When I got home from hospital on the 1st April I was so drained. It was an exhausting journey and it took me a couple of weeks to really get over it. I'd just had major invasive surgery, a surgery with a lot of risks involved. Of course a six hour journey was going to be hard.
The next day I kind of mooched around. I had a mega lie in and just spent the rest of the day on my bed watching telly. It was that evening that I noticed a smell emanating from the surgical site. It was accompanied by a milky yellow discharge and an increase in pain. I knew then that I'd picked up an infection and the next day I had it confirmed by my GP who prescribed me a course of antibiotics. The infection wasn't actually the worst of my worries in that first week. I had a lot of trouble with dilation. Now, in those early days, dilation is hard and requires a certain amount of discipline. Dilating three times a day on top of recovering from major surgery really takes it out of you. I had a certain amount of difficulty getting the larger dilator in and for the first 5 days I cried my way through dilation. Throughout this whole process I've never had any regrets but during that first 5 days I came close.
Things got really bad when during dilation I got a bleed from some of my stitches. The blood ran down over my dilator so when I pulled it out the dilator was coated in a film of blood. At first I thought I'd caused a bleed inside my vagina which really scared the hell out of me.
I think that I'd become reliant on the nurses in hospital. I was only in for a week but it's surprising how used to the routine you get. Not having that routine effected me more than I dared to admit.
After that first week things began to settle down as I got used to my new routine. The tri-daily dilations were hard and it really does take it out of you. I managed to get down to twice a day at around week 6 without any real discomfort. I've even managed to gain a bit of depth which was pleasantly surprising and resulted in a very excited tweet. It has been a very hard experience though, the hardest of my life. I always believed that 'coming out' and the months that followed would be the hardest time of my life. I honestly never imagined that anything would come close. I was wrong and the experience of Gender Realignment Surgery has blown it out of the water. It's the discipline that's involved. Some days are fantastic but other days can be pretty dire and it takes a lot to get through these days, it really does. On the whole though I have absolutely no regrets. Before the surgery I did wonder if I'd miss having a penis. I think it's the knowledge that it's an irreversible operation that gets your mind weighing things up in strange ways. I don't miss it though and I'm so happy with what I've got now.
This experience has certainly made me think about things. While you are going through transition there's not much else that gets a look in. It really can dominate your every thought. Once you have the surgery though, once you get to a point whereas you feel you are 'cured', other thoughts come into play. One of these thoughts has been regarding my sexuality. Am I straight, bi or gay, it's something I've never been quite sure of. I think I tried to find reasoning with my gender issues and linked the two together when gender and sexuality are two very different things. Do I like men? I thought I did, hell I even had a boyfriend last year! That didn't turn out too well but maybe it was for the best. Maybe I was trying to fit into the complete female role like I'd tried to fit into the male one years ago. I'm not sure I like men and that's a new issue in my life. I'll be honest in that at the age of 31 I never thought I'd still be questioning my sexuality but in truth it's a question I never really answered. I've been with women and at the time it didn't feel right but that was a problem with myself and my gender not them. I still fancied them, still wanted to be with them, just not in the male role. I always considered myself bisexual. It was easy rather than admit to myself that my sexuality might have more question marks than my gender. The truth is that I'm not sure I'm even bisexual anymore. I certainly can't picture myself with another man again. Does that make me gay? Possibly, more than likely. It not something I'm ashamed of though and admitting it is kind of empowering.
In other news I've been giving pretty serious thought to ending this blog, especially in its current form. I'll still carry on blogging but it won't be a transition story anymore. I think that transition blogs do have a sell by date because there does come a point when transition is no longer this huge thing in someone's life. When that happens what do you blog about? When you get discharged from the GIC, when you get your GRC (Gender Recognition Certificate), what else can you write about regarding transition?
