Midsouth and South US trans people:
Vanderbilt is closing their gender affirming surgery program according to a message I got this morning.
They said they’d complete my staged process, so I assume that means they will for everyone, but this is a huge blow.
Not sure if they are closing all their gender affirming care or just surgery as I only have my surgery done there.
Had my two week #bottomsurgery checkup today. Everything is healing well, even the PA seemed surprised. Maybe I got lucky?
#bottomsurgery recovery, day 13.
Got the catheter and packing out on Thursday, and I got to meet her for the first time. 🥰
Pain has been up and down but generally managed well. Off the oxy and just ibuprofen, Tylenol and gabapentin now. And cannabis edibles. 😎
Dilation is really not a big deal yet, but doing it three times a day is already tiring. I can move around pretty easily without much pain. Just have to keep aware of my limits.
@JMWinters is the best nurse ever. 🩷🩷🩷
#trans #transgender #transfem #transition #transjoy #surgery
I have come to the conclusion that I need my vaginoplasty to be able to move on with my life. That I need to fix my body so that I can fix my mind. The constant pain and thought Invades my mind like nothing else, and is preventing me from making progress.
Now the challenge is going to convince those that are gatekeepers that this is the right course of actions. Because they will tend to say the other way around, that I need to fix my mind because before I can fix my body. But I've tried. And it always comes back to this.
#trans #transfem #transwoman #bottomsurgery #dysphoria #vaginoplasty #mentalhealth
I am now back at the apartment. The ride back was not as bad as I feared. Pain is still well under control. Now for the extra fun part: the next few days on my back.
#trans #transgender #transfem #transition #transjoy #surgery #bottomsurgery
So, I just woke up to prepare for a trip to Nijmegen to get my intake for #BottomSurgery and it turns out there is a litlte bit of snow lying in the city… Not dense, but I really hope it won’t mess up public transport for me…
Good morning from San Francisco! 🩷
#trans #transgender #transfem #transition #transjoy #surgery #bottomsurgery
So I missed a call from the university hospital in Nijmegen about half an hour ago that they moved the call that we will have on Thursday (about which I had no fucking idea that it was scheduled) from 09:something to 11:30.
Now the only thing I want from them at this time, and furthermore fitting with the fact that it was the department for plastic surgery, is a combo surgery (SRS + FFS), and I’ve been on their waiting list for the waiting list for quite a while now… So could it, be that I’ll finally make it to the actual waiting list? With enough luck, this might even mean that my birthday next month will be my last birthday with genitals in birth configuration… That would be amazing! If not, it would still mean that I’d be highly likely to get the surgery in 2027; later than I’d like, but still before turning 35. 😊
#transition #bottomsurgery #FFS #SRS #trans #transjoy #transfem #medicalTransition
So, I've been looking for a psychiatrist for a very long time now, which, where I am, is complicated, to say the least. With finding a psychiatrist that is also a trans ally and that is actually going to support you, it sometimes feels like you might as well be looking for fucking Bigfoot.
And the reason why I really wanna see a psychiatrist is that, first off, my brain is a complete mess, and it could use some chemical recalibration, let's say. But also, it is out of complete and utter necessity, because I need my vaginoplasty, okay? Bunny needs her pussy. Because otherwise she's gonna keep having to deal with massive dysphoria-infused anxiety attacks every other week until she can't take it anymore.
But, to do this, it seems that every fucking surgeon in this country have universally agreed that you needed the approval of a psychiatrist, even though, no, it's not protocol. however, getting a psychiatrist is already hard enough, but as I said earlier, getting one that would be willing to even accept this instead of trying to rehabilitate conversion therapy for you is almost fucking impossible.
Whatever though, I have made progress today.
As I do every month, I saw my doctor today. She helps me with my hormones, and she also helps me with antidepressants and stuff, because, well, no one else is going to. It's like every other month the topic of my search for a psychiatrist came up and she mentioned this guy that she knew. And it turns out it's a guy that's been on my radar and I've been trying to contact but doesn't take any new patient. But if she contacts him directly she may have a spot for me.
Great. Progress.
So she starts writing her letter, she mentions the whole mess that's in my brain and so on, everything is fine, but then, she starts talking about my vaginoplasty and I have to stop her and protest. Because she wrote that I would be interested in doing a vaginoplasty "in a couple of years." And I was like, "Fuck no!"
Don't give that "in a couple of years" shit. The couple of years is now! I've been on hormones for two fucking years and I've been talking about it since the day I met you. I was 13, didn't even had the words to say that I was a girl and yet, I was already thinking stuff like, "having a pussy would fix me tbh." So no more of that in a couple of years shit, I'm almost 30! We are in it now, the couple of years have passed already. I want it. I know I want it. And more than that, I need it! I'm done waiting, I don't have it in me, this is not some fucking comfort thing for me, it's life and death, you don't fucking know how badly I need this, clearly.
But the thing is, it turns out that according to her, this psychiatrist is sensitive about these things. So if I go to him and I immediately start talking about it, he's gonna feel like he's been labeled as the type of psychiatrist that is here to give letters of approbation, and God forbid we wouldn't want this man to be wounded in his ego for being what is essentially a glorified gatekeeper here.
