Category: personal

Hiiiii

So I’m 30 years old at this point. I’m not new to surgeries at all– I had my tonsils out when I was like 5 for goodness sake. Tonsils then, tubal ligation in 2022, top surgery in 2023… I guess two of those were an option for me, you know? This last one was a little more out of my hands.

Now the subject matter is a little bit TMI, especially so since I’m a transmasc person so talking about the parts of my body that politicians want to claim make me a woman is a little iffy. I will try to use the best terms I know for things.

And never take my stuff here as medical advice.

So if I were to take this in chronological order; this story starts in March of this year. Simply, I have the parts necessary for a Pap, and I hadn’t gotten one in 2-3 years. So I think I’ll go to this gynecologist I was referred to and just get it done with for a few years.

I go and the nurse who attends to me is very considerate and sweet. For being in West Texas, there have been some real good medical practitioners re: my identity.

So this nurse gets to checking around; anyone with this set of genitals probably knows what I mean. And she starts seeming a little bewildered. There’s some tissue in the way– I tell her I’ve been told of that before but they usually can get by it. So she readjusts and then through the speculum she says something like “Well now there’s something else in the way of your cervix. It looks like a cyst?”

I’m like. Oh. Okay. That’s weird, I know about ovarian cysts but not ones directly there. So the nurse talks to the doctor and orders me just like a scan of some sort. I get those results back from the diagnostic center before the doctor talks to me about it.

It said it’s fluid filled and looks like it may be something congenital. I’m like. Oooookay? So I talk to my mother about it, because I’m silly and talk to her about everything under the sun, and she says something about “it would have been noticed by now if it was congenital, just wait til your doctor gets to you about it.”

That took about 2 weeks, maybe 3.

So I got a phone call saying it’s definitely a cyst and they say if it’s causing me issues then they’ll refer me to someone who can do this particular kind of removal. The gyn I was seeing, as wonderful as that office is, mostly does deliveries and bladder slings, and I’d need a specialist.

The first specialist they referred me to was in the DFW area, which is a metropolitan region that’s probably a little more accepting of queer identities, you’d think.

This guy. My god. He completely brushed aside the talk about the cyst and said he was more worried about my uterine lining. I wanted to be like, uhh, I think I was told that stops building when you’re on T long enough. But he’s the medical dude so at the time I just let him order me an ultrasound of my uterus.

The kicker? He did a manual exam, said he felt the cyst with his hand, and still thought ehhhh I don’t care.

I felt like I had become someone’s medical curiosity in regards to the uterine lining thing.

So I did the ultrasound back near home and it came out exactly as I thought it would, totally unremarkable in the uterus. So I cancelled my follow-up with that office and called my doctor again to get a new referral.

The nurse heard my story and was appalled. Very gently, she said “Sometimes you just need someone who can sympathize with what it must feel like. Not to throw men under the bus-” I’m like oh I understand exactly what you mean and I’m inclined to agree right about now.

So in about another week she set me up a referral to a doctor almost 3 hours west of me. I was like. O no.

But to tell y’all the truth, this cyst has been bugging me and I don’t have an estimate for how exactly long. Random cramps, pain in specific times I won’t talk about publicly, stuff like that.

So I go to this doctor the first time in June. That office is so wonderful immediately. They took my worries seriously, they wanted to check on if I was in other kinds of pain (your tissue down there gets brittle when you’re on T, y’know). They did all sorts of things like checking I didn’t have a low lying UTI or anything.

The first thing we concluded is that the “tissue” I’ve been told about since people started examining me was not my hymen like I’d been led to believe but a septum. “Those are usually taken care of around the time menses start.” I’m like cooool I’m only 30 years old.

They then decided to order me a proper MRI to see where the cyst was attached– from looking in they could only see a bit of it. They said there’s a chance it’s what’s called a Gartner’s cyst; a remnant of a duct that usually disappears in a later stage of fetal development. But they couldn’t be sure without the MRI. I said okay can I get that done back home. They said mmmm no, we want to look at the raw data ourselves.

So I had to come back an get that in July.

Then I had to come back again to get the results later that month.

And oh my god I was bitching about travelling 3 hours every time but by the time I got to the office for the MRI follow up I very quickly became glad I had been making the effort.

Let me show an artist rendition of the image that the doctor showed me.

It hit me like a brick. That fucker is almost as big as my squished up uterus and filled with fluid, most likely.

So the doctor said “Considering the size and how it’s causing you discomfort, I’m guessing you’re opting for removal.”

My voice cracked as I went “Uh, YEAH??”

So that became the new leg of the process. July 28th I decided to get rid of this fucker.

They scheduled me for pre-op tests on September 18th and then the operation on October 2nd.

That itself was difficult. I’m a nearly 24-hour caregiver for my grandmother. If it wasn’t for the kindness of family and friends I wouldn’t be able to make these trips. Not to mention I’d need to have a ride and the only person I could have for that (in my knowledge at that time) was my dad, and he (in my knowledge at that time) works Monday-Friday. I’m like. Please help me. He agreed to help on the weekend of the 2nd.

