This may be way out of line, and I apologize if it is… Are you able to penetrate during sex without the erectile implant? If not, how would you go about doing that without the implant?

Hey, no worries! Nothing’s out of line to ask me, if a person’s curious about it. :3

I wish I had a more satisfying answer to give you than “I could penetrate most of the way into a silicone vagina when it was really *really* lubed up, and when I’ve tried going in anally, I pretty much couldn’t press my way in at all.”

While I personally don’t intend on getting an erection device, I did try the trick where you roll on a condom, then another condom over that, and have at it. I’ve heard different folks having varying levels of success with that; it apparently does work for some, but it didn’t for me.

I’m extremely surprised Mr Christopher told you what he did, he certainly doesn’t think that way any more! He’ll happily custom each individual surgery to the preference of the patient and try for fill all their needs. Plenty of guys here in the UK opt to keep their original parts too and I’ve never know it to be an issue. I’m sorry you had the experience you did, nevertheless I’m so very happy it all fell into place for you. Mr C is a great surgeon, but his bedside manor isn’t great :P

This! Is! AWESOME news! 8D

I’ve had so many folks ask me whether anyone else besides Dr. Crane and Dr. Chen are doing phalloplasties without birth organ removal, and I honestly didn’t know anyone else who was. This news *thrills* me, like hearing about any step anyone takes in a new direction does!

The world may be slow and plodding towards progress on the whole, but I really do believe it does so generally in the right direction, and I have info like this to point to as my proof. Thank you, thank you, *thankyew* for letting me know. This truly does make my night!

My First Year of Phalloplasty: A Handy Timeline.

[cracks knuckles] Cool. I’m back at it! Let’s do this.

Before I get into specifics about last week’s urethroplasty, I figure I should lay out a timeline. This blog’s gotten a bunch of new followers lately, and it’d be keen for everyone here to be able to follow along on the same page. :3

February 12, 2005: I take the leap to living full-time as a man at age 25. As I had only recently moved to the city I now live in, and had scarcely left my apartment before this, introducing myself as someone new raised no eyebrows.

Late 2005: I enroll in counseling with the University of Minnesota’s Center for Sexual Health. My counsellor agrees that I qualify as someone who would benefit from gender conversion therapy. I am educated about the possibilities and outcomes of hormonal treatment, as well as various surgeries I can work towards.

Due to warnings that my depression might get worse while taking T, I decide not to opt for HRT treatment. I also decide to keep binding for the time being, as the only sexually reactive parts of my body are my nipples, and though the risk is low, I’d rather not take the chance of losing that feeling if I was to get top surgery.

Phalloplasty is mentioned as an option for sex reassignment surgery when one can’t undergo HRT.

Though I function more naturally as a man in general society, I identify most strongly with being an androgyne, and feel neutral towards the parts I was born with. I ask if there’s a possibility I can keep any of them. “I’m not sure,” is the response I get. “Nobody’s ever asked that before.”

2007: I start saving my money.

2008: I begin building connections with psychiatrists and therapists who I’ll need letters of recommendation from before anyone will consider me for phalloplasty. Some agree. Some don’t. Enough do.

2013: With a significant amount of money saved up, I set my sights on Mr. Christopher’s surgery team of London, England. His phalloplasty results are, in my opinion, the most organic-looking currently out there. I make plans to see him in London for a consultation.

September 2013: Mr. Christopher tells me that he won’t allow me to undergo surgery unless I first agree to a full hysterectomy and vaginectomy. “Why else would you want to have this done?” he asks. “It would make no sense.”

I also learn the hard way that, currently, my psychiatrist and therapist letters are considered to have expired after over a year’s time.

I leave for the USA without scheduling a surgery date.

When I report to my counsellor at the Center for Sexual Health, she gives me the name of an up-and-coming surgeon I might want to check out, one Dr. Curtis Crane.

July 2014: I have a consultation with Dr. Crane in San Francisco, California. He’s cheerful, personable, and assures me that having phalloplasty without taking hormones or removing my original parts is indeed something he can do for me. “Who am I to tell you what body parts you should feel natural having?”, as he puts it. He is, to my knowledge, the first surgeon to be willing to perform such an operation.

I sign up for his next possible phalloplasty date that very day… which turns out to be in June of next year. Dr. Crane is a busy fellow, to put it lightly.

June 17th, 2015: The words “radial forearm phalloplasty with urethral lengthening, glansplasty, and no scrotoplasty” cannot convey the joy and sense of contented wholeness the procedure brings me today. I spend the next week in the CPMC hospital, where I’m discharged on Day 6.

