• Testicle implants - It would be weird to have a penis without balls, so this is on the plate as well.
One thing I am specifically not getting is urethral lengthening. There is no guarantee with a metoidioplasty that you can stand to pee anyways, and it is much more invasive, and increases my chances for complications and revisions, and seriously increases my healing time. If sitting to pee was good enough for Winston Churchill (according to urban legends), then it’s good enough for me.
As you can see, there are a lot of options. It’s very mix and match.
There is a huge waitlist for these procedures, only made longer by Trump’s inauguration. My top surgeon said she has had a huge flood of patients because of Trump and the fears of the community about losing access to insurance.
I go to a consult in March, but who knows if I can even get into surgery this year. I still don’t know if my insurance will be cut for next year. If that happens, my husband and I will be job-hunting for sure. I like my job, but if I think we all know most men would choose their penis over their job, and I’m not an exception.
Lastly, I’d like to say this is going to impact my husband, Lucky, quite a bit. Once again, we are focusing all of our finances, vacation time, and efforts on a surgery for my body. He just spent hours organizing airfare, hotels and car rentals. I feel incredibly happy he’s willing to be 100% supportive, but I wish this was past and done, so we can both just get on with our lives.
Lucky’s Perspective Now:
I had originally asked Wolsey to start submitting to Accidentally Gay. There were some subjects I felt he was the most qualified to talk about. His surgery itself being a prime example. He was kind enough to talk about it and answer some questions even I had.
Now with some time behind me I feel I can put my voice in here and give some feedback. First by saying I was incredibly surprised how entitled people were asking Wolsey intimate questions. It wouldn’t be uncommon for someone who just found out Wolsey was trans to ask if he had a penis. It would usually be nice, but something would invariable be asked about “The Surgery.”
I was surprised and shocked about how many surgeries he was going to have, but that just showed my lack of understanding of feminine body parts and how they worked. I was quite aware it was invasive, but a minimum of two surgeries seemed a bit much even for me. Fortunately, Wolsey and I had talked about what he wanted before the consult itself so it was clear in his head.
He didn’t want a phalloplasty with the several surgeries required, the very complicated way it had to be done, and the greater than zero chance of losing sexual function convinced him it wasn’t worth it. He wasn’t into size, and he wanted to enjoy sex, so those two things let him take the less invasive direction. Sadly, it wasn’t nearly as easy as I had hoped. It turns out he was going to get at least five different surgeries and more likely six, done over two actual surgical visits.
While we were waiting for our original May consultation appointment, we had an incredible fortunate event occur. Wolsey’s case manager was able to move his appointment up with Dr. Meltzer from May to March, shaving off two months. That was amazing and we had no complaints about paying the increased costs of going to Phoenix during baseball’s spring training camp just because it was quicker.
Upon our arrival, we met with Dr. Meltzer and his new surgeon working with him, Dr. Ley. They gave Wolsey a physical and went over the options. They seemed impressed that we were aware of the different procedures, although they seemed disappointed that Wolsey didn’t want to do more in the phalloplasty direction.
We were overjoyed that there would be an incredibly positive side effect to the vaginectomy. It would remove the skin around that area that had been subject to Lichen Sclerosis for the last several years. The condition had been so bad Wolsey would sometimes just lie in bed in pain, almost crying. While doctors tried to help, they were usually unable to assist. The surgery would permanently fix this. It was perfect.
While we were there, something even greater happened. The office staff and doctors heard we both worked for the Department of Defense. They were concerned for us and moved heaven and earth to get Wolsey in for surgery in June, only three months away instead of 18. That was a fantastic turn of events and, while it was expensive to fly down for the consult, it turned out to be worth it.
The one thing that seemed to bother Wolsey the entire time though was how I felt about it. He was terrified that we were devoting all of our sick time, leave time and available cash and pushing us into debt by thousands of dollars. The problem is he never seems to remember that he is the most important thing to me in the world. If he isn’t happy, then nothing I am doing is worth it. I truly feel that way now, and I have felt that way since we got married. Being able to be himself was about as important to me as it was to him.
I reassured him, told him we would be fine and he accepted that after a lot of conversations. I truly just want him to be happy, and it was looking like it was going to get there.
Wolsey’s Perspective Now:
By the time I got ready to get bottom surgery done, I had discovered that there weren’t a lot of transgender men that opted for my collection of procedures. This made finding a path through a bit harder because nobody seemed to be talking about what I wanted done.
In general, a lot of transgender men create blogs or YouTube channels, but at some point, post-transition, they would remove it all. I ended up hunting broken links and pages of introductions that got missed in the author’s purge.
This is really understandable. “The Surgery” is one of the most hot-button topics of being transgender. Not really to us, but because society at large seems completely obsessed with who has a penis. Sometimes we just want to put it all behind us and get on with living our lives.
Additionally, deleting these blogs or videos means you can’t be found out and have being transgender used against you. There is still a heavy stigma against transgender people in the US. I can’t fault someone for “going stealth” which means to live as a cisgender person and not disclosing that you are transgender at all.
