New Surgery Date – June 10

I’ve been waiting to write this post to make sure my rescheduled surgery date didn’t get postponed again. Then I was going to write this post the night before surgery on June 9th, but my computer is potentially busted. I got it to boot up for now, so, here we go!
EDIT: My computer literally locked up and died in the middle of writing the first two paragraphs of this post. I come to you from my fiance’s dinosaur of a computer.

I was rescheduled for surgery in early April after a postponement due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As Dr. Safir promised, due to the fact that I am paying for COBRA insurance in order to have this surgery, the Crane Center for Transgender Surgery offered me one of their earliest dates and I took it.

I re-booked everything we’d had to cancel in March. Along the way, our Airbnb host hooked us up with a larger place because a travelling nurse wanted to extend her stay in the place we booked. That was a nice plus for the same price.

As we got closer to my surgery date, the surgery center and CCTS made me aware of the extra COVID-19 testing I would need. Thankfully, I was able to make this work with my travel arrangements. While I understand these are evolving times, more notice would have been preferable for planning.

As of this writing in June 2020, here are the COVID-19 related things I had to accomplish in order to have surgery:

• A virtual visit with a doctor 48 hours prior to surgery.
• A COVID-19 test (nasal swab, antibody test would not matter) 24 hours prior to surgery.
• New COVID-19 liability paperwork from the CCTS.

With all of those things accomplished and my negative COVID-19 status obtained, we prepared for surgery the next day.

We arrived at the surgery center and followed their COVID-19 protocols. My fiance had to drop me at the door and could not come into the center at all. My temperature had to be under 100.3 degrees. There was a slight hiccup with that, as I was standing in the sun, which gave a false reading of a 100.3 temperature. This was remedied with an old-fashioned thermometer in the mouth.

Once inside, things proceeded like normal, except that I had a mask on the whole time. My favorite nurses were all around and did their very best to make me feel comfortable.

Dr. Safir came in and we did more consulting. He was pleased with the room I still had for another implant in my left testicle. He marked up my left over mons tissue while I was standing, which I think helped. When I asked about possibly doing something with the buried penis repair/scar tissue underneath, he commented that he wasn’t sure he could do it without placing a catheter. This came as a surprise to me, and honestly, I had not mentally prepared for a catheter. I asked him if there was anything he could do without a catheter and he said he would see.

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I woke up from surgery feeling way better than I did from my last one. My favorite nurse was there taking care of me and let me take a quick peek at the mons work. I was instantly relieved. She told me there had not been any penis lift work done though, because he couldn’t without a catheterizing me.

I’ll admit I’m slightly disappointed we could not achieve the buried penis repair/penis lift, but catheterizing me was not part of our original surgery plan, my stay and post-op appointments had not been set up for that, and I personally had not mentally prepared for it.

My left implant seems to be doing well and so far I am very pleased with the rest of the tissue removal he did to flatten my mons and reveal more of my penis.

If I decide I need the buried penis repair/penis lift later, it will be much more feasible to pay for that out of pocket if I had to than replacing an implant due to the cost of implants.

I also plan to ask Dr. Safir more questions at my post-op to get more clarity on the buried penis repair/penis lift issue as well. I feel very good about what Dr. Safir was able to achieve for me with this procedure and hope I continue to feel that way as I heal and the swelling dissipates.

Till then, it’s just lounging around and relaxing. Which for the first time since starting this surgical journey, I feel calm enough to do. There’s no more immediate surgical planning, no reacting to things not being “just right.” This time is different, more relaxed and feels more final than any of my other lower surgeries.