It's A GAS - Part 2 free porn video

My apologies for the long delay in getting this out. It was a hectic few months after surgery, and since then a lot has happened (mostly really good! I've gotten a lot more work as a musician, lately, is one of the things.) but all of that has really cut into my writing time. Apologies also for the length of this part, but hey, it describes a pretty complicated and lengthy part of my life! If you haven't read Part One it might be worth doing so before tackling this one... (By the way, most of the names and identifying features have been changed to protect the privacy of the other folks involved. Everything else is substantially accurate, to my recollection.) It's a GAS Part Two We were sitting on the upper deck of the MegaBus, heading for Montreal; third row from the front, nice, panoramic view of the highway ahead. We'd decided to travel on the cheap, because we knew that we'd have some additional expenses for my partner's accommodation while we were there, and the MegaBus turned out to be a good option: simple, economical, and fast. The view was great, and the scenery interesting, but... I was wound tighter than a gnat's butt. Anxiety had taken hold. "You know," I said, "before we left, I thought I would finally believe that the surgery was really going to happen when I was sitting on the bus heading for Montreal..." "And?" my partner prompted. "Nope," I replied, "Still don't believe it. Maybe I'll believe it when I'm lying on the operating table with a tube in my arm." We laughed together, defusing some of my anxiety. The March farmland was brown and lifeless, the St. Lawrence River still choked with ice. We passed several enormous solar farms, far bigger than I'd ever seen before, tens of acres of solar panels arranged row upon row, perhaps ten thousand panels in each field. Montreal is a surprisingly huge city, given that most of it is on an island. As we approached the downtown, I called the limo service that was supposed to pick us up. To my surprise, our journey didn't end at a bus station; the bus simply pulled over to the side of a busy downtown street and dumped everyone and their luggage on the sidewalk. A Lincoln Navigator pulled over next to us and the driver jumped out. "Ms. Myles?" he yelled. I raised my hand. "Right here!" He grabbed our luggage and dumped it into the cargo space at the back and we jumped in. "It's nerve-wracking," he explained as we pulled away, "There's no parking anywhere near the drop-off, so we have to circle the block and do our pickup as quickly as possible! Montreal drivers aren't the most patient in the world..." But then, we were able to relax. There was water and bottled juice available, so we settled in to view the sights, as we drove through some neighborhoods with a distinctly European flair. The trip to north Montreal was quite long, about twenty minutes, but eventually we pulled in front of our B & B, a beautiful Edwardian mansion that was to be my home for one night, and my partner's for a few days. The owner greeted us and showed us to our room, a beautiful suite with a king-size bed, gorgeous private bathroom, and a view of the park across the street and the river beyond. That evening at dinner we met Rochelle, another trans woman about my age from Asheville, North Carolina, and Anna, a young trans woman from Vancouver B.C., both of whom would be having surgery the same day as me. Over an excellent dinner we got to know one another a little, and shared our excitement and our trepidation over the surgeries to come. I learned that Rochelle had chosen the Montreal clinic over the many clinics in the US that offer gender affirmation surgery. "In the US, they would perform the surgery, tell you how to look after yourself, and turn you loose in a day or so, and then you're totally on your own. Here, for the same money - or less, really, given the exchange rate - they put you up in this great B & B, drive you to the clinic, do the surgery, and then look after you for a week in the recovery center! It was no contest." That evening, in the hopes of relaxing enough to get a few minutes' sleep I took a hot shower, climbed into bed alongside my partner, and began reading a paperback that was sitting on the bedside table, Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer. It turned out to be a first-person account of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, where a total of a dozen people lost their lives in a freak storm high on the mountain. "You know," I remarked to my partner, "I don't think I've ever encountered a bunch of people with whom I have LESS in common. Imagine! Putting yourself through two months of pretty much continuous suffering, just so you can stand for a few moments on a tiny piece of real estate that just happens to be the highest place on the planet. Every minute you spend in what they call the "death zone" above twenty-five thousand feet, you're destroying your body! Things are shutting down, the body is consuming itself, you've half in the bag from altitude sickness, vulnerable to hypothermia, frostbite, and all kinds of other life- threatening problems... You could fall off the mountain and plummet seven thousand feet to your death. What's the point, I ask ya?" "I dunno," he replied sleepily, "some people just have different priorities in their lives. I suppose for some of them that's a life goal, and the dangers are just part of the whole experience." He grinned slyly, "I bet most of them would probably think that having your balls removed and your penis turned inside out pretty incomprehensible too!" "I think that's just about a certainty!" I chuckled, grateful for something