All right, so I officially had an appointment yesterday with the gynecologist, and I am REALLY glad that I went there rather to an urgent-care place, because while she doesn't have a lot of expertise in post-SRS recovery specifically, she was able to tell me what the discharge meant, was experienced enough to know the difference between an infectious discharge and a normal one, she is indeed super-familiar with care methods for dealing with vaginal infections and healing, and she was able to show me exactly where everything was coming from and how to care for it.
So basically, first order of business, she gave me a fresh dose of antibiotics to clear up what looked like a minor UTI and possibly some bacterial vaginosis. (Or at least that's what the visit summary paper said.)
Secondly, she was able to show me that my discharge wasn't in fact a vaginal discharge, it was coming from the healing wounds all along the inside of the inner labia just under the clitoris. Basically she showed me where I still had a raw incision wound, and explained that this was where the discharge was coming from, but it's normal, it's part of the healing process. Then she showed me that there was a lot of white skin in that area, and she explained, it's part of the wound-healing process as well, the white skin will slowly slough off as it heals, and the discharge and smell were basically just a process of skin shedding. Some of the pain was because she could see a little bit of granulation.
The swelling, she said, was likely because I re-injured the area somehow. That might be why some of the insides were still so raw while the outside was very well-healed. So there's a definite chance that I split the healing skin back open somehow either during the flight, or through the limited pulling/lifting of my baggage that I had to do on my way to and from the airport. And that resulted in a situation much like the original surgery, where for the first day I had almost no pain or swelling, I was just tired, but then the pain and swelling started kicking in the next day and were at their worst around days 4/5 afterward. So yeah, the flight... 23-hour international flights with 4 layovers extending the time sitting on a freshly-healing surgical site even more are just simply not okay however you look at them. But the good news is it's healing now.
Now in terms of treatment, to cut down on the discharge / bacterial levels and to promote healing, she recommended that I start doing twice-daily sitz baths. (And she was really shocked that Dr. Chettawut didn't say anything about them to me.) Basically what that entails is just sitting in a clean bath full of a few inches of warm water, (salts optional but recommended for maximum relief,) and letting everything irrigate for a few minutes. Either that or get a showerhead with a gentle sprayer. Something to get warm water up there to irrigate the healing wounds and get warm water directly there. The warm water promotes blood flow and therefore healing, and the irrigation keeps it clean and free from the discharge-causing buildup. And then afterward she said to dry everything with a blow-dryer on cold, because keeping things dry will keep more infections from happening.
Last piece of advice was to, if I'm swelling or in pain because of swelling, use an ice pack for a while.
Also, and this is just me, but I've noticed that the brand of sanitary pads I was using in Thailand were a lot drier to the touch than the pantyliners I switched to right before we left, so I've switched back to the original brand I was using, and hopefully that will help keep everything drier.
Anyway, those are the problems I was having... wound healing, (the gynecologist actually said "nothing special here, just basic wound maintenance.") and keeping things clean and dry as much as possible.
