I was afraid to go to sleep on August 31st.

 

I was afraid to go to sleep on August 31^st. I was scared I was going to miss the alarm the next morning. The alarm that was going to start me on the way to Denver for my surgery. This day had been a long time coming. When I was first put on the waiting list, it was going to be three years before I could have my gender confirmation surgery. Three years to wait to have my body and mind in harmony. Then I got a call; my surgery had been moved up. It was going to happen in June or 2020. The time was cut in half! Then more good news, it would now be in April! Well, we all know what happened around that timeframe. The dumpster fire that was 2020 was starting to rear its ugly head. I was driving to Denver for my pre-operative appointment when I got a call from the clinic telling me that my appointment had been canceled and that my surgery was postponed until November. I was going to have to wait another six months, and even that was tentative. I was crushed, and the news sent me down a depressive spiral that I’m still working my way out of.

In the long run, things worked out, the stars aligned, and my surgery was scheduled for September 1^st. So, here we are, where I started this, worrying on the last day of August that I wasn’t going to wake up on time and miss my appointment. Luckily, and with the help of my wife, I didn’t sleep through the alarm. We both got up and did all the prep that I had to do before my surgery, and we made it to the hospital with time to spare. We were still in a time of COVID, so my wife wasn’t allowed to be with me in the pre-op room, they did let her be in the surgical waiting room, though, and the surgical team did keep her advised of how things were going. The surgery was scheduled for six hours, but it was finished in under five. Dr. Hyer, my surgeon, told me more than once that I was an overachiever, starting with the surgery and continuing through my recovery in the hospital.

So here comes the medical part; you can skip this paragraph if you want. I know that some might read this that find these topics uncomfortable. There are variations in the surgery. These differences vary from surgeon to surgeon and have their roots in the surgeon that taught them (there are a lot of surgeons in that sentence). In my case, Dr. Hyer learned from Dr. Marcy Bowers, who has been doing this surgery for decades. I opted for a full-depth vaginoplasty, the other option being a minimal depth vaginoplasty. The technique that was used was a penile inversion. This is where the skin of the penis is inverted and used as the neo-vagina, and the scrotum is used to create the inner and outer labia. A segment of the head of the penis is used to create the clitoris. Minimal depth vaginoplasty is very much the same without creating a vaginal canal. Externally, they both look similar. I healed pretty well, with the only real issue being a persistent infection that has since cleared up. As an aside, I have it on good authority that the end results look natural.

I went into the hospital on a Tuesday and back home on the following Thursday, only three days in the hospital. The quick turnaround is standard for this surgery done at Denver Health. When I was released, I had a packing in my vaginal canal and a catheter. I didn’t have much pain and only rarely used the pain killers I was prescribed. Most of my pain was controlled by over-the-counter pain medications. My first visit back to the doctor was just a week after my surgery. This was to have the packing and catheter removed. Now, I can’t tell you how much of a relief getting the catheter out was. The packing was uncomfortable, but the catheter was just plain maddening. It interfered with my ability to sleep. It was always in the way and had to be regularly emptied. The same day I also had my first physical therapy appointment. This is where I was taught how to dilate. Dilation uses a hard plastic phallus to maintain the diameter and depth of the new vaginal canal, and for the first twelve weeks, I had to dilate three times a day. Now, before you ask, now it is not fun; it is stretching the tissues in order to keep the space that was created by the doctor from closing up. After twelve weeks, I was able to go down to twice a day, and I’ll keep that up through nine months, and then only once a day. At a year, I can dilate one to three times a week.

These are the mechanics of the process, have the surgery, heal, and live the rest of my life. There is so much more than that when going through transition. I have been on hormone replacement therapy for better than five years, so my transition has been going on for a while. During that time, I grew breasts, dressed in women’s clothing, and used the lady’s room.

This brings us to all the other stuff. Having gender confirmation surgery is undoubtedly an important step, but it is not the fix for all the problems you may be experiencing. Those problems will all still be there to deal with. What the surgery does is remove one of the issues common to gender dysphoria, which is hating your body. There may be other surgeries that a transgender person wants to have done, or they may not want to make any changes to their bodies. These are very personal decisions. I chose to have the surgery I did because I wanted to make sure to have the most physically challenging surgery as soon as I could, even though it meant that I did not alter those physical attributes that identified me as transgender.

All of the insecurities that I had before the surgery are still there. My face is too masculine, and my breasts are too small. I look at my body and see only the imperfections. You know the ones I’m talking about, our weight, our appearance, how we compare to all the others in our world. Those are all still there; my surgery didn’t take them away. I am not ashamed to admit that I see a therapist, not specifically for my gender dysphoria, but because life is hard, and sometimes, I need to have someone to talk to.

When I first started writing this blog entry, I had a general idea of what I wanted to say, I slightly went off the rails, but that’s okay. I do not regret my surgery. When I woke up in the recovery room, it was like there was a huge weight lifted from my chest (tiny boobs, remember); I had made it past one of the biggest hurdles in my transition. I was happy and kept on smiling through my recovery. That is not to say that I didn’t have hard days, but I know I made the right decision for me.

 

Hugs and kisses

Vicki

A Red-Letter Day

On Tuesday, September 1^st, my wife and I woke up at 3 am for the trip to Denver (64 miles to the north). We have to make an appointment at Denver Health at 5:30 that morning so that Dr. Hyer could perform gender confirmation surgery on me. My surgery started at 7:30 and took 5 hours to complete. I woke from anesthesia with a new vulva and all the component parts.

