Since I’m older… it has been important to me to compress my surgical timeline as much as possible. I expected to need five surgeries to complete my medical transition and have completed two so far. I am about 4 months behind my ideal at this point because when I planned things, I didn’t have enough information.
I’d like to discuss what I didn’t know in the hope that it helps others when it comes time to plan their own surgical journey.
When I came up with the list of procedures I would require and started researching doctors, I was careful to consider several things: how impactful the procedure would be for me (how much dysphoria I thought it would alleviate); how much it would cost and how I would budget and pay for it; how available the various surgeons were and what their schedules looked like; and finally the expected recovery times for each surgery.
Here is the thing I didn’t understand or consider. A procedure can have two different “recovery times”. One is how long before you can return to your normal routine. For example, go back to work, resume your normal diet and exercise routines and engage in unusual but normal activities (such as travel).
There is a second stage to recovering from a surgery and that is… when you will be able to endure another surgery. While all of the surgeries I needed fell into the “3 months to recover” for the first category… one specifically had a different timeline for when I could have an additional surgery.
I’m going to use my specific experience as an example, but this could apply to any surgery depending on the surgery and the surgeon’s protocol for recovery. In fact, even the procedure I’m talking about has different “recovery windows” for different surgeons and variations of the procedure.
Definitely talk to your medical provider about both the “recovery time” and “when will I be able to have the next surgery”. This is going to be specific to your case and the surgeon’s practices and even to your (unknowable in advance) recovery and healing.
I’m thinking about my vaginoplasty. There are different variations, but I had a penile inversion vaginoplasty. One of the results of this surgery is that vaginal dilation is necessary after the surgery. This physical therapy follows a schedule that is dependent on your body’s healing process and the surgeon’s recommendations, but generally a surgeon can tell you what their “normal” schedule is, as well as the “worst case scenario” could be.
The reason I’m talking about this is the following: I was “recovered” after 8-10 weeks. I returned to work, resumed exercise and generally did not have any pain while going about my daily routine… however, I could NOT have a surgery at that time. This is because I was on a dilation schedule of three times a day for an hour at a time. It was critically important that I not miss or skip a dilation unless there were no other option because doing so would threaten my continued healing.
Obviously, there is no way you can be sedated for most of a day for a 6+ hour surgery and then recover for days in a hospital and convalesce for weeks if you need to perform an hour of PT approximately every 6-8 hours. This means that until my dilation schedule was reduced, I could not have another surgery that would demand that much “time off” from PT.
I hope this helps you when you consider the order of your surgeries if you require more than one and timing is important to you.
