VERY REAL COUNTRY

yeah, there’s a slow sense of relief building as my brain adjusts to the reality that it’s actually done, I did the thing I’ve wanted done since my earliest memories.

cheers and I hope you find the details helpful!

dilation & sexual function

• Buy surgical lube by the tube not packet – you’ll need it for a couple of weeks and the packets are both wasteful and annoying.
• get a pH-balanced lube to dilate with going forward and get a lot of it. like way more than you think. pH-balanced is important because you want to maintain an appropriate environment for the flora and fauna that eventually help maintain your vaginal health without constant douching. I’ve also been taking a daily (oral) vaginal health probiotic to try and get the right bacteria seeded there as soon as possible, immediately after I stopped taking antibiotics. I’ve been pretty quickly rewarded – I discovered that I wasn’t quite cleaning my dilators thoroughly enough because the towel I was using to wipe the water off them post-soaping ended up developing the fishy odor that vaginas typically have. I haven’t attempted to directly smell my vagina yet.
• dilation was, for me, at it’s hardest by far for the first few sessions when the last half inch or so felt like poking an exposed nerve. I don’t know if I simply lost that half inch (any dude who complains about my vaginal depth can fuck right off – no one else’s pleasure was worth bearing even a tenth that much pain) or if I desensitized that nerve but it no longer hurts anywhere near so bad. at various points over the last month, I’ve felt a similar but not nearly so intense sensation with shooting, referred pain into my abdomen, but it hasn’t just left me sobbing the way that first time did. I was straight up afraid to dilate for a bit and could barely get myself to do it.
• size dilators up carefully. I experimented with one size larger than I could handle a bit too soon and suddenly caused a whole lot of bleeding – like 15 minutes of fast and bright blood that ended up all over the floor. that said, I’ve been able to size up dilators pretty quickly and easily – in fact, I’ve kinda found that trying to get the next size dilator to depth is a great way to make the current one totally comfortable and easy. so 1 month after the surgery, I’m mostly on the orange dilator and getting it to depth without too much difficulty. I wouldn’t call leaving it in for 45 minutes quite easy yet but it’ll be there in a couple of days if my previous experience is anything to go by.
• I dilate 2x/day for 45 minutes instead of 3x/day for 30 minutes and have from the start – the surgeon is fine with this. I can also start skipping sessions once I’ve gotten the orange dilator comfortable and consistently easy. “easy dilation” here means the target dilator gets to depth in <1 minute. I know a lot of women struggle to get the dilators to depth after 10s of minutes but I’ve either totally failed to get a dilator to depth (i.e. I’m not ready to start using it for time yet) or gotten it in within 5 minutes at most and typically within 2-3 minutes even when struggling. the PA expects that I’ll be down to 2 dilation sessions a week by one year post-op, consequently.
• one thing that’s helped me move up dilator sizes relatively quickly has been to steal an active stirring technique from Thai surgeons. never, ever rotate a dilator post-insertion - but you can stir the dilator, once fully inserted, about it’s deepest point. this stretches the neo-vaginal canal, massaging any scar tissue and keeping it from developing further, as well as helping larger dilators feel comfortable sooner.
• while my clit is overly sensitive to direct touch when not aroused, I recently found out that, when sufficiently aroused, both use of a vibrator and light stroking with a finger were totally comfortable. in fact, it’s easier to tell while masturbating that there has in fact been some loss of sensation - it felt a little numb when stroking with my finger, like a faint echo of a pins and needles feeling, and I had to turn the vibrator up a bit higher than I’m used to. this doesn’t totally surprise me. I’m only a month post-op and there’s a bunch of stuff that ought to hurt but just doesn’t - like open wounds that don’t sting when soaped. so I’m fairly confident that the lost sensation will mostly return. and honestly, I was hoping for a bit of sensation loss in this area, so I won’t mind if it doesn’t - what’s there now is just a little short of ideal for me and I’m able to acheive orgasm.
• I also have no clue how inserting something into my vagina is supposed to feel sexually stimulating. yes, my prostate is now above my vaginal canal so, when aroused, I should be able to get prostate stimulation during penetration, but I haven’t been able to get close to that aroused. dilation is my primary association with putting things in my vagina – it’s somewhere on the edge of being painful at least some of the time so putting something in there for pleasure doesn’t make any sense yet. presumably once I get the orange dilator totally comfortable and easy over the next couple of weeks, that will change. keep in mind, though, a lot of early dilation involved putting things in my vagina and feeling pressure on my bladder and rectum (void both before dilating) – both have largely moved out of the way at this point but I still associate dilation with feeling really gross.

