You Didn’t Just Change My Face — You Gave Me My Life Back

21st of July 2025, the FFS surgeries i had done: rhinoplasty, forehead recontouring type 3, hairline lowering, brow lift, lipofilling, mandible and chin recontouring, deep neck lift, adam’s apple reduction.

I’ve been sitting with this review for three and a half months now, watching my face settle into itself, watching the dysphoria finally… quiet down. i wanted to wait until the swelling was truly gone, until i could see the actual results rather than just the post-op euphoria. i needed to be sure i wasn’t just grateful in the moment.

I can’t wait any longer. i have to speak about this because silence feels like a betrayal of what was done for me.

My surgeon Dr. Bert Oelbrandt

I came to Bert carrying something impossible to articulate – this internal knowing of who i am, combined with a face that contradicted everything about that knowing. i asked him to do something delicate: make me recognizable as a woman somehow, a for me seemingly impossible task but i chose to believe instead of my own negative toughts. My initial request was to remove what was dysphoria-inducing without erasing the features that were authentically mine.

Most surgeons hear a request like that and immediately think “generic feminization protocol.” Bert understood something different. He understood that i didn’t need to become someone new. i needed to become myself, the version underneath without the damage male puberty had done to my face and tilt it into the right feminine direction.

The rhinoplasty alone was transformative. My nose had this weight to it, this dominance that made my face read male before anything else. Now it’s proportionate, it belongs to my face instead of commanding it. When people look at me now, i notice i can look them into the eyes and smile back without starting my previous internal conflict talk that initiated itself everytime i used to stare in the mirror. I am more confident now, i can actually forget about my face and go about my day like a normal person these days.

The forehead recontouring with the hairline lowering and brow lift – this was the subtle magic. The change is so integrated that people don’t see “work done.” they just see my face, and it reads as mine and as her. the architecture shifted in a way that opened my eyes, softened my upper face, made space for my actual femininity to exist in my features.

The jaw and chin work removed so much of the weight i’ve been carrying. that heaviness that testosterone carved into my face is gone. what replaced it, is softness that matches how i feel more internally – delicate, grounded, present. The deep neck lift and adam’s apple reduction eliminated the last physical evidence that my body spent decades running on the wrong endocrine system.

And the lipofilling – it adds dimension on my cheeks and side of my face where there was harshness. every element works in concert. This wasn’t just a list of procedures. This was a comprehensive understanding of how a feminine face comes together, how features work together to create not just femininity but beauty.

I feel like i didn’t just got “fixed.” i got beautiful enough in my own way to continue enjoying life for whatevers left of it. Before surgery, my baseline hope was “please just remove the masculine features” now i can look in the mirror and recognize myself as genuinely somehow pretty. that’s not a standard outcome. that’s artistry combined with surgical mastery to be able to do something like that for someone at this late age.

Bert, i want to be direct with you because i think you deserve to know the weight of what you’ve done: you didn’t just change my face. you changed my relationship with existing. i can just be nowadays. I can look at myself and feel something other than pain. whatever you’ve invested in becoming this skilled – the thousands of hours, the precision, the care – it shows. It mattered. it saved something in me that i didn’t think could be saved, and that makes me truly deeply thankfull. ❤️

When i think about the remaining procedures ahead – the work still needed to address the dysphoria in the rest of my body – i’m coming back to you and your team. there’s no question about it. not because of luxury, but because you’ve earned my complete trust with something sacred for me.

Petra

I’m genuinely a bit shy about saying this publicly, but petra needs to know: you created the foundation that made everything else possible.

You move through your work like someone who understands that a person about to undergo facial reconstruction needs more than logistical coordination. you need someone who holds space. who notices anxiety before it’s fully formed. who meets vulnerability with actual presence rather than professionalism as a mask.

When you explained procedures, when you answered my obsessive surgery questions, when you checked in – i could feel something underneath the competence. a genuine care that wasn’t performative. You made me feel seen in a way that mattered.

