Quote from: Karen on August 29, 2009, 02:12:46 PM
What did I lose?

Two atrophied testicles.  A hundred or so grams of corpus cavernosum.  Some fatty tissue.  About half the length of urethra my surgeon dissected and exposed.

All the rest was repositioned with a level of skill and artistry, attempting to preserve as much of the nerve connections as possible.  The tissues were repositioned to where they would have been if my body had not taken the male detour at 8 weeks gestation.

In it's new position, the tissue changed, and became mucosal (I've heard,  "You're so WET, Karen!", almost every time I've been intimate  )  I like to think they are remembering what they should have been, had it not been for that detour.

I'm satisfied with the way I am now.  I joke about leaving a couple of pieces of me in Bangkok (and smaller bits in Scottsdale  ), and picking up two pints of saline.

Going from almost-a-B to solid C-cup was surprisingly uneventful, because I feel right and proper with the modification.  Sometimes I marvel at how I DON'T think about it.

I don't marvel at all over the whole transition thing, now that gender transition is behind me and I'm back to the lifelong transition we call living.  Actually, like what I said above, I do marvel at how mundane it is now that it's over, and how I don't even give it a thought.

For me, it just is what it is.

Karen

wow, the change to musocal tissue is really interesting... i wonder how that works, i guess it's kind of like what happens to a circumscised glans but in reverse.

For the longest time, Like from my teens, back with nixon was Pres., I had tried to find a way to hide the OEM parts.  Darn thing really did not want to be an inny.  Darn disturbing and more of a What's THAT doing there.  If I could have traded parts I would have.  Of course now that the Good Doctor has made the offending parts inny's all is right in the world.  OK My world anyway.

The presence of what I had between my legs was.  Like it's been said, I don't know how I survived living in that condition for too bloody long.

QuoteI will never thank Marci & the staff at Mt. San Rafael Hospital enough for giving me my life back.

I could have said that myself.

Quote from: DawnL on August 27, 2009, 02:57:38 PM
The presence of that thing was far more disturbing than the thought that I did not have a vagina then.  My feeling was I had to get rid of that thing first and foremost and if I ended up with a vagina, that was a bonus.  Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy that I have a vagina but if I had to, I could have lived without it.  I couldn't have lived the other way.

what she said. i'm happy it's goooooooone thanks to marci too. 

I am more disturbed at the presence of D-cup breasts that are blasted difficult to bind down, than I am at the absence of a 'magic wand' that I can easily simulate with a homemade packer.

It's strange: When I'm looking around me, I get the feeling I have incredible pecs, but then I look down and see two wads of fat in a hammock instead.   Carrying around a packer, whether my chest is bound or not, considerably balances me out. I no longer feel so top heavy, as it were. 

I'd say that my lack of a penis is far more disturbing to me than the fat-and-breast-tissue presences on the chest (but then, I'm what a cisgirl might optimistically call "a small B"). I admit that I have fully bought into society's phalliccentrism, and I do want a penis quite badly. Given the choice, I'd gladly keep my breasts (so long as I could still bind them) in exchange for a fully-functioning penis (even without testicles). Fortunately, I do have other non-phallic-centered activities with which to spend my time and money for the next 12 years or so. After that, I'm going to take a hard look at my options, save up my money, and choose the best technique out there that constructs a penis of reasonable size and function (I could live with pumping a decent-looking, sexually-sensate, urinarily-functional phallo. I couldn't live with paying for a 1-inch metodioplasty that could get an erection but couldn't do much with it when "playing doubles", so to speak). There's only so long an FTM can wait for "a better surgery to come out" before the realization may come that it might not happen in this lifetime. I anticipate that since so few FTMs get bottom surgery, bottom surgery will not substantially improve in the next 20 years, and I don't want to wait until I'm 40 to have boring, heteronormative, run-of-the-mill vaginal sex.

*Note: I meant no offense to those who enjoy vaginal sex. My adjectives were merely ironic. I am greatly in favor of vaginal sex. If anyone has questions or concerns about my position on vaginal sex, feel free to contact me. We can talk about them together.

*Note to the note: Yes, I was poking fun at those on the Internet who get up-in-arms over ridiculously minor things. No, I was not propositioning the good people of Susan's. 

Presence of overly-wide and inefficient hips bothers me the most. The red death is second. Height loss is third. Lack of rib cage and shoulder size is fourth. Lack of a penis is fifth. Tits are sixth, and vag and internal organs are last.

Visible presence is definitely more disturbing because not only is it how people classify you but it also is a large part of how many people view themselves. What's in the mirror. But I'll live with most all of it if I can get closer to normal and be done with this uncomfortable femininity. I'm not going to lie, what's on the outside matters but it's not the only thing that matters in life.

SilverFang