Day 113.

Sorry for not having many updates since my last trip to San Francisco. I *could* upload the video of me trying to piss through a stricture (with accompanying groans of pain) if anybody’d be interested, but lately, I’ve just been waiting on a surgery date for a urethral reconstruction, seeing how my original urethra’s a tad choked up by scar tissue right now.

About once a day, my penis will gush a mystery fluid that’s probably some kind of urine. I don’t even know what’s in the fluid, nor do I question it anymore. I’ve been referring to my mindset lately as “Cronenberg Zen.”

Oh, and if anybody’s wondering? I still stand behind this surgery 100%. I have been *happy,* no matter how messed-up it may be to have to carry a catheter bag everywhere (inside my stylish messenger bag from BlueRobotto of Etsy.com). Before, where every “ma’am” would be like a screwdriver jabbed in my heart, now, I’m able to shrug these comments off with a simple “they just don’t know what I *really* am.” Having fleshy proof of same is something I’d never want to give up, no matter how many problems it might be giving me in particular.

Stay awesome, everyone. I’ll get through this. :3

Post-op, part II.

Okay so WOW am I glad I didn’t wait on this follow-up surgery any longer than I did. The scar tissue buildup was, in the surgeon’s words, “a wall. No wonder you were having so much trouble!”

I’ll reiterate: this is not normally something that happens. A stricture *can* happen a few months out from phalloplasty, but for anyone worried this’ll happen to them, I wouldn’t. When my body *in particular* wants to heal something, it does NOT mess around.

Turns out I get a third and final round left I’ll need to schedule within the next two months or so. Then the surgery team can go in directly and deal with the bit that’s scarring up, so the scar tissue won’t just keep slamming the urethra with every new removal. I’m admittedly a little iffy on the details for how they’re going to do this, but you can bet I’ll have a bunch of questions for Dr. Crane tomorrow.

I’m not worried; I’m in good hands. Already feeling tons better after the surgery, and from having a suprapubic catheter put in for now.

I’ll keep everyone posted. Had no idea I was going to have this much content for the blog, haha!

You never forget your first sounding.

Mine came at my appointment with my surgeon today, and was… surprisingly painless! I know, right? I was all set to hear horror movie noises come out of my mouth, and nope– he already had the length of it lubed up and pressed down through my dong without me feeling anything more than a mild tightening at the base.

Bad news is, the sounding treatment didn’t unblock the scar tissue that’s in the way of my urine stream, so I have emergency surgery scheduled for Thursday in the early afternoon. My surgeon’s going up my urethra with a tiny camera and a wire, so he can scrape away the blockage where he finds it.

Day 101.

Was put on painkillers to numb the pain problems I’ve been having while urinating lately. (Like, “not even realizing I’ve been drooling and crying until I’m done peeing” levels of pain.) As it’s iodine-based, this has turned my output bright neon orange. It doesn’t even show up in photos how bright orange this looks.

I fly to San Francisco tomorrow to see my surgeon Tuesday, who can give me some answers about this whole business. Wish me luck that it won’t take much to fix, yeah?

Huh. Well.

Bit of a setback last night. I’d been having some mild pain when peeing for the past week and a half or so, but the UTI test I took came back negative, so I didn’t think much about it. Then Friday night rolled around, and my pain when urinating jumped from a 2 or 3 on the pain scale to a 6 or 7, along with a greatly reduced stream.

From what the symptoms are pointing to, I might have developed a partial urethral stricture, meaning my dong is trying to “heal” itself by scarring up the urethra and making it that much harder to pee through it.

The ER staff confirmed I still *can* void my bladder, pain notwithstanding, so I’m not in any major danger. (Thanks, ridiculous pain tolerance!) They’re trying to treat the problem with antibiotics first, hoping it might just be a UTI that’s making my bladder spasm when I try to pee. Even though they agreed that it very well might be a stricture. They wanted to make sure I’m not playing an ace when a two will do, basically.

I’ll keep everyone posted. Fingers crossed, yeah?

Three-month Extravaganza!

Aaaa, can you believe it? It’s already been three whole months since I first got my phalloplasty!

While I couldn’t find any party hats tiny enough for Spot to celebrate the occasion properly, I’m instead offering a photo retrospective showing the then-and-now of the surgery.

* THE MAIN EVENT, aka SPOT *

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^ THEN: Three fistulas opening at different times, all underneath the head, made urination tricky. Marker lines left on my dong from surgery team looked a little awkward for the first couple weeks. Stitches everywhere.

