I'm hoping this will be useful to someone! Here are some photo's of the progress of my arm healing after RAP

1 Week. Doesn't look as bad as I expected it to. Quite purple and looks extremely fragile!! Doesn't hurt though. Every now and then it would twinge, or feel like it was hot/burning. But those feelings only lasted a few seconds and soon passed. There was often a feeling of pins and needles type feeling, kind of like the feeling you get before the pins and needles feeling, like the moment your nerves spaz out before all the blood rushes to the area. Kinda difficult to describe lol



2 week. Looking like Frankenstein creation!!! :O



3 week. You can actually start to see some skin colouration coming through





4 weeks. More skin colour





5 weeks. The bandages came off this week, and this is where we're currently at. This was Friday, it's now Tuesday. Since this quite a bit of the scabs have naturally come off and the stitches shed themselves pretty much everywhere :-/ lol I can wash it in the shower at this stage which feels amazing!! CLEEEEAAAANNNN!!!! I have one small section that Sara has ordered me to cover in this iodine bandage stuff and change everyday, it looks a bit nasty (you cant see it in the pics). Hopefully that should heal by the end of the week. The skin feels hot, and there's no sensation on the skin surface, but I can feel it horribly if I knock it or rest it on something, just feels like pressing on a bruise. Again, very little pain. It hurts (more like aches) when I use it, but I try to do that regularly to get movement back. It's hard, but it gets easier a little each day





5.5 weeks. Just wanted to show you the hairs on the new skin already trying to grow under the scabs! I hope the hairs don't look too much like pubes when they're grown more :-/

Ouch man, that looks like it stings but it's healing pretty well so far! Thanks for sharing, phallo info can be hard to come by sometimes.  Congrats on your op by the way.

I'm glad you find it interesting! I might post an update here weekly

Wow, this is really fascinating.  Thanks so much for posting this.  If you have a blog somewhere, you really should post these pics to it.  It would be appreciated by a lot of people, I bet.  Yes, it would be great if you kept posting updates every week, or anytime their is a big change.

Thanks

So here I have two photo's of my arm at 6 weeks. Most of the scabs have come off by now, still a few stubborn ones and i'm still trying to refrain from picking the small ones off lol. I spent most of yesterday with my arm in a compression bandage while at work for the first time and it's flattened it down a load! I'll try and post some pictures this weekend to show that and you should then see the difference My hand is still quite swollen, it went down loads until I used the bandage yesterday so that's not helping at all with that. And there's still no sensation on the skins surface yet. Although I do want to mention something weird, my fingertips on that hand do seem to be extra sensitive, it's weird. What feels like a smooth surface with my right hand, feels rough with my left hand! And temps are really extreme too with my left hand... WEIRD!!

It's healing really well man. Thank you for sharing this, it's valuable to so many of us.

I'm really impressed with and jealous of the colour of the skin on your left arm! Mines a sort of red purple colour with a few ridges in

You guys are so fudging strong! Looks like you are healing fantastically and hope you are feeling great as well. Really cool of you to post these, I'm sure it will help some members looking into surgery. 

Did you get a full or split thickness to cover it? Yours looks quite a bit better than mine even after a year but i do also have the tendency to scar horribly.

OMG!! That is what you guys have to go through? Respect totally earned! I am in awe of your strength and perseverance! 

Quote from: Jessica Merriman on September 26, 2014, 02:39:17 AM
OMG!! That is what you guys have to go through? Respect totally earned! I am in awe of your strength and perseverance! 

Seconded by me....!  For both genders, getting ourselves fixed is hard work!!

I would be so taking advantage of that come Halloween! Props for what you've gone through. I would say bravely, but I know what I'm willing to go through and would bet it's absolute necessity, not bravery.

Quote from: yaka on September 24, 2014, 05:33:00 AM
It's healing really well man. Thank you for sharing this, it's valuable to so many of us.

I'm really glad my posts are helpful and useful!

