tw: bottom surgery, graphic descriptions of genitals, mentions of suicide

tl;dr stay away from Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN unless your life depends on it.

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Hey all, I'm sitting in a hotel room recovering from a GRS revision surgery with Dr. Bluebond-Langner and Dr. Zhao a week ago and wanted to share a little bit of the story in hopes of helping out the community knowledge-base. As you all know Dr. Bluebond-Langner, Dr. Zhao, and their team are absolutely amazing, nothing new there. But I want to reiterate just how bad Mayo Clinic is by sharing my story.

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Story time: Back in 2017 I underwent bottom surgery with Dr. Martinez-Jorge (and another doctor who I forget) at Mayo. I was asked prior to surgery if it was okay to use a skin graft for additional depth (due to my size), to which I gave the go-ahead for. When I wake up from surgery I was told that they didn't do the skin graft because I had "enough" depth. I had a normal enough stay in the hospital and recovery went alright overall. However, they did an absolute botch-job during surgery that haunted me for years.

So what did Mayo do? Well to start they didn't remove all of my erectile tissue, any time I would become aroused there was what looked to be- and felt like- a stump of a penis underneath the skin that would protrude from where my dick used to be. I know GRS isn't perfect, but it was clear I was far from a cis woman with a large clit. It also made dilating painful. Mayo also didn't move my urethra This caused me to have incontinence issues that I spent a long time working on with two physical therapists who were amazing and understanding and helped me as best they could. They left me with a hole for a clitoris. They also only got me to the first dot on the dilator, but that's "enough" I suppose. Oh, and I had no labia minora, so that's cool too.

I was absolutely devastated and became a dysphoric, suicidal mess. I couldn't bring myself to have sex with my boyfriend when I healed. And I certainly didn't trust mayo to fix their mistakes.

I pushed on in other areas of life though, accepting my fate of being botched. A couple years went by and I got myself into a really good position in my career and started looking at revision options. I asked some friends and everyone was talking about Bluebond-Langner and her team so it's who I set my sights on. I lived half the U.S. away so I had to save up a bunch for flying to NYC for a consult and then spending a month out here for recovery, but every penny has been worth it.

It's obviously a bit hard to tell with swelling and bruising, but literally all of my problem areas have been fixed. The team has been so wonderful to work with barring a few hiccups (e.g. got misgendered in the recovery room by a nurse).

I went with Mayo because they were close to home (1hr), had next to no waiting list (I know why now!), worked with my insurance, and had name recognition- and I was too poor to fly somewhere else for surgery and recovery; but I had to do it otherwise I was going to off-myself. Had I known how that surgery would've turned out I might've tried holding out. But ultimately with how things went I just know that I'm really thankful to have been able to go under with Dr. Bluebond-Langner, Dr. Zhao, and the team because I finally feel comfortable with my body.

This also doesn't touch the topic of my FFS experience at Mayo, and my BA consult with them 😂. So seriously avoid Mayo at all costs. They gatekeep with a fuck ton of appointments for not great results.