On July the 8th this year I decided to get an orchiectomy. Although I’m American, I work in Japan and I’ve been here for several years, but due to a life circumstances, I was going to have to return to the states.
This really terrified me, and I wanted to make sure, whatever the future, I couldn’t be detransitioned by whatever dysfunctional theocratic government is running the country. So I started looking into bottom surgery and orchiectomy locally in Japan. There’s only about one doctor that I could get in at here, which was Dr. Saegusa at the TG clinic in Ebisu. At the time I thought I could be back in the states within a month and I needed the surgery before that. Dr. Seigusa didn’t have any openings for anything less than 45 days out and was charging about 3,000 dollars.
Also, many of the doctors here in Japan are very old-school, their techniques as old too (which isn’t bad, they certainly worked in the past) but trees kind of surgeries have changed rapidly in even the last few decades. I started talking to Dr. Shin Ikebukuro for recommendations. Dr. Shin runs personal health clinic in Yokohama and Ueno, and also moonlights in several other places treating transgender patients. He recommended his friend, Dr. Kim, who works out of Sacred Heart memorial hospital.
I reached out to their organization, and her husband, Justin, reached out for interview. I told him my timeline, he spoke with Doctor Kim, and she scheduled me for the morning where she had an opening about two weeks later. The charge was only 2500USD for an orchie. Justin took care of everything for me, even drove me to my appointments. The first day in Korea, he had forgot to mention that the outlets were different here than in Japan, and so he brought me to his house, I met Dr. Kim who was really so nice. She even introduced me to her cats and gave me a Korean charger/power bank so I could charge my phone. It was such a friendly vibe.
I met with Dr. Kim several times when I was there. Since she knew I wanted bottom surgery as well, she gave me a consult while I was there. She actually is the head of her own gender care unit at the sacred heart hospital, and had nearly all the restrooms there converted into gender neutral. It was a really welcoming place. She discussed her techniques and showed me examples of her bottom surgery work, and I have to say her attention to detail was amazing. I really like her work on the anterior forchette forchette, which I feel western surgeons don’t seem to care about, so the bottom of the vagina just sort of gaps open. She also said she hides the scars between the folds of the labia, which was interesting. Also, unlike most American doctors, she requires you stay in the hospital during the first week or more until the swelling is controlled, and you’ll be connected to some kind of vacuum machine to keep the swelling down (I don’t remember what it’s called)
She mentioned a lot of revisions occur because of wound separation from swelling, so that’s critical to her end result.
She also discussed assessing my available skin and recommended penile inversion initially, as she said of there are complications, we can take additional grafts using peritoneal tissue, and if there are further complications, as a last resort use jejunum. She explained that if you start with jejunum, and dilation doesn’t work, or there’s other issues, there’s simply not many other good places to graft from.
One of the things that wasn’t great was that the rest of the hospital outside of the gender unit is very gendered. Unfortunately at this time my passport was not updated, so although I was in a gender neutral ward, the name on the door was my dead name’s initials with my birth sex next to it. Dr. Kim says she’s been working to get this fixed, but since it’s a shared ward, it’s been a battle with the rest of the hospital for her. But she made sure everyone I interacted with used my actual name. And the nurses were great on the ward.
The next day or so I checked into the hospital room. I couldn’t eat/drink for 12 hours before bed, and in the morning they wheeled me to the OR. I was out with an hour or two. It was extremely fast, felt like I just fell asleep for a second. I was given a radical orchiectomy, where the cords were cut somewhere in my abdomen or inguinal canal. The suture job was amazing. It’s been several months but even right after surgery I couldn’t really see where she had cut, besti can tell she cut right on the perineal raphe, and I had to feel to find where the sutures were. It was a really clean job.
Justin picked me up about six hours later, by then I was walking. He took care of checking me out of the hospital and told me to have a seat. insisted on walking because I thought I was fine. Nearly passed out in the lobby. Just before I was about to black out I said something like “I think I’m going to pass out…” and Justin literally caught me and helped me walk to a seat. By this time we were pretty good friends. I guess I was a bit nonchalant about the way I said I was going to pass out, and said it with about the urgency in which someone might say they are grabbing a coffee.
After fanning me back to life and giving me water, we walked to the car feeling much better. Dr. Kim met me in the parking lot and hugged me and asked me how I felt, told her husband to take care of me in a kind of motherly way, she’s incredibly sweet, and Justin drove me back to the hotel. There was some discussion later on about how she had evaluated my available skin for bottom surgery and said I’d do fine, and I talked with Justin about coming back in a year, prices for bottom surgery was about 21K USD, and since my US insurance no longer covered anything thanks to Trump, that’s about as good as it gets.
Anyway, I had a great experience. my only complaint is the food in Korean hospitals was too spicy for me. I’ll probably ask for a meal modification next time. As for the surgery, there’s was some initial swelling and it was sore for about a month, but nothing that prevented me from getting around (except the first week or so, felt like i needed to take a lot of breaks, almost like fatigue as my body healed). I had to take it easy for about three months for lifting things. At at this point, almost 4 months later, I’m complete healed. I have no scars that I can see, and I really can’t wait to do bottom surgery with her next year.
Anyway that’s about it. I’m open to any questions. Justin, if you’re reading this, you have to go to the drag show down the street from my hotel in Itaewon with me when I come to get my kitty next year 😭
And for those wondering, there’s a nice gayborhood, red light distract and club district in Itaewon where the hotel was recommended by Justin. Fun place, so after hours we’re also very lit, wish I had spent more time there, but I had to get back to work.