Quote from: Al James on September 25, 2014, 09:45:01 PM
I'm really impressed with and jealous of the colour of the skin on your left arm! Mines a sort of red purple colour with a few ridges in

I worried so much about how it was going to heal and look! But I've always been a really good healer, I suppose this has really come into play here. I took a pic to show Sara the bit that's not healed as well so I'll post that up over the weekend. It's slow to heal, but I can already see the area that's affected has shrank the past two weeks. I like how the scarred skin feels, I don't know why, think I'm just weird lol

Quote from: mangoslayer on September 26, 2014, 02:34:23 AM
Did you get a full or split thickness to cover it? Yours looks quite a bit better than mine even after a year but i do also have the tendency to scar horribly.

Full thickness taken from my buttocks! I don't know what a split thickness would look like tbh, or how different it would be.

Quote from: Dee Walker on September 26, 2014, 09:28:15 AM
I would be so taking advantage of that come Halloween! Props for what you've gone through. I would say bravely, but I know what I'm willing to go through and would bet it's absolute necessity, not bravery.

You know I didn't even think about the consequences as much as I did the ultimate goal. So you're right, there's no bravery in this, it's necessity. Whatever it takes to fix the issues!

I'll be posting some updated photos this weekend! it'll also be good to see other people's arm photos if you have any and are willing to share too! Might be good to have something to compare to

Remind me how to post a photo and I will glady put a pic of my arm up

Even more incentive in not getting bottom surgery. Great information, I think I made my decision now.

Wow you're healing so fast and everything is looking great! Thanks for sharing dude!

Wow, I couldn't even get past the first photo. You're really brave. It's so sad that you need a part of your body to make a penis. I wish that the surgeons could use the removed breasts or some other material.

These are from 10 months post op but it doesnt look too different so i dont feel like taking new ones. (and cant figure out to upload photos straight on here so heres links.
http://33.media.tumblr.com/c17244ba7a112ccda27cc0ad9999153f/tumblr_n4g4n723351saclfyo3_400.jpg
http://38.media.tumblr.com/7ee2417f0b27bc6475f54d8c17e295f4/tumblr_n4g4n723351saclfyo1_250.jpg

i had split thickness, so there's more of an indent and it's more adhered to the muscle. Good think I didn't get the graft from my butt, or i'd have a very hairy arm.

Good looking to me, mangoslayer.  How is the use of the arm now? flexibility? strength? etc.

Quote from: Al James on September 26, 2014, 07:42:33 PM
Remind me how to post a photo and I will glady put a pic of my arm up

I use photobucket, but there's many more photo uploading sites. Once on there all you ned is the img link (or html link and put inbetween  brackets

Quote from: mangoslayer on September 30, 2014, 12:43:55 PM
These are from 10 months post op but it doesnt look too different so i dont feel like taking new ones. (and cant figure out to upload photos straight on here so heres links.
http://33.media.tumblr.com/c17244ba7a112ccda27cc0ad9999153f/tumblr_n4g4n723351saclfyo3_400.jpg
http://38.media.tumblr.com/7ee2417f0b27bc6475f54d8c17e295f4/tumblr_n4g4n723351saclfyo1_250.jpg

i had split thickness, so there's more of an indent and it's more adhered to the muscle. Good think I didn't get the graft from my butt, or i'd have a very hairy arm.

That looks really good, Mango, nicely healed I can see now what you mean about the difference between split and full thickness though. I can see hairs coming through on my arm and at minute they're matching the rest of my arm hair, but they do look like they have the potential to be thicker :/ oh-oh!!

Anyways, sorry it's a little late, but here's this weeks update! These were taken last Thursday night. I've included the a pic of the part that's stubborn with it's healing. Although the past week it has shrunk in size considerably so it's finally looking like it's getting somewhere. It looks a bit gunky, but I don't know how to clean it properly yet, I find it hard to get off the dried up skin bits around it. Feel like I should wait until it's properly healed before I can get rid of that gunk. It also bleeds on occasion which is weird.







The skin sensation is still the same as a week ago... a small patch tingles when I touch it, but nothing more than that. The swelling is now starting to actually go down in my hand (Finally!!) For the past week it has only been going down slightly after I've taken my bandage off when ive been at home for about a day. But when I go to work and wearing the bandage to cover it up for up to 12hrs a day, the swelling came back and I felt like I was getting no where! But today the swelling has stayed down. Hope it stays that way! Some skin on back of my hand and back of my thumb is still numb. No sign at all of that numbness going away. I can almost do a firm fist though now with that hand, but the wrist is still very stiff. But it does get better a little bit each day!