The Transgender Cancer Patient and What She Heard on Tape

Jennifer Capasso, a 42-year-old transgender woman, figured there was a good chance she would be dead within 18 months. Since her diagnosis of metastatic rectal cancer, her life had become a succession of treatments and surgeries as more tumors were found. On her liver, and her lungs, and her large intestine, and again on her lungs.

At her apartment in Long Island City, Queens, she read cancer research papers and estimated her chances of survival, updating the odds after each scan, each tumor, each treatment. She tried to remember exactly what her doctors had said, and the tone they had used.

It frustrated her that she was unconscious at the most crucial moments — as the surgeon removed each cancerous mass. What if the surgeon said something important, a stray comment that no one bothered to tell her about after the anesthesia wore off? She decided to record her next surgery, on March 7, 2022, at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the renowned Manhattan hospital.

“I wanted to know what’s going on,” she recounted. She turned on the audio recorder on her phone before the anesthesia hit. “Knowledge is power.”

The surgeon removed part of her lung. She did not get around to playing the recording until a few weeks later. Though the audio was muffled, she could follow some of what the surgical team was saying before the procedure began. Someone was going out for coffee — did anyone want something from Starbucks? The conversation then shifted.

“ — still has man parts.”

It seemed to Ms. Capasso that they were talking about her genitalia.

On the recording, the health care workers express a variety of opinions about transgender identity more generally. “Not that it’s not right, but — ” one person can be heard saying. “I don’t get any of it,” another says.