Thursday, July 12, 2012

Two and a Half Weeks Out

Every day seems to follow the same pattern: I wake up feeling nasty and terrible, dried out and poorly rested, not to mention seeing spots on my bed/bed pad from discharge. I dilate. I take a shower and douche. I feel recharged and ok. I dither around for a few hours. I eat lunch. I dilate again. I sitz bath. I dither. I dilate again. I eat dinner.

And then I start to worry. I look at my vagina. I see this horrible white stuff that is most likely "fibrinous sloughing" or something. It creates constant discharge. I get pissed off that my bed pad is full of spots where I've sat, that I'll have to get more pads, that I'm wasting pads. I look at forums and google and everything trying to figure out if I need to do something. Because I can wait, that's fine. But needing to do something and not knowing about it is terrifying. I dilate again. I sitz bath. I douche. I try to go to sleep. I eventually do.

***

I emailed back the "follow-up" questionnaire my surgeon's office sent me yesterday. I got an auto-return email saying they'd be on vacation until August 22, effective that day. I'm furious that they'd just up and leave and not even warn us about it. I don't know what to do about the white stuff. I don't know what's normal.

I'm light-headed and my thoughts are foggy. My doctor here said that if I got light-headed, I needed to reduce my anti-androgen. I don't want to; I've already regressed so much from the month I had to stop hormones. I hate having dark facial hair again. I hate having greasy hair and rougher skin. I read a forum post about "adrenal fatigue" with the fogginess lasting years.

I don't know what normal is. And that's the problem. I don't have pain. I don't have that much bleeding, aside from the discharge. It just looks bad. And foreign. I want to lie naked in bed recovering, knowing that I'm doing everything right. I don't want to sit here terrified that my incompetence is going to produce lifelong sideeffects, botching this entire surgery. The only people who can really say are on vacation for six weeks. There's a metaphor in that somewhere.

***

This is easier than I thought. This is harder than I thought. This is so incredibly worth it. This might be a gamble turned disaster. I have so many people who support me. I'm, essentially, alone. I'm so looking forward to living. I wouldn't mind dying. I literally had a fainting fit of vertigo after I wrote that. I don't know what to do. I don't know if there's anything to be done. I need someone to tell me. I'll get someone who says "Wait and see." This isn't that hard. This is far too hard.

I want to be well.

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