June 23rd – July 17th, 2015: I spend the next month by myself in a live-in hotel in Corte Madera, with three weekly follow-up visits to Dr. Crane. Uber and Taskrabbit become my best friends, when it comes to getting places and making sure I stay fed.

I develop 3 fistulas under my phallus head (healed over by regular use of Medihoney gel) and accidentally open a groin stitch that leaks serous fluid constantly. The latter ends up giving the area an infection that takes a week longer than anticipated to heal. I’m grateful I took off the full 4 weeks from work instead of the 3 I initially planned for.

A small section of skin at the top of my glans dies, discoloring the area with a dark purple blotch. In doing so, the new dong gets its nickname: “Spot.”

July – October 2015: Abnormally thick scar tissue limits my ability to move my donor arm’s hand and wrist. I enroll in weekly hand therapy sessions, which successfully give me back a full range of motion.

September 2015: I develop a stricture that gets more painful by the day.

October 2015: I arrive back in San Francisco for two days to have Spot examined, by now barely able to urinate without pain so bad I’m almost passing out hunched over there at the toilet.

The results point to a stricture far thicker than anyone had anticipated, and I end up staying an extra week to have a cystoscopy done, revealing a solid wall of scar tissue in my urethra, right at the join where the original urethra ended and the new lengthened one began. I’m given a suprapubic catheter, to remain in until the next possible surgery date Dr. Crane has available.

December 2015: Back in San Francisco, this time under the care of Dr. Chen, Dr. Crane’s new surgeon.

Dr. Chen cuts out three centimeters of scar tissue from my urethra, then sews the ends together where the scarring ends. I stay in San Francisco for two more weeks, returning home right on Christmas Eve.

Due to dwindling funds left available, I start looking for a closer urologist for the future, and finally am pointed (through word of mouth) to Dr. Elliott of the University of Minnesota’s Urology department.

March 2016: My first visit to Dr. Elliott comes just as pain and urine stream thinning start happening, just like they did in September, though thankfully without the pain this time. Dr. Elliott schedules the soonest X-ray and cystoscopy available.

April 2016: Yup, the stricture’s grown back, and looking just as thick as before.

May 2016: Dr. Elliott decides that a two-stage urethroplasty is the best way to treat my stricture problem. I’m put back on a suprapubic catheter until a urethroplasty with buccal tissue harvest can be done.

June 15th, 2016: First stage is completed.

June 20th, 2016: Follow-up appointment. My initial genital sutures are removed. Everything looks good so far, according to the doctor.

Three months from now, I’ll have another cystoscopy to see how the scarring is going (or, hopefully, not going). Six months from now, the second stage of urethroplasty *should* be scheduled, where they’ll sew the hole in my urethra shut, I’ll be able to pee standing up again, and that *should* be the end of it all.

Fingers remain crossed like hell.

[looks up at all that] Huh. Guess I did more this past year than I ever realized I did, didn’t I?

Intermission: the final *final* FINAL boss.

Last Wednesday, I had the first stage of a two-stage urethroplasty using buccal skin grafts.

My follow-up appointment was this past Monday, where the doctor took out my sutures and said everything was looking good.

I can prove it. I have photos.

But I cannot for the life of me describe to you what actually happened during the process right now.

Because there’s been something else going on in the background that I haven’t mentioned until now, but it’s time to bring up.

I’m Gerbil. And I’m an alcoholic.

Last Wednesday was the second time since I started drinking hard liquor daily two years ago that I’ve had absolutely no alcohol in my system. The only other time was a year ago, the six days I was in the hospital for my phalloplasty. And even back then, I rushed to a bar as soon as I could walk.

But, yeah. I was riding a detox high for four whole days after last week’s surgery. I was *radiating* happiness. There’s nothing to describe it besides the feeling I had the last time I detoxed and woke up to see Spot finally a part of my body, and knowing that my body felt whole at last.

I joked with friends that I’d slayed my Final Boss, getting phalloplasty. That it was all smooth sailing from here.

That’s a lie. There is no *Final* final boss, or at the very least, phalloplasty wasn’t mine.

Don’t get me wrong, it was definitely a megaboss! Probably the end of an entire stage of my own personal ‘game.’ But as the months went on, and I kept drinking, gained a hundred pounds, spiraled back into depression… I can tell you, getting a flesh-and-blood working dick sure wasn’t the end.

They took out my catheter Monday morning for the first time in over seven weeks. Just like they warned me might happen for the first couple days, I was wetting myself almost every half hour. All through work.

I relapsed Monday night.

Just to see if I could feel any better drinking a “normal” amount anymore, I rationalized to myself. It was only a couple drinks. (Only. I’ve stopped and started again four times now on the wings of “only” two drinks.)