to laugh about. "I suppose that's something that'd make a lot of guys wanna cross their legs pretty tightly!" I read a chapter or so and drifted off. The next day we had a delightful breakfast and went for a walk along the river. My excitement and nervousness seemed to alternate for dominance. One minute I'd be tingling with anticipation, the next scared shitless, asking silently, "Holy crap, have I really thought this THROUGH???" Mid-afternoon, the proprietor of the B & B showed up at our door with a rather ominous-looking package. "Now, as you know," she began, "you are to administer an enema to yourself about 5 o'clock this afternoon, and another one at the clinic, about 9pm. This is your first one. Please read the instructions carefully! ...and, good luck!" Whoa, I thought, this is trip is gonna be FULL of new experiences... I read the instructions, then... into the bathroom... I lay on the floor and, with a certain trepidation, inserted the lubricated tube... squeeze... Hmm. That's a weird sensation... I waited, lying still on my back on the floor of the bathroom, and read a few pages of my book. Nothing much happened. Dammit, I thought. Maybe I did it wrong... er, no... No... Wait a minute... Definitely feeling something now... No, I do believe I did it right after all... Oh my gawd!!! I lunged for the toilet and wondered for a few moments if I'd wind up rocket-propelled through the ceiling. Well, I thought, a few minutes later, that was certainly a... a CLEANSING experience! And I have another one later, huh? Oh, great... A taxi showed up around seven to take us trans folks the clinic. We dumped our luggage (a week's worth) into the back, I hugged my partner tight, then Rochelle, Anna and I piled in. After a ten-minute ride, we found ourselves at the entrance to the clinic, a mid-sized two-story building on a quiet residential street. The lobby was decorated with potted plants and had soft, indirect lighting; apart from the nurses in uniform, it looked almost like the lobby of a small hotel. I was shown to my room, which I shared with another young trans woman from B.C., and waited to be called in to admitting. There, I filled out some forms, got my hospital ID bracelet, and the nurse took my vitals. When I looked at the readout, I was somewhat alarmed to see that my pulse was over 100 and my blood pressure was around 170/90. "Shit!" I exclaimed. "That's high, isn't it?" The nurse laughed. "For someone about to go into surgery, trust me, that's not high." Another enema followed (with much less spectacular results), then into my PJs. A different nurse poked her head in. "Would you like something to help you sleep?" she asked. "Oh, yes indeed!" I replied gratefully, thinking that, keyed up the way I was, without it I'd probably bag all of about 20 seconds of real, honest sleep overnight. Whatever it was turned out to be pretty potent, because I was asleep in a few minutes, and stayed so till morning. Surgery day. Wow... Is this REALLY gonna happen?? My partner showed up shortly after breakfast. "Any idea when you're going in?" he asked. "About 1 or 2 pm, I was told," I replied, "I guess I've got about four hours of mounting anxiety ahead of me!" "Naah!" he responded. "Just think about how awesome it's gonna be when it's all over and you're fully recovered! It's going to be so cool!" In spite of my nervousness, I grinned. "Yup," I agreed, "It will be that." We chatted, strolled around the ground floor where my room was, and found Anna's and Rochelle's room. Rochelle wasn't there. "She's getting it done!" Anna said excitedly. "And... Oh gawd... I think I'm next!" Shortly after lunch, as my partner and I sat chatting, an orderly poked his head in the door of my room. "Ms. Myles? You're next." Oh... fuck! Wow... Unsteadily, I got to my feet, hugged my partner and followed. "How are you feeling?" the orderly smiled. "Nervous?" "Nah," I replied, "not nervous... More like, scared shitless!" He laughed. "Well, you're in very good hands. Dr. Brassard has done literally hundreds of these surgeries. His work is the best!" We took elevator (up one floor), for which I was grateful, since I wasn't entirely sure my legs would do the stairs at this point. I was shown into a small waiting room, and a few minutes later Dr. Brassard came in, wearing scrubs. He was a handsome man at the onset of middle age, with a thick shock of grey hair that I could see under his surgical cap. We shook hands and he sat down next to me. "I'm here to answer any questions you might have," he said in a delightful French accent. We chatted for a few minutes about the exact procedure and the odds of complications developing, and he explained (as I already knew) that in order to minimize risk, instead of using a general anesthetic, he performs the surgery under a spinal anesthetic, with just enough sedation to put the patient to sleep. Then I asked a question that had been on my mind intermittently ever since I'd decided to commit to having the surgery. "What are the odds of being post-surgically orgasmic?" I asked. "There are many variables involved," he replied. "I couldn't absolutely guarantee sexual sensitivity in your clitoris following the surgery." He paused. "However, I will say that in our experience, more than 9 out of 10 women do develop the capacity to have clitoral orgasms after surgery. It may take some time, perhaps as long as a year in some cases, but the odds are definitely in your favour." Nine out of ten, I pondered. Yeah, those seems like pretty decent odds... When I was heading up in the elevator, I'd been strongly tempted, as a joke, to ask if I could have my testicles bronzed. I would explain that they'd make