Rambling Faggy Tranny,
Living in Utah.
My name is Dexter and I was assigned the gender "female" at birth. Since December of 2008, there's been a whole lotta social and physical transition going on up in here. Why? To help my brain and body physiologically connect. Importantly, my gender identity (genderqueer) hasn't changed and doubtfully ever will. Male, female, genderqueer, he, she, ze... whatev.
I'm currently a college student and a McNair Scholar majoring in Psychology. I intend to nab me a PhD!
Kiddle Era:
Can you count, suckers? I say, the future is ours... if you can count!
Cuddly Face Muff
When I started this transition shindig I absolutely couldn’t wait for the day I’d develop stubble and, even better, epic facial hair. But when it finally started to happen, I was disturbed by how brittle and wiry it was in comparison to hair elsewhere. I expected it to be coarse - but it was so… dry and unmanageable and grody-feeling. Especially on my chin.
With my brother and father as facial hair role models, neither of which really do much in the self-maintenance department, I had resolved that my fate rested in either the land of coarse torture brittle or lame-o baby butt bare.
I had no idea that a solution to this predicament existed - but it does. And it goes by the name of beard conditioner.
Beard frickin’ conditioner.
And little beard frickin’ combs.
Once I made said discovery I’ve been letting these face whiskers grow! Every morning and night I rub some of this Bluebeards crap in:
- and then use a li’l Kent beard comb. It’s kinda the most adorable thing ever:
Afterwards, any little stray whiskers are cut with scissors.
This system is so good. Bang! Facial hair obnoxiousness dead!
Psych Out
Had the most difficult time getting my prescription refill (testosterone cypionate) this time around! Generally I just wander in to the pharmacy and say, “I wanna refill.”. I give money, take bag of needles and bottle o’ T, and stumble back out into the world. But when I attempted to refill this time around ON injection day I was told, “Oh, you’re out of refills. Oh, and your doctor won’t authorise a refill until you make an appointment with her.”
Oh, alright. Fair enough. Except that I just got paid and due for a shot.
When I tried to schedule an appointment with her I was told, “You owe us money. It’s in collections. Here’s their number.” Wha? From when? Where? Whyyyyy is this the first time I’ve heard of it and it’s in collections!?
Turns out, even though my doctor’s office had my current address and name - they had never communicated that to billing. So here I was, bumbling along assuming that all of my info is current, but meanwhile billing had my old name and an old ass address that I’d lived at three years ago before even beginning hormone therapy. And, presumably, have been sending bills to ever since.
Yet, throughout this time I’ve obliviously owed mula, I’ve been making appointments every 6 months. For, uh, almost 3 years. And was told nothin’.
Until, one day, I try to refill and suddenly need to make an appointment and it happens to be when I’m due and suddenly can’t because I suddenly owe money to collections and suddenly can’t make an appointment.
Lame-o. Anyway, fortunately it turned out to be a small sum and I’m paying it and was able to make an appointment and refill my prescription. But for a minute there, I had no medication. If I didn’t have an awesome friend back up, I would’ve endured withdrawal and, potentially, medical complications from said withdrawal!
I was already starting to get mega-weird from just missing one day.
See, I inject every Thursday. And last Friday when I went to inject, something bizarre happened. Pre-needle-pokin’ I generally repeat the mantra, “It’s just like butta. It’s just like butta.” But somehow I got it in my head that my leg is a firm chunk o’ callous meat and my spaghetti noodle appendage of an arm wouldn’t be able to stab the needle in fast or hard enough to make it through all of the way. And, if I couldn’t puncture through, I’d have to slowly carve through layers of muscle, veins, and tissue to get the entire needle in.
It’s not true - but the visual paralysed me enough that I just.couldn’t.do.it. I felt confused about how, after almost 3 years of self-injection, I’d suddenly hit a block. Wtf!?
Fortunately a friend poked me and all went well. But the same thing happened again this morning and I had to ask my dad to help. What’s a-goin’-on? I blame Statistics. May as well.
Totally my theme song. To a T.
Gym n’ Pink Nipplage
SO REFRESHING. After top surgery, recovery, and then a conveniently timed month-long coughing sickness, today I went to the gym with the most bad ass gym buddy ever - my mom. Back in the good ol’ days, my mom and I went to the gym together on a daily basis. Until I started the hormone shindig and the locker room progressively got a lot more uncomfortable than it already was. Eventually it got to the point where I no longer knew how to navigate gendered gym terrain and resolved to work out from home.
Which I did, for a minute. But with cats purring and video games within my reach, that didn’t last long.
Until today when my mom and I finally ventured to the gym again together. My first boob-less gym work out!
It was awesome.
I hopped on the elliptical and sweat simulated jogged for 30 minutes. No chest fat jigglage! Back in the day just feeling it there caused a lot of physiological distress that had me hating running-like motion. But now? Love it. I could’ve continued to run, but I couldn’t resist skipping off to experience other gym thangs - including the men’s locker room.