Everything in the universe is made of frequency, and when you took care of me, what i felt was a beautiful soul giving off the frequency of love. that’s not metaphorical language – that’s what i experienced. and it prepared my nervous system to trust the people who would be helping me through surgery and recovery.

Dr. Noorman van der Dussen

There’s a particular presence that only comes from someone who has completed thousands of hours of precise, high-stakes work and integrated that mastery so deeply it just radiates outward.

Dr. van der Dussen walked into the room the morning of after surgery and i felt his presence before he spoke. not authority or ego. Coordinated competence, walking in the room. The kind that comes from age combined with genuine passion for craft. I knew immediately – this is someone who has transformed hundreds of faces, and he approaches each one with the same meticulous care.

He didn’t need to reassure me with words. his presence did that work. that quality of overwhelming reassurance – that’s what happens when technique becomes second nature and compassion becomes the actual focus.

The rest of the team – you made me feel like family

I was unconscious for surgery and heavily medicated during much of my recovery, which meant my conscious awareness was fragmented. but even through the fog and the pain management, i felt them being near and being watchfull, caring.

The day & night nurses, the others i do not have the name of – i wish i did because you all deserve to be specifically thanked – you treated me like someone you genuinely cared about. Not “customer service warm.” Actually warm & actually present.

You anticipated what i needed mostly before i asked and it was like you could understand the mumbling language that was coming forth from my swollen post surgery face like it was your mother language. You explained things even when i was half-coherent. You all smiled even though i surely know you were exhausted from your shifts. You were professional and skilled but you were also just… real, human and kind in a way that felt deeply authentic.

This experience has genuinely ruined me for public hospital care. The difference is visceral and obvious. This is what happens when a team doesn’t see patients as tasks but as people worthy of their actual care and attention.

There were other staff members too – people i remember only in fragments, faces that appeared through the haze – but every single person held space for my vulnerability. Thank you, seriously, you all made this survivable and even, in moments, peaceful.

What changed for me?

Before: My face dysphoria was the first thing i saw, tought about & felt when i woke up and the last thing i saw, tought about and felt before going to sleep. The mirror was enemy territory. Getting ready meant staring at someone who contradicted everything about my internal reality. I was trapped in a face that screamed “male” no matter what i did with makeup or styling.

Now: The mirror doesn’t misgender me. I can honestly now see myself looking back. I see the woman i’ve always known i was, finally reflected in the glass. it sounds small written out like that, but it’s the difference between surviving in your body and actually being able to inhabit it. It’s the difference between existing and living. I am offcourse not perfect, probably if i came to my senses 20 years ago I wouldve looked way better still because of going trough normal female aging but i am now acceptable to me, something i honestly tought impossible for my age, height and testosteron damage that i had done to myself in the past.

What comes next for me?

There’s more work ahead for me – procedures to address the dysphoria that still lives in the rest of my body. i’m 38 and every year matters when you’re trying to reclaim your life as your authentic self. but i know where i’m going, i will get there, even if its the last thing i do in this world.

Bert and his team have earned my absolute loyalty. the level of skill combined with genuine human care isn’t something you find everywhere. I’m choosing to do all of my remaining transition work that is financially possible for me privately with them because this is too important, too intimate, to settle for anything less than people who understand both the technical precision required and the emotional weight of what they’re doing, especially at my age were every possible mistake could potentially expand tenfold impact-wise.

To everyone at o2 clinic

I came here as a 37-year-old trans woman at a point where i’d basically surrendered – not consciously, but in the way you do when you can’t see a path forward. When the dysphoria is so complete that you can’t imagine existing comfortably in your own body.

You didn’t just give me surgery. you gave me my life back. You made it possible for me to exist authentically in the world. You made it possible for me to look in the mirror and recognize myself with something like peace.

The fact that you do this work with such skill and such genuine heart – that matters. it’s truly the difference between existing and living for me. Thank you from the deepest parts of my soul and heart for that and i hope this letter conveys that message from me to you all clearly. ❤️