Wang Quest

Content warning: Non-graphic talking about sex below the cut

Hey there! I don’t think I have answered, so I’m happy to do so.  The short answer is that my donor sight is doing great. I have full mobility and the scar, though certainly noticeable, is something I’ve grown fond of over time as a symbol of my self-actualization. (also it looks badass)  The scar itself has dulled sensation, and if I bang it on things (I’m clumsy) there’s less protection, so that can hurt more than before, but I don’t feel any pain in it at this point. As for the rest of my arm, there aren’t any parts that have lost sensation or feel more pain than normal. As for edema, my hand never had much to start with, and what little I had went away within the first month or so. I had to go through physical therapy for a few months to get back full mobility. At first, I was at maybe 50% grip strength and couldn’t really bend my hand very far back and forth at all. But over time, as I healed, my scars softened. The last hurdle was getting some of the scars at my wrist to flatten more, as that was preventing me from having a full rang of motion in my hand. I used a Bioconcepts fitted compression sleeve lined with silicone to help with that. Below are some pictures of my arm, both right after surgery, and now. 

It’s Transgender Awareness Week, so I’m here to make people aware. There are many forms of awareness, so I’m here to talk about how important it is to be aware that you can be trans and happy and trans and loved. So hello, I’m a 33 year old bisexual trans man, and I exist.

Update on WangQuest 2: A Hero Will Rise

I went to my first of my two post-op appointments today. There was some good news and some (thankfully minor) bad news. Good News: No signs of infection! Everything looks to be healing well and without complication. No signs of erosion or detachment for the erectile implant and my testicle implant is looking good. Bad News: The pump for the implant is riding about an inch higher than it should (silly pump, why can't you be in the right spot like the testicle is doing?) This is a pretty common issue, and one that can be fixed by kind of slowly massaging it downward to where it's supposed to be. This usually happens because it's pushed a bit upward by the swelling from the surgery, and even just on the first try we moved it down half an inch. So for the next week I'll be working on massaging it down to where it should be and will be using Ibuprofen and ice to get the swelling down more. Due to the fact that moving the pump hurts like a bitch, we're going to wait on doing the initial inflate/deflate till next post op appointment when it (hopefully) will be where it's supposed to be and I'll be a bit less tender. Which means I'm going to have to stay partially inflated for another week, which is frustrating, but doable. (They keep you partially inflated to make sure you don't heal without room for the inflated pump, so you've got like, the very start of a boner but not enough to be noticeable with pants on, thankfully) So overall, things are looking good! (credit to @snakewife​ for the perfect image)

Starting this post with something I didn’t think I would be talking about on this blog, a content warning for mentions of past self harm. Please take care of yourself if you continue to read.




It’s been three days since WangQuest 2: Inflatable Boogaloo and I’m healing pretty well.

A common misconception about phalloplasties is that they don't have erotic sensation. This is very untrue, and I am here to talk about the deets.

As a quick basic informational thing, erogenous sensation in an RFF (radial forearm flap) phalloplasty comes from two places.

One is from the original natal phallus. In my case, I opted to have it "buried" which basically means that they take the flesh off of it and then kind of wrap the nerves around the newly created urethra. This leads to me having those original erogenous nerves ending up going from the top of my scrotum (where the natal phallus originally was) up to the base of my phallus. These nerves can be stimulated directly by rubbing or vibrating the area, or they can be stimulated by pulling at the newly created phallus (the dick, if you want to be more colloquial) as doing so pulls at those buried nerves at the base of the phallus.

As the nerves from your natal phallus aren't cut during the procedure, you recover sensation in that area pretty quickly. I was able to orgasm via stimulation to that area within a month of my surgery (this was an issue, as my doctor was like, "please no sex--including self stimulation--for three months so you can fully heal" and I was like, "Okay but what if sex?" and the long story short is that I can tell you that I had the ability to orgasm within a month of surgery so I guess you know how well I was able to follow that doctor order.)

But, wait, I said two places, right? Phalloplasties show how the body is REALLY COOL in that they don't only have sensation from the natal phallus! In an RFF (and in ALT, which is when they take the skin from your thigh) there are two major nerve branches that they take with the graft. For RFF these branches are the lateral antebrachial cutaneous nerve and the medial antebrachial cutaneous nerve. They hook one of these up to your ilioinguinal nerve (this gives tactile sensation) and the other to your dorsal penile nerve (this gives erogenous sensation)

Using micro surgery, they stitch the nerves together and in doing so, allow for both tactile and erogenous sensation to develop in the new phallus. However, unlike with your natal phallus, these nerves are cut, and nerves take a very long time to heal. Due to this, sensation in the phallus comes in very slowly. I'm a year out, and I still don't have full sensation in my phallus, and I know people who have continue to have developed more sensation in the phallus 3 or 4 years after surgery. This is because new nerve pathways need to grow through the phallus, and nerves grow very slowly.

I feel it's important to note that even before full sensation is in the phallus, you still can get off during sex, as you always still have that base of the phallus hookup from your natal phallus that is going to be stimulated during the motions of sex or wanking. So basically I have all my old erotic nerves, but I'm also getting a bunch more. Which is awesome.

One of the things that I've found since no longer really having gender dysphoria anymore, is realizing just how big an impact it had on my life.

If you were to ask me last year if my bottom dysphoria "negatively affected my quality of life" I'd probably have said, "it bothers me a lot, but doesn't hugely effect my QUALITY of life."

I used to have sex at least every other day back for most of my life as a sexually active individual. Over the past few years (about 2015 to present) that dwindled to about once or twice a week. Though that isn't insignificant, please remember what my prior rate of sex was. I attributed this to a lot of things: general stress in my life, growing older, "settling down", etc. But I didn't realize that literally all of this could be traced to the extra emotional and mental stress around my bottom dysphoria, which was increasing steadily over the years.

Part of this is because I assumed that because I wasn't consciously thinking about my junk 24/7 it wasn't causing me issues. Though sometimes I felt I couldn't have sex due to my junk, I generally attributed my lowering libido to other aspects of my life.

Now that I no longer have bottom dysphoria, I was startled at how my libido dramatically spiked. All the sudden I was initiating sex at least every other day, if not more. And this surprised me until I remembered that this was my actual normal libido, I just was no longer limited by the issues I had been dealing with as my bottom dysphoria got worse and worse. And thinking about my own anxiety and the emotional stress I felt about my diminished libido during those years, it's so helpful to understand what the change was actually tied to.

Peeing being a huge deal every time I do it is still so weird to me and I'm ready for it to be less exciting (cause it feels weird to be so happy about peeing) and less stressful (because I keep worrying about developing strictures--none so far!). Someday, it won't be a big deal to pee, until then, I will now give TeaChimera’s personal pros and and cons about how peeing is now:

Pros: - Gender Euphoria! - Being able to use urinals with ease - Not having to take my pants off to pee is W I L D - Not having to sit to pee on sketchy toilets - The ability to pee easily in the wilderness (even though I will never want to pee in the wilderness)

What prep are you doing in case things don’t turn out as expected/desired?

With a surgery like phalloplasty, minor complications are expected, and major complications are possible. There are a number of things that I’ve done to prepare myself for things going in a direction I didn’t expect: