Welcome to Review Mode, a biweekly newsletter where I mark up my social interactions, mining my, like, medical-grade self-monitoring for your reading pleasure.
What I meant to say was “Let me know if you wanna hear about my experience with top surgery,” but what I basically said was “You should be freaking out about top surgery!”
The other day, I posted a joke online about how I got top surgery on Long Island. An acquaintance, whom I’ll call Noel, commented “I’m getting top surgery on Long Island soon!”
I DM’d Noel, “If you’re going to Dr. Leiter,1 RUN”
If you can believe it, that turned out not to be the most thoughtful way I could’ve phrased that sentiment.
Noel responded, “Oh no, I am! My surgery’s in a month. Was she bad? She’s seemed good so far! I’m so scared and sad now. Can you tell me more??”
And I, not having seen the message, left them hanging for an hour. All in all, not my finest moment.
I guess I didn’t think Noel would actually be going to Dr. Leiter, since a lot of my friends have had top surgery, and a couple have even had it on Long Island, and no one I know has ever even heard of Dr. Leiter. But if I didn’t think it would be Dr. Leiter, then why would I even send the message in the first place?
My best guess, trying to reconstruct my thought process, is that I was just using the DM as an excuse to connect. I may have thought Noel would say, “No, I’m going to Dr. ___, but I’m sorry to hear you had a bad experience!” And then I could say “Glad to hear it lol hope it goes well!” or something to that effect. And our acquaintanceship would be one nudge closer to friendship.
But that’s giving myself too much credit. Really, I probably just have some unresolved feelings about Dr. Leiter, and so I wanted to complain to anyone who’d listen without thinking about how my words might affect anyone else.
In any event, I could have simply messaged, “Congrats on top surgery!! Let me know if you want to hear anything about my experience (I had some issues with my surgeon).”
Or something like that?
I don’t know. I’ll give you some context about my experience with Dr. Leiter, so you can judge for yourself how you would’ve handled it.
Warning: the next part includes specifics about my experience with the surgery and with everything around it. If that kind of thing makes you anxious or grossed out, you can bow out here. Go read something more pleasant. Like, here’s a PDF of Where the Wild Things Are.
First let me paint a picture. Dr. Leiter is a cis woman with a perfectly lovely demeanor who dresses like a cartoon of mid-century housewife. Picture blonde hair, red lipstick, bright A-line dresses, and kitten heels color-coordinated with her nails. Honestly, kind of iconic.
And there are other good things I could say about Dr. Leiter! The surgery went smoothly. She got all the breast tissue out. I didn’t have any serious medical complications. Thanks to her, I only had to wait a few months for top surgery, rather than suffering through my dysphoria for years on endless waitlists.
But there were some issues.
Like, here’s trivial one: she rescheduled every appointment we ever had at the last minute.
The bigger problems: I’d been asking for months for reference photos of her previous work. At every appointment, she assured me she would provide the photos in the next week. This was super important to me, because ultimately, this is the only chest I’ve got. If it’s really fucked up, I have to live with that.
Like, if you’re looking for a tattoo artist, you’re going to check their Instagram for pictures of their previous work. You wanna make sure they know how to make Taz playing basketball look like Taz playing basketball. Similarly, I wanted to make sure she knew how to make nipples look like nipples.
A week out from surgery, Dr. Leiter still hadn’t sent the photos, so I wrote, “Please send those photos, as I’m not sure I’m comfortable going through with this procedure without seeing previous results.” (I phrased it nicer than that.)
Dr Leiter effectively responded, “Sorry I didn’t send ‘em. You want to cancel the surgery? Fine. Go for it.”
Then I sent a very strongly worded email, which my corporate girlboss then-girlfriend helped me write, so finally Dr. Leiter was like, “Whoops okay sorry here are the photos.” That was stressful and shitty. It shouldn’t have taken all that; people who don’t have corporate girlboss girlfriends should also have access to the information they need.
Also, due to some fuckery either by the hospital or my insurance, I ended up having to pay $7,000 out of pocket despite the procedure technically being covered and despite endless rounds of appeals. I don’t know anyone else who’s had that experience. That’s not technically Dr. Leiter’s fault, but it would’ve been really nice to feel like there was anyone in her office who would be my advocate.
Lastly, my surgery results are, aesthetically, kinda fucked. Bad scars, weird nipples. Those are problems that could probably be solved with revision surgeries, but because of my experience with everything the first go around, I haven’t gone back.
All this is to say: I would have good reason to want to warn someone against Dr. Leiter, especially someone earlier in their search process than Noel was. What I don’t have good reason to do is send a super panic-inducing message to someone who is already in a super vulnerable place.
I should’ve learned from my own experience. When I was waiting for top surgery, I was so freak-out-able. At the time, I had a friend who was talking about his experiences with recovery from the surgery, and I remember wishing he’d just pretend everything was going amazingly, because I was afraid I wouldn’t even go through with it.
I’d thought, “Just lie to me a little!”
When I did finally respond to Noel, I didn’t tell them everything that I’ve shared with you guys. I’d done enough harm. I told them I was being dramatic in my first message, assuring them that, with any insurance other than mine, any issues would be easily solved. They seemed glad to hear it.
You know what’s not fair at all? For all my thoughtless shittiness in that interaction, I did kind of get what I was looking for out of DMing Noel. I mean, they felt panic, and then I felt awful, and then they were reassured, and then I apologized a bunch. We went through a whole emotional journey together. If what I was trying to do was connect, I kind of nailed it. Toxic emotional roller coaster connection is still connection.
But that’s not the lesson I’m supposed to be learning from this!!
The Lesson I Should Actually Learn from This: This might sound crazy, but hear me out—what if you thought for a second about how your words could affect other people?
Carson’s Life Updates
New Yorkers, the Review Mode live show is coming up! 4/29 at Club Cumming. Tix here.
I went to the Twin Cities, and it was so fun, but I was there to see the lead singer of the Decemberists do an acoustic solo concert, which is a humiliating answer to the question “Why were you in the Twin Cities?”
You know how Hemingway said “Write drunk, edit sober?” I’m gonna be so honest with you: I’m doing the opposite here. I wrote most of this during the work day on Monday, but then in the evening I went to a really freaking cool party where I shook Neil Patrick Harris’s hand,2 and now I’m editing this Substack while tipsier than I’ve been in a while. So whatever typos or weird sentences you catch, let them simply be a testament to how I’m a fun person who’s totally capable of cutting loose.
The Boilerplate
Carson Olshansky (still they/them, despite the haters) is a Brooklyn-based comedian and writer. You can follow them at @carsonolshansky on Instagram and TikTok and at @carson-olshansky on YouTube.
Join their mailing list to find out about shows near you (which helps us all be less reliant on social media technocrats).
Button Zone:
Pseudonym used to protect the innocent, where “innocent” here means well-intentioned but she still kinda sucks
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