vim fast, IDE slow, I use vim because I’m impatient

so, funny you mentioned not moving, but I might be moving like 4 weeks after my surgery 🙈

Do you remember roughly how long it was before you could, for example, sit through a short-ish flight (like sitting for a few hours)?

Hopefully you’ve already had extensive hair removal completed (usually recommended is at least a year of electrolysis and three full cycles of clearing), not sure if you’re still going through that, but that has been a big part of my wait for bottom surgery.

In terms of wanting to cut the thing off yourself, I find I have intrusive thoughts like this as well, I just watch them come and go and remind myself that I’m not a skilled surgeon who can turn my situation down there into anything like a woman’s vagina. I’ve lived my whole life with those thoughts, so it’s nothing special or interesting about them now. Usually I can redirect to feeling gratitude and reflect on how incredibly lucky I am to live in a time where anyone has access to a surgery like that (relative to the human past, even the trans emperor of Rome was unable to get gender affirming surgery, let alone a peasant like me).

Otherwise I try to avoid seeing or thinking much about my genitals, I think this is the best advice I can give - just don’t look at them, don’t think about them - limit your exposure. Wear dark feminine underwear that hide the shape and look of them, wear gaffs if that is affirming and helps you not see or think about them, and so on. Wear these even when you might not otherwise, like when lounging around. I even wear them during sex, so I won’t see or think about it. If you’re taking a bath, cover the genitals with bubbles or a hand towel. Avert your eyes, redirect your thoughts.

What I’ve found is the more I think about it, the worse I feel. So redirecting awareness when you see the genitals and reminding yourself that 6 months is a very short period of time and that you might even someday forget what it was like (and even wish you remembered) - those are things that have helped me. (My surgery is in a week.)

ha, the logic is a bit wacky, but I can also see how maybe publishing a book like that might cause a moral panic that could result in regulatory action (and to be fair that’s how the FDA was created, after Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle resulted in a moral panic)

Paging:

• @feminalpanda@lemmings.world
• @SamanthaLie@lemmy.world
• @captainlezbian@lemmy.world
• @LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone

Wondering if any of you have advice? 🙏🙏🙏

oh nice, thank you! as someone who dumpster dives and eats off the floors all the time, this is good advice 😂

Here’s a video I found that answers a lot of questions about vaginoplasties: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDOtejnYWAU

was pretty helpful, I should probably re-watch it soon

🤢🤢🤢

yes, you get it!

And completely agree that you’re already gross from running, it’s just socially faux pas so I prefer to wait until I’m not around others to do it (if possible, if I’m really suffering I’ll just do it anyway 🫠).

Cover one nostril with finger, then blow very hard (try to aim for the ground and not on your clothes), then reverse which nostril you cover and do the same.

It’s really gross, I try to only do it when no one is around, but it is useful.

thank you so much!! I had not considered the power bar, and I haven’t planned audiobooks and podcasts but those are great ideas!

On the donut pillow: for clarification, I keep reading and hearing contradicting advice about the donut cushion / circle pillow - most advice is that it’s the wrong thing to sit on post-op (that it increases pressure on the wounds rather than relieves it, but that it’s also a common mistake that people use it or are suggested to use it).

In one of my pre-op appointments they explicitly told me first of all that I should basically avoid sitting at all costs, never sit pre-op (only lie down flat for up to 2 hours, otherwise try standing), and if I have to sit e.g. in a car to get home, put the seat all the way down to lie down as much as possible and to always use a waffle cushion and not a donut cushion / circle pillow. That’s what I was told by my physician’s assistant last week anyway. Just passing along in case.

I think the no sitting rule is to prevent pressure on the sutures and thus to prevent wound dehiscence.

penile inversion, and I’ll be in the U.S., I will only have to drive to a different city.

When it’s bad enough I learned to do a “farmers blow”, which is admittedly super gross - but it’s effective at clearing my nose and doesn’t require bringing tissues (esp. useful when I am cycling or running in bad weather).

we don’t know if drags pronouns are trolling or not, we respect them on principle whether drag is trolling or not; the fact that drag has done nothing but troll actually seems like evidence drags pronouns could also be intended to troll, we just avoid saying that part out loud because it shows skepticism of their identity, and we want to be respectful of people’s self-identities here (a kindness that ironically drag does not do extend to others)

tl;dr

in Victorian times the author wanted to warn people about the arsenic in wallpaper and its dangers, so he published a book of wallpaper samples with arsenic that then itself poisoned and killed people who handled the book

Basically, how long would you have to be on estrogen before you could start getting some of the mental and emotional effects, but before you would start having any irreversible physical effects?

I had emotional effects within the first week. For me I think injecting a sufficient amount of estrogen to block the testosterone from being produced is what helped my mood.

The testosterone was the problem, and the only anti-androgen I tried was bicalutamide which didn’t help because it doesn’t block androgen receptors in the brain very well. It was previously thought to have no effects on the central nervous system, now we know it does act on the CNS but it’s not clear how much. Either way, I can confirm bica didn’t help my biochemical dysphoria at all.

I have heard spiro can help with biochemical dysphoria (it helped Mia Violet), but can also harm mood (I know several trans women IRL who swear it causes problems for them).

So I would personally recommend estrogen monotherapy. The ideal would be lupron, but it’s too expensive, so until an orchi is possible I think monotherapy is the least medically risky (estrogen is very safe, even in high levels), the option with the fewest side effects, and the most feminizing.

Also, mood continued to change and improve over time, and figuring out the right dose took a very long time for me. There were mood changes happening at the 3 month mark, and the estrogen does actively change your brain. I remember distinctly my intrusive anxiety disappeared somewhere in the 3 - 4 month mark.

I am pretty interested in starting HRT, but I don’t necessarily want to go through the whole hassle of freezing sperm first if I end up not liking how HRT makes me feel. Nor do I want to wait a long time before starting HRT just to find out that it me feel like garbage. So I’m thinking about potentially taking it for like two or three months as a “trial run”?

This seems reasonable to me. Depending on dose, frequency, and route of administration, you might have some breast growth that starts around that time that could be irreversible, that is the main risk. I think stopping within two months rather than three months should avoid that, however.

I believe it is actually recommended by The TransitionChannel to try HRT first since you can stop before permanent changes around the 3 month mark.

General recommendation is that you freeze sperm first, it is a risk you will lose fertility. However, it seems to be a bit of a myth that you will permanently lose fertility, most women seem to regain fertility when they stop HRT.

You should really think through the possibility that once you start estrogen you will not want to ever go off of it, even to regain fertility. I vastly underestimated the effects of estrogen on my mood, and once I started, the thought of quitting was tantamount to suicide. It was actually unsafe for me to quit. I don’t know what it will be like for you, though.

I do highly recommend injections rather than oral or sublingual routes though. I have needle phobia, so I went with subcutaneous injections with very small needles that are painless to inject.

I also recommend reading this document a few times: https://transfemscience.org/articles/transfem-intro/

then I would pay the $2 once to get access, then just grab all the links (they’re just private youtube videos) of the tangent videos, and then unsubscribe 🤷‍♀️ not the most ethical, but … it’s still technically feasible

it’s only $2 to get access to all the Tangents, well worth it

fair, but her tangents are more varied in topic she has videos on psychedelics, spirituality, the Barbie movie, etc.

oo, thanks - that’s good to know.

oh, sorry - didn’t mean that as a critique, just was thinking out loud and wondering if there was a reason I wasn’t seeing to moderate from a single open instance (like you) vs the approach of having a moderator account for the instance of the community you moderate 🤔