After 3 revision consultations with 3 separate doctors I appear to have quite a few issues with my initial surgery results, both in terms of my GCS and my tracheal shave. I figure Ill go through my story step by step so yall can form your own opinions.
I had my initial GCS/Tracheal shave with Marci back in April 2022. She seemed super friendly and super confident at our consultation so she felt like a safe choice, especially considering her role in WPATH. I had done about 9 months of hair removal prior to surgery and at my consult she said that everything should be more than adequate in the hair removal department (despite having a few thin stragglers.) I also spoke with her about aesthetics/depth. I stressed that depth wasnt very important to me because Im a lesbian, but aesthetics were very important to me. She was confident that we could get adequate depth and aesthetics despite my rather small amount of donor tissue (roughly 4 inches, I was about 5.3ish before shrinkage began with HRT.) At the consultation she was pretty proud of her technique where she leaves some urethra tissue on the outside to create a bit pinker of a vulva, which sounded super cool to me at the time.
Fast forward to immediately after my surgery, the first thing she says to me and my mom once Im awake is "I had to pull everything super tight but we got the 5 inches of depth." This should have been a massive red flag at the time, but I trusted her. A handful of days later and we are at the hotel room recovering, I take a look at the results with my mirror and notice that my labia minora is getting fairly greyish, so I contact her office and they tell me to forward her a photo of it. She seems super confident that everything is okay, so I go about recovering and hoping for the best. Fast forward a little bit more, at this point it looks like my labia is just dead skin hanging on, but I get cleared to go home. By the time I get home and look at everything again, its incredibly obvious that my labia is starting to rub off, as well as a bunch of tissue around my vaginal opening is starting to turn greyish. I send her a couple photos and she informs me that she believes that necrosis is starting to happen and that I should try Oxygen therapy to try to stop it. My mom and I pack back up and head out to SF again, and the doctor at the eighth element (the oxygen therapy clinic) confirms that I am in fact having a fair amount of necrosis.
I cant speak highly enough about Eighth element, at this point in my recovery I was pretty low, and these people felt like the only shred of hope in my recovery journey. Bowers office regularly wouldn't respond to my messages and would even ghost me, so having a doctor on hand at the Oxygen therapy clinic was a blessing. One time I sent a photo of a glob of white discharge that came out that was roughly the size of a stick of trident gum, and Bowers quite literally responded with "Yuh nasty." After a couple more weeks of oxygen therapy I had a follow up with Bowers, she met me at her office after hours to try to accommodate our schedule which I really appreciated. My mom and I took the opportunity to ask her why she doesn't just send everyone to oxygen therapy straight away like some other surgeons do and her response was "when your work is good enough, you dont have to." She said that healing appeared to be going well and that we should keep up the therapy. Oxygen therapy was such a blessing, and it clearly made a big difference in the speed at which I was recovering. After a couple more weeks I got the go ahead from Eighth element to go back home and resume my life as best as I could while I waited for a revision.
I got in contact with Bowers office to get on the waitlist for a revision, after taking my deposit they informed me that my revision was scheduled for December 2024. This news was pretty devastating because at this point in time, I was aware that my labia that died, as well as some erectile tissue that was becoming more and more apparent every day and was making dilatation and arousal feel very uncomfortable. I took the appointment because at that point they had already taken my deposit, but I decided to start looking for another surgeon to handle my surgery because by 2024 I wont have insurance (Im turning 26, woohoo America and being self employed.)
At this point my tracheal shave was causing this snagging on my muscle that was really tight and uncomfortable. After messaging Bowers and her office and initially being ignored/ghosted again for quite a while, she got back to me and told me to try massaging it. She also made sure to mention how this was the very first time it had ever happened with one of her patients. I wanted to get another opinion because of all of the nonsense at this point. I spoke with my OBGYN who handles my HRT and has worked with quite a few trans patients to ask her about getting a a referral for a revision, and she told me that Im not the first Bowers patient who was ghosted which was somewhat unsettling.
