@tgirlamg Thank you! It was scary for sure!
Update:
I did indeed drive into Philly yesterday, a packet of anticoagulant powder on the seat next to me. Since I'm on blood thinners, it could be hard to stop the bleeding if I got a decent cut. I drove carefully because of that and also because of the accumulated fatigue from meds, pain and poor sleep.
The woman who pulled the stuff out of my head was very sweet. She had to pull hard to get the ~14" drain tube out from
beneath my scalp! It's not something I ever want to experience again. Getting the staples and sutures pulled after that was comparatively a breeze. The whole thing was a massive relief. I still had lots of soreness but the acute pressure and sting was finally gone.
I rewarded myself with some pad thai at the mall on the way home, sitting there in the food with dark glasses on to cover the remaining bruises in that area and a hair band across my forehead incision (hereafter to be referred to as "incision"). I had to take my pink face mask off to eat, unfortunately. I was sitting there, as a woman, with a new face, in fairly modest clothes (a men's cut button-down shirt that revealed a bit of shape and a comfortable pair of women's jeans. No one seemed to notice or bother with me and a I felt a little less self-conscious than before the surgery. Simply put, I do look much more female from the bridge of my nose up.
But the next stop blew my mind. I stopped at one of my favorite grocery stores. This one is interesting because there seems to be at least 3 LGBTQIA+ people employed there. This is in a deeply conservative part of my state. In my pink mask, I made eye contact with an AMAB person there who appears to be transitioning. As she handed me the sack of fried chicken (for my wife) she said "have a nice day" with the slightest lift in her voice. This is a person that usually appears pretty withdrawn. I think she "saw" me and felt a connection. I hope that happens again.
Here's where it gets interesting: walking out of the grocery store, still wearing the mask over my swollen, bruised chin, sunglasses hanging in the vee of my top, I notice a young man walking toward me, toward the entrance as I'm walking out. He slows down slightly but he's taking up most of the walking space. I slow down a bit and move to the right, near the cart corral. He walks past me and smiles at me.
For the briefest moment, I didn't know what to make of that. Why did he smile? Then I realized: he was checking me out and slowed down a bit to do so, then smiled a bit to make a connection. The tall person who was walking toward him was a tall woman with a slim figure. That woman was me. THAT has never happened before.
WowIt wasn't until I got home and showered a bit later that I was able to get a look at the incision and I have say that I'm very pleased. It's very clean and very very flat and very close to my hairline, going into the hairs at some points. It continues horizontally about 3" inches into the sides of my head and down a bit. I don't know how he was able to do that. It's lovely. I'm sure he was extremely careful but I'm going to be mindful of the possibility that some hairs could be buried now beneath my scalp and would behave as ingrown ones.
I'm wanting to get to the Keystone Conference more and more as the healing progresses.
