Tuesday, June 13, 2000: US Customs and Immigration has inspectors posted at major Canadian airports so that travellers leaving Canada clear US Customs and Immigration before getting on flights bound for the USA. I left for the airport extra early in case there was any trouble and had reams of documentation about my identity, the surgery and receipts to show it was paid for, etc. Everything went smoothly, though, and all I had to say to the inspector was that I was going down for "surgery" (unspecified). I breathed a great sigh of relief once I was actually on the plane. Outwardly I was quite calm, but I remember crying easily as I read several stories, so I think my emotions were not far from the surface.

My Horizon (a.k.a. Alaskan Airlines) ticket required a change of planes in Seattle, and when I got there it was complete pandemonium. First I discovered that the watch I had clipped to my purse was missing, and then I realized that more importantly, the keys I had clipped to it were also gone--including the keys to my hard-sided luggage! I ran back to security and they managed to find the keys, but the watch was history. Only a C$10 item, but it was really handy and cute--shaped like a key. I had an hour to switch planes, but when I got to the counter the flight I was supposed to be on was delayed for maintenance. Eventually they switched me to another plane that left a half hour later, but almost imediately after that they said the original flight would be leaving as well, and at basically the same time as the one I had been switched to. This caused a bit of confusion with Paul, the driver Dr. Meltzer had sent to pick me up, but after wandering around for a few minutes we connected and I was on my way into the city in a white Cadillac.

I had booked a night at the Days Inn City Centre, which is just a few blocks from Dr. Meltzer's office. When I got there they didn't have a room ready yet, so I went shopping. I went for a long walk north through Portland's city centre and then up to what seemed to be the "Bohemian quarter". Along the way I stopped to get film, including lots of Polaroids, to order a US$50 bouquet for myself and to buy and mail three cards to myself (two get well and one congratulations). I didn't know whether anyone would send me flowers or cards, and I wanted to be sure I had some to make the experience special. At the far north end of my trip I went to Powell's, a huge used book store larger than any Chapters I have seen, and to the New Renaissance Bookstore in the aforementioned "Bohemian" quarter. I bought a couple of books on New Thought/ Religious Science (my religion) at Powell's (1005 W. Burnside) and some incense, an incense holder and a couple of meditative music CDs (Zen Garden and Divine Gypsy) at New Renaissance (1338 NW 23^rd Ave). Then I walked back south, picked up some Jello, apple juice and broth for the "no solids" diet the next day, had some pizza at Pizziola, the same place I ate last year when I came for my consultation and finally got my room. After a brief walk in Gov. Tom McCall Park along the riverfront, I went to bed around 10:30PM. I had walked about six hours, so I had no problem falling asleep, but I did wake up for a while around 4:30AM.

Wednesday, June 14, 2000: I got up at 6AM, got ready and meditated for a while using the Zen Garden tape I had bought the previous day. At 8AM a friend called to wish me well. I checked out at 9AM, leaving my suitcase and shoulder bag in storage, and set out by cab for the Physicians' Pavillion at Oregon Health Sciences University where I had a 10:45AM appointment with Dr. Cohen's staff for an evaluation for speech surgery. I was fairly satisfied with my voice and didn't really think I would pursue surgery, but wanted to make a final decision on it based on knowledge and not conjecture. I also wanted an expert to examine my vocal chords to be sure I was not doing anything that would cause them long-term harm.

The cab ride gave me a bit of a scare as the driver immediately replied he had been there many times and knew exactly where it was--out by the airport! I knew this was wrong as I had looked up the address on my map and it was just a short distance south of the city centre. I pointed this out and again he replied, "oh yeah, I know exactly where that is, I've been there many times!" I was not exactly reassured, but sure enough we got there in about ten minutes. I was extremely early, but had nothing better to do, so I settled in with a book for a long wait after getting my documentation in order.

The evaluation had several parts. I was asked to read a short piece of text, and then the speech pathologist stuck a video camera on the end of a long rod down my throat and told me to make a sound ("EEEE", I think). It took several tries to get enough of a recording since I have a strong gag reflex. We later went to another room where I had to go "EEEE" with rising and falling intonation several times.

