Reconstructive Surgical Arts

Kudos to Michael Dillon!

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In 1939, a gas pump attendant in Bristol was working a job far beneath his education because his gender expression made other employment impossible. He had graduated from Oxford. He had been president of the Oxford University Women's Boat Club and earned a blue for rowing. He had a degree in Greats. None of it mattered much when the person standing in front of employers didn't match what they expected to see.

His name was Michael Dillon. He had been born Laura Maud Dillon in Kensington in 1915, the nephew of an Irish baronet, and he had known for most of his life that something was wrong with the match between his body and his sense of himself. In 1939, he sought out a doctor named George Foss, who had been experimenting with testosterone to treat menstrual disorders. The hormone's masculinizing effects were still poorly understood at the time. Dillon became the first trans man known to have taken testosterone specifically for the purpose of transition.

The hormones let him pass as male. He changed his name. The garage manager where he worked in Bristol instructed his employees to refer to Dillon as "he" so as not to confuse the customers. Dillon enrolled in medical school at Trinity College Dublin and became a distinguished rower again, this time for the men's team, almost certainly the first person in the history of either Oxford or Dublin to earn athletic honors for both.

He needed surgery. A chance hospitalization for a head injury connected him with a plastic surgeon who performed a double mastectomy, and that surgeon put him in contact with Sir Harold Gillies, widely considered the father of modern plastic surgery, who had spent the war reconstructing the bodies of injured soldiers. Gillies took Dillon's case. To protect his patient, he falsified the medical notes, recording the diagnosis as severe hypospadias.

Between 1946 and 1949, Gillies performed 13 surgeries on Dillon at Rooksdown House in Basingstoke, using skin grafts from his leg and abdomen. The procedure became known as the Gillies Technique. Dillon described the ward there as deeply affirming, the first place his physical reality had ever matched his sense of himself.

In 1946, the same year his surgeries began, Dillon published Self: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology. It was the first book to argue in medical and ethical terms that when the mind cannot be made to fit the body, the body should be made to fit the mind. The word "tr*******al" didn't exist in English yet. He was writing without a map.

His book brought him into contact with Roberta Cowell, a former RAF fighter pilot who became the first British trans woman to receive vaginoplasty. Dillon performed part of her surgery before he had even received his medical license. He proposed marriage afterward. She declined.

In 1958, a steward on his Merchant Navy ship handed him a cable from the Daily Express. His transition had appeared in the peerage records. The press had found him. He fled to India, took the name Lobzang Jivaka, and became a Buddhist monk. He died in Dalhousie in May 1962, at 47.

Christine Jorgensen became famous in 1952 and the world called her pioneering. Michael Dillon had done it a decade earlier, alone, without a word for what he was.

Welcome Dr. Pat Mershon to RSA! ❤️

We are incredibly excited to officially welcome J. Patrick “Pat” Mershon, MD to Reconstructive Surgical Arts next week!

As RSA continues to grow, it was important to us that we find a surgeon who brings more than exceptional clinical skill and exceptional training. We wanted someone who shares the culture we have worked so hard to build — one centered on compassion, respect, integrity, and truly patient-centered care in a high touch, concierge medical setting.

We found that in Dr. Mershon.

From the beginning, we knew Dr. Mershon was someone who would fit naturally into the RSA family and help carry forward the standard of care and connection our patients have come to expect. His addition also allows us to expand our surgical offerings, increase access to care, and continue growing RSA while staying true to who we are.

We couldn’t be more excited for this next chapter — and we can’t wait for our patients and community to get to know him.

Please join us in welcoming Dr. Pat Mershon to RSA!

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing more about Pat, his background, the procedures he’ll be offering, and why we knew he was the right person to join our team.


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Looking forward to Upper Arlington Rainbow UA Pride tomorrow! Come see us and celebrate the season if you’re able. 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Today is World book day. We love this book by our friend, author, Equitas advocate Rhea Debussy about anti LGBTQ policy in the US military. Rhea is an author, professor, and an all around badass, one of the smartest people we know. She’s a Columbus friend and we’re so glad she’s on our side, doing powerful work for the benefit of q***r people.
Buy her book and follow her on Socials. She’s amazing.

https://a.co/d/0d3QnyhW

Reconstructive Surgical Arts | Gender Affirming Care Welcome to our medical practice specializing in gender affirming care. We perform gender affirming surgeries, provide laser hair removal services, and provide Botox injections.

If you notice a decided quietness at the office these days it’s because we had to say goodbye to sweet Zeke. He had been gradually declining and the time came to end his pain. So, so sad. 😞

We are in the middle of a total rehabilitation of this cute historic bungalow to create a safe recovery house for our patients. Windows going in today! Here we grow !!

Color us…unsurprised. This is common sense. And again, it hurts no one and should only involve the person receiving care and their physician.

Publicly funded, appropriate gender-affirming care for transgender people could actually save millions for taxpayers and boost the economy, according to a new study.

Analysis from researchers in Australia found that vastly improving the accessibility of gender-affirming treatment through public funding would likely reduce financial pressures caused by psychological distress.

Read the full story below.

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Cruelty is the point. There should never need to be a gender marker on a passport.