Day 60.
Two months!! And Spot’s finally starting to heal up the fistulas that were causing me/my ego such damage by having to sit down at the toilet, lest I be peeing in 3 different directions at once.
NOW I only sit down if I’m in that big of a hurry and don’t want my boxers soaked. I’ll never harp on anyone for missing the bowl ever again; there really is a HEY NOW I’M OVER HERE factor to the stream.
Last of my fistulas: [heals up, as of today]
Me: FINALLY.
Brain: You totally missed your chance to film a triple-forked piss stream for your blog, you know.
Me: …………d’oh.
Day 51.
To the Anon who wanted more front hole update pics: I came up against an unexpected obstacle while getting photos– that is, I’ve grown a whole bush of pubic fuzz in the month and a half I’ve been healing up. The basic shape of the hole is still a Y, but you can’t really tell from all the hair on top.
Still, hopefully these should hold you through until I get out my shaver. I made sure to try spreading what’s there, and was surprised at how much fun it seemed to be having that night. It’s still plenty active fluid-wise, even as my dong’s still waiting on erotic response. If anything, trying to wake up my dick seems to be getting more results with my hole than my phallus!
Day 50.
Time for another hand therapy appointment! Today they’re bringing out the big guns, in terms of trying to get the lymph to flow down from my swollen hand to the rest of my arm– they even placed what’re called “chip bags,” small bags filled with chips of foam, on either side of my palm, in hopes that any amount of fluid might drain down and away from my giant palm and fingers.
I can actually inch my wrist a little ways to either side, and my swelling’s gone down by 3cm since I started doing my 4-to-6-times-daily hand exercises. Tiny steps towards progress, always. (If phalloplasty has taught me anything, I now have the patience of a monk.)
PS. Anon, I’ll try to get to your photo request tonight! Wasn’t able to get to it last night, but I’ll do my best, ‘cause that’s a great request. :3
Day 48.
I think I have enough stitch scars to qualify my dick region as “totally metal.” What do you think?
Check out the tiny line on the bottom of the third pic. That’s where my catheter used to come out! All healed up, as of today. One less problem to worry about.
Speaking of problems, the fourth pic is a closeup of the inguinal incision where my serous fluid leak is still going. It’s so, so much weaker than it was when it started on Day 5, but it still decides to ooze sometimes at random. One day, I’ll be rid of you, serous fluid leak. ONE DAY… [shakes fist]
Day 45.
The fistulas haven’t healed yet, and I’ve been incontinent on and off. Had to start sitting down to use the toilet a couple days ago rather than soak my clothes every time I had to piss, which really brought me down, ‘cause… that is directly the opposite of why I got the surgery in the first place. Exactly what I did all this to NOT do.
Still, I got my first-ever blowjob tonight. (I was right to save it for my partner. Wouldn’t have traded it for anyone in San Francisco.) And I even had something *happen,* during– the very first little blip of funtimes sensation waking up on my dong. Just one. And it was gone. But it was finally, finally THERE. Meaning there’ll only be more where that came from.
Man. No matter how much I might try to complain, this journey just keeps throwing me curveballs.
Day 42.
Hand therapy appointment #2! This time, they’re trying ultrasound treatment to break up some of the heavier scar tissue on my donor site. It doesn’t hurt at all, though I noticed I don’t have heat or cold sensation on the site anymore after the therapist’s warning of “This’ll be cold!” felt like… nothing different. Huh.
Me: [peeing]
Spot: [forks off in a double stream]
Me: o_0 [keeps peeing]
Spot: [double stream splits into a triple]
Me: Okay waaaait a minute. [gets out hand mirror to look where the streams are coming from] a-HA!!
…Little bit of vocab info for you, if you haven’t heard of these already.
Fissure (noun): any opening to the skin surface that urine passes through, other than the end of the urethra. Are slightly more common in phalloplasties where a vaginectomy is not performed.
And that’s what it looks like I’m dealing with– two mini fissures that busted through the ring of stitches right at the tip of the head.
Never a dull moment, is there? But fear not… [holds up a tube of what’s essentially duct tape for the human body] Medihoney to the rescue!
I’m bringing this list back a little over a month after my phallo surgery last June (first part found over here: [Tumblr link broken] ), ‘cause there’s a few more things that’ve happened in the meantime that I *also* didn’t see coming. Keep in mind, these may not happen to you, but make sure you know going in that they *might.*
11.) THERE’LL BE WET SPOTS IN YOUR PANTS FOR A WHILE. Once your catheter is removed after two or three weeks and (joy of joys!!) you finally get to pee out of your phallus, your new meat is going to be totally inexperienced at what it’s doing– even moreso ‘cause the urethral tissue will be inflamed while it’s still healing. Urine will often be trapped within the urethra after you *think* you’re done going, only for it to slip out when you’ve already zipped up and walked away.