post-hospital recovery

• Buy lots of gauze rolls for leakage. they’re cheaper than menstual pads and you’re going to need to change them every single time you pee. even if you don’t have a UTI, you’re going to be peeing a lot because of inflammation in the surrounding tissue reducing the size of your bladder. I was peeing basically every time I drank anything for 3+ weeks.
• they only gave 5 days worth of oxycodone but the prescription bottle says “for 2 weeks”. this was wholly inadequate. they’ll refill this prescription on request but it’s actually really hard right now to get a hold of either Dorian or any of the other doctors - the admin staff are really dropping the ball, presumably due to understaffing and the patient load really ramping up.
• bring lots of wet wipes! you’ll need to thoroughly clean your new vulva and all the surrounding tissue each time you pee (which, again, is really fucking often). I went through 4 full packages of wet wipes in 2.5 weeks, mostly at the start when everything was really numb and I wasn’t sure where all the urine was going. as I’ve started to be able to feel everything down there, I’m using wipes much more slowly. toilet paper is too drying to use effectively while you’re still bleeeding / wounds are still closing.
• bring loose disposable underwear (look for surgical incontinence underwear). you’re gonna bleed through pads during the first week out of the hospital because of how much blood and discharge you make, especially overnight when you’re not getting up to pee and change the pad. you can cut down on this a lot by sticking some gauze inside your vulva and over your canal and changing that every time you pee – they had me do this for wound separation but it’s incredibly effective at avoiding bleeding on everything.
• they told me they were sending me home with a prescription for the new antibiotic for the UTI but the pharmacy had no clue what I was talking about. it took me 24 hours and multiple phone calls/messages to get ahold of Dorian in order to get this resolved - staff kept telling me they’d let him know and he’d call me back but it just didn’t happen. meanwhile, my UTI flared back up. I eventually got through to him by being a complete fucking bitch to their staff, at which point they had me hold and put me through with his assistant. he called me back about twenty minutes after that.
• coming out of the hospital, they cut the pain meds from 15mg of oxycodone every 4 hours + Dilaudid as needed (on top of tylenol + an NSAID) to 5mg of oxycodone every 6 hours “as needed” – about 1/3 the opioids in 50% more time, literally 5 days post-op. they also reduced tylenol from 1000mg every 6 hours to 750mg every 6 hours and replaced the IV NSAID (torridol [sp?]) with 600mg of ibuprofen taken every 8 hours! this was wildly inadequate for those first 5 days out of the hospital and I ended up switching to an equivalent dose of naproxen (aleeve, stays in your system longer so taking it every 8 hours doesn’t leave you in pain for several hours a day) and bumped tylenol back up to 1000mg. when I complained, they added a muscle relaxant to help with spasms which really reduced discomfort/pain during dilation but did very little for the pain caused by swelling/my skin feeling like it was going to burst or the pain along the stitches – the most common source for me overall. this pain medication regimen still did not work for me and I wound have been significantly more comfortable if they’d given me 10mg of oxycodone every 6 hours for those first 5 days. after that point, the swelling came down and the 5mg of oxycodone became genuinely sufficient.
• however, the oxy prescription promptly ran out after those first 5 days. between the trouble getting the antibiotics prescription and a literal week of trying to fight with the hospital over pain meds, I was just exhausted at this point. I just started taking way too much aleeve and tylenol to manage my pain until I saw Dorian, the Physician’s Assistant, in person for my first follow-up 4 days later. I ended up 50% over the maximum dose of tylenol and aleeve which risked liver, kidney, and stomach damage, but I got myself to just barely comfortable. this was what finally got through to Dorian at the first follow-up and he finally just asked me what I needed to manage the pain and told me he’d just prescribe that. I asked for a full week’s worth of oxy and he agreed. he called me 30 minutes later to walk this back by adding gabapentin instead, and reducing it to 5 days worth of oxy.
• gabapentin worked really well for incision pain in the hospital but they didn’t send me home with any. they ended up giving it to me a week and a half later at the first post-op appointment as a way to reduce the pain med prescription they were giving me from 1 full week’s worth of meds to 5 days worth.
• I have wound separation along the incision lines on the bottom of the labia majora after 2 weeks. this complication is extremely common, occurring in 50-80% of cases. the stitches along the inside of the labia majora have also begun to separate by a month post-op. I have more wound separation than is typical but the doctors don’t find this concerning. weirdly, even while totally off of the opioids, it doesn’t sting to put soap on this open skin or to pee over it.
• I’m a side-sleeper and I’ve found that when I have adequate pain meds, I can put a knee pillow between my thighs and sleep on my side just fine. there’s a bunch of stuff online saying post-op you’ll have to sleep on your back for the whole recovery. this was true while bandaged up in the hospital but once those came off, the real problem is that your labia majora are really swollen and pushing on them can hurt. but if you’re adequately medicated and have enough spacing from a pillow, you can sleep on your side just fine. OHSU’s vaginoplasty info packet also says the same – if sleeping on your side is most comfortable, do that. OTOH, I’m not sure that sleeping on your front is a great idea. the whole lower abdomen/groin region (like where you grow pubic hair) is very swollen post-surgery and no amount of pain meds makes pressure there comfortable in the slightest. I’ve only been able to roll onto my stomach occasionally around a month post-op, once the swelling came down considerably.
• after the first follow-up (two weeks out of the hospital), it became a lot easier to get adequate pain meds, especially after I had a bunch of bleeding and an infection scare immediately afterwards (right before Christmas, when everyone was off). getting the pain under control meant I could actually sleep all the way through at night – something that didn’t happen, at all, prior to the third week out of the hospital. it meant I could be comfortable through the day but being high constantly really started to get under my skin – makes it really hard to think.
• starting the third week after the surgery, I stopped needing to nap constantly so I started taking my ADHD meds again. this meant I had a bunch of mental energy and I kept trying to be active but would consistently pay for it over the next several days as the swelling and pain would ramp back up – at least once it meant a whole week of significantly increased pain. my physical endurance remains very low a month post-op. even half a mile of walking remains taxing and detangling my hair in the shower still leaves me pretty wiped by the time I’m done (my hair loves to mat). I’m working on slowly increasing my exertion so I can hopefully get back to normal activity soon.
• peeing is a bit harder than prior to surgery, even a month post-op, presumably because of the swelling. it takes noticeably more pressure to get the stream going. I haven’t had any trouble maintaining a consistent stream from the start, though I know many other girls have had issues with spraying until the swelling went down.
• sitting cross-legged is extremely comfortable once the bandages are removed and the stitches dissolve/relax enough to make it viable. it keeps pressure off your labia both from below and from your legs pressing together. if this position pulls at stitches for you, don’t do it, obviously, but I’ve personally found it to relieve a lot of pain.

