I'm getting top surgery!

I don't normally contribute to threads unless I have something substantial to add but I just wanted to say congratulations! One of my best friends just started hormones this week and I've seen how much happier transitioning has made her. Hopefully this can do the same for you!

Cheering for you!! Wish I were brave enough to go for it myself, but I'll just vibe vicariously through you super awesome transmasc folks! If you ever need hysterectomy advice/experience OTOH then I'm your enby!

Congratulations Sparks!!!

Don't really have advice for the recovery - but regarding keeping your cats off your chest while you heal, wear a hoody and put something hard and lumpy in the hoody pocket. Not sure how spoiled your cats are but mine only want to lie on me if I am sitting in perfect cat-pillow position; maybe if you make yourself an annoying seat to lie on you can prevent your chest from becoming a cat-destination while you heal :p

Hope everything goes well!!

Hoping that everything goes well for you and for a complete and speedy recovery! I'm very glad your work is accommodating and that insurance is coming through.

Not sure if your culture has traditional "comfort + heal" foods but maybe stock up on frozen portions?

Congratulations! Best wishes for a safe and successful surgery.

The closest analogous experience I can share is when my husband broke his collar bone. I was on call to help with shoes and shoe laces for what seemed a very long time. Also from personal experience, opioids can cause miserable constipation.

I can't give you any useful advice but just wanted to say congratulations! I hope your recovery is smooth and swift and that you feel fantastic afterwards :)

Congrats! I had my top surgery three years ago and it remains one of the best things I've ever done for myself.

My experience in regards to the healing process is different than what yours will be, as I didn't have drains (my surgeon was no longer using them) and I went for nipple grafts (which, in case you get them, it's normal that they look kinda gross for the first couple weeks).
Here's a few things that could help you for the rest of the recovery experience, though:

• You will have very little range of motion and strength in your arms for a few weeks, so prepare accordingly. My surgeon's instructions were that the maximum I could raise my arms was to the point where my upper arm was horizontal (elbows in line with the shoulders) to avoid stretching the scars (which they still did a bit, but as they healed it became barely noticeable). I got a stepstool so I didn't have to reach up in my kitchen cabinets, and got extra pillows so I could sleep almost fully upright as I wasn't allowed to use my arms to lift myself off my bed. A neck pillow does wonders for that too.
• Don't hesitate to ask your wife for help. It makes a world of difference to have someone staying with you who can help you out, especially the first week or so. I stayed in a hotel room with my mom and stepdad for the first five days after my surgery and I really appreciated having them there with me. My apartment at the time was too small to host them comfortably so this was the best option. (The hotel pillows were too mushy and she had to pull me out of them a few times because I couldn't push myself up...)
• Get some comfortable clothes that you'll basically live in until you can put proper clothes on. My combo was zip hoodie + pyjama pants, and a few cheap button-up shirts for when I didn't want the hoodie but couldn't pull T-shirts over my head yet.
• Your scars will look terrible for a while and you might find yourself wondering if they'll be this visible forever. They will not. Be diligent with the aftercare and they'll fade quickly. 3 years later, mine aren't very visible, and the scar tissue has softened up.
• Cleaning yourself will be tricky. Baby wipes will be your friend for a few weeks. You will feel gross after a while, and the first shower you can take is going to be the best shower of your life. I couldn't shower until about 2 weeks post-op as the incisions and grafts couldn't get wet (and if you go for grafts they tell you not to face the water for another couple weeks... something about the water pressure on the grafts if I remember right). I managed to at least wash my hair in the sink but I needed my mom's help for that.
• Food and snacks: I stocked up on pre-portioned snacks (yogurt cups, bags of Ritz crackers, that sort of thing) and made big batches of food to portion out and freeze for later as well. Making a big batch of soup, pasta sauce, curry, etc. is pretty simple and I could just reheat a container in a pan while I had rice or pasta cooking in a pot; just stir every once in a while, and your meal is ready in 15 minutes or so. If your wife can cook for you, that makes this part a lot easier.
• Pain meds are likely to make you constipated, so prepare for that and get some laxatives or something along those lines. For obvious reasons, don't drive while you're still taking pain meds. I took the meds for the first ~3 days only, but I have a higher pain tolerance so your experience may vary.
• On the subject of driving, if it's relevant to you: I had to alter some of my usual driving paths as the still-healing incisions affected how much I could turn my body. I had to avoid roundabouts and anywhere I needed to reverse into for a while because I physically couldn't rotate myself properly for shoulder checks, and became very reliant on my mirrors for changing lanes and such. Living in Germany, this is likely less relevant to you as it was to me because you'd have easier/better access to decent public transportation (I live in eastern Canada and this is not the case here), but still worth keeping into consideration. (I was cleared to drive two weeks post-op.)
• Not mandatory but I recommend it: once you can wear proper clothes again, try everything you own at least once. I had quite a large chest (DI was also my only option) and having it gone made a huge difference in what kind of tops fit me properly. I had to swap out like half my wardrobe post-op. (For perspective, I went from a North American 36DD to nothing.)
• Depending what your work is like, be very clear to your surgeon about what your duties entail so they can gauge your recovery time accordingly. My surgeon would send people in office jobs back after ~3 weeks off, but my job is very physical so the progression from time off, to light duty with very strict weight limits in regards to what I could handle, to a progressive return to my normal duties took almost 3 months. (It helped that I was/am on good enough terms with my supervisor to be able to explain what surgery I had done, and because a relative of his is also a plastic surgeon, he had a better understanding of what my recovery required.)

Sorry for the wall of text, but hopefully some of this helps!
I don't have much advice about the cats, sadly, as that's not something I had to deal with during recovery.

Woo congrats!

Congratulations!!

My husband has had a few surgeries recently, and the only way he's been able to keep the cats off is to use a blanket with a texture they don't like. Satin-y textures seem to do the trick. It's not 100% effective, though.