I'm 4½ weeks post-op (Jesus time flies), and have just arrived home from surgery with Chet. Should you get him in 2022?

I will preface this by saying that firstly it's possibly too early to be fully confident in this review, considering that there's still a couple months of the basic stages of recovery to go and much more beyond that. Secondly, I'm generally happy with my experience and result, but will address this later. I mean, next paragraph, I guess. Thirdly, I will be furnishing this review with some experiences from the Chinese community, which I think is highly under-represented in this subreddit because of China's blocks and so on. I'm ethnically Chinese but not from China and so I managed to get into some of these circles and find out a few things about Chet.

The biggest concern I had going into this was the seemingly inconsistent reviews I found on this subreddit and in other circles regarding Chet. The range was really quite wide, and it seemed that he wasn't just (as I commonly refer to him because of his methods) a budget Suporn/Banks; he's also a bit of a gamble. Of course, every SRS is a gamble, with parameters that probably none of us will ever be able to completely list, optimize, or control. Even accounting for that, though, what concerned me was the small subset of reviews that indicated his tendency of treating patients callously.

There are a number of things that happened with Chettawut that makes me wonder if I got preferential treatment from him for... Whatever reasons. Not only was he incredibly gentle with me for my first appointment with him (too gentle to be medical, almost) he also did a number of things for me that he didn't do for the other girls that I met. Individually, these things don't indicate preferential treatment necessarily, but considered together it creates a pattern with certain likely motivators. Or perhaps his treatment of patients really has gotten better over time, but I'm not sure about that given that I have contemporaries to compare with.

1. He moved my surgery date up by a couple days after seeing me for the first time in the initial consultation. Originally I planned to land in Bangkok a few extra days before I was due to start my liquid diet to account for Thailand's travel restrictions, but just before I left they removed travel restrictions for my country entirely. His behavior during the consultation was also quite... Uncomfortable. I understand that surgeons take before shots of their patients for recording purposes but the way he gently spun me around on the stool using my thigh and gently angled my face for shots felt kind of weird. He later said, "You are almost perfect; if you would only let me xxx while you're under GA, I can make you perfect," which I initially attributed to him trying to upsell me. I would have taken it, except I practically bankrupted myself to get Chet to begin with and didn't have the money for him to remove the remaining 10-15% of tracheal stuff that Kamol didn't feel like removing in 2019. He also has a habit of clasping my hands while talking to me, which, cute I guess

2. I went into the OR at around 11am, and when I came to it was around 8.30am. This implies that he spent a great deal of time on me - most of the Chinese girls I spoke to were in the OR with him for 5-7hrs, with one apparently having only been there for 4½. This means either he spent extra time with me or I had complications during the surgery - but if it's the latter case I didn't hear about it and it didn't affect me. What I do know is that all the Chinese girls living in my area of my hotel (and one Czech girl) had some form of postoperative issue, and I have had by far the least and mildest complications post-op.

3. One of the things I hear very often about Chet is that after your SRS, he basically ignores every concern you have. On the first day post-op, I farted really hard and popped a couple sutures (comedy gold, I know) and began to bleed really hard. The nurses did their usual, until Chet came along at around 8pm to do his checkup. By then I was hopped up on two shots of morphine earlier in the day but I managed to tell him about the bleeding so he removed the packing adhesive to check it. When he saw the bleeding he called up his anesthesiologist from home to rush down to the hospital, and by 8.30pm I was being put under GA again for him to re-suture. On top of that, I wasn't charged for this. This would be incredibly surprising for anyone who's looked through Chet posters in this sub - usually either he ignores you or he nickle and dimes you. One of the Chinese girls I met even got charged 100 Baht for asking for too much chocolate milk on her 2nd day in the hospital, which is hilarious.

4. Another thing I noticed when I compared my in-hospital experience with the other girls was that they didn't visit him every day. I got a visit from Chet for each of the 10 days I was there (I paid for an extra 7; standard is 3 days). I assumed that he visited everyone and that those were standard surgeon rounds but that appears to not have been the case. I don't know if this is because I paid for the extra days or because of the day 1 complications, or for some other reason.

Those are my experiences with Chettawut himself. The nurse team was mostly a pleasure to be with - I mean, spending 10 days in hospital means that they get to know me, and I did my best to be as friendly with them as I could because there wasn't much else for me to do. Won't name the nurses but me and the Chinese girls have a clear favorite who seems to have not worked for Chet for very long yet. Recovery has been uneventful for me, but for the Chinese girls it seems to have been a different story. However, I'm not quite sure how much to attribute issues they encounter to Chet and to their own actions (always a difficulty when considering reviews), but I do know that 2 of the Chinese girls in my area were botch jobs who were waiting for Chet to do revision. Interestingly, one reported that Chet had plugged her a sigmoid revision, but when she woke up she was informed that the skin graft was fine when he opened her up and just needed some mild work so he reduced the cost from 20k Baht to 5k Baht.

Which brings me to some interesting things I've heard from the Chinese side. I'm sure we're all aware that many practices in Thailand employ agents to refer, promote, and act as intermediaries for surgeons and patients (some more actively than others), and for services provided they effectively get a cut of the surgery price. Chet seems to have recently negotiated good terms with one of China's SRS agents, which explains the glut of Chinese girls going to Chet - she referred many of them, and they all knew her. I'm pretty sure the recent expansion of operations he's done by making an entire hospital and employing specialists from adjacent fields to create a large supporting infrastructure for his work has changed how he does things, and this might be one of those things. At the same time, while he might still be quite hands-off with his patients after they return to the hotel (he does have 3 affiliated hotels to convalesce in), he appears a lot more willing to engage generally (not just with me) with patients in the aftermath.

All in all, I can say that to the extent I'm able to assess rn, I had a good experience with Chet. Whether I'm able to recommend him or not - I don't think I feel confident doing so generally. Jokingly, I'd say he's probably a really good choice if you look cute enough. At the same time, I hope to contribute to the body of reviews on him, because his inconsistency is well-documented and it might help to allay some insecurities in advance. Some part of me thinks he really is a lot better than a lot of older reviews suggest, maybe as a result of the expansion or for other reasons, but just because I had a great experience doesn't mean you will.

Pics to come as I hit milestones uwu and ask me qns tq