Hey all, sorry for my lack of posting in the last several months!
Quick updates, if anyone is interested: my chest is healing well, much much better than expected. It’s been a little over 5 months since surgery (December 22, 2017) and I’m still a little swollen, the scars haven’t settled into themselves yet either, some parts look really thin, like someone drew on me with a fine-tipped red pen, but other parts are more like a kid drawing with thick red felt, but the lines are good and even and I’m okay with them being a little rough looking yet, they just need some time. I have an appointment with a dermatologist in July to see if he can do anything with them - he’s mentioned that he does laser scar removal and would be willing and able to do that for me if I wanted, but that was before surgery and I’m kind of nervous about it, but I figured a consultation isn’t a bad idea either way. I worry it might seem like I’m cheating to have them removed like that, but I don’t think that it’s right for me to hold that pressure on myself to have scars that make me self-conscious just because someone somewhere someday might think that I cheated the system by getting them dealt with rather than waiting and hoping for them to go away on their own, or doing the usual post-op care (which I definitely have done a ton of - polysporin, by the way, is fantastic for post-op healing - some of my stitches didn’t want to dissolve and tried to cause problems, but polysporin fixed that right up, and I’m in the middle of testing if prescription strength hydro-cortisone does anything good for them as well, if anyone wondered). (PS, fuck you anxiety because you’re an asshole for making me feel like an asshole for wanting to let the dermatologist work his magic on my scars).
Aside from the scarring, things are mostly okay with my chest - a little swollen, but range of motion is good. I can feel lumps of scar tissue under my arms if I run my fingers under the skin, and under my right side it still tends to swell randomly, not sure what that’s about. But that one I think has always been a little weird somehow, and I’m sure it’ll balance out eventually.
I’m still waiting and wishing that I had some feeling in my chest besides that awful tingly feeling like when my arms or legs/feet go to sleep.. fuck, when I was a kid that used to happen really bad and I remember once at a school choir thing, my classmates and I had to sit on the floor, and when it was our turn to go up to sing our part, my foot had fallen asleep, and I didn’t know how bad it was and fell flat on my ass in front of the whole school, it was awful and embarrassing and painful when it woke up, and even though I know probably no one really saw it except the people nearest me, it was not a good moment for me. My chest isn’t fully like that, it’s more like a mix of sleeping limbs and the frozen feeling in your face after the dentist does whatever, I’m childish and generally kind of touch/poke at my face when I leave the dentist to make sure it’s still there, but my chest has that same numb/tingle to it even though it’s been quite a long time, and I don’t know if that’ll go away or not, I guess it must be on its way out because it’s not really as bad as it was before? It’s just like they did an extremely heavy dose of dentist stuff, but for my chest, and it’s taken my chest ages to work it out because it doesn’t do as much movements as my mouth does, I suppose.
Anyway! Chest is good, healing will happen eventually, exercise is not a friend of it yet (because whenever I’ve tried, it swells up really bad for a couple days, and then eventually mellows out, not to mention how BAD it hurt the first few times I tried! So I kind of gave up on that since, but I’ll probably try to get back to it this fall, I think, or maybe sooner, we’ll see).
Other transition stuff: hormone injections are soon to be a thing of the past for me, because the needles have started causing so much stress and anxiety, not to mention pain, that my doctor and I have agreed, and so has my insurance, thankfully, that it’s time for me to switch to an alternate form. I’m just waiting out this last dose before switching to patches hopefully next Tuesday, so that should be interesting! Anyone else have experience with the patches, or with switching to patches after having been on the shots for a bit? February was my two years, but it’ll be good to have a change, I think.
Sorry for the length of this post, this is really really long! I might try to come back on here a little more now if things slow down or I have more time. Thank you to those of you who stuck around, I hope you are doing well!