The results were very good. The vocal chords looked perfectly healthy with no sign of damage (I was just told to drink more water to avoid the build-up of phlegmy coatings on them). My average vocal frequency was 194 Hz one time and 213 the next, right in the range of 180-250 Hz that is considered normal for a female and exactly where they would want a person of my size to be. My range was from 90 to 1117 Hz, which actually went both higher and lower than the average female. Her subjective evaluation was that my voice was better as is than most people after surgery, and she had said if I had called up she wouldn't have known I was a TS even though she works with them all the time. There was no sign of hyperfunction (overreliance on "tricks" that can make you sound fake or damage your vocal chords), and my technique seemed fine, too (perhaps a little more resonance would be helpful, but that's it). In short, she not only said don't have the surgery, but asked me how I had achieved this amazing result! All I could suggest was that I had spent a lot of time studying languages, especially Japanese, and that perhaps that had given me an "ear" that enabled me to get more out of my speech therapy than most people.

After a long wait I got a cab back downtown, picked up a few last-minute items and did some reading to kill time. Around 3PM I picked up my stuff at the Days Inn and walked down to Dr. Meltzer's office. I spent a fair bit of time there going over various forms and getting some medications and supplies and then Dr. Meltzer arrived. He examined me, talked about breast implant size (more on that later) and then they took some pictures of me. Paul picked me up and took me to Walgreens to get some prescriptions filled on the way to Eastmoreland Hospital, where the procedures would be performed. I got to the hospital just after 6PM, was admitted through the emergency room entrance at the side, and checked into Room 112. I had a light meal of broth, juice and jello which I actually enjoyed. All day long I had had to confine myself to broth and jello as part of the bowel preparation, but since I had no place to stay I had just been drinking cold broth from a can and eating warm jello, so hot broth and cold jello actually seemed like a treat! Around 6:50PM I drank the bowel prep fluid. I had heard a lot about how foul this was, so I was expecting the worst, but it actually tasted fine--sort of like a sweet lemon-lime soft drink.

Shortly after moving in I heard a woman screaming and then an angry man. It was a bit unsettling, but later I discovered that apart from Dr. Meltzer's patients, the main client group in Eastmoreland, which is very small (around 30 rooms), is geriatric psychiatric patients. Some of these are suffering from senile dementia, Alzheimers, etc., so occasionally there are minor disturbances from people who don't understand what is happening around them. Eastmoreland also seems to service a lot of osteopaths, many of whom have offices in the surrounding area.

My attention didn't dwell on this for long, though, as various nurses came to take me away for a chest X-ray, blood tests, a weigh-in, blood pressure/pulse recording, an EKG, and a demonstration of how to use the lung exerciser they give you to prevent fluid accumulation in the lungs (and subsequent pneumonia) while you are on bed rest. After doing my evening treatment (our word for affirmative prayer), I again went to bed around 10:30PM. I slept poorly as the room seemed to be very cold, and whenever I complained people just came in and fiddled with the heater controls (as if I was too dumb to figure them out).

 Thursday, June 15, 2000 THE BIG DAY: My alarm woke me around 5:20AM. I got up, did my morning treatment (prayer), put in the bowel prep suppository and had a shower. About 6:30AM they put me on an IV of Ringer's lactated something and a couple of antibiotics. Around 7AM the anaesthesiologist came in and explained that it would be done under general anaesthetic since I was having breast implants at the same time (a spinal is an option if implants are not being done). He said I would be awake about 90 minutes after the surgery was over. At 7:30AM they came and put me on a stretcher and wheeled me into the operating room.

The next thing I remember was awakening briefly around 2:30-2:45PM. A nurse who was one of the angels who worked there had had me moved to a warmer room (#120). I kept drifting in and out of sleep, assisted by a machine that would give extra doses of Demerol whenever I pressed a button. The nurses came in and got everything arranged close to me, as I was not allowed to get out of bed or exert myself in any way (not that I felt tempted!). They said everything looked fine as far as the way the surgery had gone and my subsequent vital signs. The pain was very modest, much less than most people had described to me. I would describe it as just a dull ache down below, and nothing at all from the breast implants.

My voice was quite raspy from having tubes down my throat and I remembered thinking my breasts looked small, perhaps because they were tightly bound in an Ace bandage. My first thought was how "sudden" it all was: I had not even seen Dr. Meltzer before the surgery. I also felt concerned about the breast size, but decided not to dwell on it.

These pictures show how things looked when I first came out of surgery.

In the late evening I ate my "supper", consisting again of broth, apple juice, Jello and water. I also started using the lung exerciser. You put your mouth over the tube and then inhale at a controlled rate so that the little floater in the small tube at the right stays in a narrow range. Then you hold as the air in it leaks out, putting pressure on your lungs to keep the little pockets in them from collapsing.