My way of getting around this has been to keep my dong cradled upon what’s called an “adult shield liner” (basically, an adult diaper, but just the crotch section) that I’ll stick between my legs, but even with that on my side, I have wet spots drip out after a bathroom visit and into my pants more often than I don’t.
I’d stress that you should take regular showers and change your clothes often, ’cause otherwise you are going to *stiiiink* after a couple days.
12.) SLEEPING ON YOUR STOMACH WON’T WORK ANYMORE. This one’s fairly obvious, but I still didn’t think of it. I’m a stomach sleeper– or at least, I *was,* until I had new sensitive bits down there I’d be crushing if I did. Sleeping on my side has been the go-to option so far, though it was harder than I’d like to admit to adjust.
13.) YOU MIGHT NEED A WARDROBE CHANGE. I used to be a boxer-briefs guy all the way. That was when I only had a 3-inch silicone packer to deal with. Bring that sucker up to a flesh-and-blood, not-so-squishable 5 inches, and space in the front of my drawers got dangerously tight in a hurry, if it didn’t poke out from the bottom seam altogether.
I went from Large boxer briefs to XL boxers, and had to start my underwear inventory from scratch (which ended up being 7 boxers, laundered twice a week– remember all those wet spots I mentioned having?). Count this as around $50 I didn’t think I’d have to spend.
14.) YOUR DONG MIGHT GROW HAIR. Again, this result varies from person to person. But I had electrolysis for a year before phalloplasty, and apparently that wasn’t enough to stave off *all* the hair from my arm. Right now, the head of my phallus has a layer of peach fuzz on it. I don’t mind it, and it doesn’t seem to have grown into the urethra or anything nasty, but it was a surprise after a month to realize I had hair sprouting down there.
15.) NOTHING WILL PREPARE YOU FOR HOW YOUR DONOR SITE IS GOING TO LOOK, THAT FIRST MONTH. I seriously didn’t think this would be an issue. I *love* horror movies – the gorier, the better. Bring on the Cronenberg arm, I told my surgeon team.
But when it came to unwrapping that section of my arm from its layers of bandages and gauze, and having to change that gauze, and wind everything back on again, every day, for 30 days… I had no idea. You can see your every heartbeat *moving* under there, that first week out of the hospital.
It’s going to look way, *way* better over time, even after just the first month. It really will, I promise. Deep breaths. You got this.
[EDIT, in 2018, including above photo: Heck, I had tattoos put around the scarring after it healed, because this scar was from something *happy*, and I wanted people to smile at it, instead of flinch and ask what in god’s name happened.]
But. It’s… *A Lot.* at first. Just be aware of that, going in. Gore hits a little different when the gore is part of you.
16.) WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T GO THAT FIRST MONTH ALONE. I am living proof that a person can technically make it through the first month of post-phalloplasty healing without having someone there with them. I stayed the whole month in a rental hotel room. Video chats with friends on a borrowed iPad and TaskRabbit and DoorDash drivers were my only human contact with the outside world.
DO NOT. DO. THIS. TO YOURSELF.
Bring a friend to stay with you. Bring a family member. Even if they’re jerks. I’m not kidding. If they won’t pose any physical threat to you, please, show yourself enough kindness to have somebody else there.
This is the reason why, to this day, if I hear a person has to go that first month alone, I will *immediately* hand them my contact info, so they can reach out when they need to. I do it gladly. I wouldn’t wish the hell that month was on *anyone.*
17.) NONE OF THESE THINGS MAKE THE PHALLOPLASTY FEEL ‘NOT WORTH IT.’ Seriously. No matter how many complaints I’m bringing up here, feeling whole for the first time in my life has made all these hurdles and quirks *combined* seem like no big deal. I’ve been all but euphoric since day one, to the point where people I know have mentioned how happy and calm I am now, and I can’t imagine I’m the only one who feels this way. Bring it on! >:3
Another from the main blog that belongs here just as much.
Day 36.
Seems to be Row Of Dotted Lines Day as far as healing goes. It’s interesting to me that the stitch lines on my arm and on Spot would heal the exact same way, half a body away.
Chinchilla Meat 