Hello.

I am preparing for my MTF GCS in July. My surgery date is nearly two months away! How exciting! I have some questions for you post op individuals out there. 

My wife and I will be driving from southern Ohio to Austin Texas for my GCS. I will have 3 post op checkups with my surgeon, and then we will drive back to Ohio. My post op checkups are a week apart, giving me about 3 and a half weeks of healing time before we start to drive home.

My question is: how uncomfortable will the car ride home be? We expect that I will be on strong pain meds and that I will not be able to do any driving so soon after my surgery. With that in mind, we are trying to figure out how we will get me home. My wife says she will do all of the driving coming back and that I should lay down in the back of our Subaru. She thinks I will not be able to tolerate the passenger seat because I will be too uncomfortable.

We were looking at some blow up mattresses to put in the back of the Subi that would turn the hatch into a bed. If we decide to turn the hatch into a bed, we will need to put all of our luggage onto the top of the car in a travel hatch. Which means we will end up spending about $500 on just the blow up bed, and the travel hatch.

I don't really want to spend the money on those things when I believe I will be okay to sit or lay down in the front passenger seat. The drive home will take us about 3 days I think.

I came here to this section of the forums because I figured some of you may have traveled long distances for your surgeries, and have experience with pain levels while sitting or laying down.

Is there any advice that can be given about traveling soon after MTF GCS?

My wife and I drove home to Missouri from Montreal, Quebec 10 days after my GRS.  We have a full size, 4 door pickup truck and I thought I would lie down in the back seat on the way home.  Nope, I just took hydrocodone and rode it out in the front seat (she drove the whole way!).  It was uncomfortable at times, but not unbearable.  I laid the seat back a few times to sleep, and we spent one night in a hotel half way home in Ohio.  Not bad, to be honest. 

They gave me an inflatable donut that I was supposed to sit on in recovery, and on the way home.  It helped only a little, for me.  I would just slouch and sit on my tailbone and rarely used the donut.  I would put my feet up on the dash, sit on one leg, etc., to just not be sitting on my hoohaa all the time.

I spent about 10 hours driving home eight days after GRS in Canada (that includes breaks, though - it'd be about five hours straight through). I was easily able to sit up in the passenger seat, and I actually drove short legs of the trip, about 30 minutes at a time followed by 2 hours or so of resting. It wasn't fun, but I was fine; I had stopped taking heavy-duty painkillers by the third day post-op, so I was only on Tylenol by then.

The biggest problem was that I had an as-yet-undiagnosed allergic reaction to the Celebrex, so I was unbelievably itchy all over! The actual pain was minimal.

Everyone is different, but I'd say it's reasonable to expect that you'd be off the serious meds and able to lie down without a mattress by 3.5 weeks post-op. (At three weeks and five days post-op, I went back to work full-time, including driving myself there and back. I had some discomfort, and I tired easily, but it was doable.)

If at all possible, I'd recommend that you budget that $500 for overnight stays in motels instead; that way, if you don't need to stop, you haven't spent the money, and if you do, you're going to be "buying" a bed and resting experience that's much nicer than a mattress in the back seat.

I used no pain medication after surgery and returned to work about two and a half weeks after surgery. Driving and sitting would get a little uncomfortable and the donut was a love/hate affair. You would sit with it for a while then start getting uncomfortable then you would sit without it then get uncomfortable. If you can recline the seat, you can probably be comfortable in the passenger seat but I suspect you might only be comfortable driving for an hour or two before taking a break. You may still find yourself needing between 10 and 12 hours of sleep a day which when combined with dilating and driving will make a pretty tight schedule. I would plan on about 8 hours a day traveling at the most but plan on your wife doing at least half that time. I would expect by then you could get along with no pain killer or over the counter pain medication so your head should be clear enough to drive as long as you get sufficient rest. One thing that might help is get about 2 or 3 firm foam pillows that you can place under your body when reclining to take the pressure off your bottom if you need it.