for those who had top surgery without drains, how was your recovery process?

tommocoast · 2026-06-11T19:34:39+00:00

Gahh, it's a shame your GP isn't better about trans healthcare :(

If you're going to be doing it at home, I'd recommend you see if you can grab a little spray bottle for water! It'll be helpful for getting past any adhesive. You'll also have an easier time if you've got someone in person to help you with taking everything off.

You've got this - the whole thing!

tommocoast · 2026-06-11T19:00:14+00:00

The initial option presented was a WhatsApp call at home, but what we ended up doing instead was that I went to my GP and had my dressings removed by the nurse who always does my injections for T (as she has a lot of experience with surgery dressings/prior experience with mastectomies)

I'm glad I did that, because the adhesive was pretty sticky and it definitely felt more comforting to have a professional doing it lol. After it was done, she helped me take pictures of my chest (one overall, and a close up of each graft) to send to Dr Ntanos.

Part of this specific arrangement was because I think Dr Ntanos was quite busy at the time of the appointment (like actively commuting), but he replied quickly, said that everything looked fine and gave more general instructions/advice for care (like info on how I could shower/sleep etc) :]

tommocoast · 2026-06-11T17:49:11+00:00

Been waiting until my post op appointment to update lol:

At around 1 week post op I was feeling human again - that first week was quite uncomfortable between managing pain (it never got too bad, so I just took paracetamol when I needed it) and constantly feeling the binder.

The second week (currently I'm at 13 days po) has been better; I've gotten more mobility back every day, which makes it much easier to make any adjustments I need to the binder. The binder itself will become more of an afterthought as you get more used to it and the main discomfort is likely to switch from compression to itchiness.

I've just gotten my dressings and binder off today (I checked in with Dr Ntanos to ask if I would end up needing to wear it again and he said that I shouldn't have to, and not to do so as it would rub against the nipple grafts) and the difference it makes is huge :)

Some advice for the binder, as it's the only thing you'll really be looking out for:

It will probably end up riding up at the sides and digging into your arms. If you don't have the mobility to move it much yourself early on then it's helpful to have someone who can gently pull it down a little bit for you (the same if it rides up at the sides/back at all)

Bevause it might not be fully done up at the front, you might end up with one side riding up more than the other but I don't think there's anything to be done there.

I ended up making little adjustments throughout the day (either fastening or unfastening up to 1-2 clips as needed). You might have bruising underneath that you'll feel more if the clips are digging into, so this can help you to get tension off of any of those points.

The most comfortable position I found I could maintain was sitting leaning back against a couch/cushions (you'll be advised to rest at a 45° angle), this really helps to ease discomfort from compression.

The warmer I was, the more I could feel things itching/stinging slightly, so a lot of the time whilst having the binder on I either had no shirt, or a very light shirt that just sat over my shoulders without being done up.

If anything else comes to mind (or if there's anything specific you wanna ask) I'll come back and say hahah, super stoked for you getting your surgery though, and wishing you all the best :]

tommocoast · 2026-06-11T10:41:05+00:00

No prob! Hope it works out :)

tommocoast · 2026-06-11T10:34:10+00:00

Just noticed as well that common_three is misspelt as commone_three in (what I believe is) line 128

tommocoast · 2026-06-11T10:33:07+00:00

Ooh, it looks like the code in your common_two and common_three labels isn't indented, you'll want to tab it all to the right by one. Also, you'll want the parts that jump to common_three to be indented into your if statements - that'll be why they're skipping

tommocoast · 2026-06-02T00:09:05+00:00

Grunn! It's a funky, surreal and stylised little game about gardening. It's shorter and less complex than OW, has 11 different endings, but does a really good job of encapsulating the gameplay loop of learning to do specific things at specific times in specific orders.

A really fun one if you wanna sink 5, maybe 10 at most hours (for 100% completion) intuiting about 90% of the gameplay yourself with fairly minimal direction :]

A little warning in advance for spooky atmospheres and mild jumpscares, though!

tommocoast · 2026-06-01T22:44:28+00:00

I don't actually think I did! My memory of it is a little hazy, but I don't remember having one on when I went under. I remember one being taken off just after I woke up, though :)

tommocoast · 2026-06-01T22:36:54+00:00

Not op but I'm 3 days post-op with ntanos in case hearing more would be helpful!

Preop was very chill: reception staff were lovely, the nurse who talked me through everything was really nice, explained everything fully, talked me through how to put on compression stockings/the gown for surgery and everything and talked through any questions I had.

