#sam's ts

[queerforscience]

I WENT SWIMMING SHIRTLESS OUTSIDE AND IT WAS SO NICE

[queerforscience]

I took my shirt off at the beach and no one looked at me weird and the wind on my skin felt great and it was so fucking good

[queerforscience]

Top Surgery Consult

I meant to write something about this a while ago buttt I didn’t, I mostly wanted to give some feedback on my surgeon for other people’s information and help people know what to expect for these appointments. Let me know if anyone wants to know anything else!

I had inverted T top surgery on 6/20/18 with Dr. Hema Thakar in Portland, Oregon. I am nonbinary and am not/have never been on T.

Consult

I honestly didn’t really know what to expect during my consult. I got this appointment through a referral from my PCP so I didn’t really know anything about the surgeon or anything. At this appointment a nurse took vitals and gave me an open front gown to change into before I met Dr. Thakar. 

She looked at my chest and took some measurements, then talked through the options for different procedures (after letting me put a shirt and binder back on so I wasn’t so uncomfortable), which in my case was double incision or inverted T because my chest was Not small enough for keyhole :p. During this part she talked about some of the pros and cons of those procedures and showed me pictures of her results from these. She did mention that she worked with a lot of nonbinary people! She said that a lot of her nonbinary patients tend to like the inverted T procedure. The two drawbacks to that procedure she mentioned was that it does leave a little bit of breast tissue so it doesn’t get you quite as flat as Di, but cis dudes aren’t entirely flat either, especially ones built like me, and that if I were to go on T the leftover tissue might shrink and make the skin in my chest be loose. 

(The weight thing something else I was worried about from what I’ve heard about other’s experiences, I know some pepole have been told they need to lose weight but my weight was never mentioned other than in relation to having a bit of tissue left looking natural and I’m definitely a bigger guy.)

We also discussed that I needed a therapist’s letter for insurance coverage and when I mentioned that I didn’t currently have a therapist it turned out that she even had a social worker that worked with her office that could help me find a therapist to write one. I did talk to the social worker who gave me some names of local therapists that would do “top surgery assessments” so I could get a letter without it taking too long. I did end up deciding to get a letter from my former therapist when I went back to school though because I thought it would be better to talk to someone I had an established therapy relationship with and everything. Her office also helped me work out scheduling so that worked out so I could use that letter and get top surgery while I was home for the summer.

Both from my experience and what other people have said online it sounds like Dr. Thakar’s office is really good at working with insurance to get people’s top surgery approved. The main impression I got from this visit was that Dr. Thakar definitely had good experience working with trans patients and had a really great bedside manner.

I was also going to write about my pre op in this post but this is already really long so I’m going to make that another post.

[queerforscience]

Weird sensory things about top surgery recovery:

- the feeling of a t shirt moving over your chest when parts of your chest are numb

- arms brushing against the part of your incisions on your side

- missing pressure/touch because you can't really get a *good* hug because you're fragile or cuddle people properly or even use a weighted blanket because it's too much weight for you to lift

[queerforscience]

I'm really doing pretty well for my second day post op, I can eat on my own and get dressed mostly on my own and everything but I'm so ready to get to shower, I'm glad my surgeon only has people wait 48 hours post op for that.

[queerforscience]

Only one more week of the surgical binder 🙏

[queerforscience]

Chilling shirtless, watching mindful education, and sipping some cider 👌

Being 21 and having had top surgery is p great

[queerforscience]

I'm freeee from drains

Real talk though y'all that second drain felt *weird* coming out, it didn't even hurt that much but I could like feel it moving as they pulled it out and it kinda felt like I had healed around it.