I had no recollection of falling asleep as I was just in and out all the time.

Friday, June 16, 2000 (first day after surgery): I had a breakfast of eggs and bacon and then spent the rest of the morning dozing, drinking, reading, and doing my lung exercises. The first day after surgery you are required to spend on bed rest, i.e. no getting up, even to go to the bathroom. I had to go several times as the last of the bowel prep kit worked through me and they brought a bed pan each time. It would have been a good idea to bring a backscratcher, as your back gets itchy from lying in your sweat for long periods.

Dr. Meltzer came by around 12:30PM and I gave him a Government of Ontario form I needed to get my birth certificate changed. He said my implants were 550cc, which should be a D cup (I subsequently checked and I think it will be a C unless I get some of the development back that I lost when I went off hormones). He said he tried going up to 575 cc, but it didn't look good, so he went back to 550 cc. He said the shape was good and the whole procedure was very routine.

When I woke up around 3PM lots of stuff had arrived: three bouquets and a collection of festive tinfoil helium balloons anchored with a box of chocolates from some friends at work. The bouquets were from me, the faculty association at my university, and a couple of colleagues.There was also a congratulatory fax from a friend at work. Later another bouquet arrived from a TG friend in Calgary and various cards, calls and faxes continued to drift in over the next few days. Only one of the three cards I had sent to myself ever arrived, though!

Sometime during the day they also cut the Ace bandage off my breasts and I could see them for the first time. There was a blue, U-shaped pull-through suture along the bottom edge of the aureola on each one with a piece of tape over it all, with just a small round hole for the nipple to peak through. Under the tape was some blood, which bothered me until I found out a few days later that it had been congealed all along.

I watched a bit of TV, but they didn't have much of interest. The remotes are weird things with only one button, so once it's on you have to go through all the channels to get the thing to go off. The cable selection of channels is also pretty bizarre. There are about a dozen Christian fundamentalist channels, about 20 infomercial channels, a dozen or so that deal primarily with auto racing, and perhaps half a dozen that one might actually want to watch (networks, History, etc.!)

Around 9PM one of Dr. Meltzer's patients who had had a labiaplasty came in for a chat.

Saturday, June 17, 2000 (second day after surgery): About 5AM the Demerol in my machine gave out. The nurse said I was going to have the machine taken off in a little while anyway, so she gave me some Percocet oral painkiller instead. It didn't work as well, but still the pain level was quite modest.

Around 7AM a great nurse came in and got my room cleaned up. Then she unhooked my IV and got me into the shower. It felt so good to finally get moving and get clean. Not all of the nurses who had been on while I was confined to bed had been as conscientious as they might have been and so I was really quite filthy. After breakfast Dr. Meltzer came by briefly and told me to walk as much as possible, so I started going up and down the halls all day long. In the late afternoon I also went out briefly into the little garden at the back of the hospital and got some fresh air. I didn't go far, though, as I was still in my night gown and was carrying my catheter bag.

It felt like I had lost a bit of weight due to the prep for the surgery and the modest amount I had been eating since. The food was actually not bad for a hospital, and you could order from a menu a day in advance, but generally the food was cold or at best lukewarm, so I didn't always even eat all they brought (cold scrambled eggs don't pique my appetite, and I have a thing about my food being hot, not lukewarm). The soups were generally both good and relatively hot, so I always ate them. In the evening I finally got so hungry I ordered a pepperoni, bacon and extra cheese pizza from Domino's. It wasn't that great, but it sure tasted good after days of Jello and cold eggs.

Sunday, June 18, 2000 (third day after surgery): I slept poorly, probably because of the drugs, and eventually got up around 6:30AM. I got showered, did my hair and eye makeup and got dressed to go to church. I asked at the nurses' station and they said it was OK and gave me a plug for the catheter bag, but then called Dr. Meltzer to confirm. He gave the green light and they called me a cab around 9:30AM, asking for it to arrive at 10AM to take me to a 10:30AM service. I went outside to wait, but the cab never came. About 10:35AM I gave up, came back inside and asked them to cancel the cab. I was quite disappointed, as I had really wanted to see what another church of my faith was like.

Still, it felt great to be dressed in street clothes and up and around. I went over to the 7-11 on the corner and bought the first of innumerable bottles of cranberry juice that I drank throughout my stay (it is renowned for its power to fight urinary tract infections, to which one is quite susceptible during the recovery period). I drank at least two 16-oz. bottles a day of the stuff, and continued to drink it after getting home.