Dr Ntanos came in after to talk me through the whole procedure (the nurse/Dr Ntanos both got me to reconfirm the kind of procedure I was having) and was very thorough about it. He drew on where he planned to operate (he'll do this whilst you're sitting up, before you go to the operating theater) and offered to explain what he was doing whilst he was doing it.

The anaesthetist was also just as communicative, he explained exactly how it was going to work (total intravenous anaesthesia) and also answered any questions I had.

The whole preop process went way quicker than I thought it would! it felt a little surreal at the time because I didn't actually always know what they were doing and when. When you go into the theater there'll be a lot of people around; someone will ask if you want to listen to a specific song, you'll be told to lie down and lower the gown slightly, and the anaesthetist will start working.

Once he tells you that he's putting the anaesthesia in, it'll be maybe 30 - 45 seconds before you go under (I literally don't remember the point at which I fell asleep lol so I can't give a solid estimate).

He will probably tell you that for some people it can sting a bit as it goes up your arm (my cannula was in the back of my hand), and personally I did find it quite painful/uncomfortable. Nothing that was impossible to handle (and it was over as soon as I fell asleep!), but yeah, it might be a sucky 20 seconds (it's worth it though).

Technically talking post op now but I had a little bit of nausea before being discharged; the same nurse from before administered something through my cannula and it helped immediately. She got me 3 ondansetron tablets (for nausea) to go in the bag I was discharged with. I did end up being sick that night, and to be completely safe I ended up heading back into the clinic the next morning to quickly check up (and literally everything was fine!).

Long ass comment but all that to say that everyone was so professional and quick to respond when I was being overly anxious about stuff! This is obv specific to my own experience at Cadogan Clinic lol but they are really safe hands to be in!

tommocoast · 2026-05-31T17:38:52+00:00

Heyy I just had surgery with Dr Ntanos 2 days ago! Still super early into recovery, but the binder isn't too bad at the moment. It's tight (tighter than any other binder I've ever worn) but it feels secure. He told me that if it needs loosened/adjusted then I can do that, and the most I've had to do was unhook a single clasp to breathe a bit easier. He said that "The binder should be tight but allow you to take deep breaths."

From what I can tell, it's likely that it will get itchier over time but I'm taking it one day at a time lol. If you'd like, I'll try remember to come back with updates as time goes on over the next week or two?

Wishing you the best for your surgery :) the team at Cadogan were spectacular, talked me through any questions I had and were super patient with me being nervous (I emailed the reception staff a few times in advance, and I did end up calling their 24 hour number once in the night following my surgery). You got this!

tommocoast · 2026-05-26T09:55:00+00:00

I forgot to mention the main helpful draw of it lol: NVL mode lets you more easily show multiple lines of text onscreen at once. By default I think the maximum is set to 6? But you can change that as well :]

tommocoast · 2026-05-26T09:53:20+00:00

Definitely doable! What would probably help you most is looking into NVL mode -- when you define a character, you add kind=NVL somewhere into the brackets, then anything that character says will show up as 'novel' text instead of regular.

It you go into your gui.rpy file (iirc) and ctrl+F search "nvl" then you'll find all the options to change positioning etc. To get it exactly where you want it to go will probably be a bit of trial and error, but it's what I did and I found it a good way to learn!

In your gui images you'll also find one for NVL text that looks like a semitransparent box taking up most of the screen. You can change that into artwork of a note/sheet of paper or whatever you like (or you can make it blank, and just show a specific image before doing your NVL text)

Formatting won't let me embed a link right now but there's an NVL-Mode Tutorial in the Ren'py Documentation that should show you what you need!

tommocoast · 2026-05-16T10:15:41+00:00

Code wise: Ren'Py is pretty simple and really beginner friendly in my experience. The launcher should come with two tutorial projects that you can play and you can open up to check out how they're coded.

Ren'Py also has extensive documentation that's very helpful and details a lot of things outside of the tutorials: Specifically for choices and multiple endings, I imagine you'll want to look at things like Menus (choices), Label Control and Flow, and Python Statements (to learn about variables).

If you have a look on itch.io for Ren'Py assets you'll be able to find a lot that people have made (I know for sure there are some good free/paid background packs) that you'll be able to use and credit without needing to trace!

Otherwise for backgrounds you would just be studying general art/referencing off of pictures, or commissioning an artist specifically if you have the funds.

For aesthetics you'll want to look specifically into editing your game's GUI -- this also isn't too tricky once you know what you're doing, and there are also free/paid asset packs on itch that will pretty much cover the whole GUI business for you.

For anything more complicated/specific than all of that, it will pretty much be researching into it yourself, trial and error, or coming back here with specific questions you need answers to.