I'm going to stop for a moment because I want to cover an important subject, that's personal privacy. I am choosing to divulge that I have had "the surgery" of my own free will. I do so for several reasons. First and foremost, I crave the attention. Those of you that know me know that that is not the case. I am sharing because there are people out there that are struggling with being transgender. They find skewed information or even outright lies. When I was very young, I knew that I was different, that something didn't match up, but I didn't have the vocabulary to describe how I felt. It took me well into adulthood to come to the realization what was going on with me. You see, the hardest person to come out to was myself. The difference between me as a child and me as an adult was access to the internet and all of the information it contained. I started off convincing myself that I was a crossdresser. That it was all about the clothes. I knew better, but I couldn't allow myself to believe it. It took me years of counseling and self-reflection to come to terms with who I truly am.

So, back to my original point, just because I volunteer this information does not mean that it is okay to ask other transgender individuals about their surgeries. Nobody has the right to know what is in your pants, and you don't have the right to know what is in someone else's pants. If they want to share that with you, that is totally and entirely up to them.

Back to my surgery, or rather the recovery. I spent Tuesday through Thursday in the hospital; I was released on Thursday afternoon with a packing in my vagina, a foley catheter, and some pain pills. Let's talk about those pain pills, and please remember that this is my experience only. I cannot speak for others going through the procedure. I had a pain pill the day of surgery, while I was in the hospital, I only took acetaminophen, I took my next pain pill the night that I got home, the drive home was torture, 64 miles of road construction. I've only had to take one more since then; I have been making do with alternating acetaminophen and ibuprofen. The pain has been manageable using regular, over the counter medications. Again, this is me, your mileage may vary.

What have I learned so far? When you get home, make sure you have pads, thin maxi pads work best (my wife read that in the documentation and got some for me). I would also recommend some panties that are a size larger than you usually wear because there will be swelling, and it will be significant. Dr. Hyer calls this the "Shark Bite" stage, and boy is she ever right. You are going to be stitched together like a patchwork quilt. While you're in the hospital, make sure you eat. Your body needs the energy to repair itself, but watch what you eat, because going #2 in a bedpan while you're bandaged and stitched up is not fun, and if you're my age, it's embarrassing and humiliating too (not that I would have any idea, mind). When you get home, walk. This keeps things moving and also makes sure that you don't get blood clots (I read that in the paperwork, BTW). If you can bear to look at yourself, get a hand mirror (another thing I have to thank my wife for), it will help you keep track of your healing and also allow you to see trouble spots. Also, be prepared for the swelling; for me, it was significant and very uncomfortable. The swelling is probably a bigger issue for me than the pain. Ice packs help, but the only thing to do is wait for it to go down. One thing I was not prepared for was the mixed messages my genitals were sending me. I keep getting tingling and electrical shocks, all part of the healing process, but disconcerting anyway.

I want to take some time to talk about my hospital stay. Everyone I had contact with at Denver Health has been amazing and supportive. All of the nurses and CNAs that helped me were amazing and made me feel taken care of. Dr. Hyer did a great job, and I feel that her focus was on me and on making sure that when it's all said and done, that I am happy with the result. I cannot express how much I appreciate the staff there.

Tea Party

I’ve been writing this post for a long time. It’s been bouncing around in the back of my mind doing damage and wrecking my confidence. Now, don’t misunderstand what I’m saying, these are not complaints, it’s my insecurities doing everything in their power to push me back into a box that’s too small for me. I wouldn’t be surprised if others experience the same thing, it’s not a trans thing, well, not exclusively.

I’m going to start with a question, do you ever sit at home and see social media posts from your friends having fun and fume that they didn’t invite you? Does that start a spiral of telling yourself that they really don’t like you? Are you that person that never feels heard in a conversation? Do you take all of those negative thoughts and feelings floating around and invite them in to sit down and have tea with you? See, I do that. I know that I can be the one going out and having fun, inviting people out with me, but I don't. My insecurities keep me home, it's comfortable there. And those same insecurities tell me that no one wants to spend time with a 60-year-old transgender woman. I have entire conversations in my head where I talk about my fears and loves, my dreams and hopes, and all the things I really want to say to someone… in my head. Oh my god, these are some amazing conversations, but no one ever hears.

All of this living in my own head feeds my doubts about what I’m doing and what my future looks like. It also makes me want to stay home rather than going out and doing the things I enjoy. I love rugby and my teammates, it’s an amazing group of women that have accepted me, warts and all, but my brain is working really hard to convince me that I don’t belong there… No ladies, I am not going anywhere, I’m too stubborn to give in… I've said it before, depression is a warm fuzzy blanket made from porcupine quills that we cannot get rid of.

We all see social media posts about not knowing the pain behind other’s eyes. I’m here to tell you, it’s true, we all hide something. There is a sociological concept called dramaturgy proposed by Erving Goffman. It’s the idea that there is a distinct delineation between the front stage and backstage behavior. There is the person we show the world, our front stage selves. This is the person we are with the world at large where there is an audience present. Then there is backstage, the person we are with our friends and families, you know, those people that we trust and are comfortable with. I want to throw in another idea, that of the dressing room. The dressing room is where we sit and put on the face that we show the world. Any of you that were in theater know how stage makeup can drastically your appearance.

I did that for most of my life; I hid myself from the world by playing the role that was expected of me, I put on the stage makeup making me a boy and went out into the world. But I wasn’t just hiding from the world; I was hiding from myself. As I look back on my life, I see all of those instances that were clues that I was too scared to acknowledge. When you live your life hiding, it becomes difficult to allow yourself to be yourself.

I guess I’m a work in progress, and I’m scared of the end result, but I’m going to get there, come hell or high water…

And I have to thank all the wonderful people in my life without whom I would still be playing a role. I especially want to thank my wife who is standing beside me while I go on this journey because she is going through this transition as much as I am.