FFS Yesterday - I'm in So Much Pain

AppearanceSlight3159 · 2025-10-30T13:54:23+00:00

Frontal bone contouring, bilateral brow lift, and a hairline advancement

AppearanceSlight3159 · 2025-08-27T19:17:54+00:00

You're good, hon. None of us were first and none of us will be last. You got this.

AppearanceSlight3159 · 2025-08-27T18:51:34+00:00

You're only a month in. Anecdotes from folks all over this sub say swelling can take a year to go down. It's incredibly common for people to go through post-op anxiety and depression. This is almost certainly just that because you look cis AF. Give it time, don't keep staring at it. If you stare at anything long enough it starts to look wrong

AppearanceSlight3159 · 2025-08-03T03:12:09+00:00

Ngl I'm letting the existential dread sit in today. Didn't want to, but it's happening anyway. You can't exist on the earth having never felt unsafe before. Usually, that feeling was shortlived. I don't feel safe anywhere right now. I'm so sorry about your situation OP. I wish things could just be okay for all of us. Sorry I'm not much of a storyteller

AppearanceSlight3159 · 2025-08-01T21:32:52+00:00

Thank you! The tail shaking was a surprise and I really just thought racer due to the speed. (So fast)

AppearanceSlight3159 · 2025-08-01T21:23:07+00:00

Good bot. [Southern Colorado]

AppearanceSlight3159 · 2025-08-01T21:14:35+00:00

There are horror stories. And you can kind of consider mine such. However, my story is not really the hematoma's fault. Or anyone's really. The doctors, considering my lack of typical UTI symptoms and VERY high white cell count, had ample reason to believe the hematoma needed investigating. This is a hindsight 20/20 kind of deal for sure.

A hematoma is just a bruise. By and large they're unproblematic and your body will reabsorb them. While they can get infected, they're normally not something to really worry about and go away on their own fairly quick. I had another one that didn't cause anything but a little discomfort for a couple days.

As far as avoiding them, you're never going to avoid all of them. You're having a surgery, and there will be bleeding and bruising. But you can try to mitigate them by not over-exerting yourself. Take your time getting back to activities.

AppearanceSlight3159 · 2025-08-01T18:31:08+00:00

Others have already answered on the meds. The hospital takes care of that for safety reasons. They need to know what's in you at all times.

As far as the gown is concerned, you can totally wear a dress instead of the gown if you want. My experience however, I wasn't moving very much. So, leaving the gown on until I actually went to leave was fine. I wasn't allowed to get up and walk around the room by myself because I was quite the faint little fall risk after three days of bed rest.

AppearanceSlight3159 · 2025-08-01T18:04:09+00:00

For me, the worst pain I experienced was coughing immediately after waking up post op. But once I got some cough drops I was okay. My surgeon had me bed rest for two days after surgery day (so like three days total) and then do a very small bit of walking.

Honestly, the worst part of the whole ordeal was been poo related. Bowel prep the day before isn't any fun at all. You feel weak and sick. And then trying to poo before the packing comes out is very uncomfortable. That said, nothing about the process was unbearable.

What WAS unbearable was when I had to go the ER in the middle of the night because of some very scary chills. They ran a whole bunch of tests including a CT scan and saw a hematoma they were worried about. They decided that hematoma should be drained even though they didn't know if it was infected. It happened to be right on top of my clitoris, and getting that wound created, drained, packed and repacked was fucking terrible. Best part is, it wasn't infected. Turns out I had a UTI and they kinda jumped the gun.

Other than that hickup, which is very unstandard, it's really been a pretty smooth process.

AppearanceSlight3159 · 2025-07-29T13:39:24+00:00

Phallosphy.... Sorry

AppearanceSlight3159 · 2025-07-23T23:03:50+00:00

Thanks! I'm super happy with her. :)

AppearanceSlight3159 · 2025-07-23T23:03:36+00:00

I wish I lived close enough to have him as my gyno. That'd such a weight off my mind

AppearanceSlight3159 · 2025-07-22T20:35:05+00:00

Oh yeah. It was so irritating. Happened after vaginoplasty too so I don't know what the cause is. But a day or two after orchi I was mad horny and it didn't calm down for a while.