• docs recommended I ask for drugs (morphine) that nurses wouldn’t give. verify pain med schedule in advance and don’t let authorization for meds slip. just take pain meds when offered them and don’t refuse them.
• I developed a fever from a UTI the day after the surgery. it was low-grade for a day or so then spiralled out of control. they didn’t start tests until my fever went north of 102 degrees and the result was that I had a 104 degree fever at points and we didn’t know what was causing it – ultimately, I was taking the wrong antibiotics. if they’d started testing sooner, they’d have been able to pinpoint the bladder infection earlier, but because they waited until the fever climbed, I was in a world of hurt for about 48 hours. I have no clue why they wouldn’t just run urine cultures as a precaution starting the day after surgery – they’d have caught my infection much sooner and it doesn’t take them much time or energy to do it. doctors tried to disclaim responsibility for the bladder infection by telling me that “if it had been caused in the OR, they wouldn’t have expected it to show up so soon,” but this is clearly bullshit. prior to the operation, I had a long urethra which does a lot of work to prevent UTIs so it’s extremely unlikely I had a UTI to begin with and even more unlikely that I had a UTI without any clue about it. the infection must have happened due to poor adherence to protocol during catheterization but they’re covering their asses. this high fever meant my memory through this whole period is super spotty. at one point I was apparently speaking in tongues.
• they will remove one of the redundant IVs – I had one in each hand coming out of the OR – if pushed. hospital policy requires them to leave one IV in until discharge. this was annoying on day 5 when I was due to be discharged before the next dose of IV meds but they still wouldn’t take out the IV because I wasn’t literally leaving.
• bandages can’t come off a day early; they were really irritating by this point and I wanted them gone pretty badly. in retrospect, the bandages were keeping swelling down so this is probably a good thing since the very first thing that happened after leaving the hospital is that everything became so swollen that it felt like the skin was going to burst. this was extremely painful in it’s own right.
• first dilation session sucked hard. getting most of the way inside only feels weird/mildly uncomfortable. however, the last half inch or so felt like pushing past an exposed nerve, with referred pain all through my abdomen. the PA ignored my attempts to communicate this and then left after we got to depth, tellling me to keep it at depth for 30 minutes. after 15 minutes the pain hadn’t reduced from a 7/10 at all and I began to cry. I pulled the dilator out after 20 minutes, unable to bear keeping it in for any longer. at the first post-op appointment, I found out this is a fairly normal complaint for the LPV approach, presumably because of the sutures used to close off the internal end of the neo-vagina, preventing access to the abdomen, so I don’t know why he pushed past that while I was telling him it really hurt. I was absolutely terrified to dilate for the next couple of days after that. that evening, I only put the dilator in halfway, and continued to avoid anything approaching full depth for a few days. once I started the muscle relaxant, dilation got significantly easier, and I started trying to push for depth again. I did eventually get it back to the point where I felt the exposed nerve sensation again but I’ve never managed to get the dilator to go any deeper, however hard I push. I’m not sure I really care about the lost half inch of depth, tbh. it’s too little of a loss and it would have required forcing myself to do something wildly painful 3x a day.

