Hello all,

I've gotten to a point in post-op where I am ready to start sharing my notes on how SRS went for me. This is just one girl's experience. I benefited immensely from discussions with other trans women, private facebook groups, YouTube, Reddit, and other online resources and am here to pay it forward by sharing my experience. I am happy to answer any surgery related questions publicly here.

I initially planned on having surgery with Dr. Kamol as he is extremely well regarded as one of the best by the Thai transgender community. Reddit doesn't have as good of an opinion of him which ended up changing my mind, so thanks! I got in contact with him via an agent. She had surgery with him years ago and arranged everything for me. This is normal here for plastic surgery - it's a big market and a lot of LGBT make money from it this way. I'm not sure how foreigners usually do it. I guess you can email the clinic directly? Maybe they have agents that speak English too?

I ended up getting to Kamol hospital an hour and a half early, whereupon reception told me that there must've been a mistake in booking my consultation, as Dr. Kamol wasn't going to be there today, but they could book me for tomorrow, and that the fee was twice what I'd been told when I set up the appointment. I reluctantly accepted the change, and went to the second floor for a round of laser that'd I'd booked at the same time. While I was waiting for the numbing cream to take effect, the nurse told me that Dr. Kamol was going to be in in the afternoon if I wanted to wait, I could be his first appointment for the day, which I quickly agreed to. After an ATK test, laser, lunch, and waiting for quite a while, and somehow having someone else get to go in before me (so much for getting the first queue) I went in.

Dr. Kamol obviously was interested in keeping things as short as possible, but I fired off questions as fast as I could, and he answered all of them which was nice.

* I think the most interesting answer for me was how many (SRS) surgeries that he does a day, he said often three or four, but he would prefer to only do one or two. This is due to pressure of the hospital investors. His team takes care of a lot of aspects of surgery for him (from stitching to removing hair follicles), I suspect that a lot of the variability in results lately is due to the lottery for how busy that day is and who ends up doing what. This ended up changing my mind and I went to a different surgeon because I want someone who will do the whole thing, not just be there for part of it.

* He was unwilling to engage in questions of what technique was better, more popular etc. I think that's good.

* Revisions are not free, results are not guaranteed in any way. Follow up appointments are usually two for graft, maybe three for colon/PPV, but it depends on the person (and if they'll even be in Thailand for follow ups - a lot of foreigners don't stay long enough for all of these).

* I asked a bunch of questions about how he removes erectile tissue, deal with pelvic floor muscles, nerves, what he does with the rest of the head, spacing of anatomy, etc. It was very interesting to hear how it is done. I think you can learn about this online, I don't really remember the details now.

* He said he does allow people to bring in example pictures of what kind of look you want, but the example should be of a neovagina. Regardless of any customization requests, he has an overall look that he does, and doesn't deviate from that in major ways. I was impressed by his honesty with this.

* I asked about hair removal quite a bit because I have more hair down there than most Thais - he was upfront that scraping doesn't get them all, and that it's common for a few hairs to grow back. He suggested that hairs aren't an issue, and that they can be removed later (neither of which I think are true from what Reddit says).

* As far as PPV goes, he does do a flap and not a graft. He said that he's done about 200 of them over the last couple years since he started offering that technique. He heavily emphasized that it's a very new technique for trans women, and there aren't long term studies on it. He seemed to think that excess lubrication doesn't happen, and in many cases it's somewhat dry. I was surprised he didn't try to sell me on it as his website makes it sound like it's the best and it's much more expensive (and I assume he would make more if I chose this)

By the end of my questions he was about ready to throw me out, we talked for maybe 30 minutes. He is obviously a very busy man. I really had to keep the questions coming fast and make the conversation lively to get the answers I wanted. In contrast, the person before me (so much for being the first queue) was in and out in less than 5 minutes. I did end up paying the amount for the consult that I was originally told when I booked, which was nice. But I wasn't happy with the confusion about the time or the cost of the consult, they should be more organized.

Result: I left thinking Dr. Kamol is very good, but too busy to focus on his patients which worried me. I was impressed by his honesty about a lot of things. I think he is a good surgeon, but maybe not the best choice for some people.