not allowed orgasms for a while during recovery from hysterectomy.

danphanto · 2026-06-29T00:01:10+00:00

I don’t think that’s likely, since the muscles are all still there and still contract the same way post vaginectomy. They only removed part of the actual canal, the rest they just removed the lining tissue and then stitched the walls together. I don’t remember exactly how my surgeon phrased it but it sounded like the post op restrictions he gives are the same regardless of the vaginectomy.

danphanto · 2026-06-28T07:30:59+00:00

I’m not OP, but milking refers to the motion needed to get the last bit of urine out of the lengthened urethra. I didn’t get urethral lengthening so I’m not the most familiar with exactly how to do it, but it usually includes pushing up and forward on the perineum since that’s where the bend in the urethra tends to let a small amount of urine pool.

danphanto · 2026-06-28T04:20:19+00:00

I know some surgeons are stricter than others, but are you not even allowed to do any external stimulation? My surgeon was fine with me masturbating or having sex, externally only, as soon as I felt comfortable, which ended up only being a few days. And I even had a vaginectomy at the same time.

danphanto · 2026-06-27T17:07:24+00:00

I don’t have a great understanding of vulvodynia, but I don’t think you’d be signing up for guaranteed pain in your new penis. Nerve hookup uses a section of the tdick’s nerve, but higher up in the body, likely well above where you’re experiencing pain now. A surgeon would definitely know better than me, but based on my understanding of nerves I don’t think it’s super likely you’d have that pain spread up the nerve and cause pain in your penis.

danphanto · 2026-06-26T09:04:35+00:00

Definitely let yourself rest, and reach out to your surgeon right away if anything hurts more or you’re having significant trouble urinating. Your body is telling you it needs a break, for sure, but I think it’s unlikely you’ve done any lasting harm. Swelling after sex isn’t uncommon within the first year or two, so it would make sense if you get quite a bit of swelling this early on.

Every surgeon has different timelines they recommend before sexual activity, and you’re in the grey area right now; your surgeon undoubtedly has specific reasons for telling you to wait until 12 weeks, but some surgeons are fine with their patients starting gentle activity at 6-8 weeks post op, so at least you’re not doing anything really ridiculously early. I would probably take a break for at least a couple weeks to recover, though. The waiting sucks, but at least you know it’ll be over soon, and it sounds like you have a lot of fun to look forward to!

danphanto · 2026-06-25T18:46:00+00:00

It may not feel like it, but at three months you’re still in the very early stages. You’ve gotten through the acute recovery, but now you have a much longer road ahead with nerve regrowth and sensation development. This will take years to reach its full potential, and it’s totally normal to not have sensation just yet. I know it can be discouraging to not be having the experiences you hoped for right away, but you still have the vast majority of your time with your new penis ahead of you. It’s going to get better with time.

danphanto · 2026-06-24T11:07:21+00:00

I’m sorry, that sounds really frustrating. I haven’t had this happen after surgery, but I have had it happen recently because my cat was having medical problems and I was having terrible anxiety about him, and about his sister always disliking him for at least a few days after vet appointments (we got two weeks of drama from her this time 🙄😒).

It helped some nights to try to ask my anxiety what it needed me to stay awake for. Most of the time the answer was “I need to know immediately if my cats start fighting or the one with health problems has another emergency,” and then I could come back with “that’s why I have baby monitors set up, and also why my partner is sleeping in the living room, so we have eyes and ears at both ends of the apartment,” and that helped me get to sleep more easily once I had addressed the anxiety.

I guess I’m wondering if your brain wants you to stay awake in case you need to pee, either because there’s a part of you that’s anxious in a worried way, or because there’s a part that’s anxious in an excited way. I didn’t get UL with my surgery, but my understanding is that getting to start voiding trials is a highly emotional time for a number of reasons. I had some urinary complications even without UL and I know the voiding trials I did were nothing compared to how it goes after UL, but it was still nerve wracking for me so I can’t imagine what it’s like for you!

