The Dr. O Chat

I have attended the TGSF Executive Committee meeting for the past few months ever since winning the title of Ms. Transgender San Francisco 2009. A few months ago they were looking at some education options, one of which included seeing if Dr. O was up for presenting on FFS.

So, I contacted his office to see if he would be available at one of TGSF's End of Month activities. We settled on May 28th for him to talk. I confirmed both a month and week ahead of time and gave them my number if anything went wrong.

Dr. O and Mira both showed up right on time, if not a touch early, but unfortunately, our usual private room was not available and we were not able to have the presentation as we would have preferred.

I was horribly disappointed since we put in a lot of effort to have him there, and he was unable to present on his materials. Not only that, but there were people that came to hear him talk.

As Dr. O, Mira, and myself waited on the potential opening of our presentation room, though, we were able to chat a little.

Initially, Dr. O planned to retire in 2011. That has since changed. It appears that he plans to work another 3-5 years, making his likelihood for retirement sometime between 2012 to 2014.

It also appears that Dr. O will have a successor. Mira mentioned that they do plan on having an announcement in the future. On the downside, it appears that successor may not be in the San Francisco Bay Area. Mira mentioned a location for the announcement, but I'm not going to mention it here as it may lead to a lot of conjecture.

She also mentioned that Dr. O will be alongside the successor in the OR for a decent amount of time to ensure all knowledge has been passed along.

Dr. O did mention that the economy isn't the best right now, and even he was feeling it, but he still had patients coming in for FFS. I know a lot of trans-people have probably been affected by the economy as well, and have likely put off FFS or SRS because of their financial situations. Hopefully the delay in his retirement will bring a little sigh of relief to those still working on their funds.

Dr. O is a very resilient man. His father lived into his 90's, I believe, and at least one of his father's siblings just celebrated their 95th birthday. I think Dr. O's work has even gotten better since I saw him in 2004. A local girl recently had surgery with him this past Fall, and I have to say, she is probably the best result I have ever seen of his patients. So, it's nice to know he is still spitting out some great work, and will continue to do so for the next few years.