great Christmas ornaments. But when the moment came I found that I was far too nervous to kid around, and Dr. Brassard was so down- to-earth that I was afraid he'd think I was not taking things seriously enough. Nope, no jokes today... He put his hand on mine. "We will perform the very best surgery we can, that I promise. You are in good hands." He withdrew, and a minute or so later the orderly showed up again. I was led into the operating room and lay down on the table. A nurse appeared and inserted an intravenous needle into my arm, and a moment or so later the anesthetist came in, introduced himself (I forget his name now) and hooked me up to an IV. I looked up at him from my prone position. "You know," I said, "when I was on the bus coming here, I thought to myself that I would finally believe this was really going to happen when I was lying on the operating table with a tube in my arm. Now, here I am, lying on the operating table with a tube in my arm..." "So?" he inquired. "Do you believe it now?" "Nope," I replied. He laughed. "Maybe you'll believe it tomorrow morning when Dr. Brassard pokes his head into your room and says, 'Everything went fine, Ms. Myles!'" "Yeah... maybe!" I laughed. We chatted for another few moments, then... lights out. I woke in my room, groggy but generally feeling pretty good. My partner was sitting by my bedside. "How do you feel?" he asked. "Hmm... Not bad, I think. No pain, no nausea... not bad." It had taken me a few moments to remember just why I was here. Then I reached down, and discovered a huge gauze dressing that had, so it seemed, been sutured over my crotch. A catheter ran to a bag hanging from the bed rail, and a drain had been inserted just below my pubic bone. Well, I thought... It sure seems like SOMETHING happened... To my considerable shock I discovered that everything below my waist was completely numb, and that I couldn't move my legs. "I really hope that's the result of the spinal anesthetic," I muttered. Before I could really begin to worry, a nurse came in with an ice bag. "Okay, tell me when you can feel this," she said, holding it against my thigh and gradually moving it higher. "Nope... Nope... Nope... Now." "Good," she said, "it will take perhaps two or three hours for sensation to return." "I assume that includes muscle function in my legs..." "Of course!" She smiled and left. About an hour later I discovered that, if I really focused, I could wiggle the toes of my left foot. "Well," I sighed, "that's a relief. Looks like I won't be paralyzed for life. Still, this must be what paraplegics experience all the time. It's pretty awful!" Sometime later, I could wiggle the toes of both feet, then bend my ankles, and finally, to my great relief, flex my knees. I was given a light snack for dinner, after which I was totally exhausted and ready to call it a night. My partner and I kissed good night, a nurse showed up with a good strong sedative, and I soon fell into a dreamless slumber. The next morning, just after breakfast, Dr. Brassard, again wearing scrubs, poked his head into my room. "Ms. Myles," he said, "I just want you to know that the surgery went completely perfectly. No problems at all." Well, I thought to myself, there it is. No way I can worry about it not happening now! Looks like it really, really DID happen. Holy shit, I really did it!!! But... where's my partner? He was supposed to show up before now... By mid-morning I was in considerable pain. I asked the nurse for some pain medication and she returned a few minutes later with a syringe. "This should take care of your discomfort," she said. And she was right. Good pain meds! Within twenty minutes or so I was floating on a soft, cushiony cloud, totally pain-free. But... where WAS my partner? About noon my cell phone rang. It was him. On the way to the subway, he managed to find one of the few remaining patches of ice left in the city and, no doubt overbalanced by my laptop in his backpack, slipped and badly sprained his ankle. He was currently resting in his room back at the B & B. Oh my god... Now there was an unexpected complication! But, floating on a blissful haze of medication, I couldn't get too worried, not yet, anyway. About mid-afternoon, a young, good looking orderly showed up and announced that he was there to take me for a walk. "Okayyy...." I said, somewhat hesitantly, "Let's give it a go." We re-arranged all of my various tubes and bags of liquids and my IV pole and I stood up. And promptly sat down again as a wave of vertigo swept over me. Holy shit. This is going to be trickier than I thought... With the orderly's help, I finally made it to my feet and was able to stay there, shaky, but upright. With a firm grip on my arm, Craig, as he introduced himself, led me slowly out of the room. "Okay," I quipped after a few moments, "race you around the nurses' station!" I can only suppose that Craig didn't expect patients to be making jokes so soon after surgery. "Oh no!" he admonished. "I don't think THAT would be a good idea! Let's go nice and slow, just like this..." Not to be deterred, after a few moments more, I said, "Aw come on! Let's really boogie! Race you to the corner!" "Come ON now, Ms. Myles," he chided gently, "you have to walk before you can run!" Okay, one final try... "Alright, tell you what. Last one back to the room buys the beer!" He finally got it, and chuckled obligingly. We went for a second circuit, and I started to feel a little steadier on my feet. We picked up the pace... a bit. "So, what do you do back home, Ms. Myles?" he asked. "Well, at the moment, not a whole lot," I replied. "I guess you could say that my occupation right now is musician. I