Susan's Place Transgender Resources

So, I'm not a complete stranger to pain but I admit, I have a lifelong fear of it.  But I think if I know what kind of pain to expect, I might be a little less anxious.

So far in my life, I have experienced several conditions that were probably the most painful things I've had to deal with.

Once when I was 13, I fell off an office chair hard onto a stone floor and probably broke my tailbone.  For a moment I was unable to move my legs, then I was able to get to my feet and hobble home in terrible pain.

When I was 16, I developed a varicose vein in my left testicle that caused me to have swelling, severe pain, and even a fainting spell by the time I was 20.  It's still there and part of the reason I have a strong hatred for my testicles.

Once when I was 19, I fell and bit my tongue hard enough that I needed stitches.  I was able to weather the stitches just knowing that at least the awful gash in my tongue (which hurt like hell) was being fixed.  I still have a slight lump and a slight scar at the site of that inury.

And since my teens, I've suffered from kidney stones.  The worst batch hit when I began spironolactone after building up some large ones in 2011-2012 due to stress.  The spiro caused me to cycle water faster and these stuck stones began to shift.  They were too small to warrant surgery or ultrasound so the doctor said I had to void them naturally.  The result of this tormented me for more than a year and was a three-pronged stone caltrop followed by an 11mm long stalactite that caused me to bleed profusely and left my insides tender for months after I'd voided them, not to mention the severe flank pain, nausea, missed school days, loss of livelihood, and stomach upsets that came with it.

Which of those levels of pain should I expect when I get my SRS?  At this point I'm willing to brave any but the last of these especially if it will go away within a couple months.  If it's more like the level I had with that bloody pitchfork I passed last year, I'll have to really think hard about this.

I've heard that because it is all soft tissue it isn't the worst kind of pain you'll experience (I'm slotting electrolysis directly under the nostril in that category). So maybe like biting your tongue, not that I have a reference for either experience. They will give you pain killers I imagine.

I've had kidney stones, electrolysis, laser skin treatments, and a herniated disk that sent burning pain through my arm for several weeks. The most painful thing I've felt is urinary catheterization after GI track surgery a few years back.

My SRS was mild compared to all of those. The most discomfort came from muscle aches because I had to lie on my back for a couple days after.

The most painful thing I've ever felt was when I broke my ankle as a teenager; I passed out from the pain, and almost vomited when I regained consciousness. If  that's a 10 on my personal pain scale (and that *is* actually how I judged it when the nurses asked at the time), then GRS was a maximum of a 4 and that was on day one. By the second day it was a 2 or 3 depending on how far I was from the last pain meds, and that was quite tolerable. I'd say that after the first few hours, even the tongue injury you had was worse than the pain I experienced.

Of course, this is partly because it was well-controlled pain; I never found out what it was like without the drugs, and I was fine with that. On the meds, I was basically too sleepy to notice much on day 1 anyway, and after that I was uncomfortable more than truly in pain. I switched from opiates to Tylenol around day 3 and that was it. (I did technically have bladder spasms from the catheter that put me on Oxycontin for a couple of days later in the healing process, but the surgical site pain was dealt with adequately by Tylenol before that. Now, the bladder spasms were about an 8 on the pain scale, but that was for the few hours before I broke down and reported it and got treatment, which helped immediately.)