My first consultation was with Dr. Min Jun, he seemed like a super lovely guy, but after taking a quick look at my vulva, he asked me if he could draw on it. He proceeded to draw a bunch of lines in the places that he would make incisions to try to fix things, but informed me that he had never done a revision that dramatic before, he said that he COULD do it, and it would probably turn out similar to how I wanted, but that it would be somewhat of a first and that he would recommend going to Ellie Ley at the GCC. He also said that he didnt feel super confident removing the erectile tissue, and to quote him "thats something that important to nail the first time."
Fast forward a couple months and I have a consultation with Dr. Dev Gurjala at Align surgical associates. Their office was VERY speedy with getting a consultation booked which was a blessing, and the consultation went fairly well. He seemed pretty confident about his ability to fix my issues, he also pointed out that due to "pulling everything super tight," my skin had healed over my vaginal opening and was collecting a bit of urine when I go to the bathroom, which was probably the source of my chronic bacterial infections from this last year. He also seemed to think that the tightness might have been the reason my labia died. When I told him that I had an appointment for another consultation, he asked if I minded sharing who it was with, and when I told him that it was with Ellie Ley, he seemed relieved and told me that if I chose to go with her, that I would also be in good hands. Between his response about Dr Ley and his ability to point out the issue that Min Jun hadnt, I was feeling somewhat confident about his abilities, but I wanted to be sure about who I went with so I still went on to have my third consultation.
My final consultation was with Ellie Ley. She was amazing and I cant speak highly enough of her. She was so kind, so compassionate, listened EXTREMELY well to all of my issues, and she really tried to inform me about how she would go about fixing things, she also explained everything in a way that just made sense to me which was nice. I showed her some photos that I had shown both Min Jun and Dev Gurjala that had some decent examples of the amount of erectile tissue left behind and how big things get when Im aroused, after I showed her the pictures she went on to explain how Bowers and a lot of other surgeons put urethra lining down the center on the outside, and how that typically leaves quite a bit of erectile tissue, to quote Dr Ley "urethra tissue only belongs in the urethra." She asked if I felt comfortable sending her the photos so she could try to convince surgeons to stop leaving urethra tissue on the outside. Apparently shes already been going around at different events and has been trying to convince people to change their technique for quite some time. To fix my situation, she recommended two surgeries, one to fix the urethra tissue/erectile tissue, and one to fix my labia. She said that if we try to do both at once that it has a much higher chance of failure because the skin would be pulled two separate ways, but that if we do in in two stages, that shes very confident that she can fix my complaints, Ill just have a few extra scars.
I decided to go with Ellie Ley for my revision, mainly because of her desire to get surgeons to stop doing what Bowers did to me, and the fact that she recommended splitting up the surgery to avoid risks. She values my safety, and she wants to get it right, not make the situation worse in an attempt to save time. We are currently waiting on UHC to stop dicking us around, last time it took a couple months, but Im excited to finally start working towards leaving this chapter of my life behind me. Her office has been super friendly, but a couple times now there have been delays due to negligence on their part (not checking the right box when processing my paperwork, not communicating between departments, ect) but despite those setbacks I think Ellie seems worth the wait, and the office staff has been super friendly. As far as the Tracheal shave, the general consensus is to try massaging or for a WHILE and hoping for the best.
The final update at the moment is that at my last Gyno appointment, my doctor informed me that there were quite a few EXTREMELY thin hairs on the very back wall of my vagina. Im pretty upset about it, especially considering how much electrolysis I went though and how confident bowers was that it should be enough. I wish that she would have been honest with me and told me to delay my surgery and get a bit smoother results from the Electrolysis first. I also wish that she would have been honest with me that PPT would probably have been a better idea considering my size and desire for aesthetics. Especially after Min Jun told me that he would recommend going wither another surgeon, it really confirmed to me that not every surgeon is a good fit for every case, and seemingly, she wasnt a good fit for mine.
If you took the time to read through all of this, I hope it at least somewhat made sense, Ive been to a lot of appointments and spoke with a lot of doctors this last year, and its hard to condense. If youre considering Bowers, I wouldnt say NOT to go with her, but be careful and I wouldnt just blindly trust what she tells you like I did. If you went with Bowers or any other surgeon who failed you, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and sure, my results probably wont looks as close to cis genitals as Id like, but they work, and after a couple revisions and a few new scars, they should finally feel comfortable and look at least in the ballpark of what they are supposed to.
Marci Bowers and her ghosting/medical neglect tendencies
