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I'm getting orchi very soon and am hoping to get SRS before too long. How did you pick your SRS surgeon? What has the recovery process been like? Thanks for being open to talk about your transition! 
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Oct 3, 2022 03:57
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 15:01 |
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Domus posted:I am in no way questioning your decisions, but why did you feel surgery was necessary? I’m just curious why some people do it and some don’t. Is it just a personal feeling? Did you not feel female with “incorrect” genitalia? Recovery from surgery sounds super long and painful. How did you know for sure you wanted to go ahead with it? I can't speak for everyone so YMMV. The word "dysphoria" literally means "hard to bear." I think that's a very accurate description of how I've experienced dysphoria. Genital dysphoria, for me, is an almost unbearable feeling of distress. I think there is this sort of misconception in popular culture (not saying you hold this idea, just that I've seen it elsewhere) that trans people "want" to be the correct gender the same way that someone "wants" a nice house, or a nice car, or a sexy body. Granted, not every trans person experiences dysphoria, so I can't speak for everyone. But for me, it's not that I "want" a vagina. It's that having the wrong genitals is almost unbearable from a physiological standpoint. Imagine that you're running, and you've hit your limit, but you're being forced to sprint harder and farther than your body can handle. Your body feels like it's unbearable to keep running. For me, that's what having the wrong genitalia is like. There are times when it feels like it's just completely unbearable. It's like an acute, whole body, neurochemical distress. And even when the distress isn't acute, it's like there's this tax on my everyday wellbeing. I'm lucky and have had a pretty positive time with my hormone replacement therapy, so I can socially live as the gender I want without much trouble. When I was a teenager and wasn't out yet, I'd say that I had a 70% tax on my wellbeing. It truly felt like my mental health, physical wellbeing, hopes, and potential were capped to 30% of their maximum. I didn't expect much out of my life, and my whole system was in such distress at all times that there was no way for me to thrive. Being on HRT and transitioning has let me live a normal life with a sense of self-worth and hope for the future. I can't say how much of a tax on my wellbeing genital dysphoria puts on me. But it's still a significant amount. The surgery might be challenging and have a long recovery time, but compared to living the rest of my life with such a heavy tax on my wellbeing, I'm willing to go through with it.
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Oct 9, 2022 18:38
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Same here on the phantom vagina. It's a really weird feeling. The brain is very strange.
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Oct 10, 2022 15:50
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Me again. posted:Also, in what practical order does a trans person set themselves up in society? I'd really love to hear about what it was like to learn to socialize differently and about the ways it was challenging. Did you work with anyone to help build new social scripts, or maybe working and socializing as a woman came more naturally to you? I transitioned about a decade ago, when I was 21. I will say that it was like having to spend an extra decade as a teenager, basically, in terms of having a changing body, a flood of hormones, and having to figure out who I was in the world. I fluctuated between trying to be super girly and fem and being an extreme tomboy. It's worth noting that when I came out, "nonbinary" wasn't a word in common parlance (even among my circle of queers), but over the years I've come to identify more as a nonbinary person than strictly 100% as a woman. As far as the social transition goes, I'd say it's been a lot of like, recontextualizing things. When I was younger, I was really horrible and rude about cutting people off mid-sentence or speaking over them. Men can sometimes get away with that, but I've noticed women generally can't. Moreover, since reaching a point where people see me as a woman, I've often been spoken over or interrupted, so I learned how bad it feels to have that happen and have actively learned to avoid doing that to others. I've noticed that when I'm hanging out with a couple of my guy friends, they tend to dominate the conversation and I have to wait for them to stop speaking so I can get a chance to speak up. Basically, I used to be "one of the guys" but now I'm not. They don't do this on purpose, but it's something I've noticed happens now. There's definitely a kind of inherent distance between me and straight men now. It's like a kind of social barrier? In a way, I always had my barrier up around men, so now it feels like it's just a mutual thing. By comparison, around women, I am able to feel a lot more at peace than I used to. Before I transitioned, I felt really bad because I wished I could be one of the girls, but I was never allowed in. I always felt like I had to be super careful around girls because I was afraid of being seen as a creep. I always felt really guilty for wanting to be in that kind of space. These days, though, there are times when it almost feels like I'm dragged in lol. I now find myself in female-only spaces where people are talking about wedding dresses, or what makes someone husband material, or talking about different clothing or makeup outlets. Sometimes it's a bit much, because like I said I do have a bit of tomboy energy in me, and as a bi nonbinary trans fem, there are some types of girl talk that I just really don't connect with at all. But getting to participate in that kind of social interaction is really nice. It makes me feel more normal. I know some trans guys who have said similar things about how nice it is to finally just get to watch a game and have wings with the guys lol. Like, sometimes it's nice to just do Gendered™ behavior. I find I'm just always learning a little bit more about who I am, and how that manifests in terms of things like expressions and mannerisms. Like, I've learned that when I'm laughing and feeling a little embarrassed, I'll cover my mouth and laugh. It's just a little gesture that's considered kind of feminine for whatever reason, but when I gave myself permission to just do what comes naturally to me, that's how I end up laughing. I remember one time, as a teenager, I covered my mouth when I laughed like that and thought "that was a gay thing to do, now everyone's going to know that i want to be a girl." It was something that I felt I needed to self-police. Even now, a decade later, I've been finding there are little things I've been self-policing all this time that I can let go of. As hard as it is to be trans sometimes, letting myself become the person I want to be is really nice. It sometimes feels like, maybe I can't have children, but I get to bring myself into this world.