have a recording studio, and I play lead guitar in a rock band, as well as a few other instruments." He perked right up. "Is that right!" he exclaimed. "That's so cool! What kind of music do you play? Do you do covers, originals?" "Well, we play mostly rock, funk, blues, a bit of R & B. Right now we're about 50/50 originals and covers. We do some old stuff like The Stones, Pink Floyd, Zeppelin, and so on, and some newer stuff, Radiohead, Pixies, that kind of thing." "Do you do any Tragically Hip? I LOVE The Hip!" he enthused. "As a matter of fact, we do," I said. "We do... um..." It was hard to think about music and concentrate on keeping my balance at the same time. "We do... 50 Mission Cap, Nautical Disaster... um... Ahead by a Century... There's a few more that we've played around with but never done live; Three Pistols, Twist My Arm... A couple more; I can't think of them right now." "I LOVE 50 Mission Cap! And Nautical Disaster! And the other ones you mentioned. They're fantastic, The Hip. I think they're my favorite band ever!" It was on the tip of my tongue to mention that there are some old YouTube videos of us performing several of those tunes live, but I remembered in time that they were not exactly our best efforts. My own guitar solos in particular were not exactly stellar, so I decided to keep my mouth shut. (As I am writing this, several months later, I can't help wondering how Craig reacted to the news of Gord Downie's terminal illness, and the impending demise of the band. I only hope that he managed to see one of The Hip's concerts on their final tour.) He took me back to my room and promised to return for another walk and talk later in the evening. It was about that time that my partner showed up, moving VERY slowly, hobbling mostly on one foot, and looking to be in a LOT of discomfort. "Oh my god, you look worse than me!" I said, as he walked in. "I'm the one that's supposed to be in pain! Hey, maybe I can snitch some painkillers for you!" "I could use some," he replied, "I feel so stupid! One tiny patch of ice and down I went. It's lucky that someone was coming along the sidewalk. They helped me back across the street to the B & B, otherwise I might've had to crawl!" Around mid-afternoon, Craig showed up again to take me for another stroll around the floor. By the time I was much steadier on my feet. He once again talked enthusiastically about the Tragically Hip, and we popped in on Anna and Rochelle to see how they were doing. Rochelle seemed fine but Anna was clearly in some discomfort and looked rather haggard. "Did you ask for any pain meds?" I asked. "Yeah," she replied, "but they're not doing a lot of good..." "Well, ask for some more." "That's what I said," Rochelle chimed in, "no sense in being miserable!" "I've got an ice pack," she replied, looking less than sure of herself. The conversation went back and forth a few more times, but she remained unconvinced. (Me, on the other hand, I'm more than happy to drop a few Oxycodones if it means being pain-free!) The following morning, the nurse removed the drain and swapped a valve for the reservoir on my catheter, and about noon I was put in a wheelchair and taken next door to l'Ascelepiade, the clinic's recovery center, which was housed in a beautiful turn-of-the-century mansion. I was assigned a large double room with private bathroom, and it turned out that Rochelle was my roommate. Nice! The center was quite lovely, spacious, and well equipped. I met Pauline, a young trans woman from Toronto who had surgery the same day as me, and two trans men who had had their surgeries the previous week. Everyone got their own ice bag, and encouraged to fill it from the ice machine in the lobby and use it frequently. For the first few days, you do tend to walk a little funny. I mean, hell, you've got a huge dressing sutured to your crotch, and an internal dressing (or vaginal mould) stuffed inside you. One of the nurses told me "Walk like a cowboy!" After a time, I started calling it the "Montreal shuffle", and the name caught on. Everyone else started call it that, too. "Hey! That's a nice Montreal shuffle you're doing!" The food, as it turns out, was great. Everyone ate in the communal dining room, and the conversations were often, well... pretty frank! Especially later in the week, as various dressings got removed. That evening, I was again in pretty serious pain (it always seemed to hit late in the day, I suppose as I became more fatigued); fortunately, the nurses were always on hand with pain meds, for which I was extremely grateful. The following day, my partner returned home on the MegaBus, the plan being that he would take care of some things at home, then return by car in a few days to drive me back. There was little to do at first. My friend Kathryn, who lived in Montreal, dropped in for a visit and we went for a short (much shorter than intended!) walk along the river. We bundled up, as the temperature had dropped overnight, and strolled and chatted. But then I began to feel some tell-tale stirrings, and I realized that my long hiatus from using the toilet was quickly coming to an end! Oh, shit... literally. Moving as quickly as I could, we returned to the center, and I blessed whatever gods were responsible for such things that Rochelle was not at that moment in the bathroom. Wow! It's amazing how grateful we can become for the little things, something I realized intensely, as I... well, let's just say that I thoroughly appreciated my first visit to the john since those enemas, four days earlier... There was a TV in the lounge, but it was rarely tuned to anything interesting. Instead we sprawled on the sofas and