My doctor gave me the day off today after hearing what I did. “Learn how to pee again before you go back to work. It should only take the one day.”

He added, “You thrive on having good stories to tell people, right? How perfect would it be to say you had your last drink on a full moon, at the Summer Solstice?”

He knows me.

I *do* thrive from telling people my stories.

I’ll give a report on the urethroplasty when I can, I promise.

Right now I’m busy beating down another megaboss. Probably not my last, either.

It’s still worth the fight.

Thanks for your patience. Be kind to yourselves, everyone.

Spot is officially 1 year old!!

You know what this means.

This means birthday cake.

For real, though– I can’t believe it’s been a whole year already! Spot may’ve proved to be more of a problem pup in these first 365 days than most phalloplasties, but I wouldn’t trade the experience for the world.

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU, all of you followers, for joining Spot and me on this adventure!

NOTE: Spot was thoroughly showered with soap and warm water after filming this. Sugar and genitalia do not go well together.

VIDEO: Spot is officially 1 year old!!

Word to the wise: if at any point you need a suprapubic catheter hooked up to you, and you’ve got a belly with some overhang, like I do, make sure you’re lifting it up and putting sterile, dry gauze over the entry site SERIOUSLY every day.

I could’ve had my catheter out with my urethroplasty yesterday, but because I’d been slacking off when it came to changing the gauze, not really checking if it was staying in place under my belly hang… yeah, even after six weeks of having a cath in, the area shouldn’t be looking *that* red. Got myself a nice little infection, which didn’t halt the surgery, but it means I have to keep it in for another week until I run a full antibiotics course.

What is the sensation like? The best way you can possibly describe. I’m terribly afraid I won’t be able to feel and orgasm after surgery.

Best way I can describe… Gotcha. I’ll break it down into how it personally went for me.

A couple months after surgery, I had the shift from where touching Spot felt like tapping a stranger’s skin, to suddenly… THAT’S *MY* BODY, I CAN FEEL IT. What an awesome day.

A month after that, if it got cold, say from after a shower, I could touch the skin and it would feel cooler. (Not that it would shrink up like a cis guy’s– in fact, my dong itself wouldn’t actually *feel* the cold, but it would lower in temperature around cold things and still be perfectly fine.)

Three months, and I was no longer irrationally worried it would break or fall off. It was THERE, in all its admittedly floppy glory.

It wasn’t until six months in that I felt comfortable trying to masturbate again, but when I did, I managed to get myself off on the very first try. I did this by humping blankets and pillows, much like I did before phalloplasty. There was a lot more surface area to work with than before, which made for some awkward bumping around, trying to get a feel for where to rub, but masturbation worked pretty much the same as it did before. With multiple orgasm ability still intact! Woohoo!! (One’s own mileage on that may vary, but from what I’ve heard from others, if you can chain-orgasm beforehand, you shouldn’t have a problem keeping that ability.)

Almost a year to the day since phalloplasty, I’m still not able to orgasm from getting a blowjob or from my attempts at penetrative sex, but that’s just me. Everybody’s phallo will be different, will react a little different… And in my opinion, that’s a fun part of the experience, getting to know yourself all over again! :3

How were you able to pay for bottom surgery if you don’t mind me asking? I want it so bad but it feels so far out of reach and it’s heart breaking.

This question always breaks my heart a little, because there really is no easier answer I can give than “I saved everything I could for seven years.”

One bonus I wasn’t counting on back when I started saving was that several national insurance plans (and indeed, a lot of big companies’!) started offering coverage for bottom surgery, IF it was determined to be “medically necessary.”

Not that getting HealthPartners to agree with me was a walk in the park, either– it took literal months for me to get ahold of people who could tell me what exactly I’d have to do to prove it “medically necessary,” but in the end, my Insurance ended up paying $45,000 of what would’ve otherwise been a $50K bill. *Much* more reachable, and they only changed their policy in the last couple years. I do hope the tides keep changing in this direction for more companies.

hey, I know you didn’t get a vaginectomy, but did they still have to alter that part somewhat as part of the phalloplasty process?

Good question! And, in fact, one that I only found the correct answer from my original surgery team last week, when I received the bill for my June 2015 phalloplasty (yup, my health insurance company took *that* long to crunch the numbers and pay out their share).

The bill I received had an itemized list that counted every single thing done to me or item used on me during the surgery. While I thought I never had a vaginectomy, it turns out that’s not entirely true – the list said a *partial* vaginectomy was done.

This makes a lot more sense when you consider I have no outer or inner labia anymore, just a Y-shaped opening that goes right into the vagina.