hospital stay:

• Anesthesiologist did great. no harm or strain on vocal folds; mild swelling alleviated within 24 hrs. I let them know I was a singer and that was enough to get careful treatment.
• pain med problems began in post-anesthesia unit. my memory of this is foggy but I remember them slowly giving me pain meds one at a time while I came in and out of consciousness and complained about how much pain I was in. it took them about an hour and a half to get the pain under control, as they refused to give me adequate meds until each previous medication had time to take effect and I got separate authorization for each new pain med. they started me on tylenol, then an IV NSAID (toradol), then (finally!) 15mg of oxycodone, and lastly morphine. I received authorization at this point for morphine at this point, in addition to 15mg of oxycodone every 4 hours. at the time I barely understood what was going on. in retrospect, this was the start of a whole host of problems with access to pain meds - they started literally minutes out of the OR.
• I noticed in the post-anesthesia unit that my right foot was numb and that its condition wasn’t noticeably improving while I was there, for a total of about two hours. one of the surgeons, Dr. Blair Peters, came to check on that while I was there, and helped get me auth then for the morphine when he realized I was in significant pain. this will be a recurring theme through my hospital stay - the doctors expected me to be given adequate pain meds to keep me comfortable and the nurses ignored them and minimized pain meds as much as possible.
• VP patients are kept in singlet, closed-door rooms during the whole hospital stay – they have 3 of these on the floor. my support person was given a cot to stay in the room with me. while covid restrictions are in place and visitors are restricted, this is important - the hospital only allows one visitor PER DAY. we later learned that because the support person was sleeping in the hospital, they were actually a resident and so someone else could come and go to bring us things.
• staff only referred to me by my real name. my wrist band had both my deadname and real name on it.
• the first nurse (Peter) misgendered me upon arriving in my hospital room; he corrected himself but it was completely out of left field. I was also misgendered later by the staff bringing and taking my food but that hurt less since they had no clue who I was or why I was there. a nurse that knows I’m there for a vaginoplasty that was just done and has received training on this really shouldn’t make this mistake. Dorian, the trans masc PA, also got misgendered by one of the nurses on my last day in the hospital. this completely shocked me as he’s both a passing trans man and her coworker. this was literally a cis person misgendering a trans person just because they know he’s trans.
• don’t skip pain med doses – fear of opioid addiction has gotten to the point where they’ll use this to immediately cut your available pain meds and make it harder for you to get them when you do need them. the first night, immediately after leaving the post-anesthesia unit, I was in really good spirits. I was so happy that the operation was FINALLY done and I’d finally gotten enough pain meds there in the post-anesthesia unit so I really wasn’t in a ton of pain that night, especially with anesthesia still in my system. so I turned down the next dose of morphine and only asked for 1 5mg oxycodone pill. they immediately cut authorization on the morphine and it was days before I got access to it for breakthrough pain again - only after they screwed up and caused me an inordinate amount of pain between an unmanaged bladder infection and indelicately moving me between hospital beds. just lie about pain levels - a nurse told me that they “didn’t want you to be too comfortable”. a 5/10 (i.e. the level of pain during a fairly intense piercing or tattooing) is acceptable to them but isn’t bearable for days on end. They expect people to describe that kind of pain as being an 8+.
• you will greatly benefit if you can have someone there with you 24/7 at the hospital. the nurses are overworked and their response times can run up to an hour. this is possibly because of covid but it means that basic things like getting water, adjusting the temperature in the room, or feeding you can stretch past the time when you actually need help – your need for basic things can shift drastically and they’ll greatly affect your ability to remain comfortable. Bring a gallon water jug and a large mug with a bendy straw to be fridged and refilled - getting single glasses refilled takes too long and the drugs will dry your mouth out something fierce. you’re on a catheter anyway so may as well drink up since hydration is good for recovery.
• doctors visit annoying early and will just wake you up without warning. nurses also come in at all-hours to give scheduled meds. this means sleep is super-interrupted the whole time, even when you’re comfortable, especially for the support person who isn’t on twelve different drugs that make you sleepy all the time. Try to schedule drug admin concurrently; they’ll resist this but it means you’ll actually get some uninterrupted time to sleep.
• nursing staff weren’t communicating very well with each other. nurses from other departments (such as for xray) weren’t informed about where I had stitches or the fact that I wasn’t able to lay totally flat on my back and were happy to toss me around without sufficient care for bandaged stitches that were incredibly painful to have yanked. always watch the wound vac (sucks blood out of vaginal canal). general nursing staff won’t know about it and can rip it out accidentally. this nearly happened to me - thank god my support person caught it in time. not being able to lay totally flat while bandaged is normal but, for example, the nurses doing your xray don’t know that. the bandages are adherent and cover the whole groin and abdomen. when you try to lay totally flat, they pull on the stitches and push against the swelling, both of which hurt considerably, especially if you’re forced to it.

