Hello everyone,
I live in Perth, Western Australia. I thought it would be interesting to share my experiences and thoughts regarding top surgery in one of the most isolated cities of Australia. :)
I have been working my butt off with exercise and healthy eating to get my weight down safely to a healthy BMI. I'm hoping to have top surgery mid-2015. For the longest time, I have desired to have a flat chest. When I was young and enduring puberty, I thought I would grow up flat-chested because many of my female friends had already started growing breasts. To my horror, I was simply a very, very late bloomer. Going bra shopping was torture, I would leave the store breaking down into tears, it would ruin my mood for the rest of the week. I had no interest in having breasts in any shape or form. It wasn't until I brought my first binder that things changed inside my mind and my outlook of my body, the joy that these breasts were able to be controlled and flattened by a simple binder was amazing. However, during summer, it became awful to wear a binder under a t-shirt. During transitioning and acquiring hormones, having been on them for four years and despite my male identity shifting to non-binary, my underlying urges and desires behind top surgery has only grown stronger and more concrete than before.
I long for the day that I can wear a t-shirt without a binder underneath, to be able to look down and see a flat chest, to be topless on hot days to cool down and more importantly, to be free of the breasts that have caused me so much pain and dysphoria since the day they began growing.
I have already seen two surgeons regarding top surgery in 2012. Surgeon A said DI would be the only available method for me as I have large breasts and losing weight would change the shape of my abdomen but not my breasts. Surgeon B said I have a choice between his method or DI. His method is a horizontal line on either side of the nipple and around the nipple - only I would need to (happily) lose weight so my angle of my nipples point forward instead of the tilting downward. I also noticed the description of the Surgeon B's method is similar, if not the same method as Megan Hassall's technique in Sydney. I was surprised that Surgeon B mentioned his method, it sounded like a combination of both peri-areolar and DI technique(?) He assured me that there is minimal scarring but it is ultimately up to me whether I would like go with his method or the regular DI. I have nothing against DI technique but holy snapping turtles, minimal scarring? Yes please!
There was also a third surgeon that my gender psychiatrist wrote on his list for me but I only picked the first two to consult as he encouraged seeing two would give me a better idea of which surgeon I would like to go with, so I figured, since I am losing weight, why not see the third surgeon in the mean time, gather their opinion, quotes and compare all three together...? As of right now, Surgeon B is one I would likely go with but I feel it's always a good idea to shop around more!
What do you guys think? Is it concerning or not at all odd that Surgeon B says I can have his method done if I lose weight whereas Surgeon A said DI is the only method suitable for my size...?
P.S. Is it shallow of me... that while my main interest is having a flat chest, that I care about the nipple placement, such as the symmetry? The thought of waking up from surgery and finding I have lopsided nipples terrifies me but I think I could handle lopsided nipples over losing them completely. Thoughts? Am I just being too vain or is this a common fear?
Kind regards,
Jacey
Seems like a perfectly reasonable concern to me! Good luck with your remaining consult.
There was one guy here who had the incision across the nipples. I don't remember his name but maybe he is still around.
Quote from: Alexthecat on October 21, 2014, 10:59:09 AM
There was one guy here who had the incision across the nipples. I don't remember his name but maybe he is still around.
My recollection though it was a doctor in Australia. I'm not sure if anybody uses that technique in the US.
But maybe the person who had the surgery will show up. You could look way thru the sticky posted thread way back. Sometimes guys kind of drop out.
--Jay
Quote from: Alexthecat on October 21, 2014, 10:59:09 AM
There was one guy here who had the incision across the nipples. I don't remember his name but maybe he is still around.
Kreuzfidel
Yes, that guy was me. (Thanks, Brett) :laugh:
I saw Megan Hassall. I preferred the look of the incisions either side of the nipples to the crescents underneath, but that was just personal choice. I didn't have a large chest, though - I'm not sure if that has something to do with whether or not she (and, in your case, your surgeon B) can do the kind of technique that I had done. I know other guys who are a bit larger and who saw her but ended up with the crescents underneath instead of her "trademark" incision style. *shrug*
Anyway, it's still a DI even with the scars being placed differently. In my case anyhow.
(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi762.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fxx266%2FMouse5479%2FDSC01440.jpg&hash=4a84a141f73cca720c8c9f5dbca5ec0a68f70fa2)
Thank you everyone for the replies!
I speak in Surgeon A & B terms because I worry that I would be tarnishing(?) their reputations but Surgeon A is Dr. Patrick Briggs and Surgeon B is Dr. Edward Van Beem. Not much is known about their results online - I've looked everywhere, Yahoo Groups, Transbucket, tumblr... no luck. There was only one other result I saw online of Edward Van Beem's and it had the same incisions as Megan Hassall's but the person deleted the tumblr entries for that surgery a year ago. I am unaware of what their original chest size was but when I see Dr. Beem again, I will ask to see patient results as I forgot to last time and only relied on what little I had seen from the online result.
Alittlespooky (aka Casper) from Youtube also saw Megan Hassall. I have thought about flying over from Perth to see Megan Hassall but I worked out how much it would cost, including travel and it's basically the same price, if not a little bit more than how much it costs to get it done in Perth.
Mid-2015, expect to see a Hassall-look-alike clone in the top surgery experiences thread. I cannot wait to get a flat chest, dreading the surgery and recovery aspects of it but it will be worth it in the end.
I won't pretend that surgery is fun or that it is inconsequential. But it's temporary. I can't really remember how it felt anymore (I mean i can if I really stretch my imagination.)
--Jay
Quote from: EchelonHunt on October 27, 2014, 12:11:56 PM
Mid-2015, expect to see a Hassall-look-alike clone in the top surgery experiences thread. I cannot wait to get a flat chest, dreading the surgery and recovery aspects of it but it will be worth it in the end.