chatted, talking about our lives, coming out as trans, and what brought us to the point of seeking gender affirmation surgery. On day two a young trans woman all of eighteen years old showed up, accompanied by her mom; she had had surgery the day after the rest of us. She was clearly frightened and uncertain in the recovery center. She hardly spoke above a whisper, and wouldn't meet anyone's gaze. I found it a really touching tribute to the warmth and inclusivity of the trans community, at least as represented by the folks present at the center, that everyone made a real point of including her in conversations, showing an interest in what she had to say, and generally making her feel welcome and part of the group. By the time I left, six days later, she had totally come out of her shell: fully involved in life at the center, joining in to the sometimes-chaotic conversations in the lounge, joking around, and generally looking relaxed and engaged. It was wonderful to see. On day three things picked up a little. We took turns in the examining room where a nurse unstitched and removed the huge gauze dressing, now crusty and brown with dried blood, from between our legs. What a relief! I don't think any of us quite realized how annoying it was while it was there. Now we could stop walking bowlegged! It was also nice to be able to apply one's ice bag (wrapped in a towel) directly to the surgical area. I think most of us were still experiencing pain, especially toward the end of the day, and the ice definitely helped. As before, Anna still looked like she was doing rather worse than the rest of us, and spent a lot of time slouched on a sofa with her eyes closed, clutching her ice bag to her crotch. The conversation in the dining room that evening was particularly frank: "What's yours look like?" "Wow, I thought it looked kinda like roadkill!" "Yeah, like something after a plane crash..." "I thought mine looked like something out of John Carpenter's The Thing!" (much laughter.) It was true, at this point the surgical site didn't look very appealing, nor did it look much like a vulva; terribly swollen, red, and in at least my case, surmounted by a huge blood clot, which I was instructed not to touch. I was also covered in bruising, so that it looked almost like I was wearing purple boxer shorts. But the booklet we all received on arriving made it clear that this was all perfectly normal. The swelling, bruising, discoloration and the rest would all resolve itself over the next couple of months. Day four was a big day, the removal of the stent, or "vaginal mould". I'd heard that this was a painful process, so I followed the nurse to the examining room with a fair bit of anxiety. Feet in the stirrups, she unstitched the closure to my vagina and reached inside with forceps. I closed my eyes. There was a brief moment of a VERY weird sensation, then... "Okay, done!" I opened my eyes to have a look at what was inside me. "Oh my goodness!" I burst out, "Look at the size of that thing!" It was WAY bigger than I expected, resembling an outsized Polish sausage, streaked with dried blood. But, no pain. Bonus! And the sense of relief was incredible. It felt SO good to be rid of the damn thing! A short time later as Rochelle and I were resting and reading on our beds, a nurse showed up. "Okay! May I have your attention!" she said, in the manner of a high school soccer coach, "I will now teach you how to dilate. Please get your dilators from your basket." (We each had a basket containing pads for the bed, fresh sterile panties, disinfectant, and a few other items. And of course, a tube of lubricant, and three vaginal dilators.) "Alright!" she went on enthusiastically. "Please take out your mirrors and your lubricant, and your number two dilator." A little apprehensively, we complied. "Now, prop up the mirror on the bed so you can see your vagina. Good... Angle it so that you have a clear view... Now, be sure you hold your dilator by the end, and don't touch any other part of it, or allow it to touch anything else. We must think 'sterile' at all times! "Now, open the lubricant and spread a good amount on the tip... be sure not to touch the end of the tube to the dilator! Now, spread your legs, like you're about to have sex..." (Okaaayy...) "Okay, now using the mirror, place the tip against the lips of your vagina and press gently... that's it... Angle it downwards at first, then once the tip is past the pubic bone, angle it upward..." Wow... what a weird sensation. I'd never had something... enter me before, not quite like that, anyway... "Now be sure that the tip is firmly against the bottom of the vagina... Good. Now, you wait fifteen minutes, then remove the number two dilator, and repeat with the number three. You won't need as much lubricant... Why?" "Um... Cuz there's already some in there?" I said. "Exactly! Remember, don't touch the tip! Enjoy!" And with that, she was gone, no doubt to give the "dilation pep-talk" to the others... We were also taught to douche at regular intervals using a sterile saline solution, and follow it with a Sitz bath. The nursing staff were incredible. Several times a day, after one of us had our Sitz bath, a staff person would come in and completely clean and sterilize the tub, ready for the next person. I never quite got over feeling a little guilty about that! Day five. Some more of my Montreal friends showed up to visit, full of questions and enthusiastic support, which was great. Then... time to remove the catheter. Peeing with the catheter was an odd experience, to say the least. When you felt the urge, you'd STAND at the toilet (for the first time in ages for me) point the tube at