Vaginoplasty GCS Disaster from the Beginning.

This week marked the 2-year anniversary of the first of my two GSC surgeries with Dr. Sidhbh Gallagher and IU-Plastics. The entire experience has left me in a state of nearly-continuous PTSD -- it has been that traumatizing. I’m going to include pictures, so you can see my surgeries and their outcomes. The real problem with my entire story is that the images only tell the more obvious part of this disaster. The only reason I’ve waited this long to review the experience is that I wanted to make sure I gave them every benefit of the doubt on their promises concerning my results.

It’s important to note here. That I was not a disgruntled surgery patient despite my differences with her precocious patient coordinator and my disappointment in the outcome and post-surgery treatment. I never had a single argument or a difficult appointment with Dr. Gallagher. Not once. I expressed my difficulties with how she handled my surgery and she gave me the typical surgeon-speak of never taking any responsibility for anything. I don’t like it, but I expect it. Sometimes I enjoy listening to them dance around with their vocabulary choosing words to avoid any blame for something they know they messed up. Nevertheless, I struggle to find any respect for her after what she’s done and what she continues to do to me even now. 

Here’s the real issue for people currently looking for a GCS Dr. I don’t have the slightest doubt that given a similar circumstance, the same thing will happen to the next paint that suffers complications from her surgery. And I say that because Dr. Gallagher, her practice, IU Hospital, and IU-Health, have not responded to a single written email, contact form, public posting, internal or external emails regarding my complaints in over 12 months. Not a single one. Complete silence. They don’t return my calls either. This is even after my well-documented complaints were hand delivered by my own in-network primary care physician. I know people are thinking, “I would soooo sue them”. I have never even threatened to sue them. In fact, I told Dr. Gallagher over and over that I wouldn’t do that. Why? Because when you’re in this kind of painful and lengthy recovery situation and you’re literally coming apart at the sutures you need them to put you back together.  When they’ve compromised every resource you have and left you dangling precariously on the edge of cliff --making them your enemy doesn’t seem very wise. So you cope, you trooper-up, you overlook a lot of frustration, [RS bleep], and pain. All you can do is hope you get through it all and they, in turn, do what they billed you 6 figures plus to do. In my case, Dr. Gallagher expected me to be recovered in 8 to 10 weeks. Do you think I was prepared for this to go on for well over 18 months?  

Anyway...I’ll get on with it.

In the beginning, I had complete faith in Dr. Gallagher. When she described what the surgery would involve and spoke of how great the trained staff and the aftercare process would be, I believed her. I had no reason to believe anything otherwise. Unfortunately, it all turned out to be anything but what she’d advertised. I am now writing this review, so you can make a more informed decision than I was able to. From Day One, my surgery experience was a complete mess. Every Transgender person seeking care has fears about how they will be treated in a healthcare setting. I don’t need to detail them. If there were a menu of terrible experiences that someone selected for me prior to the surgery, they checked all the boxes. Every. Single. One. From the untrained staff to misgendering, to language barriers, to feeling abandoned along with a massive panic attack -- and this was just in the first three days. I’d had plenty of surgery before this, and experienced my share of pain and discomfort. But post-surgery pain, on top of all of what I’ve just described, was beyond my worst nightmare. Let me reiterate this one more time. The day after my surgery, Dr. Gallagher moved me from the ICU unit where I was supposed to recover for 7 days under the specialized care of staff she trained herself to treat her transgender patients. She moved me to another location in the hospital 5 floors up, where NO ONE that was there had any experience with trans patients or had any idea about the nature of my surgery. Before moving me, Dr. Gallagher told me there was a one person on that floor that she trained and it would be OK. The moment I arrived on that floor, it was during the nurse shift change. That one nurse she pointed out to me, left. I never saw her again.  This was all before Dr. Gallagher discharged me from the hospital 3 days earlier than we’d planned. She didn’t even tell me this in person. She called me at 8:00 AM and told me I had ALREADY been discharged. I left the hospital a couple of hours later, without having seen my surgery results.

One more titbit to underscore how bad my first week was. I wouldn’t discover this until months later when my insurance company denied the claim for part of my ICU stay in the hospital suite I was no long in to the tune of almost $5k. Being the pillars of organization they were, they couldn’t be bothered with getting more than the first 2 days of pre-authorization for my hospital stay even though they sent me three emails confirming that I would be staying in the ICU for 7. Then I wasn’t even in their fancy ICU care after the first night, but they billed me for it anyway. It’s like a repeating April fools joke on me every single day. Do you think they made any attempt to help me get that corrected? None. It remains a disaster exactly like everything else. I would post the emails of me trying to get this rectified but I would fill the entire site with posts of me asking the same questions over and over getting nowhere. That situation deserves its own terrible review. I’ll admit, it does make me wonder if Dr. Gallaher’s desire to get me out of the hospital so quickly had anything to do with that. Maybe she realized they hadn’t done the pre-authorzation and panicked. I can only guess. It doesn’t change anything either way. 