Over the next several days I compiled a map of the area showing businesses and points of interest to those who are staying at Eastmoreland. The file is huge (331K), but if you are going there you may want to check this out and print yourself a copy eastmorelandmap.htm. For those interested in transit, the #10 Harold bus goes from Steele Street downtown and the #75 39^th Ave-Lombard bus runs north along 39^th Avenue.

I also began socializing in earnest today. There was one GRS patient who had her surgery the day after me (Friday) and one who had had hers two days before. The rest mostly just passed through briefly for labiaplasties. Dr. Meltzer was leaving the week following my scheduled departure, so he had to "clear out the inventory", so to speak. By some strange coincidence, at one point there were four of us who were university professors on the floor!

I realized late in the day that I had been taking too much Percocet and was feeling kind of high, so I started cutting back. I also realized I was freezing, so another one of the good nurses arranged for me to move to another room, my third (#116). It had a new heater (definitely try to get one of these rooms if you can; the heat control is totally shot in the other rooms and they swing wildly back and forth between arctic cold and tropical heat). This room had a better view, too, similar to the first room I had had. It overlooked a community garden behind the hospital. The blinds also worked, which they hadn't in either of the previous rooms.

This is the view of the community garden from Room 116, the one I spent the most time in.

Monday, June 19, 2000 (fourth day after surgery): Right after getting up this morning I did a body shave, which felt great (body hair is the bane of my existence, though it did get finer under pressure from massive doses of spironolactone during my real life test). Dr. Meltzer came by about 10AM. He explained that the two stitches above the surgical site that I had been wondering about were to take pressure off the top of the vagina. He said everything looked good and that the spread of the bruising was normal as the blood migrated around. It hurt more to sit today and he said that was also normal as the swelling went down and the nerves started to get active again. He gave me the OK to start back on a half-dose of hormones, too, which he said would avoid the hot and cold flashes.

About 10:30AM Sue, one of Dr. Meltzer's nurses, came by and removed the drains (two tubes that had been used to drain out blood from the surgical site). She snipped a stitch on each one and had me inhale deeply as she pulled each one out in turn. It burned a fair bit, especially the second, shorter one, but the pain was not that bad and had gone away within three or four minutes. Shortly thereafter I got calls from my sister and a colleague.

The gal who had had her surgery two days before me mentioned a rhododendron garden nearby, so I went there. It's called the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden and is about an eight minute walk south of the hospital (go to the 7-11 and turn left). It's a nice walk and has washrooms if you need to empty your catheter (you can't have it plugged for more than two hours). I ended up in a long conversation with one of the elderly garden volunteers who had spent her childhood in Japan and then went back 60 years later to teach English.

On the way back I almost got run over in front of the 7-11 by a senior citizen who ran a stop sign. He came within about 18 inches of hitting me.

When I got back I met a patient I ended up spending a lot of time with. She is a very successful disabled athlete who entered competition after an accident in middle age. She had a great attitude and I basically spent all my free time in the hospital with her after that.

I also ventured out to Trader Joe's, an 18- minute walk away. It's a rather unique upscale supermarket with a lot of neat stuff, and I began buying odds and ends there regularly to supplement my diet.

Tuesday, June 20, 2000 (fifth day after surgery): I washed my hair for the first time since arriving and then walked to Walgreen's pharmacy, a 23-minute walk away. Later I went to see a patient who was in for a labiaplasty. She and her partner had me in later after her surgery for butterscotch sundaes, and then gave me custody of the leftover supplies.

Wednesday, June 21, 2000 (sixth day after surgery): Sue came by around 9:20AM and removed the pull-through sutures from my breasts after cutting off the part of the tape above the aureola. Pulling the sutures caused a mild burning sensation. Then she snipped the stitches that had been holding the labia together so she could get access to the gauze packing in the vagina. As she began pulling it out I was reminded of those old magicians' tricks where they pull an endless chain of hankies out of a hand or something similar. It just seemed to go on forever, but it didn't hurt. It felt really strange looking in the mirror at my new vagina. I was always pretty naive sexually so I didn't really know quite what to expect. Now that everything was visible I began to really look it all over. There was still a lot of black-and-blue bruising above and on the very top part of my left leg, though some of it had already turned yellow. The outer labia were very stiff and swollen so they stuck straight out. I was surprised to see how exposed and obvious the bright pink clitoris was. Sue then did the first dilation. Apart from a brief moment as the dilator went in it didn't hurt, to my surprise, perhaps because things were still distended from the packing. I had just over six inches of depth measured from the outer labia. She then had me do it myself to be sure I understood what to do (the angle took a bit of getting used to, but otherwise it was not hard). As soon as the dilation was over I had to have a bowel movement. Apart from the leftovers from the bowel prep kit right after surgery I had not been able to go since the surgery. The removal of the pressure from the packing caused me to go several times in the next few hours.

