Rowan's top surgery

$10,062 of $21,685 goal

Given by 121 generous donors in 2 years

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Help Rowan fund his top surgery!

Wellington

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Kia ora e hoa,

I'm a 30 yo transgender man living in Te Whanganui-a-Tara looking to fund his top surgery. Last year, through many generous donations I managed to raise over $2800! Thank you so much for all your donations in my first fundraising effort.

Unfortunately it does not cover the complete costs of top surgery, so I've decided to have another go and relaunch the fundraiser.

It would mean a lot to me if you could donate and share this around. All contributions will go towards my top surgery and associated costs which includes anesthetic, overnight hospital stays, surgical binders, leave from work and so forth.

I have been formally rejected from publicly funded top surgery, so anything you could contribute would go a long way to helping me meet the costs of private surgery.

In the event I no longer need this money or there is a surplus, the funds raised here will be donated to other top surgery funds, trans and queer organizations in New Zealand, and new, better fitting, gender affirming clothes (in that order of priority).

Use of funds

Fee breakdown:

Surgeon: $6600

Anaesthetist: $3500

Theatre: $6051

In patient overnight: $1608

Consumables: $3750

Garment: $176

Total: $21685

In the event we overshoot the rest will be donated to queer and trans orgs here in Wellington.

Latest update

Recovery update 17 August 2022

Kia ora e hoa!

After a week of T-Rex arms, I had some of my stitches out on Monday and my dressings redone. I have slightly more mobility now and my surgeons are really pleased with my recovery process.

My medication has been reduced too. I was on antibiotics, multiple typess of anti-nausea meds and 3 types of painkillers, now it's just 2 staggered lots of painkillers.

I've progressed beyond having to wake up my partner to help me medicate in the night too, and this morning I managed to prep breakfast by myself!

I've got several daily exercises to increase arm mobility, especially above my head. The main thing is not to take any weight or push off with my arms (harder than it sounds).

So I'm doing really well all things considered. Thanks for all the lovely well wishes, concern, donations, Netflix recommendations, meals and helping out with the household chores, you're such an amazing community of people to surround myself with during such a big chance, I'm truly, really lucky.

Reminder that this fundraiser is staying open until I'm recovered in September, so if you'd like to chip in to help out with groceries, bills, new clothes etc, please do so! Money is naturally a little bit tight at the moment after such a huge expense, so donations are still super useful to us. Thank you!

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