pre-op notes

• clear liquid diet day before; no colon cleanse
• don’t have to stop hrt, recommend switching from pills to injections
• nicotine urine test required. it’s apparently sensitive enough to pick up even nicotine ingested within 6 weeks or even from second-hand smoke exposure. extremely bullshit.
• BMI must be <35 or they won’t operate.
• no paperwork day of surgery - consent form signed in pre-op
• prescriptions are provided by the hospital; they don’t want you to bring your own meds
• Physician’s Assistant & anesthesiologist recommended in pre-ops that I inject estrogen early, prior to the surgery, rather than trying to get administration at the hospital. apparently they won’t give it and they won’t let you give it to yourself.

day-of schedule

• arrived at hospital day-of @ 5:30a
• in for surgery at 7:30a
• on OR table by 8a (I was unconscious shortly after)
• surgery started at 8:30a according to surgeon
• surgeon made 3 calls to support person during operation - 9:15a, 11:30a, 3:30p
• Woke up at 2:45p in post-anaesthesia unit
• In recovery room at 5

supplies

• surgical/post-partum mesh underwear (disposable)

  you’re gonna be bleeding through gauze pads so don’t ruin perfectly good underwear with blood, pus, discharge, etc… make sure to get these 1-2 sizes larger than you normally wear because you’re gonna be unbelievably swollen for a bit.

• oversized undewear

  once you’re no longer bleeding through undies, it doesn’t make sense to keep wearing disposable panties but your regular panties are invariably going to be way too tight and painful. make sure you have a pack of oversized undies for use until swelling goes down.

• lube

  you’re gonna need a lot of this while dilating. after some research, it seems that lube like Good Clean Almost Naked (green tubes, you can sometimes find them in pharmacies or definitely online) does a better job of maintaining vaginal flora. that’s important if you don’t want to be douching for life and you’re gonna be putting a lot of this stuff inside your body for the first few months. you will also need surgical (bacteriostatic) lube for the first week or so, while you might have open wounds internally.

• post-partum cooling pads

  these are disposable ice packs that go in your underwear, made for women who have just given birth. they do in fact need to be disposable because you’re gonna bleed all over them. these are expensive so they’re mostly only feasible for the first week or so post-surgery, when the swelling is at it’s worst. get a reusable ice bag and fill it with ice to help with the swelling on the pubic mound.

• wet wipes

  dear god did I go through wet wipes quickly. cleaning yourself each time you use the bathroom is an exhausting experience and you really don’t want to miss anything. you’re also gonna be cleaning up a lot of blood, pus, mucus, and discharge so toilet paper ends up being too drying. wipes with witch hazel on them are especially nice because they keep everything feeling calm down there, even when there are semi-open wounds due to stitches dissolving before wounds have entirely closed.

• gauze rolls

  super important. these are way cheaper than menstrual pads when you buy them bulk and if you make a liner out of them by carefully layering the roll, you can expose a surface of clean gauze by rotating the bloody gauze to the back of the liner.