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Oct 13, 2022 03:42
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It's a mix for me. When I was in the closet as a teen, there were some gestures I very consciously avoided doing, even though they seemed nice to me. Like sipping from a cup while holding it with both hands. That always seemed like a cute, comfy way to drink a beverage to me, but I knew that it wasn't "manly" to drink in that kind of dainty way, so I never did. OTOH I've been unconsciously doing the bro nod for most of my life and I've finally broken that habit and switched to smiling and giving people a little wave. I have a customer-facing job, so this switch has been a big one for me lol.
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Nov 11, 2022 18:28
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Greg12 posted:What does it feel like to realize you're trans? To be trans before you realize it? Before you know trans exists? How do you know, and how's it different from just thinking that parts or all of the gender role assigned-at-birth don't interest you? IMAGINE it's the early 90s. You are a 6 year old boy[?] who is really into The Land Before Time, that long-running Don Bluth animated movie series about dinosaurs. You don't know about fanfiction yet, but already you are nascent internet trash, so before you go to bed, you close your eyes and tell little stories to yourself. You imagine a self-insert of yourself is in that arcadian valley going on adventures with those cartoon dinos. One day you realize: your imagination, your rules. You could be anyone.... You could be.... A girl dino. That's what "being trans before you realize it" was like for me. A lot of pussyfooting around a realization that I had when I was 6. By the time I was 11, I was fully conscious of the fact that I'd rather be a girl. There were times when I'd wrap myself in a blanket and pray, asking that the blanket would be my cocoon and that I'd emerge as a girl in the morning. I was raised religious, and those prayers really tested my faith. When God didn't answer, I stopped being picky. I'd ask for anyone's intervention, no matter what religion. I even offered to make a deal with the devil if only I could be a girl. But those thoughts were all private. In my day-to-day life, it was like I was slowly dying. I went to very gender-enforced Catholic schools and had some pretty bad domestic abuse going on at home, so I was not in a place to experiment with my gender or talk about it with anyone. I dissociated from my body most of the time, and I ate to numb the pain of self-loathing. It felt like I was drowning underwater, but couldn't die. (That's how bad it was when I entered puberty--absolute anguish and despair.) That feeling of drowning-without-dying continued until I was 20 and finally transitioned. There were only a few things that eased the pain of feeling like I was drowning. Anime helped a lot. I still remember, in the early 2000s, one of the first anime I got my hands on was DNAngel, about this soft sweet boy with some dumb anime plot about angels and phantom thieves. Characters like him, and Kurapika from Hunter x Hunter, kind of opened my eyes and made me realize that there was more to being male than the machismo I saw in my personal life. Like, you could be a sensitive fem twink, basically. That had a really strong impact on my mental self-image, even if I wasn't in an environment where I could live any different on the outside. It might have been different if I could have spent time with the girls in my school, but where I grew up, there was no place in the world for being soft--the boys were all machismo all the time. It really was night and day to see anime where boys could do things like appreciate a flower or laugh in kind of a fruity way. I also went all-in on online RPGs. Playing female characters in Neverwinter Nights, World of Warcraft, and play-by-post forum RPGs was like the teenage version of my little childhood bedtime stories that I'd tell myself. It was so freeing to be able to be anyone I wanted in the form of a character. I was one of those weirdos who played on RP servers, and I felt so much happier in the skin of my virtual self that sometimes after school, I would log in, /sit emote in some photogenic space where my guildmates were hanging out, and write poetry. Basically insulating myself in a character whose body I wished I had, and then doing something really mundane and everyday. I had a character in an online Neverwinter Nights server who was just a barmaid, and I'd hang out in the ingame tavern and run people orders of spirits and ale. It made me so happy. When I was 13 I found out about a 2001 webcomic called Venus Envy, which was written by a trans author and was about a trans girl's daily life. So by that point, I knew definitively that transitioning was a thing people could do. But, as a minor, that was a life entirely outside my grasp. It would have been suicide-by-parent to ever try to make that happen. I'm in my early 30s, so I grew up in a time where there were zero trans people in my daily life and the only exposure was through trashy Jerry Springer type shows or the internet. So it made sense that I felt gender dysphoria and had the realization "I want to be a girl" first, and then learned about being trans later. It's actually really interesting to me to hear that these days, it's pretty common to know trans people exist and then to realize you're one of them.
