Lost in the Dryer

29, US, Gay guy just trying to finish transitioning. HRT: January 2013, Top surgery: May 2014, Phalloplasty Stage 1: October 2021

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Idk if anyone's still here. I certainly haven't been for a while. But I feel like I owe this blog a proper send-off, since it's basically the only record of 90% of my transition.

I had stage 3, my final stage of phalloplasty, about a year ago. Now, a year later, we are beginning the second Trump term and, though I'm afraid of many things that could be coming, I'm incredibly grateful that I finished my surgical transition. I have my dick and balls, I can use a urinal so I won't have a problem in bathrooms. I don't have ovaries, so I don't have to worry about estrogen production (in case I can't get a steady supply of testosterone).

I feel overall relieved to have a penis. The motion involved in jerking off feels so much more natural to me, especially with my erectile implant. Facial hair growth is still in progress (lol), I've got the chin and mustache going half decently and just in the past few weeks noticed the first signs of proper cheek hairs (only took [checks watch] TWELVE YEARS?!). Also got the male pattern baldness going on, but I'm making my peace with it.

I finally quit the full-time job that I was tied to for insurance during my surgeries! I'm going to college this fall to study a practical skill I'm actually interested in. My boyfriend and I have discussed living together later this year. My life is so, so much better these days.

Which is why it's all the more of a poetic contrast of sorts that, as I enter this post-transition phase of my life with a feeling of freedom I was denied for so long, I now have to worry about my very existence becoming illegal. I defeated the enemies inside my fortress, only to step out of the gate and realize there are catapults pointing at the outer walls on all sides. But hey, at least I can fight them from my own home now.

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I have had my penis for one year today, and I didn’t even notice until my mom pointed it out, which was awkward.

Stage 2 has been rescheduled to January 2023. That means the wait between stages 1 and 2 will be (at least) a year and three months, which feels kind of ridiculous. It would be one thing if I’d had complications that caused a delay, or needed a break for emotional reasons, but I didn’t, it was all related to the hospital’s scheduling issues.

Anyway...

TMI stuff: I’m happy to have my penis but I am a little disappointed with my current level of sensation. I’ve read a lot of people saying by one year post-op, they’re able to have an orgasm just from penile stimulation and I feel like I’m nowhere near that. I definitely have some sensation, it’s just not that strong. I also had some loss of sensitivity with my genitals before phallo, probably related to all the urethral repair surgeries when I was in the “meta” stage. That was depressing, but I hoped it was more related to my actual (pre-phallo) junk being desensitized, and not the nerves. Now I’m wondering if maybe that’s not the case and I’m just never going to have a lot of sensitivity again? That would suck. But I also recognize that it’s still early in the grand scheme of phallo recovery, and I’m definitely not finished with nerve growth. It’s also pretty hard to tell just how much sensation I have when the floppiness kinda turns me off and I can’t really ...handle it the way that I would like to. I think once I have my ED I might enjoy everything more, with or without more sensation (although, obviously, more would be preferred).

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So anyway, because I’m me, I was scheduled for stage 2 (glans sculpting and scrotoplasty) in September, then it got moved back 2 weeks, which was fine, then they told me there were cuts to OR time and they lost OR time on my new date, and now I don’t have a surgery date at all anymore.

So just for the record, every time I groan that “this literally ALWAYS happens to me”, I am right.

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I follow 55 blogs on this account and a grand total of 3 have posted within the past year. Many haven’t posted for 3+ years. Kind of sad. Not that I have much to say these days either, but I might be inclined to say more if I felt like I was talking to anyone.

Scrotoplasty and glans sculpting planned for September. That’s 11 months after stage 1, but I’m ok with it. It’s much shorter than the amount of time I waited BEFORE stage 1.

I have to travel much further this time because my surgeon moved to a different hospital several states away, and I refuse to keep getting handed around to new surgeons. Stage 2 will be my seventh surgery overall, fifth genital surgery specifically, and the first one that is done by a surgeon who has operated on me before.

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So I bought a few pairs of that ridiculous-looking elephant-trunk-style underwear just to see what it was like and I actually kinda like it? I’ve been looking for something that won’t end up with my penis curling down on itself because that makes the scar retract, and this actually holds it out pretty nicely. Looks normal under clothes. Also it’s like the perfect size for my 4-inch dingaling.

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6 months post stage 1 phallo.