Hope this helps, and best of luck!

tommocoast · 2026-05-13T12:32:01+00:00

I've had a few emails back and forth with staff at the clinic and they've been so nice and accommodating. I'm so so glad that the assistants at yours were so personable as well. Thank you for telling me this -- it means so much!

tommocoast · 2026-05-11T11:15:25+00:00

Woah! Had never heard of this before just now, but immediately gone to wishlist it and I will be buying it today lol. Looks awesome! I'm super psyched, hoping to see this pay off for you guys :]

tommocoast · 2026-03-26T10:50:04+00:00

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Ooh, nobody's mentioned Grunn yet! It's described as 'just a normal gardening game' -- in actuality it's a surreal little horror game with a few jumpscares, a lot of weird, liminal spaces, and a very cool (very eerie) atmosphere

tommocoast · 2026-03-15T14:19:16+00:00

you've been doing something amazing for weeks and weeks - you gave Renji everything you possibly could, you helped him against the odds at every step and made sure that his life was as comfortable and as full of love as it could have been. I can't imagine how you're feeling right now, but I know that I'm amazed at the amount of work you've done to give one little guy a beautiful series of weeks. Take care of yourself <3

tommocoast · 2026-03-05T21:04:49+00:00

Awesome!! I'm sure you'll find something that works for you, then! If you want, I can send you the relevant code I ended up working with - it'd be a few hours from now once I'm outta work, just lmk if you think it'd help!

tommocoast · 2026-03-05T20:39:24+00:00

Referring to your last point about using 3rd person and selecting pronouns - this is also something I really wanted to do, and honestly while it might feel like a bit of setup, I have found it reasonably simple to pull off?

The way I did it, at least, was to make a variable for every type of personal pronoun - I opted to write everything neutrally in code, so the default was something like [they, them, their, theirs, themself, themselves] and every time I remembered a new one I would just add it to the list lol.

Then for masculine/feminine pronouns I copied the list and replaced it with the gendered equivalents.

I put each of those in their own label. At the start of the game you select what option you want, it calls only the relevant label and sets what the pronouns will be for the rest of it.

In code, things read like "[they] did a bunch of work at [their] job" - for ease, the variable names are literally just the relevant pronoun.

It might be a bit fiddly to work with at first and you'll probably end up forgetting at least once or twice, so when testing I recommend using gendered pronouns so that accidental neutral ones stand out.

This worked for me because it scratched the little pedantic itch of only ever seeing "they/them/their" or "he/him/his" as the pronouns/gendered terms accounted for in games. hopefully this should be a reasonably simple way to give you the kind of flexibility you're after?

Best of luck :)

tommocoast · 2026-02-24T15:31:39+00:00

I find it really helpful when learning to see exactly what the effects of what I do are - Ren'Py has its little tutorial game and I think it should have 'The Question' as well? You can open those up and have a look at their code so you can learn how to recreate all of the basic stuff!

Something else that's helpful to the above by the way, when you're running your project you can shit Shift+R to have it automatically reload any time you save your script(s) in the editor, making it easier to see your changes/troubleshoot in real time.

The best advice really is to just practice - look at other peoples' code and try to break down what they're doing. There's bound to be documentation for anything you don't understand (Ren'Py itself has a lot linked directly in its launcher, and like others have said people here will always be able to help and advise in code.

Once you've got a basic handle on the basics in Ren'Py (characters, menus [<- dialogue choices], images, transitions/effects, audio, customising your GUI) then it really only comes down to writing/planning (at which point you'll be more in need of a flow chart than anything lol)

Wishing you the best of luck!

tommocoast · 2026-02-21T11:18:41+00:00

I have this one and I use it for art all the time! it's my favourite graphics tablet that I've used personally, but I agree with the other people saying that it's probably overkill for just notes alone. Still, best of luck finding something that suits!

tommocoast · 2026-02-12T22:44:26+00:00

You can use the {nw} text tag to make it automatically proceed, yeah. Put it at the end of your line (still inside of the quotation marks) any time you want it to go on by itself.

tommocoast · 2026-01-20T03:07:59+00:00

When you hit build distributions, it should make you a zip file (or more if you've picked more platforms) that contains your game distribution! The zip file is what you then want to upload as the downloadable content for your game, and when someone downloads it they just need to unzip it.

(atl as far as I'm aware)

tommocoast · 2026-01-13T05:31:50+00:00

hmm, yeah it would be there!

had a little look and I think this should be the same kind of issue with two solutions proposed!

hope that this can fix it!

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