An odd one from therapy this week.

[agent_dani]

I mentioned to my therapist that I didn't know which surgeon actually performed my surgery as I met both for the 5 minute consultation in the waiting room immediately before I was taken into the OR  (the only pre-surgery consultation I had.) My therapist said that is highly irregular and I should have been furnished with that information.

I had a decade of people insisting I was wrong and overreacting to be uncomfortable with that and "but you signed consent forms so they did nothing wrong!"

Comments

[cmcmck]

That IS highly irregular. I had an hour's consultation with my surgeon so he could check me over and allow me to make an appointment with his secretary (that's how I got it on my birthday).

He also spent another half hour with me on the day before surgery talking over exactly what it was he'd be doing and what he hoped to achieve (as I said before- new surgical techniques were in play).

I also signed consent forms, but only after that first meeting!

[agent_dani]

The first time I had any informative paperwork (that is, not forms they required to be filled out and returned) was after my final payment was due - they finally sent the information packet I'd been asking for weekly for the previous 9 months and was always told "we'll get it out next week." That is to say the first time they sent me any actual information docs was after the point where if I canceled they pocketed $10k CAD of my money. I can only guess they decided they didn't like losing the comparatively tiny cost occasionally mailing that to people who ultimately didn't schedule. I first saw the consent forms at around 8-9PM the night before surgery - after I had arrived on-site, been officially admitted to the hospital and done more of the pre-surgery prep!

If I wanted a separate consultation it would have been a separate trip and at its own cost (it was not done for free!) My therapist and HRT Drs had made it very clear that they strongly opposed having that consultation as they felt it wasted money that was better spent on paying for surgery itself. I have since come to realize that the real fear is that it would lead to us finding out they had lied to us about the risks of vaginoplasty - they insisted that things like being unable to orgasm were completely impossible as part of their persuasive tactics to get us to have vaginoplasty and, in their words, "completely transition" because they felt that even if we ultimately were seriously unhappy with our result it was better than being more happily transitioned without having that surgery.