Pre-op was very sweet as well; questions, weight, blood, x-ray and ekg. Got me in and out before my appointment time was even scheduled for.

Final step in my mind was that surgery. Up until the day of I was expecting something to happen to postpone the surgery, but hey, nope, at 6:30 yesterday morning I was in the car on the way to that hospital 3 hours away.

I was scared. There are possible complications to any surgery, but as I laid there and the doctor went through all the necessary things for informed consent, I was almost getting cold feet. Possibility to injure the bladder or ureters, there were going to be sutures and bleeding for a while. I just had to think to myself “I’m taking care of my body.”

I was in surgery for about 3 hours, so shorter than I had anticipated. When I woke up, my throat HORT. Which, duh, when you’re under general anesthesia they intubate you. I knew that. It doesn’t make it hurt less.

I noticed I was suddenly wearing something new. Apparently post surgery bleeding required a pad and underwear.

They offered me drink, I asked for Sprite. I wanted caffeine but they didn’t have Pepsi or Coke so Sprite was a good option to help me wake up.

They told me it’s going to be a 6 week recovery process. No lifting, pulling, pushing, nothing heavier than 10 pounds at least. No tampons, nothing up there for at least 5 or so weeks, and the bleeding should stop by the end of the 3rd week. I laid there and possibly out loud said “Holy shit.”

I had downplayed the surgery itself so hard in my head that I thought I’d be down a few days and be right as rain after the weekend. 6 WEEKS???

Dad got the car and we drove the 3 hours back with me intermittently falling asleep in the passenger seat. It was impossible to stop the naps. My body just fucking knocked itself out.

Got home, ordered food for Dad to go get for supper. I get Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to sleep in. Then back to work on Monday. I’ll probably take my post-op information to my boss since my job has semi-regular lifting involved.

Today I was having some serious brain fog. I think it’s because I was refusing to take the pain meds. I didn’t feel pain the way I was expecting to, but I took one of the pills at about 1pm and my head cleared up. Couldn’t draw for shit though.

I’m looking forward to being healed up. I think this will help a lot.

I feel more like a dragon in human skin than an actual person sometimes.

^{Wolf, circa 2022}

I kinda lost track of where I wanted to start this lmao

I logically know this is a very common experience, but I’ve always felt very… isolated? It’s like there’s a pane of translucent glass between me and my peers, and part of that is a genuine lack of understanding social rules and “unspoken contracts” between people. Growing up I had my waxing and waning phases on whether this quirky inability to blend in made my life hell or gave me a weird superficial popularity. Maybe that was genuine, but even in the height of my senior year of high school when I won prom court, I felt like I wasn’t connected to most of the people who even voted for me. I had a core group of friends and even in that there was someone trying to cuckoo bird me out for about a year.

In college people liked me well enough, but I really attached to very few, and those few understood that I was…quirky. Thankfully the bachelors degree I was able to obtain was in Theatre, so being unique played strongly into success. Even then, though, I was socially uncomfortable to be around– I was told I have outbursts, I made crushes feel awkward, I went to parties and while everyone was pairing off and drinking I was hijacking the aux cord to DJ based on vibes.

I graduated and chose not to walk the stage, I missed a chance to make that accomplishment feel real because I felt like I didn’t have anyone to enjoy the occasion with, and then I got a text from an ex-roommate saying she wishes she could have gotten pictures with me. I felt awful, I just seem to lose social cues so easily.

Fast forward past 2017, past my attempt to finish a second bachelor’s degree that failed, into 2022. At that point I’d been living in Texas with my mamaw for about half a year. I get a chance to see Beetlejuice on Broadway with a close friend and another one of my past roommates from college. I kind of butchered that visit a number of ways, but I remember telling my friend that I don’t feel like a human a lot. I don’t understand people, I don’t have common sense in the common meaning of the phrase. _{I’m still unpacking in therapy the concept that common sense still needs to be taught at some point in the learner’s life.}

So I said vaguely that I might as well be a dragon in human skin, watching people and trying to learn through mimicry.

And then I got back to Texas and what I said stuck in my head. And I started having fun with it.

The first doodle I have that leads to the dragon critter comes from the end of 2022. I’d spoken with someone online who encourages me to express myself as freely as I want to– they suggested a color that might fit me since I have the color sense of a toddler (“MY FAVORITE IS PURPLE YAAAAAY”) and I drew a draft of person me with dragon aspects:

But the critter came about as shorthand, sometimes for comedic effect and sometimes with genuine intent. That started around when I joined Broadwaystuck (early 2023).

I tried to do bipedal designs sometimes–

But for the most part I use the “critter form”. It became a comfortable shorthand for myself. And I draw it constantly.

Nowadays when I do draw myself as a human, I keep some of the aspects of this critter too

Simply, this has become part of how I choose to put myself forward and view myself for now, and has been for a few years. It’s comfortable and easy to wear

From meme draw-overs and redraws to sporadic doodles, I’ve enjoyed this process. As much as I look back with dread at 2023-2024 for a number of reasons, I am very thankful I’ve gotten to explore some dorky form of expression throughout the Horrors.