And now it's a lose-lose situation for me, because if I see him and I tell him "Oh yeah, by the way, I desperately need and want this", he's not gonna get it to me because he's gonna feel used or whatever. But if I wait for a couple of months, not only do I lose a couple of months, which, as I'll get to later, is not nothing, but also, he's gonna be like "Well, if it was that urgent, why didn't you talk to me about it sooner? It seems to be coming out of nowhere, so surely it must just be you being obsessing about something. Surely, it's not that serious." And besides, how the fuck do I know when it's the right time? How am I supposed to gauge when his ego has been satiated? How do I make sure he's not gonna feel manipulated or whatever in the end? Not to mention that avoiding this specific subject for me is kind of like avoiding the fucking elephant in the room when it comes to my mental health, which is kind of fucking difficult to do, WHEN I'M TALKING TO MY MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONAL!
Why is it that every time I go see a mental health professional or someone like that, I am the one that ends up having to work around their feelings! Why is it that it always ends up with me trying to baby them and tiptoeing around them so that I can get the treatment that I need! I'm going there to get help but I spend more time worrying about how I ask it then I do getting help. They should be fucking paying me at this point!
When I saw my doctors, she told me that it would need two years of hormones and so on. I could totally understand her reticence, she didn't know me after all. And honestly, I was open to see if HRT alone would help. But the thing is, I've been told "in a couple years" already. And now, I'm gonna have to go through this shit again with someone else? Because he doesn't know me and he must make sure that I'm sure that I am actually desperate?! When does it fucking end, then?! Because the thing is, the waitlists are years long already! I have some that are much shorter than others but they will keep expanding the further I wait and I can't even get on the fucking waitlist until the psychiatrist makes his letter of approbation! So even just waiting a couple of months could cost turn one more year of wait time in multiple. At this point, what the fuck is preventing the surgeon to tell me to come back in a couple years to make sure that I haven't changed my mind, too?!
"You're focusing on the negative!"
YES I FUCKING AM! Give me a fucking break! I'm sick of every fucking piece of slightly good news coming with caveats and footnotes! I think about this surgery every fucking day, it's all I can think about! I'm miserable in my body because of this thing in between my legs and instead of helping me, I have to lie and manipulate my way to victory because the people in charge ARE SCARED OF BEING LIED TO AND MANIPULATED! Because that's simply the current standard for trans people to access to health care!
I feel hopelessly alone, like this system is testing my resilience and hoping that I will give up or do their fucked up society a service and end things for good. Why is no one is willing to listen to me and what I need, why is it always up to me to be patient and strong. I feel like nobody is taking me seriously when I talk about how fucking desperate I am for this surgery. I say that the only thing that's preventing me from doing self-harm there is that I don't want to ruin my chance to have a sucessful surgery and no one bats a fucking eye at that, and if anything, it leads to people thinking I might be too unstable to get such a life changing surgery.
Yes, I'm a miserable depressed anxious traumatized fragile little creature, and that needs to be taken care of, I get it and we're working on it, I've gone through more antidepressants than I can remember at this point. I've been going to therapy for years. I'm working on this. But none of that is improved by the fact that I'm also a girl stuck in this rancid body that isn't her! If I was cis and I had a malformation there, it would've been taken care of already! Somebody fucking do something! Begging makes me sound desperate and that scares people off, with-holding information makes me manipulative! I AM DESPERATE! What the fuck do you want from me! Have some fucking empathy you fucks!
Every step forward feels like a sidestep. Like things are morphing without ever changing, the scene outside the window is different yet we haven't moved one fucking centimeter. I wanted my surgery before I'm thirty. If I get it before I'm forty it'll be a miracle but I don't plan on still being there by then with this thing still attached to me. I can't fucking do it.
Fuck psychiatry. The entire thing. These people practically invented transphobia, this entire field has always made things considerably worse before making things better. It can rot. I'm gonna buy a fucking DSM just so I can burn it for catharsis at this point.
#trans #transgender #transwoman #transfem #vaginoplasty #psychiatry #psychiatrist #bottomsurgery
You'll Never Trust a Toilet Again - Weekly Weird News
🇩🇪 Heute eine schöne email erhalten! Termin für 2. GaOP! Anfang Februar. Frueht mich sehr darauf!
🇮🇪 Oooooh, got a nice email! Date for my bottom surgery revision/finishing op. Beginning of Feb. I'm really looking forward to it.
I just got an email that I’m on the waiting list for bottom surgery at Radboud! 😊
This is almost 1.5 months after they should have put me on it and I will remark that lying about when I was done with weight-loss turned out even more fair than I thought, since I essentially got onto the list when I’m (almost) actually done.
So it’s apparently half a year or so until the intake and then between another 0.5-1 years and some further time for recovery until I have a body with which I can feel comfortable going into a public #onsen again !
(Yes, the onsen is an unreasonably large factor in me wanting to get rid of that stuff. 😅)
#transition #transjoy #trans #transfem #bottomsurgery #medicalTransition