In the afternoon I walked up to 39^th Ave and Powell St., which is quite a long walk (perhaps 35-40 minutes each way). When I got back the videos I had asked Dr. Meltzer's staff for were there. I took the cart down to the room of my new friend, who was the least mobile of us, invited the other Meltzer patient on the ward to join us, and then we started watching Better than Chocolate, a movie with a lesbian main character and a TS supporting character that was set in the Vancouver, BC area, and eating butterscotch sundaes made from the provisions I had inherited. The other gals couldn't make it all the way through the movie, so I took the cart back to my room and watched the rest of that film and another one I had requested, Flawless, which featured Robert De Niro as a retired cop who tries to regain his speech after a stroke by taking singing lessons from a TS living as a drag queen in the same dingy building where he lives.

Thursday, June 22, 2000 (seventh day after surgery): I decided to stop taking Percocet altogether today and switched to Extra Strength Tylenol. Later in the day I finally got my O-ring cushion, which made sitting a lot easier. Dr. Meltzer's staff also gave me a beautiful white stuffed cat that I promptly named "Puff". (No, the irony of it being a cat did not escape me.)

I walked north up SE 28^th Ave (just to the west of the hospital) to Powell St., then east on Powell to SE 39^th Ave, south on 39^th to Steele St. and then back west to the hospital. This was my longest walk yet, a total of about an hour and ten minutes. I was supposed to be doing "bladder training", which consists of plugging the catheter so the bladder gets used to holding urine again instead of just leaking it out into the bag, but since I had been capping the catheter for four days already in order to go on walks, this involved no real change in my routine.

In the evening my friend and I ordered a pizza from Papa Johns (much better than Domino's) and we shared it around with some of the nurses and patients who were in for labiaplasties.

Friday, June 23, 2000 (eighth day after surgery): Around 9:30AM Lindsay (one of Dr. Meltzer's nurses) came by and took out my catheter and the two button-like stitches above the surgical site. This was a great present, as it was my 42^nd birthday. The stitches hurt a bit as they were extremely tight and had to be pulled tighter to cut them. The catheter removal was no problem, though the feeling was pretty weird as it slid out. I was told to wait a while before passing urine in order to let a good quantity accumulate. When I did go an hour later, everything came out fine, with no blood, though I had been told there might be some for a while. It also came out in a steady stream, although for the next several days it tended to spray a bit. Urination was accompanied by a hissing sound like air leaking from a punctured tire. I asked Dr, Meltzer and he said other patients had told him the same thing and that the cause was likely the unevenness of the exit of the urethra. He said it should resolve as the healing is completed.

I had been getting little shooting pains now and then for a couple of days, and both Lindsay and later Dr. Meltzer said this was normal as the nerves recovered. The area above is still swollen and could remain so for up to six months before completely returning to normal. As the swelling and bruising resolved I would experience leakage from the sutures around the clitoris, which is the only area the blood and stuff could really leak out of. They gave me these huge old-fashioned pads, which I needed at first, though by the time I went home I was able to switch to a mini-pad (Kotex Light Days).

For my birthday lunch I went to Toki's Bento Stand near the 7-11 and got a very nice Japanese-style (i.e. mild) chicken curry for US$4. They also have teriyaki chicken and beef, and are the closest place one can get real food if you are looking for a change from the hospital fare. I then walked south on 28^th Ave and east on Woodstock to 39^th Ave, then north to Steele St. and "home". This route took me around the southern perimeter of Reed College, which has a spacious green campus imediately to the east of the hospital. This was a pleasant 45-minute walk through verdant surroundings.

Just south of the 7-11 is a little local produce stand. I bought two pints of delicious local Oregon strawberries, cleaned them and left them to soak in a syrup made of water and all the leftover sugar packets I had been hoarding (one came with each meal and I never used any of them). Later in the evening my friend and I shared berries and the last of the inherited ice cream.