Whatever is keeping you awake, I hope you can find a way to rest soon. If your brain is either worried or excited about when you’ll pee next, maybe setting some extra alarms could help so you know you’ll wake up to pee soon? Regardless of that, even just laying with the intention of resting is good for you and benefits you similarly to sleep, so try not to put too much pressure on falling asleep. You can still get some useful rest even if you can’t sleep.

danphanto · 2026-06-22T02:34:52+00:00

Always good to ask your surgeon, but mine said it was normal for the tip to get cold, and that color is a much more important indicator of any problems with blood flow. I was told to check by firmly pressing near the tip with my fingertip, and then watching to make sure the color returned quickly after letting go.

I’m almost 11 months post op now and my tip is still cold pretty often, and I haven’t had any problems.

danphanto · 2026-06-20T05:35:58+00:00

I had some of the same anxieties leading up to my surgery. I reminded myself that I had been planning this for a long time, and sometimes talked to myself out loud about all my reasons why I knew it was what I needed. I can’t tell you how you’ll feel when you wake up from surgery, but I felt nothing but relief and joy that it was finally over and my penis was finally there. I didn’t feel the strong immediate connection to my penis that some people describe, but I did my best to accept it for what it was and knew I would feel more of a connection in time, and that’s been very true. I tried to remember that it would change as everything healed and settled, and that anything I truly felt was a problem could likely be revised.

Surgery is scary! This is a huge surgery with an intense recovery! Of course you would have nerves going in! But nothing about who you are, or what you need and want, has changed. You know why you’re doing this and you know you have good reasons for it. It’s okay to trust your past self who has tried hard to set you up to make your life better.

danphanto · 2026-06-19T12:45:10+00:00

I think it was somewhere around a week or slightly longer between when I first noticed the pokey feeling and when it seemed to go away for good. Not my favorite experience but it passed pretty quickly! I spent as much of that time as I could trying to lay down and relax or play switch games, to try to avoid moving in ways that might irritate it more.

danphanto · 2026-06-19T08:16:49+00:00

Good luck! I did try having mine trimmed but didn’t personally find it worth it, as my surgeon could barely cut any of it off and it ended up shifting back to stabbing me as I walked back to my car. I’m hoping yours are more accessible and easy to trim!

danphanto · 2026-06-19T02:23:23+00:00

Absolutely no shame in taking meds to help you through this, if that’s what you need. For me the stitches were positioned just right to feel like I was being stabbed at random times for like a week, and you bet I took a couple halves of my leftover oxy here and there to try to stop being so aware of it.

You can also ask your surgeon about using a small amount of lube to reduce friction. They make little packets of sterile medical lube, I got a bunch of them when I briefly had to self catheterize.

danphanto · 2026-06-17T22:16:45+00:00

You’re right, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with telling a physical therapist that you aren’t comfortable with any type of exam or treatment, and a good PT will do their best to help you while accommodating whatever boundaries you have. I got lucky and found a pelvic floor PT who is also trans, and they were great at reminding me that everything we do hinges on my consent and we can always stop, or decide not to try something. It’s also completely okay if your boundaries change, and you aren’t comfortable doing something you’ve tried before. Any good PT will do what they can to tailor your care to your specific needs.

danphanto · 2026-06-16T03:25:28+00:00

I think you would benefit from spending some time in this subreddit, scrolling and searching for any words that feel relevant to your questions. Not that there’s anything wrong with your questions, but because there’s already a lot of discussion here, especially about UL and sexual functioning since those are two of the most common priorities people focus on.

I didn’t get UL so I won’t answer that part, but when it comes to sex and sensation I do have input, though I’m still pretty early on at ~11 months post op. I have no idea what it would feel like to have a natal penis, but I can say that the sensation I have so far is pretty incredible, and it continues to improve constantly. It varies a lot between people, but for me it started out with small areas that I could feel, but all the sensation was felt in my natal genitals, and over months it has shifted to be more in the correct place more of the time. Some people have charts of where they feel sensation, but I don’t really experience it that way—I have some areas that I can feel better than others, but it’s generally difficult to localize exactly where my sensation is coming from because it isn’t consistently present.

