3 Months Post-op

It's kind of hard to believe how quick time has moved on, but here I am at the 3 month mark. In 4 days I return to my voluntary work and essentially resume my normal life. Because so much has normalised with regards my surgery, this will probably be the last major update until the 6 month mark.

Externally I am pretty much completely healed. The vaginal opening now has some impressive scars but they are regular and slowly fading. At my post-op check, Liz Hills urged me to get working on them with Bio-Oil as recommended in the discharge notes. I have duly done so and even within a couple of weeks, they definitely seem paler. Even if it is not helping, oiling the scars eases any soreness they can sometime exhibit. On a note with Bio-Oil, you can find it half the price on-line than you can on the high street.

Moving up, the clitoral area is also well healed. It is now a lovely healthy pink colour instead of the patchy red colour that it was for quite some time. The granulation has disappeared, and quickly after Mr. Thomas treated it. I have a lot of sensation in the clitoral area but have not yet explored this area simply on the basis that I do not feel ready just yet. It could still become sore quite easily and I would rather wait until it is ready than open myself up for disappointment. I am still getting quite a few stabbing pains in this area and they often strike out of the blue. In public they can be quite unnerving, just last week I was with Mandy out shopping and it just started throbbing away, and not unpleasant either. In a busy supermarket is NOT where I want my first orgasm!

Overall the general look of the whole area is in my own word, amazing. I knew what I was going to get was going to be good, but this has exceed that by a massive amount. It is truly a work of art and I am still at a loss to even comprehend how Mr. Thomas changed what was there to what is there now. Unless you know what to look for, you can't tell the difference. Even then, you would need to be quite an expert to spot the difference, pretty much the only give-away is the closeness to the anus and the clitoral area looking a little different.

Urination continues to be a hit and miss experience and I do not expect it to improve for some time, if ever. I can get a good direction to start with but then it seems to go everywhere. Often it can go berserk and start spraying around everywhere. There is no rhyme or reason to it and I just have to live with it.

Dilation is still quite an easy process. I have now moved on to 35 and 37.5mm dilators with the final 40mm one perhaps a few weeks away. I had some granulation internally that was treated on my post-op check and this does continue to give a little grief. I get a small pain on inserting the very last inch of dilator. It is usually the smaller dilator that gives the pain and there is still a small amount of discharge that indicates the granulation is still probably there. Treatment of this is sketchy further down the line but I have an idea what Brighton will suggest next if it doesn't clear up. I also moved to twice a day a week ago with dilation. The schedule from Brighton stated that after 6 weeks I could go to 2 or 3 times a day until 12 weeks but I faithfully kept to 3 on the basis that it was not going to do any harm. I reached 12 weeks last week and then moved to twice a day. Afternoons now seem so much longer without that dilation in the middle but I do kind of miss it. It was perhaps the quietest and most unhurried of all the dilations. The schedule says to continue at this until 6 months when I can go to once a day but I suspect I will probably continue much longer at twice depending on what is going on.

Emotionally, I have been quite a bit better recently. I have dealt with some irritations in my life and despite those irritations trying to insist they will remain in my life, that sadly will not. I also have my appointment soon with the mental health team to try to deal with the issues that those irritations left me with and I am optimistic I can get through and beyond them. Spring is here, summer is around the corner and things look very good. My hormones seem to have stabilised and my body is returning to its pre-testosterone state. In fact it is getting better, my breasts have grown, my body hair is much slower and finer and my face is showing a lovely shape again.

I should also note that PMT is much more of a problem than it was pre-op. I wrote this a few days ago and felt in a very good place. Now on the day of publishing, I find myself in a very low place and on the verge of crying at any moment. This is confirmed by where Mandy is at at the moment and sure enough we are synchronised. I had moments of PMT pre-op, but post-op with the testosterone eradicated, I find it is a far more intense experience. The ins and outs are aside from this post and I will look to write something far more specific about it soon.

So I'll look to leave it at that, I am just having a blip and hope that things will be looking up again in a few days!

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. 
• 2 Months post-op - A clitoris emerges!

Also:

• Dilation FAQ's - Some ins and outs of dilation 
• Post GRS emotions - Dealing with the emotional roller coaster aftermath.