Saturday, June 24, 2000 (ninth day after surgery): When I showered this morning I was able to remove the clear tape from below the nipples of my breasts. They are still very firm, though the swelling has gone down a lot and so the skin is not so tight. I started to pack in the morning.

I went for a walk north on 28^th to Holgate, east on Holgate and back. Along the way on 28^th I kneeled down to pet a cat who then followed me for several blocks heeling like a dog. Weird. I made a slight detour west on Holgate before resuming my route. Initially I just wanted to check out the Holgate Station Deli and Espresso (the nearest sit-down place where one might go for coffee or a snack). To my delight right beside it there was a collectible car dealership, Mathews Memory Lane Motors. They had several dozen really clean old cars, ranging from a Model T and a couple of Model As to a GTO. Most of the cars were from the 40s and early 50s (like a 1940 La Salle convertible and a 1950 Packard Super-8 Convertible). This is quite close to the hospital and makes a very interesting destination if you have a soft spot for older vehicles (they had several old pickups, too).

As I was nearing the hospital on the way back I looked down and got a huge shock--there was a big blood stain in the centre of the chest of my dress! In panic I looked down the top trying to find the source of this. I was very puzzled, as everything had healed well and there were no incisions anywhere near the centre of my chest. It turned out to be a false alarm: when rearraanging the flowers in my room to find stuff to pack I had inadvertently shaken some red pollen from the stamens of some of the flowers onto the centre of my chest. It wasn't blood after all!

Sunday, June 25, 2000 (tenth day after surgery): Departure day! I said good-bye to my friends and one of the great nurses. The daughter of one of Dr. Meltzer's staff took me out to the airport. We were a bit later than I would like to be but eventually I got on and took my seat next to a burly, outdoorsy guy who was on his way to Alaska to go fishing with his brothers. We had a pleasant conversation (he seemed to have no idea about my background) and an uneventful trip until I got to Seattle, where I had another travel scare: until the very last minute I thought I was going to be bumped. I turned out to be the last passenger allowed on (one stayed behind). I was glad because I knew a friend was waiting for me at the airport and I didn't want to inconvenience her any more than necessary. The moral of the story is that if you are travelling through Seattle by air on your way to Portland, allow lots of extra time. The place is a complete zoo and it seemed like every flight in or out of there was either late or cancelled or overbooked or some combination of the three.

My friend picked me up, dropped me off at my home and after unpacking I joined a party my housemates organized in honour of my birthday and homecoming from surgery.

Epilogue: On Monday the 26^th at 10AM I had an appointment in Calgary with my doctor to be "inspected". I then took his letter and the documents I had received from Dr. Meltzer to the Registry Offfice and got a new driver's license with the correct letter "F" and a picture that actually looks something like me. After stopping at the university to say hi to my friends and get my passport application signed, it was off to the Passport Office, where I applied for rush 24-hour service on a new passport. I needed the passport right away so I could apply for my visa to Japan. I picked my new passport up on Tuesday and got everything sent off in good time.

When they removed the packing on the 21^st they gave me a set of four dilators. The #1 is one inch in diameter and they step up in increments of 1/8".On Wednesday, June 28^th I managed to use the #2 dilator for the first time, though I had to prepare with several minutes of the #1 first. By the next day I was able to get the #2 in without the preliminaries. It is hard enough for me to imagine using the #3, which I am supposed to do within three weeks of the first dilation; the #4 looks gargantuan! Fortunately the #4 is optional. Dilating is still a bit of a chore, as it hurts briefly when the dilator first passes through the muscles a couple of inches in. Once past that point it goes in easily until the last half-inch, which requires constant pressure to maintain. With the #1 it went in slightly over 6" without a problem. With the #2 it goes in about 5.5" and then it takes some stretching to get back over the 6" mark. I dilated for longer than required in order to ready myself for the step up to the #3. I used the #3 for the first time on Wednesday, July 5 after ten minutes with the #2. On Thursday, July 6 I tried going straight to the #3, but it hurt a lot and there was slight spotting of blood afterwards, so I went back to using the #2 for ten minutes first before stepping up to the #3, and then leaving the #3 in for 20 minutes. Apparently it will take up to six months for the muscles inside to fully loosen up.