the bowl and open the little valve... (This would be the last time I would enjoy the "point and shoot" method of peeing!) The end of your pee was signaled by a wee jolt of pain (I never did figure out why) and a sudden cessation of the stream. But now, it was time to have it removed. Now THIS sounded like it could only be painful... Once again in the stirrups, the nurse deflated the little balloon-like thing inside my bladder that kept the catheter in place, and gave it a good steady yank. Oh, yes! That was definitely painful! But thank goodness it only lasted for a second or so. Now, for the first time, I would be peeing totally like a woman. Cool! (From my current perspective I have to say that, as much as I am delighted with the results of my surgery, and as much I am loving having a vagina, I've come to the conclusion that a vulva is not the world's best urine-delivery system. Even now, sometimes the stream will go straight down into the bowl (nice) but other times it winds up on my thigh, my ass, or some other bizarre location. And camping this summer was the first time I actually HAD to squat to pee. I really do need to work on my thigh muscles...) Then, trouble. By mid-afternoon, I discovered I no longer COULD pee. I was so swollen that my urethra had completely shut. I had a full bladder, but sitting on the toilet accomplished nothing. We were given a little triangular insert to put in the front of the toilet to measure our urine output, which we were supposed to keep track of. Mine was a big fat zero. This was NOT going to be fun! We had been told to drink LOTS of water daily, and the staff reiterated this directive with me. Lots of water. Try peeing at regular intervals. Run the tap. Nothing. By mid-evening, I was close to panic, and one of the nurses raised the possibility that I would need to have a catheter reinserted. Now THAT is something I would avoid like a Justin Bieber concert... (apologies to Justin Bieber fans.) I lay in bed, miserable, unable to read, unable to focus on watching a movie on my laptop. It's amazing how your world will shrink down to a single, overwhelmingly present need when it's something like this. It's literally all you can think of, and nothing else is of interest or relevance. Then, about 2am, a tiny quantity of pee... My bladder was still achingly full, but I rejoiced anyway. Almost 50 milliliters! Woohoo! Then, an hour or so later, another 50 ml. Then another. Tiny amounts, but it gave me hope. By early morning, I was peeing about 100 ml, and my bladder started to feel a bit less full. Bliss!!! Around 9 am, Dr. Brassard came into our room. "We may need to reinsert your catheter," he said. "Are you having to strain to urinate?" I thought, damned if I was going to have that fucking tube stuck inside me again! "Er, well..." I began. "I do have to push a bit to get the stream going, but then it more or less goes by itself." Yes, a bit of an exaggeration... In reality I was straining quite a bit to keep the stream going. "Well, alright," he said, somewhat skeptically. "We'll keep an eye on things. Please let the nursing staff know of any change." By noon, I was peeing about 250 ml, or more, and I was in an absolute paroxysm of ecstasy. You really can't imagine how heavenly an empty bladder can feel after a whole night of not peeing... The next couple of days fell into a routine. Breakfast, dilate, douche, Sitz, read, chat, lunch, dilate, douche, Sitz... shampoo, rinse, repeat. And peeing became easier and easier, thank goodness. On the sixth day, my partner called to inform me that the ankle was actually broken, not sprained. "I'm really sorry, but there's no way I can drive down to get you. You'll have to figure out how to get home on your own." Shit. Well, the prospect of sitting on my donut pillow for six hours on the bus, or perhaps even longer on the train... that's just a non-starter. If I was stuck taking public transportation home, I would damn well want it to be as fast as possible. Fuck it. I decided to fly. I booked a flight online, and spent the rest of the day hanging out, going for walks, chatting and - of course - dilating, four times a day. On day eight, I packed up my things and said a tearful goodbye to Rochelle and the others, promising to stay in touch. Anna, Pauline and I would be heading to the airport together in a limo, provided yet again by the clinic (they don't miss a thing!) Before leaving, we were told that we MUST take our dilators in our carry-on. If we stashed it in our checked luggage and our bag ended up in Lima, Peru or something, we'd be in trouble, since at this point in our recovery, we need to dilate four times a day. We were each given a surgeon's letter of explanation. Dutifully, I packed them into my carry-on bag. So of course, going through security, what were the odds that my bag would NOT go to secondary inspection? I mean, here I am carrying things that, on an x- ray, would have to look a lot like miniature artillery shells or something. The security guy began rummaging through my bag. "Any liquids in here?" "Nope." He pulled out my pack of dilators. "What are these?" I looked him square in the eye. "Those are vaginal dilators," I said. He pursed his lips, looked down and fidgeted. "Um... have a nice day," he said, returning the dilators to my bag. I couldn't help it, I started to laugh. The look on his face made it all worthwhile! I thought, "Yup, I guess there's some places you just don't wanna go..." Once inside I ran into Anna, waiting for her flight to Vancouver, and we chatted for a while, then headed off to our separate gates. The flight home was surprisingly comfortable (thanks in part to my donut