For transgender men, we are constantly asked if we’d gone out and gotten ourselves a penis. People I didn’t even know asked me about the state of my genitals. It seemed the less I knew someone the more likely they’d ask. Usually loudly, and inappropriately.
This cultural obsession would be comical if it wasn’t something that took over the narrative of every transgender person’s life when they deal with non-transgender people sometimes. I can’t think of any other situation where complete or near strangers felt comfortable asking about my genitals.
It’s a big surgery filled with uncertainty, so humor was my way of dealing with that. I took the opportunity to make dick jokes at a rate that could only be eclipsed by a 12 year-old boy. I encouraged all my friends and coworkers to join in. Sometimes humor makes the unknown less scary for everyone.
My biggest fears during this period were two-fold. Firstly, that I would not get into surgery until after the end of 2017 and that my surgery would no longer be covered by insurance because of the Trump Administration. Secondly, that this was a huge list of procedures being done at once and could take a serious toll on my middle-aged body.
The surgeon’s office managed to address my first fear. By choosing Dr. Ley, the wait times were drastically reduced. Then, they had a cancellation for May of 2017, and offered it to me because they knew I worked for the Department of Defense. The whole transgender community was concerned about how the Department of Defense was going to deal with insurance coverage for transgender care, so the only thing we knew that was concrete was I was covered for 2017. I am still incredibly grateful to the office for pulling that hat trick and getting me in so fast.
As for my second fear, of my original list I had the following procedures scheduled for May 2017 surgery:
• Hysterectomy
• Oophorectomy
• Vaginectomy
• Metoidioplasty
/> The only thing that changed from my original post in the Accidentally Gay blog, was I decided against testicular implants. There is a very high complication rate and that risk just wasn’t worth it for me.
Everything but the mons resection could be done in May. The mons resection just wasn’t compatible with the rest. That still left a frightening number of surgeries all rolled up into one.
I have never seen a population have so many surgeries in such a short a period as I see in the transgender community. Dysphoria driven desperation to rectify the irreconcilable issues with one’s body drives a lot of us onwards.
There is also an issue of access. It’s damn expensive even if you can get your surgeries covered by insurance. I got this first round of surgery and procedures covered, but I still paid cash for hotels, flights and travel. That’s thousands of dollars to stay weeks in a hotel while recovering. Not every transgender person can manage that.
This means, if they can get one surgery, it’s sometimes the only option to get all the different procedures done at once. For a lot of us, we simply can’t raise the funds to spread these procedures out. This was in part the reason I was doing a bunch of major procedures all in one go. I didn’t know if I’d have insurance later.
Another decision I made was to write up a journal of my experiences here: https://wordpress.com/view/ ratneedsadick.wordpress.com I want to leave that up for other transgender men, and for anyone curious. There is nothing to be ashamed about, and if my experiences can help others I am more than happy for them to be accessible. This cultural obsession with who has a penis doesn’t look like it’s going away anytime soon, so maybe it can be a bit educational.
Having my appointments and plans in place, I went forward with my new penis-buying project.
Chapter Fourteen
The Verdict is In
To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions.
—Benjamin Franklin
From the Accidentally Gay Blog: The Verdict Is In
Posted on June 8, 2017
It has been ten days since Wolsey’s surgery, and things are looking good. Don’t get me wrong, he is uncomfortable, on a pain management regimen and still home from work, but having a hysterectomy, oophorectomy, vaginectomy (the three of those are commonly referred to as HOV), as well as a metoidioplasty and scrotoplasty. Overall this was a major undertaking.
The surgery itself went really well, as was detailed in the multiple smaller posts earlier. We met the two main doctors, Dr. Meltzer and Dr. Ley, but in addition we met the person responsible for the HOV itself, Dr. Webb who was a very entertaining man to talk to. He chatted us up more about the nitty gritty of the surgery than either of the metoidioplasty and scrotoplasty surgeons.
At the surgery I met Jeff from the Greenbaum Surgery Center. He is the most absolute fantastic nurse I have ever met. He was fabulous with a capital fab. He was sure to inform me every two hours by phone how the surgery itself went.
When Wolsey got out of the surgery, the doctors all contacted me directly and relayed to me that he had lost less than two tablespoons of blood in total. The surgery went textbook and there were absolutely no issues. I picked him up two days later, and then the ordeal began.
He looked great. Don’t get me wrong, he was swollen, stitched and not able to move well, but was in pretty darn good condition considering. The whole time he kept being in awe of having the changes. I am sure it was partially the pain meds, but his glee was pretty overpowering.
The five days at the hotel room were cool and cave-like. With temperatures of about 107 degrees in Scottsdale, it really wasn’t a place I wanted to go outside in (but I did to retrieve him food). Over the course of those five days he was starting to heal up just fine.
Sadly, our flight home that Friday did in all that progress. We were held up for hours on the plane without air-conditioning, just as his pain meds gave up on him. This resulted in Wolsey being in pain for most of the flight. It has taken about four days for him to recover from that.
So here we are four days after getting home, and ten days after surgery and the swelling is going down, and he is ecstatic. I am ecstatic too. I am sure I will have more anxiety in the future, but the joy he has, the running around exclaiming how mighty he is, is more than worth it.