Since I was a wee bot until I stopped going to the gym a few years ago, locker rooms were all kinds of awkward. My mom went with me before primarily to help with this, so she could walk in with me and help make the experience less socially awkward. But, this was also the first time I walked in to a locker room without startled reactions. No one called security, no one stood up and darted out when I entered… nothin’. Just, walked in, did my thing, walked out.
Whoa.
On a related note, recovery has been going super well! Between classes (particularly stats - the most intimidating phobia triggering topic *coughmathcough* that I’ve avoided for about 13 years) and being sick, I’ve been negligent about updating my progress. Essentially, this past month has been my nipples morphing from little blackish mutants into pinkish little nipply nubs. Now that they’re scab-free and becoming more nipply with each new day, I slather them in a Vitamin E / Shea Butter concoction. They’re so cool. Pictures soon!
So honestly, throwing up a photo like this is unprecedented for me. In fact, back in my “before times”, I’d poke fun at people who threw up “ooo look how cute I am.” photos. I was all about the modesty. But now? Uh, yeah, alright, modesty is still awesome and all - but, from now on, it’s not for me. Guess who doesn’t have to wear a binder ever again and feels super cute 4 the 1st time eva? Me!
Already I’m losing precious study time having so much fun exhausting myself romping about in the world. I feel absolutely ecstatic and the most comfortable I’ve ever experienced. I can look at myself in the mirror. I can look down at my bare chest. I can even take a photo like this and throw it up on my blog.
I never knew it was possible to feel this awesometastic !!!
Out and Aboot
After working from home on a recliner chair in jammies for a week, I returned to the office yesterday. Wee!
I’d predicted that the worst case scenario would involve my being an idiot and trying to lift shit when I shouldn’t - but, that didn’t happen. Instead, the worst case scenario turned out to be the bro shake. I hadn’t realized how often this happens in my world… or maybe just on a college campus (and elsewhere?), but there’s a LOT of grab-hand-hard-and-shake-arm-or-fist-bump-or-variations-of-this going on. To which I’d whimper and respond, “Ooo, careful. I just had surgery.”
This happened about five painful times. “Hey! Haven’t seen you around in a while! How have you been??” *hand flies out towards mine, grab, firm swing while my hand flops around like a flaccid fish*.
There was one feller who bounced in to the office while I was in there with a couple other student government peeps. He was in student government last year and I shared a class with him. When he went in for the bro shake I diverted with, “Just had surgery. No shaking for me.” He of course asked, “Surgery? What for?”
Me: “Chest…”
Him: “Chest? Did they operate on your heart or something?”
Me: “No, no! Top surgery.”
Him: “Top surgery?”
Me: “Yes. To get rid of my breasts! So relieved!”
With this, he was clearly caught off-guard. His mouth literally fell agape and his brow furrowed as he tried to process my response. Meanwhile, in my neck of the woods, I replied with, ya know, the honest reason that I couldn’t shake his hand. If I’d dislocated my shoulder skating along a sidewalk or something, I would’ve blurted that out instead. But, when it’s presumed that I’m a cisgender feller and I reply, “My boobs are gone!”, clearly there’s a whaaaaa puzzle pieces clicking cognitive disconnect going on.
Fortunately, instead of feeling compelled to elaborate and before he had a chance to respond, we were interrupted by someone else in the office asking me questions about something on the H:\ drive something another. And then he had to run off.
a.w.k.w.a.r.d.
Ouch! I didn’t notice this until earlier today when I removed the compression vest to finally get cleaned up - but I have lacerations on both sides from wearing the vest for 6 days. Why I didn’t feel these, I don’t know. Pain killers initially - but I stopped taking them Tuesday. High pain tolerance? I dunno! But what the frak.
The moral of this story? Leaving my vest on for 6 days was entirely worth these lacerations, which require less help healing than my chest and nipple grafts.
My compression vest has been washed and is now hanging up to dry while I relax in the front room with my mom. Topless. Lacerations, bruising, swelling, stitches, and nipple grafts gots NOTHIN’ on how absolutely comfortable and relieving this feels. I still can’t believe that this has happened. The reality is setting in little by little and I love it.
My mom put some Neosporin and bandages on the lacerations. We also removed the bandages from the drain tube wounds since they had stopped leaking. For cleansing, I decided not to shower since I’m super paranoid about babying my nipple grafts so the tissue doesn’t die. Instead, my mom helped me wash my hair - and then I took a quick bath for everything else. My nipple bandages remained entirely dry and I won’t remove and re-bandage them just yet.
Dr. Cori Agarwal removing my drain tubes earlier today - which is 6 days after my double incision mastectomy with nipple/areolar grafting. It was essentially painless and just felt like a brief pinch.
PART 1: Double Incision Mastectomy with Nipple Grafts by Dr. Cori Agarwal Surgery Photos (EXTREMELY GRAPHIC)
Earlier today I learned that Dr. Cori Agarwal’s medical secretary, Haley, was able to come in and take photographs during my 3 hour surgery on August 11, 2011. I had asked her to 6 months ago and, fortunately, Dr. Agarwal also wanted her to come observe this type of surgery. Double-win!
As a warning, these photos are extremely graphic, but also incredibly informative and educational. This is why I’m displaying them after the “read more” button below instead of as a photo gallery. Proceed with caution!
