![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Hope for surgery recovery.
Apr. 11th, 2019 03:23 amI'm scheduling therapy to deal with my regret about vaginoplasty. I'm tired of feeling this way about my body and it being a barrier to so much. The regular "squishy" sensations from my vulva, which I'm sure many others like experiencing, still gross me out. I never actually made a decision about surgery as such, instead it was approached by my HRT doctors and therapist as "you will be doing this or else we will stop prescribing HRT." I'll never know if it was completely wrong for me or if I just wasn't ready.
I do know that I figured it out a month before and then faced an ultimatum at home - because we couldn't get a 100% refund of what we'd paid I was required to go through with surgery or I would face severe consequences at home for getting only a partial refund.
I also know that I was genuinely happy about it from a few days before until a few weeks after, but the fights with my then-spouse were just unrelenting. Imagine having to endure a fight with a spouse a day after surgery, while you're laying in a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV and on heavy-duty pain meds, and then having several more before you're discharged, returning home to even more. I feel like they were angry that I wasn't miserable with the result of them getting their way and were determined to make me be so at any cost. I remember my SO telling me that they were going to make sure I never missed a dilation and then, when I willingly did them of my own and made a point to keep to schedule, were angry about the schedule being disruptive - that it took too much time each day and that the schedule was impossibly rigid (I could shift dilations by an hour or two on weekdays and a bit more on weekends but even that wasn't good enough.) Complaints that it took me away from doing my share of the housework. Even anger that I kept at it and spent so much time and money in the effort to find ways to not cease dilation completely and, therefore, close the door on penetrative sex.
I've finally actually gotten response on the medical front. I've been trying to get treatment for whatever happened that lead to me being unable to continue dilation (I wasn't fully physically unable; it just kept getting more painful and reached the limit of what I could endure.) I get a lot of attitude about "you're not bleeding, etc., so why do you care" and demands that I consider it a completely successful surgery on that basis. Like that I should be happy and content with orgasm being difficult and disappointing and penetrative sex impossible just became my vaginoplasty result isn't as bad as others.
My own surgeon refused my request to have it addressed, dismissing how painful it had become, telling me that the only problem was that I wasn't relaxed enough or using enough lube.
In the past few weeks one surgeon got back to me. Today I had an appointment with my GP for STI testing and decided to take the risk of asking. She had three physician names for me right away, all local, and we came up with a plan to approach this.
For the first time in a long time I feel hope.
I also hope that getting this treated will help the regular "shock" pains. Everyone insists that these are nerves reconnecting after surgery but most of a decade later seems a bit excessive for that. Mostly they and the "squish" sensations served as cruel reminders of how I felt butchered and mutilated rather than happy with that part of my body.
I do know that I figured it out a month before and then faced an ultimatum at home - because we couldn't get a 100% refund of what we'd paid I was required to go through with surgery or I would face severe consequences at home for getting only a partial refund.
I also know that I was genuinely happy about it from a few days before until a few weeks after, but the fights with my then-spouse were just unrelenting. Imagine having to endure a fight with a spouse a day after surgery, while you're laying in a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV and on heavy-duty pain meds, and then having several more before you're discharged, returning home to even more. I feel like they were angry that I wasn't miserable with the result of them getting their way and were determined to make me be so at any cost. I remember my SO telling me that they were going to make sure I never missed a dilation and then, when I willingly did them of my own and made a point to keep to schedule, were angry about the schedule being disruptive - that it took too much time each day and that the schedule was impossibly rigid (I could shift dilations by an hour or two on weekdays and a bit more on weekends but even that wasn't good enough.) Complaints that it took me away from doing my share of the housework. Even anger that I kept at it and spent so much time and money in the effort to find ways to not cease dilation completely and, therefore, close the door on penetrative sex.
I've finally actually gotten response on the medical front. I've been trying to get treatment for whatever happened that lead to me being unable to continue dilation (I wasn't fully physically unable; it just kept getting more painful and reached the limit of what I could endure.) I get a lot of attitude about "you're not bleeding, etc., so why do you care" and demands that I consider it a completely successful surgery on that basis. Like that I should be happy and content with orgasm being difficult and disappointing and penetrative sex impossible just became my vaginoplasty result isn't as bad as others.
My own surgeon refused my request to have it addressed, dismissing how painful it had become, telling me that the only problem was that I wasn't relaxed enough or using enough lube.
In the past few weeks one surgeon got back to me. Today I had an appointment with my GP for STI testing and decided to take the risk of asking. She had three physician names for me right away, all local, and we came up with a plan to approach this.
For the first time in a long time I feel hope.
I also hope that getting this treated will help the regular "shock" pains. Everyone insists that these are nerves reconnecting after surgery but most of a decade later seems a bit excessive for that. Mostly they and the "squish" sensations served as cruel reminders of how I felt butchered and mutilated rather than happy with that part of my body.