I wish I could say this story gets better, but it doesn’t. It’s not like I didn’t like Dr. Gallagher. I really did in the beginning. The problem was, I eventually got the sense that she had been just making stuff up as she went -- flying by the seat of her pants to get patients in and out the door. While she had been attentive and thorough before my surgery, this was far from the case afterward. She didn’t really take the time to listen to what I was telling her, as one thing after another unraveled. Perhaps she didn't have enough GCS experience to see that what was happening to me was more than a “less than ideal” outcome; my recovery was in serious jeopardy. Our opinions may differ on all the reasons my surgeries were such a disaster. But it really does come down to her responsibility as my doctor to address each of the issues that I faced -- after the first surgery, and after the “revision” surgery that was supposed to resolve those issues. To this day, she has refused to do so. Despite my questions. Despite my concerns. Despite my pleas.

A second problem -- a logistics issue, rather than a medical one -- was that Dr. Gallagher’s patient coordinator was in way over her head due to a combination of inexperience and ineptitude. On top of that, this person was too condescending and too unaware to know what she didn't know. When she had to call me to find out when my appointment was (apparently because she didn’t enter it into my records, though she’s the one who had set up the appointment), I really couldn’t do much but shake my head. I could go on for days about this, but there are enough complaints on the internet about her staff already. You can just look them up yourself. They basically mirror my own experiences. In fact, the patient coordinator’s blatant disregard for my privacy was the reason I informed Dr. Gallagher that I no longer felt comfortable coming to her clinic even though I was still having problems. I decided to return to my PCP and try to deal with the post-revision problem with someone I trusted.

The irony was, Dr. Gallagher's response to me telling both her and her Patient Coordinator that I didn't feel welcome there anymore was to write me a lovely email telling me that she would no longer be communicating with patients via email. Brilliant timing with that decision. Then, to ice the cake, she told me if I had any further needs that I could contact her via her Staff. Yes, the very individual I had written multiple complaints about over the previous 10 months, and the very reason I decided not to return to her clinic. 

All of this happened within 8 weeks of my revision surgery and proceeded to throw me into the worst post-surgery depression of my life. The revision surgery turned into a debacle just as bad as the first. Again, I've provided images. 

Since the email from Dr. Gallagher informing me that she would no longer be using email, none of my unanswered questions were answered. She sequestered herself behind the walls of IU Hospital, refusing to address any of the issues that she left unresolved. Six months later, when I asked for an apology for the way that I'd been treated, she sent me a certified patient dismissal letter claiming my actions constituted "verbal abuse and harassment of staff". None of which I'd done. I hadn't even spoken with anyone remotely connected with her since I received her email about not responding to email. Then she told my PCP that she made recommendations for me to other surgeons -- which never happened.

It's not like I don't keep meticulous records of all of these interactions. I do. This is why it's so easy for me to tell you about my experience and not fret about the details. Trust me, I'm just giving a basic overview here. There's so much that went absolutely haywire that still hasn't been resolved. My mental health therapist even contacted Dr. Gallagher to try to broker some kind of communication so I could get some closure on this ordeal.

Nothing.

So, yeah, I'll start with this and leave you images of the damage and the results I live with. BTW, Dr. Gallagher told me she thought this was a good result. I beg to differ, considering I have no genital sensation in the bottom half of my labia all the way through my vaginal cavity -- and she left my vulva, that she was supposed to “fix” looking like the backend of a C-17 cargo plane --hatch open. I have a giant scar and lump at the top that she totally surprised me with, which took 12 months to stop oozing pus. Plus I have zero pressure from my urine stream. It's one speed...dribble. I won't be writing my name in the snow anytime soon.

It has taken me two years to recover only slightly, and I still struggle with the trauma from the torture they put me through. No one from Dr. Gallagher’s practice or the IU Hospital administration will even acknowledge that I'm alive. On the IUHealth.org website, they go on and on about their claims of “Patient-centered care” and “patient rights”. They should be honest and call it exactly what it is:  Doctor-protected Care. This is exactly what it is when things don't go as planned and patients are left in ruin -- physically, emotionally and financially. My online portal emails are a further lesson in bad patient management as they’re passed from one care team to another until they come full circle and no one takes any action what-so-ever.

I went to Dr. Sidhbh Gallagher at IU Health Physicians Plastic Surgery for GSC and for my revision 7 months later. What I discovered was an inexperienced GCS surgeon and a careless Patient Coordinator -- neither of whom treated my care, disclosure or surgery instructions with the attention they deserved. I found that a hospital that uses the term “Patient-centered care” approached my care in a way that could not be any further from that definition in any way, shape or form. As a result, my life has been decimated in ways I never thought possible by my own healthcare provider. Two years later, my recovery remains tenuous at best. I basically regret ever contacting Dr. Gallagher for the most important surgery of my life after waiting for decades. I’m left feeling completely violated, unheard, and abused.

It didn’t have to go this way. It was easily within her perview to make a simple phone call and offer me a genuine explanation about the questions I had already posed to her. We could have worked out the surgery issues as well. Instead, she turned her back on me and left me hanging exactly like she did the first week of my surgery. I guess she thought others would finish what she started. They haven’t.

Buyer beware.