pillow), and I was met at the airport by my wonderful friend Scott, who drove me home. I was totally wired and full of excitement, so I must have talked almost non-stop for the hour-long trip. Thankfully, Scott is one patient guy... Because you see, it finally, REALLY hit home. I had actually DONE IT! It was over, everything went very well, it was a fantastic experience, and I was finally absorbing the fact that, at long last, I finally had the body I'd dreamed of. (Well, okay, not completely. Let's face it, I could still stand to lose a few pounds, and I was always a bit tall for a woman, and a bit narrow in the hips... and my ass leaves something to be desired... but...) YES! At last, I had a vagina. And a vulva. And a clitoris. And labia... I could scarcely keep the silly grin off my face for the entire trip. Once home, my partner and I had a joyful reunion. He was wheeling himself around the house on an office chair, his leg in a plastic cast, but looked fine otherwise (and, like me, enjoying good pain meds). That evening, my daughter arrived for a two-week stay to look after (as it turned out) both of us. The original plan was that my partner and my daughter would look after ME for the first few weeks of my convalescence, but as it turned out, I was far more mobile and capable than my partner! Still, I was very grateful to have my daughter on hand to do some grocery shopping, cooking, and so on. Over time, my life fell into a comfortable routine, dilating, douching, bathing, showering, getting lots of rest, and watching my diet: eating healthy, drinking lots of water and cranberry juice (post-op trans women are every bit as vulnerable to UTI's, yeast infections and so forth, basically the same things other women have to watch out for.) Over the intervening time everything has healed remarkably well, with only a couple of very minor setbacks. My genitals look, as far as I can tell, perfectly natural. I am now down to dilating twice a week, and with regular penetrative sex I may eventually be able to do away with it entirely. Sensation has returned, and a few months ago (yeah, it took a while) I had my first clitoral orgasm. After I regained my powers of speech I think I said something like, "Holy fuck! So THAT'S what an orgasm is supposed to feel like!" (Okay, that IS a bit of an exaggeration. Over the years I have had some pretty decent ones with my "old equipment", but I have to say, the new stuff has really come through!!) Before leaving for Montreal, I loaded up my laptop with some music- composition software and a good library of samples, synth VSTIs, loops and so on. I thought it might be interesting to capture in music the moods and feelings that arose for me during my post-operative stay. Sadly, it turned out that my laptop was totally inadequate to run the software without a lot of nasty glitches and crashes, so all I came home with was a few small fragments of music. In the days following my return home, I took those fragments and loaded them into my studio computer to see if I could recapture some of the feelings I experienced, and perhaps weave those small pieces together into a larger composition. (It turned out to be a good idea to finish it at home. It is way easier to perform and record music when you have a proper selection of instruments at your disposal: guitars, keyboards, basses and so on, as well as a good, powerful computer!) The end result was two tunes. As I was messing around on my acoustic guitar one afternoon and reminiscing about my time at the recovery center, I started thinking, "Hey! I think The Montreal Shuffle is a pretty kick-ass song title!" So, in about an hour I had an up-tempo 12- bar blues song - with some pretty explicit lyrics! - called The Montreal Shuffle. It's a song that I've since performed live, either solo or with my band, at least half a dozen times, usually to some enthusiastic response. Unfortunately, I've yet to come up with a decent recording of it that I'm happy with. (If/when I do I'll post a link to it in the comments section.) The other effort is an instrumental composition that you can listen to on SoundCloud here: https://soundcloud.com/user-888197765/new-vag The title, "New Vag", is, perhaps, less than subtle. It was originally my working title, but, what the hell. That's what it's about, right? I decided to keep it. (The vocal tracks in this piece, by the way, are all just taken from a sample library. It'd be nice if I had someone with a great voice standing by to do live vocal parts for me, but that's not the case... sigh.) When Rochelle listened to it, she remarked that not all of it was exactly pretty and upbeat. There was a section that she described as "harsh". Well, yeah. It wasn't ALL fun, after all. There was pain, and there was that long period where I couldn't pee! Harsh, yeah. No doubt about it. But overall, I think the piece reflects the excitement, and the sheer bliss I felt, especially on my return home, feeling truly complete for the first time (and spending a ridiculous amount of time with a hand mirror, going, "Oh my god! Wow! Look at that! I actually have a PUSSY!!!!!!") Bliss indeed. As Lili said at the end of The Danish Girl, "I am entirely myself." ADDENDUM - Answers to a few questions Some of you may be wondering just what goes on during the surgery; just what IS the procedure? Well, of course I was asleep for most of it, but I think I have a pretty good idea, from both my conversations with the surgeon and others, and, well, from examining my own nether regions. There are apparently several techniques, and different surgeons favor different procedures. You may have seen the computer-animated video that went somewhat