Facial Feminization Surgery (FFS) with Dr. Bart: One woman’s experience |
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A reader just sent a brief account of her experiences with Dr. Bart:
http://www.doctorbart.co.uk/ffs/
I wanted to write something about the FFS I had with Dr Bart.
I mainly chose him because he lives near me, in Leerdam, and access by train would be easy. I had made an appointment and when I arrived at the station I was picked up by his secretary, who was very reassuring. At that moment I was only a little less than terrified!
I was first ushered into his X-ray room – which I was not expecting – and spent the next ten minutes there. I was then taken to his office, where I felt myself at ease for the first time in several hours. In subsequent meetings my impressions of calm and experience have been re-inforced. Indeed he has more a passion for what he does, and wants to share it. We discussed my needs, which were to be honest driven more by my lack of money than any hopes I might turn out pretty.
I went home rather stunned that it had all happened at all! As an early-onset TS my face has caused me considerable woe, starting when I was in my mid-teens. Being in my mid forties now means that this has been gnawing away at me for some time. It was only discovering such things as FFS that gave me any hope whatsoever: by my late teens I had already given up any hope of rescue and have been floundering ever since.
I was told in a phone call that I would need to meet him at his new clinic in Spain. I was expecting to go down the road, but in retrospect the trip was fun and I had not flown anywhere since I was a child and enjoyed seeing the bright white of the clouds that covered rainy Amsterdam that morning.
There were two things that came as a surprise to me after the surgery: firstly that I would be so comprehensively swollen, and secondly that I felt very little pain. I quizzed Dr Bart later and asked him if he really had done what he said he would do, especially to my forehead. I felt so little there that I imagined he had done something else! I must admit that one time I frowned and my forehead creaked, it so startled me that I fell off my bicycle!
It was some ten weeks after the surgery that the swellings had receded enough for me to be able to recognize the new me under what had been a hippopotamus! Given that I had a severe aversion to looking at myself in any manner at all meant that it took some getting used to me being presentable. I am informed that it will be a full year before everything is finally where it should be.
As I say the surgery was modest, and well more than I could really afford. But its value to me has been well beyond what I paid. I now have a mirror that is not kept in a drawer (mirrors were very dangerous things) and am still taken aback that I look nice! Suffice it to say that I have now transitioned and feel comfortable, if a little dazed and empty of anxieties!