I can say as of now, the verdict is in, and the surgery was a great success!
Lucky’s Perspective Now:
The time of Wolsey’s surgery was a whirlwind of emotion, action and numbness. I truly didn’t understand what I felt in comparison to what I saw for weeks after the event. I do know that I was truly happy for Wolsey and am even more so now.
The preparation for the trip was probably the easiest, yet most stressful portion. I spent hours and days going over our plans looking for anything that could be missing that he would need. We were fortunate to pre-purchase the flight tickets so that was fairly cheap, but spending nine days in Phoenix was the longest non-work trip either of us had been on. This didn’t count the food and transportation costs either. That being said, we swung the costs anyways.
We were fortunate. While the DCAA and DoD overall is not a good place now, our office was incredibly supportive. It was made absolutely clear that both of us could take as much time off as we needed and they wouldn’t object. They were very supportive of our trip and overall tried to help with our anxiety.
The day we left was incredibly busy. We were at the airport at 5:00 a.m. and the hubby was in a good mood. I have to give him many kudos for that. He isn’t a morning person, and with the anxiety of the looming surgery I was worried he’d be unhappy. However, he was positive, smiling and seemed excited. Part of that was that we got to fly first class for the first time. We got round-trip tickets so he would have the opportunity to fly home as comfortably as possible.
I was surprised at the differences from first class to coach. It was comfortable, the food was decent and the steward was there for anything we needed. This was my first flight ever that I didn’t feel like I was in a cattle car.
When we arrived in Phoenix, a jerk at Alamo rent-a-car tried to continuously upsell us on car insurance. Wolsey put an end to it though by looking over at me, calling me sweetie and making it clear we were together. Evidently the guy did not realize we might be gay and he immediately recoiled and we were able to move on with our car with no other harassment.
We had no medical plans on the first day, but we did stop by Papagos Park, and in 110 degree heat I watched the locals from the area mountain biking on the path. My first thought was, “Nope, this isn’t a place I could live in.” I would have died from heat exhaustion the first day if I was expected to do that kind of thing.
We then went to the hotel room, had some chicken and waffles at a restaurant called Lo-Lo’s and just relaxed until Wolsey’s pre-op appointment. His surgery was scheduled for the next day.
The next day went quickly. All we really had to do was go to his pre-op appointment, with no new news. He was given some stuff to drink that would clear out his system and we were unable to go do anything as he waited for the process to complete.
Surgery day came and I have to say this was probably the most anxious, worried-filled day I have ever had with him. He would be undergoing multiple major invasive surgeries at one time. I knew the odds said he was just fine, but the voices in my head were freaking out.
The morning started with getting up at 4:00 a.m. after having only slept two or three hours before and driving out to the surgery center. There was some surprise on my part as the temperature outside was 85 degrees at 4:00 in the morning. That isn’t something I am used to in the Pacific Northwest and the heat just added to my anxiety.
We got Wolsey checked in and I fluttered around him the whole time. I realize that probably made him more nervous but I couldn’t help it. My husband was going to get his surgery and there was some danger. To be honest, I think the last vestiges of his feminine body disappearing were making me even more anxious, as ashamed as I a
m to admit that.
I never thought of that until now. I think there was something to the idea that the last feminine part of the woman I had married was going to be irretrievably gone. I never once considered him not being who he was, but I think I might have been grieving, in a small way, the wife that was going away.
We rolled him into pre-op and I said my goodbyes. He was smiling, excited and probably anxious too. However, I knew it was him. This is what he wanted, this is who he was and no matter the weird little sadness I felt, it didn’t matter. I knew as he got rolled into surgery he was doing the right thing.
I spent hours waiting for the surgery to end. This meant I wandered Scottsdale, Arizona picking up souvenir spoons for him. I then wandered to Denny’s and finally just around the local mall trying to find a way to override my anxiety about his safety. I was truly worried I would never see him again. No matter how much I logically knew that was false, it didn’t go away.
I then got a call from Dr. Webb about the removal of Wolsey’s feminine bits and he said Wolsey would be out soon and things went well. I was excited and then confused when it was six more hours before he was out of surgery as Dr. Ley and Dr. Meltzer finished the reconstructing of his new male parts. I worried there were complications and sadly I have never found out if there were. So of course, my anxiety went off a cliff. The only thing that saved me was Jeff, the famous and fabulous nurse at Greenbaum’s Surgery Center. His call every two hours kept me from freaking too badly. For that, I am eternally grateful
When they did roll Wolsey out, he was pretty drugged, but I still gave him a hug and almost broke down and cried there. I had worried so much that I had worked it up that he wasn’t coming back out and to see him there in the hospital bed all of a sudden—I didn’t really know what to do with my feelings.
I think, even with all the pain and discomfort Wolsey went through during the surgery, the worst part was the next five days of healing in the hotel room and the travel back home. Neither of us were used to the 107-degree heat, and there was no way he could go anywhere. We relied on a dilapidated hotel room air-conditioning and I scouted him out the healthiest foods I could find.
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