viral a few months ago, posted originally by the British Urology Association. If you haven't seen it, here's one version: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/science/how-surgeons- transform-penis-vagina-6956319 For some reason, in this version the final few seconds of the video, showing the completed vagina, have been lost. There may be other more complete ones around. This one, at least, has the correct narration. Now, what Dr. Brassard does is somewhat different from the procedure in the video. All of the surgical techniques do have some common features. In all cases, the penile skin is pulled back from the shaft of the penis and at some point in the operation it gets inverted, augmented with (in most cases) scrotal or urethral tissue, then pushed into the perineal cavity to form the vagina. In the surgery I had, the tip of the penis and part of the underside of the penile shaft, along with its blood and nerve supplies, gets repositioned to become the clitoris and the labia minora (inner lips of the vagina). Remaining scrotal skin becomes the labia majora (outer lips). In some cases, if there is not enough penile and scrotal tissue available to give the vagina enough depth, skin from the inner thigh has to be grafted in as well. I was worried that that might be necessary in my case. After several years of estrogen and t-blockers, my penis wasn't... well, let's say it wasn't exactly in Harry Reams' class (not that it ever was). Quite the opposite! And the grafting process is reputed to be rather painful. However, as it turned out, additional tissue wasn't necessary; there was enough penile and scrotal skin available, and my depth is pretty good, judging by how far the dilators go in; about 6 inches, more or less. WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT FROM THE SURGERY? I think the most important thing to bear in mind is: be patient. It is, by any reasonable standard, major surgery, and these things need time to heal. It can be as long as a year before everything is totally settled in. This includes shape and appearance of the vulva and vagina, sensitivity, full width and so on. You can expect some other changes in your body, apart from the obvious. The vagina (in my case, certainly) impinges on some of the space previously occupied by my bladder, the result being that I have to pee rather more often than before. Almost all surgeons (maybe all) leave the prostate intact. Removing it can cause all manner of complications, including chronic incontinence. Not anything I want! If your prostate has previously been removed, talk to your surgeon about it; he'll want to know. One nice thing is, if you are taking estrogen, you are unlikely to ever have to worry about prostate cancer. Estrogen shuts the thing down completely, and within a couple of years it often shrinks down to the size of a grape. And, now... here's a delicate subject! ...for at least several months following surgery, I discovered that I had lost the ability to... um... (well, out with it, Christine!) fart quietly. Okay yeah, hilarious. Except when it isn't! The surgery does shift things around a lot, and the vagina is only a couple of inches away from the anus, so I suppose one thing affects the other. In my case, I suppose the surgery slightly altered the musculature of my butt, and... that was the result. Anyway, the ability has since (think god!) come back. Mostly. Following surgery, you will have to think hygiene constantly! Speaking of butts, do NOT wipe your butt back to front! This is a surefire ticket to a urinary tract infection (UTI), or worse. Make sure that the area stays clean, and even if you have to retrain yourself, wipe front to back, AWAY from your vagina. You will also wash your dilators after EVERY usage in an antibacterial soap, and store them in their pouch. Very important! Eat heathy. Drink lots of water. Drink cranberry juice (a good way to ward off UTIs), eat some yogurt now and then to keep your intestinal flora healthy. And most importantly, follow your post-surgical care routine to the letter! If they tell you to dilate four times a day, do it. If they tell you to have daily showers, Sitz baths and douches, do it. And if anything seems amiss, if you notice any discharge leaking out of your vagina that's not just left-over lubricant, or if you notice an unpleasant smell, see your doctor right away. It could be the sign of an infection. Don't be afraid to follow up with your surgeon or post- surgical care-persons with any questions or issues you may be experiencing. It's your health, after all. I think it's important to be aware that the surgery is not, for the most part, going to change how you are perceived, how you present yourself and how people see you. It may well change how you feel about yourself - in a positive way - which may, in turn, change how you project yourself to others, but don't forget that it is, after all, in most circumstances, hidden, and generally only your intimate partners and medical people will even be aware of it. You must go in with realistic expectations about what the surgery is, and what it is not. Remember, too, the surgery is totally non-reversible. If you're considering it, you need to be 100% absolutely sure it's what you want. 99% isn't enough. You need to be totally committed, and aware of all the potential risks, complications and outcomes. Once it's done, there's no going back! So yes, there it is. A lot of people have asked me at various times if I've felt any regret. Yeah! I regret I didn't do it a lot sooner! Do I miss my old equipment, or feel a sense of loss? "Absolutely NOT". Am I happy with the results? Not just happy: ecstatic!