Quote from: Steph on September 16, 2011, 11:32:57 PM
Wow if your avatar is your current one, you recovered very nicely and very quickly I might add. I can see why you don't have to worry about passing. If it's a pre-ffs avatar I can't see why you needed FFS you look wonderful. Was it expensive, and where did you get it done?
TY for the confidence boosting compliment
I am of the school of thought that passing is 95% from the neck up.
That picture was one week post op. Looks even better as time passes. All I had done was he feminized my nose. We agreed to leave the bone part alone, narrowed the nostrils (tucked them in from the sides) and narrowed cartilage from mid point to tip from the front view. He gave the profile a convex curve and angled the tip up instead of drooping. That added space between my nose and lips which made my mouth more centered between my nose and chin. That helped my chin a lot and also this made my eyes seem larger. Super happy with the results considering how little was really changed.
The worst part of it was recovering from the 2 hours of GA this required. I felt dizzy and weak for a couple of weeks, feel fine now. Only was on prescription pain meds for about a day post op. MUCH less painful than say wisdom tooth removal. No nose cast or packing, just taped to hold it up until external stitches came out 5 days post op. Took about 10-14 days for irritating inside the nose stitches to dissolve and fall out. It's still healing (but no pain whatsoever) and he said won't see the -close to final results- till 3 months post op (90% swelling gone etc), a year to completely finish healing.
It was done by Dr Lincenburg at
http://www.gaplasticsurg.com/ for total cost, including surgeon, all pre-post op visits, hospital fees and anesthesia of ~$5,000 USD. He is VERY friendly/sympathetic to trans patients and the whole staff is very friendly/helpful. I don't think he does the major saw your skull open type FFS surgery but he mentioned he could do a trachael shave or shave down my brow bone, neither are pronounced on me. He initially suggested doing chin reduction, lip lift and plumping/filling but I wanted to just do the nose and glad I did. I don't doubt this other would possibly help but don't feel I really needed it.
But as you said earlier, obviously I care about how I look and wanted to improve my passability. I probably pass 99% of the time on casual inspection now (was maybe 85-90% before?) but it's still more like 90% when interacting/chatting for a while with someone. Don't really know for sure if they read me or not because no one ever starts calling me sir or acts weird.. Occasionally someone gives me the "I admire your courage, you looks great" which is nice to hear but I could live with them keeping it to themselves
The comment I get much more often is "You have a great smile"
)) I only pass about 70% of the time on the phone so I feel working on my voice will improve the interacting passing from 90% back to the 99% casual figure.
But I hope I have made my point that my wanting to pass is different than needing to pass 100%? Getting from 99% to 100% takes a LOT and some people just can't pull it off. If they need to pass 100% yet can't, they will never cure their GID and be happy with themselves. I've known people like that and I feel for them. I feel lucky I can accept less than perfection
)
