My Transition - The Big Surgery, Part 2

My insurance took longer than expected to process, so my surgery had to be scheduled further out. January 17th, 2020, was the earliest date I could get while still giving my workplace enough reasonable notice for medical leave.

I received a pre-surgery phone call on December 19th, 2019, and asked the following additional questions:

• When will I be able to go swimming?
• About 3 months post, which would be 2 days before my birthday.
• Can I use reusable pads during recovery?
• No, mostly for sanitation reasons, as there will be a lot of discharge.
• Will I be able to take progesterone vaginally?
• No idea, need to ask Dr. Stiller.
• How do I clean the inside of the vagina post-recovery from stage 2?
• Douche. They give me a high quality reusable one for this purpose.
• I have had intestinal cramps as a period symptom. After full recovery, since the inside is formed using intestinal tissue, will I have vaginal cramps?
• Probably not? I've never thought of that. Maybe, but probably not.
• Can I get a temporary handicapped parking permit to use during recovery?
• I haven't had this question before either. I don't know. Probably. I'll look into that, but you probably send a letter or something to the Department of Licensing for that.
• 1st vs 2nd stages:
• As expected, there will be a small opening about half an inch, and that is what the colon graft will extend from. They use tissue that is naturally hairless (from my shaft?) to form that area.

We set a pre-op appointment for January 16th, 2020, and she told me to call once I'm in town.

Unexpectedly, during that phone call I learned that my surgeon's office didn't know of anyone other than them in Washington State who would be a bioidentical estrogen implant to bridge my hormones through the surgery. So I had to schedule an appointment for January 2nd to have that done. 10 hours of driving, round trip...

The process of putting in the implant was actually quite simple. We talked for a bit beforehand to make sure everything was in order. The doctor injected me in the butt with some lidocaine, and after that point I really didn't hardly feel anything. I couldn't even tell when he started making the incision to put the estrogen pellet in.

The recovery was pretty easy. I had to keep the bandage on for three days, which was the second hardest part, next to driving 5 hours sitting on it. It felt like a bruise for the first two days, and then devolved into feeling rather itchy by day 3. After the bandage came off I started forgetting about it.