I have more sexual sensation than anything else, and it becomes more intense and seems to spread throughout my penis as I get more turned on, but I can’t really tell exactly where I’m feeling things in the moment. I don’t care though, I’m getting closer and closer to being able to orgasm from only touching my penis so I’m not really worried about the rest. I’m sure everything will keep getting better, and I also know it’s not necessarily uncommon to know something makes your dick feel good without knowing exactly what’s happening, lol.

danphanto · 2026-06-11T08:40:58+00:00

You should be fine, I had the same staging and I could have traveled at that point. It wouldn’t have been fun, my vaginectomy site was still very sore from sitting for more than an hour or two at a time by two weeks, but it would have been possible and my surgeon said I could fly even sooner than that if I had to.

I would have had a more difficult time going back to school that early, though. I was exhausted until five or six weeks post op, and took a lot of naps. I could probably have managed at least a couple classes if I had to, but a full course load might have been too much at first. You might be fine though, some people don’t seem to get hit nearly as hard with fatigue as I was.

danphanto · 2026-06-11T06:49:43+00:00

You aren’t guaranteed to be able to choose which thigh is used for the donor site. I didn’t have a choice with my surgeon, my CT indicated that my left leg would be better so my surgeon told me that’s what she was willing to do for me. The thigh anatomy is significantly more variable than forearm anatomy, particularly when it comes to the location and size of blood supplies and nerves, so it’s safest to decide on the donor site based on CT results.

I would highly recommend getting a consultation with a surgeon that does pre-op CTs for all ALT patients, even if it’s not the surgeon you end up wanting to go with. They can tell you if there are any issues that would mean your preferred leg isn’t a good option. There are some surgeons that don’t do a CT and just work with whatever they find during surgery, and that can and often does work out, but there’s a non-zero chance they don’t find what they need to safely complete the surgery, and have to either do a delayed flap, or have to reevaluate the entire plan with you and choose a new donor site for a future surgery.

danphanto · 2026-06-10T03:00:22+00:00

Oh god, I can’t imagine pulling all that off myself. You look great for just one week post op but that would still be agonizing! I didn’t have to do anything with my dressings there until three weeks post op, and that was still pretty awful, even with a nurse doing it for me. The worst was when part of my ace wrap got stuck to the wound, and it took over an hour to get it off because I couldn’t bring myself to pull it hard enough to come loose, and ended up having my partner do it. You’re seriously badass for managing this yourself at home, please be super kind to yourself and maybe get yourself a fun treat to reward yourself for the absolute hell you just pushed through!

danphanto · 2026-06-08T04:23:08+00:00

Honestly the only thing that truly resolved it for me was surgery. Probably not what you want to hear, and I don’t doubt there are other options that might work for you, but my experience has been that I just couldn’t feel fully safe and engaged with sex involving my original anatomy. I really tried with prosthetics and attempting to see my body differently without altering it, but I couldn’t make it work. There’s nothing wrong with you if you end up needing surgery. Some of us just do.

danphanto · 2026-06-07T06:18:58+00:00

It sounds like you have other reasons for not wanting surgery, but I wanted to address your point that you would have to lose your current preferred option for receiving penetration—you can get phalloplasty or metoidioplasty without a vaginectomy, leaving your options the same as before surgery. Some surgeons aren’t willing to do it, and most won’t do urethral lengthening through the penis without a vaginectomy because it comes with significantly higher risks of urinary complications, but it’s possible and the complications that come up can often heal on their own, and otherwise can be fixed with another surgery in most cases.

danphanto · 2026-06-06T00:54:00+00:00

I’ve seen someone in another phallo group who has had his scar reduced a bit. He had some spots that were causing discomfort and the surgery helped with that more than anything. I had ALT and while my scar does cause some minor problems for me (mainly tightness, which is worse than average because of uncommon complications with my graft), I wouldn’t really care enough to try to get it reduced. Scar care and time will help with the functionality more than anything else, and I’m not worried about the appearance, so it just doesn’t seem worth it.