As for the healing issue with my leg, I ended up having to use Silvasorb and mesh oil dressings (non-stick gauze was pulling off my skin) for several weeks but it’s finally healing in what I assume is a somewhat normal manner. Stopped dressing it maybe 6-8 weeks ago, now I just make sure to keep it moisturized. It’s still pretty itchy but otherwise not a bother.

I graduated hand therapy several weeks ago, now I’m just supposed to keep doing my exercises three times a day (although I’m bad and usually only do twice a day). I massage the edges of the graft every night with moisturizer. I did have an issue about a week ago with my hand starting to swell again around the thumb area. I wrapped it up overnight and stepped up my exercising and it seems to be back to normal for now.

I can still feel the scar on the underside of my penis tightening up if my penis hangs down for more than an hour or so, so I’m still struggling a little bit with underwear. I want it propped up for most of the day, but keeping that positioning isn’t easy when I’m moving around a lot at work. Funnily enough, my current easiest option for keeping things relatively in place is using Separatec underwear but instead of wearing it the way it was designed, I pull it up super high and basically slot my penis into the lower pouch where your balls are supposed to sit. It’s roomy enough that it doesn’t crush my penis but structured enough to keep it from flopping down. I’m hoping that this scar retraction will eventually (soon?) be less of an issue and I can start dressing things in a more comfortable position.

Sensation is still coming along. I still don’t have much of anything in the way of Fun feeling. Most of my sensation is of the discomfort/hypersensitivity variety. For the right and top sides of my penis, I “feel” the sensation around the lower left base area. For the left and underside of my penis, I feel sensation in the right groin area where my leg meets my body, and along the diagonal scar that runs up and to the right from the base of my penis. I accidentally pinched the tip of my penis last week and it was like a jolt of sandpaper and a hot poker to my right groin area. Eurgh.

Masturbation is not very much fun because I feel like a Ken doll. At least when I was pre-phallo, there was something to grab onto that acted as a sort of main focus for stimulation, but that’s now under the skin, and the new external piece doesn’t feel good yet (not to mention the extreme floppy-ness is more of a turn-off than I anticipated). Like, if I had a partner right now, the best bet for getting me off would be to basically knee me in the crotch in a rhythmic fashion and that just doesn’t personally seem very sexy or satisfying. So. Yeah.

I had a consultation for stage 2, which will be scrotoplasty and glansplasty. Don’t have a date yet but thinking late this summer. The results of that should be nice, but at this point I’m more anxious for further nerve growth and my erectile prosthesis. I’m also not excited about healing from scrotoplasty, since it seems to be a very uncomfortable process and I tend to swell a lot in that area post-op. At this point I’m just like, haven’t I put my body through enough? I even thought about maybe compromising and just doing fat grafting for it or something, but I guess I’m going to stick with the plan and give it a try.

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A negative report: My split thickness donor site is still having serious healing issues. Before I went back to work it wasn't looking good, but it was mostly dried out and crusted over, with some oozing from around a few of the nastier scabs. Now that I have to wear pants and move around for 8 hours a day, it's gotten much more raw. The non-stick gauze sticks to it (surprise) and pulls parts of the scabs off. Before, it was slightly sore if poked at, but mostly just tight and itchy. Now, it feels like a burn. Painful with every movement. I had to take an oxycodone at work today. I think I need to call out tomorrow.

I'm supposed to drive out to see the doctor on Tuesday. I showed him a picture of my leg and he suggested putting some Silvasorb on the areas that were still oozing. It may have helped some, but that was outweighed by the fact that it made the gauze stick even worse and the extra moisture made bits of my skin pull off with it around the scabbing.

I just want to know how to fix this. It makes everything extremely difficult, and at this point it's the most painful it's ever been. I'm over 12 weeks post-op now. Picture below, if anyone wants to be grossed out.

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A positive report: I used to be so uncomfortable with my physical situation that if I was in the shower and someone needed to just slip into the bathroom for a second to grab their toothbrush or something, I wouldn't let them, even if I was fully behind the curtain and wouldn't be seen. I would bring my clean clothes in with my towel and get undressed and redressed in the bathroom.

Now I can walk from my room to the bathroom naked before a shower (with a hand or towel in front of my junk just for politeness- it's a 4-foot walk at the far end of a dark hallway). This would have been unthinkable before.