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Nov 28, 2022 06:23
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Does anyone have a perspective on why they did or did not take the plunge and go from an orchiectomy to full-on SRS? I had my orchi last month (!!) and it's been really wonderful. The same surgeon does SRS, and I'm meeting with him in a couple days for a follow-up. I'm hoping I can ask him for more details about SRS then (last time I talked to him, he went over a lot of the broad details and said that he would have powerpoints and diagrams to show me). I'm at a kind of crossroads in my life right now, where I currently am financially stable enough and have good health insurance, so I can afford to take some time to recover from SRS and pay off the insured cost. But if I put SRS on hold and go to grad school, it may be many years before I have the same kind of stability and security in my life. So I kind of feel pressured to make a decision this year as to whether I want SRS or if I am satisfied with just an orchiectomy. On the other hand, the recovery process terrifies me on a deep and primal level. I think the main thing I feel about my genitals at their current ball-yeeted status is that erections are still a pain, and I wish I just had a clitoris instead. The actual vagina... It'd be nice to have a functional one, but the process of healing along with dilation and complications is really, really, really scary to me. Maybe over time the status of my stuff down there will mellow out? (I don't even like saying/typing the words "my Also--zero depth SRS. Does anyone have insights? Thank you friends. 
Cephas fucked around with this message at 06:57 on Jan 11, 2023 |
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Jan 11, 2023 06:54
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I had my post-orchi follow-up with my surgeon. He showed me a power point of what his technique (penile-inversion and optionally robo arm-assisted peritoneal pull-through) looks like, and how the results heal over time. Definitely veered me away from zero-depth/vulvoplasty, personally. He said that his technique creates a dimple rather than a shallow vaginal canal. He also said that the recovery process is not significantly different between zero-depth and full SRS as far as his technique is concerned. I am going to give myself some time to let my feelings percolate now that I am ball-free. Seeing the powerpoints and listening to my surgeon talk about the surgery, I feel less afraid of the process. However, I also am starting to feel like, maybe this isn't something I need. I definitely don't want to do it just for the sake of doing it--there needs to be a real benefit that is worth the costs. I can't overstate how happy my orchiectomy has made me, though. Like, I can just full-heartedly smile and say that I'm glad to be alive. In all my life I don't think I've been able to say that before the surgery.
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Jan 14, 2023 02:22
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I've been thinking lately about getting SRS. I orchied at the end of last year, and it's just kind of like, made it very clear to me. I'm just really worried about the recovery. I'm almost 33, and I've spent basically the entirety of my 30s dealing with injuries and illness so far. It's just kind of exhausting imagining adding yet another year of pain and suffering on top of that. OTOH, getting srs will probably improve my life. idk, I have felt like I've been backsliding lately in terms of gender dysphoria and mental health. When I came out a decade ago, it was like shedding layers and layers of baggage. When I resolved to get orchi, I also felt a sense of renewal and self-love. But lately I've been kind of sliding into a mild self-loathing. I guess it's bc being trans basically got me disowned and led to several bad romantic situations, so on top of the internal gender dysphoria, I've unfortunately had a lot of external reinforcement of my negative self-image. i just wanna be gay and be kinda pretty and be someones comfy gay wife
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Sep 19, 2023 20:14
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 15:01 |
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I'm researching different surgeons in my area and I have a question for anyone who might have knowledge on the subject of SRS. The surgeon who did my orchi did his fellowship out in Oregon, and he moved to my city to set up as a gender-affirming care surgeon for the region. I've gotten a good vibe from him in all of my interactions, very kind and trustworthy. Earlier this year I had a consult with him and he showed me some info about SRS from his prior institute, and he said he's performed SRS somewhere between (iirc) 50 to 120 times. However, googling him gives basically zero hits other than his professional pages. He also told me that peritoneal pull-through SRS would have to wait until 2024, because the hospital is still setting up their new facility for it. A new facility means new equipment, but it also reinforces that question of experience. There are some pros to this surgeon (he's covered by my insurance, I wouldn't have to fly, I saw him for orchi and found him very professional and kind). But I'm also quite concerned that having a lack of online info about him means it's hard to really know what I'd be getting into. If I'm making a list of surgeons to consider for SRS, do you think the lack of online info about him would be disqualifying? I have a follow-up consult with him coming up--are there any specific questions I should ask that would make or break him as a candidate?
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Sep 25, 2023 18:16
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