I'm now 6 weeks post-op and I felt it was high time I posted an update because it's been about 2.5 weeks since my last update. To bring you up to speed, everything is good overall but I did have a little infection for a little while there. Which is a big part of why I didn't update. If you read my last post I was all ready really frustrated with healing and then I got the infection and was REALLY fed up with healing. lol So I didn't want to make a post of me just complaining about everything. I was confident I would get through it eventually but boy I was feeling negative about everything so I figured I'd write about it once I had a hold on things. And then I went back to work a week ago and got kind of busy with that. lol But now that you're up to date let me elaborate on my infection and how I'm healing so far.
The Infection
In hindsight it wasn't really that bad. In the moment it was scary but I never had a fever. I never felt physically ill. Basically what happened, there seems to be an increase in swelling in the penis and the penis felt particularly sensitive all of a sudden. At times the sensitivity was to the point of being painful. I wasn't too concerned and attributed it to not taking the Ibuprofen anymore. But then, puss started coming out. lol Yes, very gross. It wasn't any crazy colors or anything it was just normal, albeit gross, puss. So I went to the ER. They gave me oral antibiotics as well as an antibiotic ointment to apply to the area and told me to follow up with my primary doctor in about 5 days. They took a culture of the area and said the results would be sent to my doctor. I was extremely nervous about going to the ER with my post-op penis because I have had less than adequate care in other healthcare facilities and this was going to involve me telling them my story and showing them my genitals. BUT, everyone was totally respectful and cool about everything. I'm pretty sure the doctor had never seen an FTM post-op penis, because he couldn't even pronounce the word metoidioplasty, which is okay because I'm not sure I'm pronouncing it right half the time either. lol But he wasn't weird about it in the slightest and was very matter-of-fact about it. He said, I'm going to treat you with medicine that handles all the common types of post-op infections, so you're going to be fine. Slapped me on the ass and told me to have a nice day. Okay that last part isn't true.
And he was right! Well at least so far so good. Knock on wood. I went on the antibiotics and instantly things looked better. Although at around day 4 I had a little bit more puss come out. When I followed up with my doctor on day 5, she said the little bit of puss might have just been some that worked it's way out but she extended my antibiotics from a 7 day schedule to a 10 day schedule just to be safe. I've been off the antibiotics for 6 days now and there doesn't seem to be a problem. I'm still keeping a watchful eye on it though.
I discussed my infection with Dr. Medalie (my surgeon) via e-mail and he said he "didn't believe it was surgery related because of the area infected." In other words he didn't believe it was a typical staph infection because it wasn't in an area right around any incision lines. So I asked my primary care doctor, "how could I get a random infection in that area at a time when I'm washing it with antibacterial soap twice a day? It's probably the cleanest it's ever been!" And she elaborated that while it might not have been a "staph infection directly related from surgery" having a surgery lowers your immune system plus I had a lot of inflammation in the area which probably made me more susceptible. So basically they don't believe it was a full blown staph infection from surgery but indirectly this surgery may have caused it. Which is good, because from what I hear staph infections are terrible. I asked my primary doctor if my penis was going to fall off. She was dying laughing, but reassured me that "No, it would not." And that's all that really mattered to me at that point. lol
So things are looking good considering I'm 6 weeks post-op. There are a few very minor cosmetic things that I'm hoping will change over time. It's still really early on in the healing process to know how things are really going to look. As the swelling goes down things start to take shape. Things are going to keep changing over the course of the next maybe 6 months to a year. So at this point I'm not stressing about any asymmetries. Worse case scenario in a year I can go back and have him do some very minor touch up work. But it's still very possible that in a few months things will look even better. I know with my chest surgery, right after, it looks pretty jacked up, but by the 1 year mark it looked tremendously different. 'Gotta give the body time to heal.
Back to Work!!
Speaking of healing, back to work and functioning pretty damn close to normal at this point. I have never been so happy to get back to work. In hindsight, I might have been babying myself more then necessary. But it doesn't matter. I'm out and about now running around at work chasing after kids and what not. lol And I feel great to be doing stuff again. I'm not the kind of guy that can be happy just sitting around watching TV all day.
I did purchase a soft cup and wear it at work. It serves a couple purposes. As annoying and sweaty as it can sometimes be, it allows me to wear nicer pants and not have to worry about the friction against my healing genitals. Up until I started working I almost exclusively wore gym shorts and I really didn't want to go to work in gym shorts. lol Also, I really do sometimes have to run after kids in my job, and the soft cup keeps my thighs from knocking everything around, so that's nice. The other thing about working with kids is they are all at a height where it is very easy to be knocked in the genitals, so the cup also offers protection when a 100 kids are running around the playground like maniacs. I feel safe with the soft cup on. Not sure how long I'll wear it.
I also have a couple hard cups but at this point they're way too uncomfortable to wear. I am currently working on integrating a student into the typical 1st grade class, but next week I'll be back to my normal class room where the kids are a little more rough, shall we say. Some hit or headbutt and these are little guys but they are right at that level where I'd be seeing stars if they made the right contact. lol So when I get back to working in my normal class room I might wear the hard cup. We'll see. Depends if by next week I'm at a place where I can stand to wear it for 7 straight hours. If not, then I'll wear the soft one, and be very mindful of my surroundings at all times. I'm not too worried because at this point I don't think it's going to cause any serious damage. My incision lines are pretty well healed and I only have a few stubborn stitches that haven't dissolved yet. I just think it will hurt like hell because it's still really sensitive down there. Maybe it always will be. Maybe this is just part of having external genitals. The world becomes such a scary place when you have external genitals. lol I at least want to wait until all my stitches are gone and then I'll consider losing the cup.
Exercise
Oh yes, and back to exercising. Still not doing any lower body or cardio stuff because I am paranoid I'll hurt the testicles. The body basically forms a sort of capsule around the testicle implants over the first few months and until that happens I don't wanna do anything to make it more to a bad position. One is all ready lower then I'd like it to be. It doesn't look unnatural because I know a lot of cis-men don't have testicles that are perfectly side by side but I don't want it to go any lower so I'm trying not to aggravate it.
I've been doing lots of weight lifting for my upper body. Getting the heart pumping makes me feel so good. I think that was a big part of why I've been feeling so blah. Exercise is really important to my emotional stability. When I don't exercise regularly I get depressed easily so I am very happy to be back at it.
Well that is enough for now. At this point the changes in it are slower and a lot less drastic than the first couple weeks so I'll try to update every couple of weeks with how things are going. I still want to talk in depth about the pubic lift (aka mons resection) but I want to wait until I'm a little more healed so that I can really give my opinion of how it has or has not helped the placement of things. At this point, I want to say, yes it has helped drastically! But I don't know if in a few months when all the swelling is down I might feel differently so before I really elaborate on that I'm going to let my body do some more healing. I will also talk more about aesthetics and function etc. when my body is a little more healed. For now, I'm doing all the things I need to do. I feel almost back to normal at this point.
And I'm still extremely happy with my result. :-]
