My GRS Experience - Day 2

Day 2: Tuesday 26th March 2013

     Breakfast arrives at around 8:30am. The orderly asks me what I'd like and I ask for toast and jam with juice and a white coffee. I'm still experiencing pretty bad effects from the anaesthetic and morphine so I struggle to eat the toast. I feel sick and sore. I've literally not moved all night so my entire lower body aches and it's also soaked in sweat. Just after breakfast a doctor shows up. I recognise him from the knockout room and I assume he assisted Mr Bellringer in the operation. He checks my legs and asks me how I'm feeling. He gets me to wiggle my toes and bend my knees. Apparently I went really pale in recovery and they were quite concerned, hence the questions. He hurries off and Manjit pops in.

     Manjit starts to remove the dressing around my groin. I've heard of the dressing described as a sumo wrestlers nappy and I can see what they mean. She starts to unwrap it carefully. It's not uncomfortable, not like I thought it would be. Manjit smiles as she looks at the surgical site. Apparently there's been no bleeding in the night which I can only presume to be a good thing. She tells me that the surgery went well and that there were no real concerns. As she goes I hear her ask a nurse to remove the dressing completely and to take me off the morphine. I give the morphine button a couple of presses before the nurse arrives.

     The nurse is quick as she removes the dressing and the morphine drip. I thought it would hurt more as she pulls the needle out of my arm but I hardly feel anything. She also removes the drain and that does hurt. It's a burning sensation and it feels like a very long tube. She tapes the catheter tube up to the top of my groin, just below my naval, before attaching it to a leg bag. The leg bag straps to the top of my thigh by two Velcro straps. It holds around a litre and has a tap at the bottom of it. This is so you can empty it down the toilet. After the surgery they like you to be mobile pretty quickly and the hourly trips to empty the catheter bag help to achieve this. Once my leg bag is attached she gives me a thick pad (to soak up any discharge) and a pair of NHS nickers. I've heard all about these so I've packed some of my own. The NHS nickers are these ugly net ones. I put them on, along with the pad, and get up out of bed.

     Walking feels strange. I almost waddle across the hall to the toilet/washroom. Once I'm in I instantly feel sick and I feel like I'm going to pass out. I'm still suffering the effects of the general anaesthetic, not to mention a night with my own supply of morphine! I grab the sink and look in the mirror. I've started to get a bit of shadow and my hair hangs limp around my shoulders. The bags under my eyes tell a tale of a constantly disrupted night. I look a mess in my NHS hospital gown. I shave and wash despite the nausea threatening to send me crashing to the floor. I spray some dry shampoo in my hair and it does make me feel better. I still look a mess, just a nicer mess.

     I waddle back to my bed and clamber back in it. While I've been washing the nurses have changed it although it's soon back to a mess after I've been in it for five minutes. I start jotting down notes on my notepad before Mr Bellringer, closely followed by Manjit, pops in. He stands at the foot of my bed in his trademark cycling gear as he repeats Manjits comments about the surgery going well. He also remarks that he got concerned when he phoned down to recovery after my surgery and it looked like I was losing blood. He smiles though, before he leaves, when he says that despite that small problem, everything else went to plan.

     I get a nice surprise just before lunch when I get a bunch of flowers delivered. They're from my mum and dad and as I look at them I cry. I'm not sure why I cry. The emotion of it all might be getting to me or it might be the fact that at this moment I feel so far away from home. Getting the flowers does bring certain things home to me. I realise how much certain people care for me and how much I miss them. They're coming to visit me on Saturday and it's that that keeps me going through the next few days.

     Lunch arrives and I manage to eat more than I did at breakfast. I feel so hungry which is no wonder considering I spent most of yesterday nil by mouth. After lunch the drugs trolley comes round and I'm given two paracetamol tablets. It makes me giggle for a moment. Normally I'll take paracetamol for a hangover yet here I am taking it for a sex change operation! Around half an hour later I'm moved. They wheel me into F-Bay so I'm with Mr Bellringers other patients. F-Bay is bigger than E-Bay with its own shower room next to the entrance. There are six beds, three along each wall, with a big window at the end wall. The scenery isn't much to look at, just a brick wall, but it's daylight at least. I'm wheeled into F-5, in between two other Bellringer patients. They are both very I'll having undergone colonvaginaplastys. This is where they take a piece of your colon to use as part of your vaginal wall. It's a last resort operation as it is quite painful and risky.

     On the right side of me is a lady called Deborah. She's older with curly hair and I later learn that she underwent her original GRS thirty years ago! She's experienced complications most of her life and it's only now that she's managed to, hopefully, get it sorted. On the left side of me is Adele. She was born intersex and I later learn that she was on embarrassing bodies a year ago. She was due to have an operation under Mr Thomas as Brighton in a bid to give her more depth. She had to pull out of it and now she's managed to get it done under Mr Bellringer. The other three beds, on the opposite wall, are taken by non-trans patients. To the opposite left is an African lady in her late fifties who's had an operation on her throat. She's friendly and always waves at me as I waddle past her bed. To the direct opposite of me is an eastern European lady in her thirties. I'm never quite sure what surgery she's had although she walks worse than me. To the opposite right of me, next to the window, is an elderly lady in her late sixties/early seventies. She's had a stroke and seems really friendly. It's a ward of variety although I kinda feel out of place somehow.

     I spend the rest of the afternoon watching episodes of Homeland on my IPad before tea arrives. I'm thankful for the leg bag as the process of emptying it takes up time. By the end of the day I find that the waddle has become a bit of a limp. I struggle to sleep that night. The girls on either side of me are hooked up to drips that trigger an alarm when they are empty and this happens every three or four hours. It seems to take the nurses forever to refill them so I don't sleep a lot that night.