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^ NOW: Fistulas have healed! Yay! Urine stream has healed… a little oddly, veering waaaay over to the left, but it does so in a predictable pattern, so it’s not any trouble to correct for. Stitches have faded to a birthmark shade of light purple. No skin bubbles left underneath the shaft between stitches. The tip’s gained some scruffiness from arm hair growing back in.

Overall, my dong even got a seal of approval from my general MD back home during my annual physical exam a couple weeks ago! She was all kinds of impressed.

* THE RUBBER CHICKEN ARM *

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^ THEN: Looked like nothing alive. Had the sickly sweet smell of
wound dressing and disinfectant. Needed at least five minutes to
unbundle all the bandages and dressings to reveal itself to the world
and possibly terrify any children/onlookers. Healed with such thick
scarring at the wrist as to cause me to lose most of my hand/wrist
mobility for some time.

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^ NOW: Much more healthy-looking in its color and overall appearance. Regular hand therapy has returned hand/wrist motion nearly back to normal, with some wrist stiffness and a slightly swollen/reddish hand. Still terrifies small children if left uncovered. This Halloween opens up a whole universe of possibilities.

* THE LEG *

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^ THEN: Sticky gummy hell for the first week, then itchy flaky hell for the next two. Had to be kept constantly bandaged, so as not to soak anything laid over it. Made sleeping at night… problematic.

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^ NOW: Has healed immensely! No drippage, stickiness, or shedding snow-like skin flakes anywhere for months. Barely even looks like Rocky Horror Picture Show lips anymore. More like a rectangular mild sunburn.

* THE SEROUS FLUID LEAK *

THEN: Scourge of daily living from five days after surgery through ‘till very recently. Needed bandaging at all times, lest it soak through whatever I was wearing and make it look like I’d pissed all over whichever car seat I was riding in.

NOW: Killed in Vietnam. Or healed itself out of existence. (I always get those two confused.) It will not be mourned.


* CONSTANT URGE TO WHIP SPOT OUT AND URINATE ON ANYTHING WITHIN RANGE *

THEN: My immediate giddy thought whenever walking past anything standing still: “I could pee on that now. Should I? SHOULD I? I TOTALLY CAN!! Wait no that’s probably a bad idea…”

NOW: I have somehow not racked up any public indecency charges. This baffles me. I had no idea my willpower could hold out for this long.


* OTHER THINGS I CAN DO NOW THAT THREE MONTHS HAVE PASSED *

– Carry objects over 25 pounds! Yay, I get to… start taking out the trash every week again. Hm. (Still, yay!)

– Accept penetrative sex with my original plumbing (or as I call it, the Warp Zone)! [NOTE: I had the okay to be on the penetrating end of penetrative sex a month earlier, with the downsides that (A) without an inflatable rod put in surgically, I’d be nothing but floppy, so (B) I’d probably have to double-bag Spot with a couple of condoms to attain a hope of being rigid enough to put it in. The More You Know!™]


Here’s to another three months, and then another, and another, and so on! [blows party horn]

Day 90.

So the *bad* news is, for some reason, I’ve been called “sir” ONCE over the past two weeks of social interactions among folks who don’t already know me. I have no idea why, but after a friggin’ *phalloplasty,* WOW does that sting.

Add to the pot the fact I found two co-workers of mine refuse to go into the men’s room when I’m in there, and we have a Not Happy Gerbil Indeed™.

The co-workers’ll get pointed out to HR as soon as the department’s open tomorrow, but in the meantime, some good news! Know what I can do now that I couldn’t just a few days ago? Go on, guess. :3

I can hold a full fast-food drink cup in my donor-side hand with no support or bracing from the other side’s hand at all! Pinky up, like I’m used to, no less.

AND and and. I can fall sleep on my stomach again! I was wondering if that ability would ever come back, given the tenderness of what’d be being squashed underneath.

Give and take, eh? Give. and. take.

Expect a super-phototastic 3-month anniversary (monaversery? …whatever.) post tomorrow!

Hey, how comes you wet yourself? I have not heard of incontinence in a young man such as yourself, can it be psychological reasoning?

I should say it again, just to make it clear: it’s true, a bit of urine is likely to slip out after you’d think you were done peeing, in the first couple weeks after getting a phalloplasty.

To the grand majority of folks, this will probably never be a concern. However, I had occasional problems with incontinence before the surgery, too. Just reporting this as a heads-up to anyone who has similar issues; I’ve found it harder to clamp down on ‘holding it’ muscles when there’s almost five inches of new tissue between me and the muscles I’m used to clenching.

This isn’t the fault of anyone on the surgery team, mind you. Just chalk up another point for “individual bodies heal in different ways, some of which you can’t predict beforehand.”