Dr Klienberger & Shih FFS
So I'll start with the familiar refrain, that I'm shy and a mostly private person and I not especially capable of projecting myself the way I see others do so easily. I've gained a lot by reading stories of other ladies and their experiences have helped mine become more informed and generally smoother. This is my attempt to give back and in light of the new president..... fight back.
My planned progression is FFS -> GCS -> BA ->Glottoplasty
I met with Dr Klienberger at his Walnut Creek office in August and he immediately made me comfortable (not just ok comfortable but at ease conversationally). It's hard for me to put into words but you when a health care provider is super polite and official and never uses a pronoun (oh poor little trans girl, let me help you out).... it's wasn't like that at all. We talked about what I wanted and he talked about how he approaches creating the right change in the right place.
3 days later I get an email from his office asking to called his scheduler and one 15 minute call later (I had some time conflicts to maneuver around). I got my surgery date December 9th (JOY) and then radio silence until 2 weeks before and then another email to call a nurse and discuss the operation (I had a little dread they were cancelling/delaying or informing me of some problem) Nope. She talked to me about stopping hormones and gave me a special surgery board phone number to call on the tuesday before the Friday operation (my brain was going YIKES! thats last minute but surgery schedules are kinda like that. I called tuesday and the nice lady told me I had to call back Wednesday (tears.... I know there is a problem) . There wasn't a problem. Another nice lady confirmed I'm all set 9am Friday. I was scheduled for 8.5hrs of OR time so its a little harder to tetris those surgeries into place.
Kaiser Oakland campus is a pretty nice facility. It's like it's own mini sky line (literally blocks of medical buildings) and I took comfort in knowing they had infrastructure to handle any emergency. A lot of times hospitals need to send for a specialist, welp, I know where they all are now. Parking? easy. There is parking structure connected to the hospital I went to. Second floor Check in and about 10 minutes later a nurse took us (OH I forgot to mention my Wife, the most fantastic human being on the planet came with me) to a second waiting room, hmm maybe lobby is a more appropriate word but a large pretty nice waiting place. We waited there for 40-50 minutes. They would call patients (and family) and through some magical doors (once side hotel lobby, the other side hospital pit crews. I say pit crews because it's really one long room with curtain dividers. You go to your divided area and change into gown and slipper socks (which are completely awesome) and get on the hospital bed where nurses & techs start doing vitals and IVs and hospitalish medicalish type stuff. They say one of the doctors will visit me before I go to OR. Wife holding hand trying to calm me. Me: trying to pretend to be calm and not have my heart jackhammer out of my chest. Dr Shih pops in and calms me down. How did he do this? He was kind intellegent and his hands were steady and moved with a conservation of energy(efficient?). Did I really see this? Idunno but I thought I did and he calmed me down(he's obviously done this a lot). Maybe they slipped something in my IV (the wifeunit aint talking ).
More waiting. Not sure how long, I'm starting think there is some credibility to the drug Tara when she's not looking theory. In bounds Dr. Klienberger. You know how people kinda semi run walk when they are happy(yeah that). He just finished a small surgery and he's ready to go! Asked if I had questions. Nope! You can tell when someone is happy and doing what they are supposed to do. The doctor is SERIOUSLY happy this morning. Wait I forgot to ask who he voted for? What kind of wine does he like?
In comes my anesthesiologist Dr Todd Foster(spoiler alert he did it perfectly. I had zero post-op effects) and he goes through the procedure like I'm 6 and tells a few jokes and I'm giggling. oh crap! they drugged me and they are going harvest my organs. I have to get out of....he is kinda funny (snicker)
In comes a team of 3 people I think. They wheel me while i'm still sitting up so it like a cross between a wheelchair and ancient litter. I don't have witnesses at this point but I believe I stifled my urge to ask for a ridding crop and shout navigational directions. Pretty sure. The OR is BIG! I pictured a living room sized place like you see in TV but this was like 30' x 30' and lots of equipment and articulating lights in the ceiling and what looked like a tiny ergo chair couch in the middle. They slid me onto this and starting hooking up lots of stuff but the most important thing was a giant warm blanket. I don't know if it was electric or steamed but it was soooooo
warm.It felt soooo good.
That was my last moment of consciousness. If I had died, my last thought was happy. It might sound weird but looking back thats pretty cool. I will comeback and write about recovery in another post.
