Tay - mate bad luck with the haematoma.. I had that with my chest surgery and had to go back to theatre after a day so I know how frustrating that is. Hope you're now on the road to recovery! Tough to tell about your changes too.. Will just have to see if I experience any sort of surge. I would imagine my levels are now higher as the T doesn't have anything to override - I'm hoping my facial hair will fill in some more!
mm - thanks mate! I will have been on T 3 years next month

I have a horizontal incision about 30cm across my abdomen (hip to hip). I actually was supposed to have it done lapriscopically (with the smaller incisions) however on examination of me once I was asleep on the table and reviews of the scans the surgeon said it wasn't possible so it was done abdominally.
Recovery so far has been good. I had a morphine button when I woke up. But it didn't really touch the pain I had across my belly so they gave me a lot of extra morphine which in turn made me intensely nauseous. So I spent the first 10hrs in pain thinking I was going to spew every time I moved my head!! And anything they gave me to stop feeling sick didn't work either. It was absolutely horrible, wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. But after I got a little sleep (with a tablet!) the next morning I only had minimal pain at the incision site and no nausea (thankfully!). Day 2 I was just on oral pain meds..
Apologies for TMI but I don't believe in sugar coating.. It took til about night 2 to be able to fart and the wind pain was intense but intermittent. And it took about 4/5 days to get the ole back passage to open up if you know what I mean - and again waiting for that was a little painful but intermittent. They really don't want you to "bear down" for risk of herniation or dehiscing the incision so I really didn't push it... After about day 3 I have just been on panadol and brufen. Am still taking both but now not as regimented and only when I need it. Moving around and walking etc is slow but not too bad. The most painful things are sneezing (excruciating!), coughing and sudden movements. As for bleeding I had some minor loss the night I had surgery, then a couple of days of spotting but as of today (day 6) I have had nothing.
Any other questions mate just ask. I am so glad it's done - was something I really wanted. I didn't know how I would have coped if I had experienced another period after starting T - think it would have been completely incapacitating and traumatic to be honest! And well I've never has any sort of checks down there so I was getting anxious at almost 30 that something could be wrong and I wouldn't know. The worst part was actually acknowledging that those parts of my body existed and dealing with the finality of removing ANY chance in the current world to have genetically linked offspring.