My Visit with Dr. Monstrey

I'll fill in more details as I am constantly touching up this site:

I visited Dr. Monstrey in Belgium from November 5 to 8, 2001. This was only an informational visit to find out more about the facility and the Dr. himself. This was not to have surgery.

Belgium is an interesting country. The two main languages spoken there were French and Flemish. The city of Gent, Belgium was mostly Flemish.

I arrived at the University Hospital of Gent in the city of Gent, Belgium. It was a very large hospital campus (an entire block with at least 15 large and small buildings) and I found it very difficult to find the main administration building. It didn't help that everything was in Flemish, since I speak and read English.

Through e-mails with Dr. Monstrey's secretary, I knew that I had an apointment first with Dr. de Cuypere, the gender program's psychologist, and then Dr. Monstrey himself. Once I found the administration building, I had to give the clerk my passport so that she could enter my information; when she was done, she handed me a hospital ID card (I guess I was officially a patient). I then had to go and find the building that Dr. de Cuypere was in.

I met with Dr. de Cuypere for about 25-35 minutes. She asked me the usual questions: What do I expect? How was my relationship with my parents? Any siblings? What are their reactions? How was my childhood? Personal relationships? Etc, etc.

Dr. de Cuypere actually seemed bored but I couldn't tell because of our cultural and language differences. She did give me a good recommendation, which means that I can be officially entered into the program. Which means that basically, should I choose to use Dr. Monstrey for my phalloplasty surgeon, I only have to contact the hospital and be put on his waiting list (which is a year long currently), along with completing the other criteria (providing my therapist's letter, and funding a Belgian bank account with enough money to cover the surgery - currently about $25,000 USD).

After leaving Dr. de Cuypere, I walked over to Dr. Monstrey's building. I had to wait in the waiting room with various other patients waiting to see him (he does other plastic surgeries too). What scared me is that there was a really old x-ray machine (from the US Army, 1960's) in the corner of the waiting room. I hope it was not actually for usage! I found out that Dr. Monstrey gets paid a salary from the hospital and does not make any commission from any surgery he performs.

After waiting about 15 minutes, I was called into his office. What struck me first was that Dr. Monstrey seemed very young, about mid-thirties. He also had an "apprentice" doctor with him. This apprentice doctor was an Italian doctor (I forgot his name) who is studying under Monstrey so that he can go back to Italy and open a clinic for gender reassignment surgery. This doctor seemed very concerned that there were no gender clinics in Italy and he told me that he felt that Monstrey was the best in this field which is why he was studying under him. He told me that a phalloplasty is a challenging surgery to perform that requires great skill and innovation.

Anyways, Dr. Monstrey himself was very personable and very passionate about his work. He asked me a few questions to find out what I knew about the procedure and then he proceeded to tell me the steps involved (which is outlined in his letter on this site).

After his brief sysnopsis of the steps, he went and got his laptop (which had its wallpaper as a picture of his baby - which makes me think that he should be around 30-35 years old) to show me pictures. What he showed me was a Powerpoint presentation which, I got the feeling, was the same one he used at the Harry Benjamin conference just days earlier in Galveston, Texas, USA. Once he opened the presentation, he launched into his "presentation-giving" voice and began his "speech". Basically, I was probably getting the same thing that he presented in Texas. Of course, I'm not complaining. The pictures showed around 3 different phalloplasties. They all looked about the same as the ones on this site. There were pictures of the arms, which to me, were very, very (for lack of a better term) noticable. The skin was very thin and "sunken-down" looking. In other words, tissue is removed from the arm to create the phallus, and skin from the thigh is grafted on to the arm. This grafted skin kind of contours itself onto whatever it's attached to. So if there is a "chunk" of tissue missing from the arm, the grafted skin is going to make that chunk very visible. And the skin color of the grafted skin and the regular arm skin didn't match on any of the arms I saw. I'm hoping that these were older pictures or something. The phalloplasties themselves were decent looking, pretty much like most of the ones on this site. No new surprises here.

Once Dr. Monstrey reached the part that showed his statistics he became very passionate. He talked about the one complete failure he had. He attributed it to the fact that the patient was an avid smoker who had quit only a couple weeks before the surgery and then was smoking within 3 days after being discharged. This patient also had some kind of problem after being discharged and did not tell anyone until it was too late. It was very obvious that Dr. Monstrey really disliked having this failure on his record and it also showed that he really cares about doing a good job.

All in all, Dr. Monstrey was very professional and caring about his work. And thus far, he is a surgeon that I would highly recommend based on personal interaction and from viewing his results. If I do not find a suitable doctor in the US, my current options remain Dr. Monstrey or Dr. Daverio.

Feel free to e-mail me questions that you may have about my visit.

JJ