• 4x4 gauze pads

  these need to be the kerlix type cotton weave that have a habit of sticking to things. cut one in half and stick it in between your vulva lips as a wound dressing and change it every time you pee, shower, or dilate. this way, you’ll catch a lot of the discharge on the bit of gauze inside your vagina and get way more mileage out of your underwear liners (whether you’re using gauze rolls or a menstrual pad). you can also cut these from a gauze roll if you get the appropriate type - this might be cheaper overall. the surgeon will instruct you explicitly to do this if you get wound separation or tissue necrosis but it’s cut down so much on the speed with which I’m going through underwear liners that I think it’s worth mentioning even in lieu of medical indication.

• vaginal health probiotic

  get a solid one to take after surgery. it’ll be a while before your vag can support the normal flora that are supposed to be there (lactobacillus, mainly) that keep the canal slightly acidic and prevent all kinds of infections.

• chux pads

  especially important during dilation and also while you’re still figuring out how to keep from getting discharge through your underwear. I manage to get a half-week out of each pad before it’s consumed too much bloody lube to reuse so you’ll need a bunch of these.

• hibiclens

  the surgeon’s info packet lists this as an item to bring but the anesthesiologist gave me wipes to use at home the night before the surgery and then more wipes when I got to the hospital to do it all over again. so check with the surgeon’s office to see if you actually need this.

• donut pillow

  hasn’t been particularly useful for me but everyone says it’s super helpful for sitting. maybe mine just sucks (the actual hole is smaller than the part of the body that’s all swollen and painful) but it’s been easier for me to stick a shirt/jacket under my tailbone or to sit cross-legged when there’s enough space.

• peri-peri bottle

  fill with saline and spray down the surgery bits like you would for a piercing, in theory. in practice I haven’t actually used it much because it’s not healing like a piercing. even when there’s bleeding, it’s through stitches or from under healing skin, and being diligent about wiping everything clean with wipes and keeping up with careful maintenance of the dressings has been easier for me to coordinate, especially because the swelling makes it hard to actually open the lips and spray. I only have two hands! I’m also in the habit of hopping in the shower after bowel movements so it hasn’t been helpful there either, but if you’re not this may be useful for you as a hand operated bidet.

what does this actually feel like?

I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone actually describe their internal and sensory experience of what it’s like to have a part of your body reconstructed, where the old parts are largely still present but in a radically altered configuration, and especially how that experience has evolved through the recovery process. so hopefully this sheds a little light for the curious, whether trans or cis.

when I woke up after the procedure, the surgical team had wrapped me in tight bandages, with a catheter inserted into my urethra so I didn’t need to pee until after bandage removal. so my brain’s machinations to maintain a coherent & consistent model of my moment-to-moment experience utterly fascinated me. I knew my penis was gone but most of the nerves involved were still telling my brain they were there and rather unhappy, whenever pain meds were inadequate. so while I couldn’t see and touch my new parts, my brain just decided my dick was still there, just floating over the bandages. I didn’t have the same problem with my scrotum as I could touch the outside of the bandages and feel my new labia minora. I’ve heard trans women describe this feeling as the world’s worst tuck, but that’s not really right for this version of the procedure. it didn’t feel like my penis was now squished into my body. and because moving and triggering new sensations - especially after the bandages came off but while the swelling was too intense to allow access to my labia minora or clitoris - meant that I’d experience entirely contradictory sensations moment to moment, my brain amazingly tried to keep up by just teleporting my virtual penis around, still floating over and just inside my vulva. as the swelling came down, I was able to actually touch my inner labia, clit hood, and clit, and this mostly got rid of the floating penis sensation. but, y’know, I’m not sure my brain is quite ready to give up that ghost just yet. somehow, part of me is still convinced the old parts are still there - I’m reminded of this fact when I unconsciously move muscles in my pelvic floor that corresponded previously to movement in my old genitalia and now correspond to… I have no clue. but my automatic awareness still includes all of my old and new genitalia.

ok, sorry if I’m the only one who finds that utterly fascinating. brains are wild and however much we feel like we’re in control of them, that our knowledge of the world guides our beliefs and actions, and that our experience is coherent and reliable, our unconscious and automatic minds can willfully ignore reality, however nonsensical the alternative.

and it’s this shred of insanity my dysphoria now clings to, trying to trick me into forgetting that I remodeled my body to better suit who I am. remember, kids - dysphoria is a lying, insane bitch that’s trying to destroy you. don’t listen to her; kick her in the teeth, instead. eat your brain worms before they eat you.

logging in just to say eat my whole ass cissies 😎😎😎. https://hexbear.net/post/71063/comment/744962

I’m not even an anarchist and fuck all the way off with this shit.