Cool about the lip lift. Yeah prob good to wait.

I wouldn't mind a lip lift but due to my bigger teeth and overbite, I already show teeth so it would make me look way too toothy.

Tomorrow it will be 4 weeks, one month mark post-op.

I removed the internal nose sutures myself, because my nostrils became too much swollen and inflamed risking tight scars. The sutures were supposed to fall out, but sometimes they refuse. Was easy to do with sterile equipment. They came out easy as well, as the body already started to work them out. I had to remove them, because they dried up each day and possibly making ugly scars. I don't recommend you do this yourself, but I did. I have some experience. Even with my SRS I debrided some dead tissue myself with a scalpel, so I am very comfortable with that. Did I mention that I always wanted to be a surgeon? I have the motor skills, not the training. Fate dragged and raised me into a home of poverty, so getting a medical degree was utopia...

Nose is getting much better now the internal sutures are gone. I still have a runny nose when I go from a hot to a cold room and the other way around. I can blow my nose with ease, but I do not force it. Much of the healing is steady, and nothing is remarkable. My forehead is somewhat sensitive again, but the closer to the scar the less I feel. Top of my head is numb, although some patches are getting back. It still feels as if I am wearing a baseball cap.

What remains is exhaustion... very tired at times, and I sleep 9-12 hours on end. Much healing is done in REM sleep, so that is a good sign actually.

It is cold right now, sub zero. Ice and stuff. And when outside, my forehead doesn't like it. I need to wear something to cover it, because my head feels very heavy when I walk outside. Last few days I spent inside. Did not want to go outside, just tired.

Getting ready for the day takes longer than usual:

- washing hair is still problematic, it's not easy. Have to be careful not to pull.
- salt water mouth flushing
- cleaning my nose each day, takes at least 15 minutes.
- gently cleaning my face.
- applying vaseline to scars before sleeping.

Everything goes a bit slower than I've used to.

Also still a bit of mental fog...

Oh, and did I mention this:

When my sense of smell came back, it was both a blessing and a curse. I smelled the smell of dog food for a couple of days... turns out, the smell was inside my nose.  ...And thus the nose cleaning routine commenseth...

  :

xx

Today is 4 weeks, one month mark.

Before going to bed last night, I noticed a little bit of blood along my hairline in a tiny spot. Apparently, the skin came a bit loose. After applying Vaseline and going to bed, it healed when I woke up today. So, even after 4 weeks I have to be very careful with the hairline. It's something minor, but still...

Everything is fine. I do get annoyed by the forehead sometimes... I start to think: heal will ya? what's taking this so long...? get over it!  it happens when I feel stressed and panicky.

I can feel my forehead again, but about 1 inch from and around the hairline it's completely numb. The surgeon could remove sutures and staples and I did not feel a thing. (good I guess...)

Last night, I slept on my side and my head started to hurt.... what odd, I thought. Well, sensation is starting to come back on top of my head and the sides. But with sensation also comes pain! slowly I feel the numbness is pulling away towards the hairline. But's very slow.

Ok, I made a picture just before I prepared to go to sleep. 

The picture will last only for a day. It will 007  self destruct after 24 hours. I am very shy... sorry.

So here I am: https://unsee.cc/temapiro/

Nothing fancy, just a very bad attempt at photographing my new profile in my bathroom.

I am very happy with the result. But I could use the lip lift. Which is planned for January.

What a gorgeous pic 2Cherry. You look so feminine: fabulous fabulous, honey xx

Quote from: Rachel Richenda on December 07, 2016, 05:48:42 PM
What a gorgeous pic 2Cherry. You look so feminine: fabulous fabulous, honey xx

Thanks!   

Another day... another rant.

So far the healing is going well. The exhaustion is still there. Especially today. There are moments where I am thinking: "was it worth it?" but then I look at the before and after pictures, and I smile. Yes it was worth it. But the price is high, especially in recovery. FFS is no joke, it can be brutal. Emotionally as well as physically. To me, SRS seems like a joke now. FFS is surgery on your face. Your skull. Your head. They literally are sawing into your skull, and burring bone away with tools. The movie SAW is a fairytale, compared what FFS will do. (especially if you do full FFS like I did) It is something to think very carefully about. Are you ready? ...truly ready? This ain't no joke. It will put you in your place. It's humbling! That much is true...

