I had my top surgery almost 4 years ago now (March 10th is my 4 years mark) and for me the best things about my chest post op are quite subtle and maybe a bit weird:
- When lying in bed for going to sleep and I hold my stuffed tiger against my chest and feel it so close to my heart without those... "things" being in the way and feeling wrong. (Yes I still sleep with stuffed animals even though I'm almost 30, judge me all you want...)
- When taking a shower and just stroking my chest without feeling any resistence, that it's just flat all the way down (little too far down though, I wish there would be a bump somewhere around there, but still!)
- Seeing how my chest hair grows and I keep thinking things like "this patch of hair right there under my nipple used to be the skin that was above my nipple before surgery" and how that's kind of fascinatingly unreal still somehow.
- Fantasising about getting a nipple piercing (might work, cause I know of other trans guys who've gotten it when post-op, but depends on the scarring, but now I have to wait until after my bottom surgery) and a chest piece tattoo that I'll never be able to afford.
- When despite being so unmuscular I can still see that I have pecs when I move my arms in certain ways, cause I couldn't see them at all before surgery.
- Yep, wearing an open shirt or preferably a shirt that's just not buttoned all the way up, cause I'm still a bit insecure about my stomach being a little pudgy on most days. But honestly I still get weird looks whenever I'm shirtless or have an occasional "nip slip" cause everyone's so prude around here...
I still find myself very happy over my results and still have my moments of "euphoria" over my chest. So, very much most definitely worth it for me. I still notice it, every time I either see or touch my chest, or if someone else does, and it always makes me smile. So that feeling never did fade for me, and I don't think it will anytime soon. However, I also did have post-op dysphoria for almost a year after my surgery. That kind of phenomenon I've noticed few ever wants to talk about. I can see why, it's not very nice having to deal with. It made me feel ungrateful and sh*tty at every turn. But eventually that post-op dysphoria actually quite poetically started fading when my scars started fading too.
Not wearing a binder actually wasn't the most amazing thing for me, although I did get very tired of the post-op binder thing that I had to wear 24/7 for 3 weeks straight. It was driving me crazy. So I was very glad to be rid of that thing.
When I just had my surgery, it was actually quite a bit of an emotional shock for me. I had my first post op shower 9 or 10 days after the surgery and I hadn't fully seen my chest until then, just a glimpse directly after surgery when the surgeon came by to take a look at me and I was still drowsy from the anesthesia. However in my own shower later on I literally almost passed out by just seeing my chest properly for the first time. It didn't look bad at all, but just how different I looked took me completely off guard.
I had the double incision with nipple grafts method, by the way, and it took forever to heal (I had to wear dressings up until 2 months after op). I was given the option to go with either that or the peri-areolar method, and most of my post-op dysphoria was about that I had regretted that I didn't go with peri instead. But I just had the feeling that it was too high a risk that my chest wouldn't have turned out even and flat if I had gone with peri, cause I had a B-cup chest, almost C-cup. I thought my surgeon was crazy for even suggesting peri. So it took me a while to kinda learn to be okay with my scars, and even appreciate them. They're still not entirely white now 4 years later, but more like a pale brown, kinda beige/tan colour while my skintone is very light so scars show very well on me unless they're white, then they blend right in. It makes me somehow feel as though I'm still ambivalent about my chest but I'm really not. It was bad, then it got better and been awesome ever since. I hope I'm not discouraging anyone though! The odds of you going through what I did are probably very tiny.
