Just posting this as a handly little PSA for my fellow Swedish trans people so y’all don’t have to deal with this asshole the way I did.
He took too much tissue out in some places and left too much in others so my chest is a bumpy mess and in some spots it caves in far further than it should.
But hey, all surgeons make mistakes sometimes. Except he would not admit that anything was anything less than perfect and insisted that I should just wait it out and “continue the journey of [my] anti depression meds” (actual quote, translated from Swedish). He did the same for all three post-surgery vists I fought by teeth and claw to even get in the first place. Basically he tried his best to make me believe it was all in my head.
It was only with the help from my doctor at ANOVA that I was able to get a second opinion from a different surgeon – and almost straight away when he saw my chest he said “yeah this bitch fucked up” (I’m paraphrasing here but that’s the gist of it).
And this isn’t even touching on all the information he (Schennings) straight up withheld from me before my surgery.
Don’t let him be your surgeon. Demand to get someone else – and if you can’t cope with shouting at people over the phone yourself, you can ask someone on your gender evaluation team to do it for you.
(For non-Swedes: If you want to get top surgery without having to pay for all of it yourself, you are just assigned a surgeon. You don’t get to pick and choose the same way you do in other places.)
A lot of the people getting TS get it on very short notice, and won’t be told who’ll be doing their surgery. You can ask during the call, but I can’t promise they’ll tell you who’s doing the surgery or in what way declining based on surgeon will affect position in the queue.
As a matter of fact if you get into a last minute spot you will likely get very, very little information until literally the day of, when you get to meet your doctor. Try and take notes and ask beforehand, don’t be afraid to stop the process just so you know what’s going on – you might feel stupid or like a bother, but this is all for your benefit. If you don’t feel confident with what’s going on, let your doctor know.
Also, because no one told me this, post surgery, the person to get ahold of for any concerns is your kontsktsjuksköterska. You likely won’t get a direct nr to them, but will have to go through the phone queue. When I got complications, it wasn’t until the third time I called my avdelning (the nr I got in my post-surgery folder…) they actually told me who I should be calling rather than them. If you are worried, don’t hesitate to call, and be vocal in your concern. These people do nothing but look at post-surgery bodies all day, so they will be very blasé about it, but if you can articulate what your body is doing, how it affects you, and how it has changed, you have a much better chance at being taken seriously. Like, it’s scary as shit and pretty terrible, but you actually have to take a big responsibility for your own post-surgery care. Write everything down, take photos, describe it to friends and family, that way, if you have any complications, you can accurately track what has happened and the process of it.
Don’t let Torgny Schennings do your top surgery
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