My new breasts are not painful, but also don't feel natural yet, either to the touch or when I move (it feels like I have a ball in there right now). I have to manipulate them once a day to help the process along. Significant progress should occur within three months, but it could take up to eighteen months for the full effect. By that time I should have regained any breast tissue I lost while off hormones in preparation for the surgery. It seems right now like they will probably be a C cup (I am not supposed to wear a bra for at least six weeks, but did try a couple on just to get a sense of the size). Regrowth might push that up a bit, perhaps to a D, but they are quite adequate in size even if they stay just as they are right now.

As I think back on the whole experience, there are three things that come to mind that I would pass on to anyone contemplating a "trip to Portland".

First, everyone was amazed at how quickly I was up and around, even the nurses and Dr. Meltzer's staff (one nurses' report referred to me as "party girl Teri" due to my propensity for socializing with others in a humour that belied the fact I had just had five hours of major surgery!). Dr. Meltzer himself confirmed that I was at the extreme end of the spectrum in terms of my recovery and level of physical activity. I was in good health, though not that "fit", before the surgery, but so are many other patients. I believe there is one difference between me and many others, though: Faith. I had treated (i.e. prayed) for "healing that is always perfect, immediate and complete" and had had one of the ministers at my church do so for me as well (another friend did whatever it is they do in Wicca, too). By the time I arrived I knew I would be up and around as soon as they would let me and that there would be minimal discomfort, and that's exactly what I experienced. This is what we in Religious Science call a "demonstration" (i.e. the fulfillment of an affirmative prayer). You probably have a different religion, or perhaps none at all, but whatever the case, I believe you will have an easier time of it if you can, by whatever means (prayer, meditation, intellectual reasoning, etc.), acquire the complete conviction that you will bounce back in no time. Pay no attention to those who will tell you it will hurt a lot or you will be disabled for an eternity afterwards. Believe all will be well and it will be.

Second, your experience at Eastmoreland will be what you make it. It is quite possible to be entirely miserable there if you really try. There are lots of reasons to complain if you look for them: the heaters are wacky, the food is usually cold, there are occasionally loud disturbances from patients with senile dementia, some of the nurses need some attitude adjustment (one could barely stand to look at me and another complained about every single thing she had to do for me while I was confined to bed rest the first day), the TV sucks and it's not all that comfortable to have a bunch of tubes and stuff hanging out of you. So what?!You've just completed a major life goal with the help of the best surgeon in the world and most of the nurses range from good to great. If you get your butt out of bed you can do stuff yourself anyway, socialize with a bunch of people who have just had the same experience and get anything you want to eat or drink (well, almost--they might be alarmed if you had a case of vodka delivered!). There's no reason not to be so busy that the discomfort is forgotten, the time flies by and you can't be bothered watching the stupid infomercials anyway. You may not get the coddling they offer in, say, Montreal, but Dr. Meltzer's staff are great and will do their best to fix any temporary problems that arise due to miscommunication between his office and the hospital (I heard through the grapevine that Dr. Meltzer severely reamed out a couple of the Eastmoreland nurses, for example). So enjoy!

Third, I have to say that somehow I felt less feminine after the surgery than right before. I think this was probably because all the new "feminine parts" were sources of discomfort rather than pleasure, and perhaps the lack of hormones played a part, too. There is also so much work to do to keep everything healing right, and it is hard to romanticize parts that still have stitches (the remaining ones are self-dissolving and should fall out in the next month or six weeks). As things have normalized this feeling of "oddness" has been gradually subsiding, and I am confident that once I am completely back to "normal" I will feel just as before, but with one big difference: I can now love instead of loathe my body.

More Epilogue: July 9 the stitch came out of my left breast. On July 21 I had the last thing get flushed out during douching: a large, mucous-y piece of skin about the size of a dollar coin. Yech! As of August 10, 2000 dilation continues to be quite painful at the time of insertion, then gradually softens to moderate discomfort. My breasts have loosened up quite a bit so that they now have a crease under them. Still firmer than natural tissue, though. On August 10, 2000 I started using the Premarin cream Dr. Meltzer had prescribed to soften and pinken the skin on the inner side of the labia majora. There is an amazing discrepancy in price for this product between Canada and the USA. The tube I got in the USA cost over US$55, i.e. C$83. The tubes I bought in Canada cost C$22 and change, or about US$15!! The product is exactly the same in size and composition, and is even produced by the same company (actually its Canadian subsidiary).

Return to Teri's home page: http://members.shaw.ca/tallteri

Page created July 3, 2000.