely was convinced that

if he knew about the error, he couldn't love me. And I mean, he was a lovely person, luckily. But I, yeah, it took me two and a half years to tell him, because every time he would say something like, you're beautiful, I'd be like, well, if you only knew. How did you hide your ear from him for two and a half years? Hair? Yeah, I just always wore my hair down. And I mean, I have scars on my body. And one time he noticed a scar near my belly and I said, oh, that's from having my appendix set, which was a total lie. But for some reason it felt less bad than, oh, it's because I was born this way and had this problem. Yeah. And I mean, I played rugby and in my, we had to tape our ears back. And I always did my own taping because I didn't want my coach

or any of my teammates to know. But yeah, the day that I told my first boyfriend, my plan was to break up with him. You were gonna tell him and that was gonna be the end? Yeah, because I figured me telling him that would be me breaking up with him. And of course he was so lovely about it. He hugged me, doesn't matter.

But the belief was so ingrained that I didn't believe him. That's also impacted how you think about food or how you thought about food. Yeah, the problem with me is never that I've not had enough willpower, it's the opposite. And I think it became an obsession at times when my body was quote unquote misbehaving, if I was about to get sick,

there was a time, and I write about this in the book, where my only hearing ear starts to plug up, which is, to be fair, like it's a horrible feeling and it kind of feels like you're stuck behind glass and like you're suffocating. And so I went to my doctor who said, oh, blocked eustachian tube, we can't do anything about it. So I went to the internet and the internet has a lot of things to tell you. And I went on this low mucus anti-inflammatory diet. And it again was from this idea of, I don't know what my body's ever going to do. So I can control this through

what I put in my body. And if I eat an orange and suddenly I feel some sort of reaction, then oranges are out. And I ended up on a very, very strict diet for many, many years because of it. How do you get to a place where you can trust other people? I mean, I wanna talk about you, but how do you get to a place, and part of this is about just how other people will react to you.

Where are you at with that now, and how did you get to that place? I'm quite comfortable now, but it took a very long time. Dating, I think I have always not trusted partners to love me, knowing this about myself. I think how I got there, I started talking about it. Like, I have whole groups of friends that knew nothing. And I think, shame can't survive that when you start talking about it.

And I think I came to a point, I'm now in my forties, I think women or female identifying bodies, you're constantly having to monitor how your body's performing. And then at a certain point I got tired of that. And I think the, the impetus to remove shame from my body became bigger. That was the start of it. I think also trusting other people is trusting yourself and

I think also trusting other people is trusting yourself and loving yourself on a deeper level so that I can say, hey, I was born without an ear and completely stay in my body. How do you feel now? I mean, the line at the beginning of the book is about why you're writing the book and you say that you write to make this body my home. How do you feel about your, it's a strange question. We've used all this language about things being fixed and problems and what have you. How do you feel now? Better. I wouldn't say perfect. Like I think I wouldn't say perfect. Like I think I'm much better at feeling compassion for my body, which I think is something that I struggled a long time to feel. You know, before this book came out and I was talking to some other memoirists, they're like, oh my gosh, are you nervous? They're going to know all your stuff. I haven't felt that, strangely.

I have felt absolutely no shame in talking about it. That said, there's no tidy bow ending here. I think things get triggered in me where I do still fall into a shame cycle. But I can now, you know, when I do some body work exercises where I can now feel myself fully in my body. And that has been such a beautiful thing. And when my body gets sick, instead of being like, I'm going to avoid you or how could you do this to me? It's sort of that more compassion of, okay, we're, you know, we're, we're going to, we're in this together. We're going to, and it's interesting because there's always still a split, but I just feel much more in my body than I did.

And, and I still go through, um, shame, but it's much, much less and much less frequent. I'm glad to hear that. It's really great to meet you. Thank you for coming in. Thank you so much, Matt. Kate Gies is a writer in Toronto. Her new memoir is called, It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished, A Memoir of My Body.