The aftermath isn't fun either. My forehead is still numb, and that is annoying. It's gets old after a while, and you wonder: will it ever feel normal again? a mouth full of stitches is also something that heals very slow. Ever had you wisdom tooth pulled? well, multiply that times ten and then you get an idea of what it feels like when they saw your chin, jaw and cheekbones in half and stitch it all up.

It gets better each day, but there are moments that everything seems depressed... this is one of those days.

Maybe because the holiday season is here, and I am all alone.... another year gone, alone. A new face, but my heart is still the same.

I can so identify with that and I didn't have half the sawing procedures some do. I was also incredibly lucky that a close friend just decided on the spur of the moment to fly out to be with me for a week. She returned yesterday which was hard.

FFS really isn't a joke. I'm off for my one week checkup shortly. I know Dr Sutin has done an incredible job but that doesn't alter the fact that the procedures leave you mauled, and as you say both physically and emotionally.

Hold on in there hon. You look fab.

xx

Quote from: 2cherry on December 04, 2016, 07:03:30 AM
Something like that! 

A few thoughts...

In January I will have the lip lift, which the surgeon didn't do yet. He wanted to wait, and I am glad he did.

Snap. It's the one thing I didn't have done on my wish list but Dr Sutin was pretty firm that doing a lip lift at the same time as nose work can produce 'wonky results.' It's better to let the nose heal and settle, then do the lip. I respect a surgeon who sometimes says, 'no' or 'not yet.'

Oh boo, I'm gone for a day and I miss the pictures.

I'll say it again -- for me it was at two months that everything finally started to click.  Not just the visual results, either, which were apparent earlier.  But that's when I started getting the sense that I was healed, not a hundred percent, but rather enough.  That's when I started feeling like my face was mine, and it was working the way I wanted it to work, when enough stiffness was gone.  And that's when I really started to feel my energy and mood return.  At about three to four months, I pretty much felt "normal." 

At five months out, I was ready for minor revisions -- a little more burring of the jawline, just for symmetry, and scar revision, all under twilight sleep, not major anesthesia. That only took about 3 weeks of recovery to get back to where I was before. 

All this to say, not only is facial surgery incredibly brutal and draining and profound (and expensive), but it's also very time-consuming, especially when you get the whole wax.

Quote from: 2cherry on December 08, 2016, 06:13:09 PM
Another day... another rant.

So far the healing is going well. The exhaustion is still there. Especially today. There are moments where I am thinking: "was it worth it?" but then I look at the before and after pictures, and I smile. Yes it was worth it. But the price is high, especially in recovery. FFS is no joke, it can be brutal. Emotionally as well as physically. To me, SRS seems like a joke now. FFS is surgery on your face. Your skull. Your head. They literally are sawing into your skull, and burring bone away with tools. The movie SAW is a fairytale, compared what FFS will do. (especially if you do full FFS like I did) It is something to think very carefully about. Are you ready? ...truly ready? This ain't no joke. It will put you in your place. It's humbling! That much is true...

The aftermath isn't fun either. My forehead is still numb, and that is annoying. It's gets old after a while, and you wonder: will it ever feel normal again? a mouth full of stitches is also something that heals very slow. Ever had you wisdom tooth pulled? well, multiply that times ten and then you get an idea of what it feels like when they saw your chin, jaw and cheekbones in half and stitch it all up.

It gets better each day, but there are moments that everything seems depressed... this is one of those days.

Maybe because the holiday season is here, and I am all alone.... another year gone, alone. A new face, but my heart is still the same.

Hang in there, sweetie. I can totally relate to what you said. FFS is brutally painful, at least it can be if you have a lot of things done at once, which I know you did. 

I am almost three months post-op, and right now the worst part is the healing of the nerves.  The shooting pains in my forehead, orbital bones, ears, and jaw, and the electric sensations in an otherwise numb forehead. How is it possible that something can be numb and hurt at the same time???  In a weird paradox, I can really feel the numbness in the parts of my face where the nerves haven't fully recovered. I guess my brain is desperately searching for input from those areas because nearby nerves are now working.