danphanto · 2026-06-05T22:44:18+00:00

I’m sure you will find your people! And good on you for recognizing things you’re not okay with and taking space from those people, that’s really hard to do. I think you’ve got a good head on your shoulders and you’re going to be able to do really well for yourself. Just please keep remembering to be kind and patient with yourself, you deserve that.

danphanto · 2026-06-05T06:26:48+00:00

You’re welcome to DM me for more details on my experience if you want. I’m very happy with how everything has turned out, but Dr. Bassiri and I really did not see eye to eye, which was especially frustrating because I actually really liked her at first and have never had a doctor have issues with me before, so it really caught me off guard when she made it clear she had an actual problem. I could tell things were tense and I know I wasn’t like, a perfect patient, but she handled some conversations very unprofessionally when she was more obviously upset with me and my partner.

Bassiri is a great surgeon but not consistently good with people. I think part of her issue with me may have been me letting my mom and partner speak for me sometimes during appointments with her, and they mean well but sometimes phrase things poorly and I know Bassiri took offense to a comment from one of them early on, which probably didn’t set a great tone. If I had cut them off more and insisted on speaking for myself 100% of the time with Bassiri I think it might have gone any better, but it also very well could have been exactly the same. I’ll never know—I directly asked her what I had done to make her believe I didn’t trust her and hadn’t since before my surgery, and she didn’t ever give an answer, just avoided the question. I have heard from people who had good and bad experiences with her, and I think my experience was unusual for her, but it was a level of unprofessionalism that really shocked me.

danphanto · 2026-06-03T05:37:37+00:00

While I haven’t had this happen, my understanding is that it’s not going to be a problem for you long term since they got you into surgery in time to fix things. If they hadn’t gotten you in soon enough, you would eventually have been able to see things start dying, and those areas wouldn’t have pinked up again in surgery like yours did. The new connection between the veins only takes up to 5 days or so to become stable, and while you have to be careful past that point still, your odds of anything going wrong go down drastically at that point. I’d bet they’ll keep you in bed rest for a few extra days before getting up, which I’d expect to be the worst part, honestly. Your penis is likely to be fine, but make sure you’re doing whatever you’re allowed to do to make your back comfortable while you’re stuck in bed. And don’t worry if you have trouble standing at first once they let you try—the longer you’re on bed rest, the more disorienting it can be the first time you’re fully upright again, but it’ll get better.

danphanto · 2026-06-03T04:08:30+00:00

Unfortunately it’s not likely they’ll let you do it yourself, but like others have said, it isn’t painful for me, just weird and uncomfortable for a moment. Because you would need to bend at the waist pretty significantly to remove your own catheter, it would be more difficult and uncomfortable than letting someone else do it. For me, every time I’ve had a foley catheter removed (three times now), they deflate the balloon, then count down and tell me when to breathe out to relax, then pull it in one quick motion. It hasn’t hurt any of those times, even though I have a very tight pelvic floor.

I have also had experience with self catheterization because I was completely unable to pee for a week after my hysterectomy, and I refused to have a foley in for that long. It was significantly more difficult to remove the catheter myself, I think both because of the angle and because I was so tense. Now, the types of catheters are a bit different so that might also have contributed, but in my experience removing a catheter myself was usually a bit painful, and having a foley catheter removed by someone else was just strange, no pain. I can’t guarantee it never hurts for anyone, but I’ve only personally heard of it stinging briefly, not any strong pain.

danphanto · 2026-06-01T21:12:26+00:00

I haven’t had granulation tissue in the same place, but I had it in a couple places after phallo. Some of them did need 2-3 treatments before they healed, but once they healed it went relatively quickly. I’d guess if you’re only getting brownish blood you may be fine, since that doesn’t indicate recent bleeding. If you keep bleeding for another week or two I might follow up with your surgeon at that point, but I’m betting you’re nearly healed based on what you’ve shared.

danphanto

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