SRS Diaries - Part 3 - Surgery Day

Printer-friendly version

Author: 

Blog About: 

Taxonomy upgrade extras: 

I'm writing this 3 weeks after surgery.

Read previous entry here.

September 11 - Surgery Day

"Have you said goodbye to it?" Z asked.

I sighed. "Why do you keep asking me that? I’m not attached to it. Well, um, physically but not mentally."

"Yeah but don't you–it's just–" he shivered as he kind of held his own crotch protectively. I laughed at this and reassured him that I'd be very happy to have it gone, even though much of the tissue would still be there, just, rearranged.

As preparation for the surgery, I had to stop eating by 9am in the morning. I had to do similar fasting for a colonoscopy a year back, but that doesn't make it any easier. My dietary policy has always been to eat when I'm hungry. This has worked for me and I have managed to stay slim with this simple method, in addition to not eating red meat (beef and pork). "Small, frequent feedings," my mother would quip. I get very antsy when I'm hungry, so I took a shower to distract my stomach.

I was still drying my hair when there was a knock on our door. Peeking outside, I saw one of the Filipina nurses. "Prepare for surgery!" she commanded. Well, she didn't actually command it. The exclamation is a product of my imagination. It was more like, "Let's prepare for surgery." With a smile.

It wasn't lunch yet. "Oh, so soon."

Well, I wasn't going to get to eat anyway. "Okay, one moment," I said and went back to the room.

I smiled at Z. "This is it!"

He opened his arms to hug me. "Are you ready?"

Snuggling into him, I said, "Yeap."

"Love you!"

"Love you, MWAH."

We transferred to the ward at the 6th floor where I would be staying for 6 days. It's similar to our room but with buttons for calling nurses and a bed, the orientation of which you can control using even more buttons.

It was a little weird having one of the nurses had to shave my pubic region. It just felt wrong to have a penis, let alone allow others to see that I have one, and much more to, heck, let others TOUCH IT! I just suffered through it because it was the last I'll see of that piece of flesh anyway.

With that finished, I had an exciting enema! Okay, I'm being sarcastic. It was cold and weird, because it feels like you're suddenly full in less than a minute. Then they ask you to expel all that jelly fluid thing along with your previously digested meals. Then a shower, if you hadn't had one. But I took another shower just for the heck of it.

As the last part of the preparation, they attached the IV thing that would be my source of nutrition until I can eat solid food again. Yum!

Preparations done, they left me alone for a bit to wait for my surgery. It was around lunch time and my surgery was around 6pm, so I waited. And waited. I turned on the TV but I felt like my braincells were dying every minute I watched, so I resorted to reflecting about my SRS.

I wasn't expecting the surgery to make a dramatic change in my life, in the sense that it would suddenly make me happy. I viewed it more as a procedure that would make me feel more normal and remove the anxiety I felt when doing activities that should have been relaxing, like swimming, going to the spa, getting a massage, changing clothes in the gym. Maybe I'm different, but I really felt that my having SRS is really just a corrective procedure instead of something to complete me. After all I've been living full time for 9 years, since college, and pass decently. Still, I wanted some work on my face, even though my boyfriend and best friend don't see what needs to be changed. "But I have masculine features!" I would say. "No you don't," they would counter. Lying in bed with the IV fluid seeping through my veins, I pondered whether I should have had FFS first before SRS, but I realized that it was just idle beauty envy and discontent, something experienced by almost every woman alive. No, I've waited for SRS for so long, I thought as I drifted into a long nap.

Waking up much later, I only had to wait about an hour before the nurses arrived to transfer me to the surgery room. On a gurney ride. Yay! Entering the surgery room, I goggled at the huge lights overhead and the room's clinical ambience. Well, it was the operating theatre after all. I met the nice nurses and anesthesiologist. I imagined them happily preparing for their "performance". After connecting some kind of monitor to my left index finger, the anesthesiologist put the IV in. As the anesthesia started dripping, I thought back to Dr. Kamol's explanation of his technique during the previous consultation as I drifted to a deep clinically-assisted slumber. The next moment I knew, I was slowly waking up in the recovery room, extremely groggy from the procedure.

To be continued

Comments

Count backward...

Andrea Lena's picture

...for me it'll start at 2023 or so back to 1951, if at all? The idea of rebirth, Kelly Blake has reminded me, seems so much more appealing than transition; but I should leave that to you folks who have been through the surgery. The other bit of description that sounds good is Gender Confirmation Surgery, since we've been female (or male) in so many ways since before birth. I may be the only soul on the plant who looks forward to dilation, simply for what it represents. Thank you!

  

To be alive is to be vulnerable. Madeleine L'Engle
Love, Andrea Lena

I suppose the concept is more

I suppose the concept is more appealing, but I've always considered my rebirth, if any, to be when I started transitioning and blending in. Nevertheless, if the concept of a rebirth gives us hope in a sea of despair, I'm all for it.

Dilation is...well, I'll write about it later. Tee hee. Thanks for the comment!