Yes, the mouth sutures were really bothersome!  Thank goodness, they have finally resorbed. I can even open my jaw enough to floss normally now. The next problem is I have sutures surfacing near my nostrils where I had the lip lift.  I thought I was done with that! Apparently not.

I'm glad you think FFS was worse than SRS, because I have that scheduled next, and I am not looking forward to another extended session of pain and recovery. 

My best wishes for a speedy recovery, 2cherry. My thoughts are with you.

With kindness,

Terri

Thank you so much... I really appreciate it. I had a very bad day yesterday.

Today I slept a bit longer, I listened to my body. My body wanted sleep, and I let it...  Today I slept 12 hours (waking up in between) and I really needed it. right now I feel very good again. So listening to my body is the right thing to do.

I uploaded my picture for another day: https://unsee.cc/siropabu/

In time, I think I will post a before and after post. But only when I am fully healed. My nose, chin and jaw are still swollen much.

You are gorgeous 2Cherry. What you said about listening to the body? It's so true isn't it? After this flight I'm going to take it mega easy.

Hang on in there honey. You're an inspiration to me and many others and you look fab

xx

Quote from: 2cherry on December 09, 2016, 10:48:50 AM
In time, I think I will post a before and after post. But only when I am fully healed. My nose, chin and jaw are still swollen much.

You are smart. I posted a 1 month FFS B&A on another forum and a bunch of people were freaking out that the changes weren't dramatic enough. Reassuring them that my face was going to be better once it healed was a strange exercise.

Quote from: Rachel Richenda on December 09, 2016, 03:13:27 PM
You are gorgeous 2Cherry. What you said about listening to the body? It's so true isn't it? After this flight I'm going to take it mega easy.

Hang on in there honey. You're an inspiration to me and many others and you look fab

xx

Thanks  <3

I notice that I heal a lot when asleep. Just before I fall asleep I feel these shooting little pains on my head increasing in number. Sometimes they feel funny, and tingly in a nice way... at other times it feels as if a bug is biting my head. So a mixed bag, really.

The forehead now feels as if I have a warm washcloth laying on my forehead. Feels soft and nice... other times it feels tight. Especially in the first two weeks, that tightness of the forehead was something! now it's more flexible, and even moves again when I raise my eyebrows. So it's slowly healing. 

2cherry, that looks like a wonderful result, especially given that you were the first trans woman the surgeon worked on.  Simply amazing!

By the way, you and I were both born in the same year and had FFS the same year, haha!  Although I went to Dr Zukowski for my FFS, and you transitioned years before I did. 

Quote from: EmilyMK03 on December 09, 2016, 06:05:24 PM
2cherry, that looks like a wonderful result, especially given that you were the first trans woman the surgeon worked on.  Simply amazing!

By the way, you and I were both born in the same year and had FFS the same year, haha!  Although I went to Dr Zukowski for my FFS, and you transitioned years before I did. 

Thanks!

Yes, I queried my surgeon about this. But he does operate on cancer patients a lot. People with cancer on the forehead, and he basically accesses the same area.

He's a maxillofacial surgeon, so he has 15+ years of study and training before he was ever allowed to operate on a face. These people are the highest skilled surgeons, because of their long training. They are also dentists and plastic surgeons. They can reconstruct complete faces from injury, illness and in my case feminize a face.

He also told me that he just follows well established procedures. Step by step. There is no guess work.

He has access to all this material, and we don't.  Here is a good example of a step by step procedure But be very careful in viewing this page. It shows step by step how to operate on the forehead and is extremely graphic, with fullscreen intraop photo's.

Personally, I like to look at these photo's so that I can process what has happened. But sometimes it's too much. Can't imagine seeing this in real life. But seeing this, makes me appreciate how difficult it is. And how much I respect my surgeon. 

Quote from: 2cherry on December 09, 2016, 04:38:38 PM
Just before I fall asleep I feel these shooting little pains on my head increasing in number. Sometimes they feel funny, and tingly in a nice way... at other times it feels as if a bug is biting my head. So a mixed bag, really.

Yes!  The sensations are the worst when I lay down to go to sleep!  It's not so much painful as extremely annoying.

~Terri