Here's a bit of a summary from posts scattered elsewhere, along with some of my musings while spending far too much time inside my head.
My Facial Feminization Surgery (FFS) was on August 28, 2018 at Kaiser's Richmond Surgery Center. They have a Head and Neck specialty facility there.
My surgery team was Drs. Kleinberger and Shih, with support staff from Richmond and Oakland. The surgery as planned and approved was nine hours of work, with the surgeons taking turns on the bone work and soft tissue changes.
It's an amazing skill, understanding how all these tissues will interact and heal together. Unlike cosmetic surgery, much of what was altered in me was in the bone of the skull and mandible, to reverse some of the changes that testosterone had induced in those structures. The soft tissue was adjusted slightly to where it should be if the removed bone had never been there. This is a remarkably complex surgery, with two surgeons working on me over a 9 hour period, but it was deemed medically necessary for me by a board at Kaiser.
I am very grateful to the medical team and evaluation board for providing this astounding level of service and treatment for me.
I'm continuing to heal, with the bruising and worst of the swelling starting to fade.
I spent the first few days rather spaced out, between the effects of general anesthesia and the acetaminophen/hydrocodone ("Norco") tablets. By the 4th day after surgery I was able to control most pain and discomfort with just acetaminophen tablets (2 small ones, every 6 hours), and tweaking the compressive wraps to avoid compressing the swollen areas too much.
There has been some bleeding the three days after surgery, not unexpected, but troubling. It appeared to be worse Friday morning, so we called the Head and Neck Surgery unit. One of the doctors called us back and mentioned some concern over a hematoma, also a concern in the surgeons notes, and asked us to have this evaluated at the Walnut Creek ER Department.
We spent a few hours in the ER, getting unbandaged, cleaned, inspected, and rebandaged. Wouldn't you know it? The bleeding stopped when I was unwrapped. The hair is a mess, naturally, but there is no hematoma, and all will be well. We will give the head incisions several days to knit before we try cleaning the matted hair of blood.
I'm continuing to regain mobility. I can't talk well with the compression bandages and the sutures in my mouth from the jaw surgery. I can handle soft foods, so Laurie was able to make me a nicer dinner tonight.
I had butternut squash soup, homemade chicken broth, and garlic mashed potatoes with broccoli. Dessert was Tillamook Mudslide chocolate ice cream. My weight is down but i expect this will reverse the trend with my regaining my appetite!
I have a follow up visit in one week. Meanwhile, I expect to just continue healing here.
Saturday morning I found my appetite was back, if not my ability to chew. I finished off Laurie's yogurt and berries, a coffee, one of those nutritional drinks, and Laurie's Scrambled Eggs, with ham, cheese, bell peppers, and other goodies. Delicious!
Breakfast was done in time for me to do other little medical tasks that are part of my lifetime routine now, and I started a load of laundry, with ... extra Oxi-Clean... If it's good enough for crime scenes it is good enough for my towels and wardrobe.
Our friend Jessica dropped by for lunch, thoughtfully bringing Jamba Juice drinks for all of us. I let mine get a little melty and then slurped down the purée of berries and fruit. Yum. Probably a lot of sugar but my body seems to want some of that right now.
We chatted about yard projects, life, and another friend's coming out story, which had me in tears again. I leak so easily these days, it seems. There were some familiar notes in her story, as individual to her as it was, and the emotional notes and associations struck home again.
So many of us still live our lives in hiding, out of fear of loss, fear of personal safety, fear of job and family loss and rejection. It is a terrible thing that we do to ourselves, out of not wanting to make others slightly uncomfortable with our existence, and fearing the violence of retaliation against our existence.
In reading about 12 year old Maddie in Oklahoma, I find it even more terrible what others would do to us, or to small children, out of their own fear of being slightly uncomfortable. It is sad to realize that my society, this so-called 'land of the free', has a side of it's own culture that teaches others to fear those slightly different from an artificial idealized normal, and inculcates hatred toward others for daring to not match this idealized normal.
There are microaggressions built into everyday cultural interactions. Both myself and a friend were misgendered this week while in the hospital specifically for surgeries related to our transitions, in spite of our having all our medical records up to date with names and gender identification. Oh, it's easily corrected with each individual we encounter, yet still, each misgendering is a hammer blow driving home that we have once again failed to be recognized as who we are, but are instead being put back in that cultural box people are more comfortable confining us within.
Meanwhile, we are negotiating daily life as Laurie and the Mummy Girl. Perhaps tomorrow I'll try shambling to the grocery store and grunting incomprehensibly at the clerk. My Middle Egyptian is poor, but I do not think it will matter all that much.
At my follow up on September 7, I expect to have the staples and non-dissolving stitches removed on schedule. Healing is progressing about as expected.
Me, day 4 post-op. The changes in bruising about the eyes and swelling are visible.
Me, day 2 post-op. Bruising and swelling were at about the worst.
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