I am healing very well. As I said at the 6 week mark, externally everything is completely there. I get a little soreness on some of my scars from time to time and I just put a tiny covering of Sudocrem on it to help with this. I have also had a spot on one scar and suspect it was an ingrowing hair. It is nice now to be able to go to the toilet and not have to fear bumping any wounds and getting bleeding.
The clitoral area has probably been the most relevant the last fortnight as there has been a lot of changes here. Just after my last update, we decided to have another go at removing the white build-up in the upper corner of the clitoral hood. I was aware that it was getting bigger and it looked like it had moved one morning. Mandy agreed and had another go at it with a cotton bud. Suddenly, it just fell off and ended up on my labia. I got a tissue and dabbed it off. On examination, this lump was the size of a medium pea, quite hard and a mass of all sorts, including pieces of suture.
Where it was attached, Mandy felt she could see a gaping hole but I assured her that it was just an indentation caused by the build-up. More exciting was the fact that suddenly the whole clitoris was now completely visible! My whole anatomy was a lot clearer now and what we had thought was the clitoris before was actually not.
This was 2 weeks ago and there have been some dramatic changes in the whole area. The clitoral hood has been slowly shrinking back and this has made the clitoris seem to become larger. The area in general is now taking on a more pink tone as opposed to the angry red that it was. Some granulation is now evident in isolated places. I have my post-op appointment in 10 days so they can decide then if they want to try to treat this (hopefully not, the silver nitrate stick they use stings a great deal).
There have also been some interesting sensations in this whole area. The end of the day is a little difficult as it gets very tight, almost painfully so. It actually becomes an effort to even move by the finish. Morning sees it much improved and perhaps the evenings are slowly getting better but the time-scale makes it hard to notice. There have also been some days where it is incredibly sensitive and just walking down the street is uncomfortable. It is not really painful, just massively sensitive. I have also had a few attacks of stabbing sensations, although these are less painful and more on the lines of pleasurable but not quite comfortable yet. Last night saw me have one whilst dilating and it lasted for a good 30 seconds. During that time, I was hard pressed to keep the dilator held in!
On that subject, dilation continues to be quite easy. I have however noticed a little pain particularly when getting to the back end of the vault. I am not too concerned, it may simply be a sign of sensation. The important thing is that it is not getting worse and some days, I hardly feel it at all. It is also possible there may be some granulation inside and this seems to happen at about 6 weeks, which was roughly when the pain started happening. I also notice sometimes that the gel that comes out afterwards can be a light brown colour. The advice is that granulation inside would cause streaks on the dilator, but there is no sign of this, just a general brown colour occasionally. This could simply be discharge of a sorts. I am still using panty liners to guard against discharge but there is very little now, it's mostly just a little urine on the liners.
Hormones, I still feel wrong physically and emotionally and I had a blood test yesterday. I will know next week where I am at.
Which brings me yet again to emotions and they have still been all over the place. Things got to a head about 10 days ago with actually feeling a little suicidal. It was not too serious and I used my skills from the past to help me work through it - you can read about it here. Since then, I have been ok and not got back to that low but I can be triggered very easily into getting upset. I feel I am progressing to a point, but it is slow going. I am using lots of ways to deal with it by talking about it, listening to music, reading, sewing and a little gaming (Civ 5 was cheap on Steam!). The more I ponder it, the more I realise how much of it is down to the end of my transition. I likened it to someone about it being like the fog of war having been lifted. Suddenly without my transitioning in the way, I can see everything in front of me and some of it is good but there are some bad things too. It's just very overwhelming and to be able to cope I have been having some lazy days recently. This has been quite therapeutic and I am starting to get to the point of feeling ready to start some of my projects I want to do, the main one is writing.
So that's it for the moment and I think that I will give it another month now before another update such as this. I will of course be writing other things too and I have my post-op check-up in 10 days which will of course make for something interesting!
My GRS time-line :
- Surgery recollections - The day of the surgery itself.
- Bed rest - The days following surgery and the critical resting phase.
- Vaginal pack removal and first dilations - The day I saw my vagina for the first time and started dilating.
- Catheter woes and first solo dilations - Catheter comes out, goes back in again! I also dilate without supervision for the first time.
- An adventure of a lifetime - Getting back home and reflecting on the whole experience.
- 10 days post-op - Getting back to normality and bad smells!
- 2 weeks post-op - Catheter removal and successful toileting.
- 3 weeks post-op - Healing well and advancing dilation.
- 4 weeks post-op - More healing and hot flushes.
- 6 weeks post-op - An emotional time.
- Dilation FAQ's - Some ins and outs of dilation
- Post GRS emotions - Dealing with the emotional roller coaster aftermath.
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