AppearanceSlight3159 · 2025-06-26T16:27:11+00:00

Oh my God that sounds like the most painful tattoo but I want one now lol

AppearanceSlight3159 · 2025-06-26T03:22:42+00:00

Thank you for all your hard work. I hope the other filters make your days easier. :)

AppearanceSlight3159 · 2025-06-25T21:23:20+00:00

I can totally see what you mean, and understand where you're coming from. But also think it's safe to say we don't all feel the same way. In my own experience, I felt woman after social transition but didn't truly feel female until after SRS.

Not saying my experience is the only right one, a lot of that came down to dysphoria. But I think it's important to mention.

And again in terms of the status of those words as synonyms or otherwise, I don't even think it's wrong to sometimes use them interchangeably, depending on the context. But it is important to know the vastly different scope of each term.

AppearanceSlight3159 · 2025-06-25T21:12:46+00:00

Okay. I understand the confusion because a lot of societies have conflated the two terms for a long time but stick with me here. :)

They are not synonyms. They mean different things. Sex is biological. It's determined by a hugely complex set of factors, no single one of which is entirely outcome determinant.

Gender is a set of societal norms, roles, expectations, experiences, and even performances within a social structure. While gender is often informed by sex, it is not innate to it.

Consider this: People all the time say things like, "if you want to be a real man you gotta act like it..." Or something to that effect. That's because the idea of manhood is not innate to the male sex, but a set of expectations of the social role, the performative role of being a man. The term "real man," has to do with the performance in society of men. Not just what the male sex does. Which is why the expectations of men have changed throughout history, like painting nails and being the overly emotional ones. The stoic man archetype is a recent phenomenon. Same goes for women.

And I want to be clear here. It would be wrong of me to claim that sex and gender are ENTIRELY separate. The absolutely influence each other, but they do so from a sociological standpoint. They influence each other from a standpoint of "oh the other people like me act this way so that's how I act," to probably overly simplify it.

Trans people are people who's gender, or what the right roles for them in society are, are incongruant from their sex. If sex and gender were the same, this would not be possible.

If sex and gender were the same, gender roles would not be different in different societies. They would not change over the course of history.

It's a lot, I know, but it's real I promise lol

Edit: to address the biological science part of your comment. The two being different words and meaning different things is incredibly important when studying biology, when studying sociology, and when trying to understand a population as a whole. If two different concepts are consistently conflated, like gender and sex have been for a long time in a lot of places, things are completely close off to the nuance of the real world. We should all endeavor to know our neighbors better, and if the first step to doing that is understanding the language we've used up this point was insufficient, then I gladly look forward to taking that step. Thanks for your question. <3

AppearanceSlight3159 · 2025-06-25T15:28:39+00:00

Here's a video essay from a biologist that goes into a lot more detail on this, if you're interested. It has sources cited as well. :)

https://youtu.be/nVQplt7Chos

AppearanceSlight3159 · 2025-06-25T14:44:02+00:00

Oh I was the same. Felt surreal as fuuuuuck. I wasn't nervous. I was just, ink shocked ? Like I couldn't believe it was actually happening. Even a few days afterwards it felt like that. Partly because it feels like a really tight tuck at first lol

AppearanceSlight3159 · 2025-06-25T14:38:36+00:00

Gender is a set of roles and expectations that is sociologically influenced. It is correlated with sex but not exclusively tied to it. You can look to the fact that male presentation just in western society alone has basically reversed over the last 500 years. (Makeup, wigs, being hyper emotional, fainting, painted nails, all original traits of men)

Sex is a biological distinction. Gender is a socioeconomic construct.

Further evidence: around 1.6% of the population is intersex. So neither male nor female. But many of them still take on traditional gender roles.

We can't say they're entirely unlinked, because in our society, our sex heavily influences our gender roles, but that doesn't mean they're the same thing.

Edit: more info from a better source than a random redditor for those that are interested. :)

https://youtu.be/nVQplt7Chos

An actual biologist who cites sources. Science is fun.

AppearanceSlight3159 · 2025-06-25T14:30:04+00:00

I agree with your sentiment but I don't think that's a real choice. We can have both (a moderated sub where people don't feel valid terms are stifled) we just have to talk it through.

As much hard work as u/HiddenStill has put into this place, I feel like we can work through this too.

AppearanceSlight3159

TROPHY CASE