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Reveling in the fact that I have a small dick but I need to wear big dick underwear. I find it very entertaining.

I could mislead so many people with my photos. Thought you were getting an anaconda? Better luck next time, what you see is ALL you get. There won't be any more later.

Idk is it weird as hell that I find this funny?

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Almost 11 weeks post-op. Starting as early as about a month out, I noticed a small sensitive area on the right side of my penis, where if I just brush my fingers against it, there’s an unpleasant hypersensitivity. I would feel that right side touch on the leftish underside where the base was connected. That has grown from an elusively small area I’d only find by accident, to now going up at least half the length of the right side and spreading to the underside (still nothing on the left). Although it isn’t the Fun kind of sensation, I’m surprised and encouraged by how strong it is already and how quickly it’s grown.

I’m still figuring out underwear. I had read about people post-phallo preferring larger pouch-style underwear, so I bought a few pairs of that (nothing super fancy like the separate ball and dick pouches, just a basic roomy pouch on the front for everything to hang in). One kind I tried was David Archy, which turned out to be way too big for my 3.75 inches, but I did find that it was actually great to wear over the cloud dressing. The pouch is so big that even with fluffy gauze and my penis sticking straight out, it still covers everything without compressing. So I did get some use out of it (and I can probably use it after other stages of surgery), but I don’t think it will work for everyday wear. I also bought some Andrew Christian Trophy Boy underwear, which is their line designed for larger dicks. That’s been a better fit for me. The length of the pouch is pretty good, although without balls (yet) it’s pretty roomy. I also found that I can basically use this kind as a cloud without needing mesh underwear, if I stuff some gauze into the pouch, lay my penis on top of the gauze, and pull everything up a bit. It’s nice and structured.

As for non-pouch-style underwear, that’s also something I’m still experimenting with. I don’t like to point my penis down in this style because I’m afraid I’m going to sit on it, so it either has to go up or to the side, but when I do that I end up sort of deforming my penis and I don’t like the way it looks.

While the softness and floppiness was generally expected, I didn’t think about how ...pliable? the skin of my penis would be. It changes shape based on the way I pack it in my underwear. In a normal hanging down state, it’s slightly skinnier at the base but nothing terribly noticeable. If I pack it to the side for a few hours, it gets these very deep creases that stick around for a long time and the skinny base/bulbous end shape gets exaggerated for a whole day or so even after I change the positioning (illustration below). I still like to pack it up once in a while because I don’t want it to lose that motion (I already have a ridge of scarring on the underside and unless I wedge some fluffy gauze underneath the base, it won’t really stay propped up). So, I have been wearing my roomier pairs of non-pouch underwear so there’s room for the gauze. Not sure how long I will continue with this, I might have a better idea of if I should be worried about it once I actually get to see my surgeon again.

Basically I don’t have a normal underwear routine yet. Otherwise, hand is steadily improving, leg is still a crusty monstrosity but at least it isn’t getting worse, and I’m going back to work next week (ugh).

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This cracked me up because I read it wrong at first glance and thought you were saying I looked 10 years old (to which I was like, damn I know I have a baby face but 10 is a little harsh LMAO)

Thank you, that is very flattering and definitely an exaggeration but I'll take the compliment! 😍

Oh and I am feeling better! Thanks!

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Rare selfie (featuring Donor Arm for funsies)

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I’m 9 weeks post-op and this recovery really is a long haul. In comparison to the other surgeries I’ve had, right now I feel the way I’d usually feel at maybe 3 weeks post-op. Still moving carefully, trying to get used to sitting up and walking more often, and of course there’s the more long-term healing stuff that I haven’t had to deal with before (the arm and still that damn leg graft area).

I have to say that at this point I mostly associate my penis with anxiety and discomfort, which sucks. I’ve had it for 2 months now and I want to enjoy its presence. There have been a few nice moments when I was able to appreciate it, just lying around and feeling the warm bulge through my underwear, but mostly I’m still slogging through the healing stages feeling pretty uncomfortable.

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I've had some retraction of the scar at the base of my penis, which means it doesn't flop up like it's supposed to. I struggled for a few days trying to figure out how best to wear normal underwear without letting my penis hang down all day and causing further retraction, and now I've been advised to wear the cloud dressing again. Kind of a bummer. I'm thankful that this isn't a super serious, life-threatening issue, but one of the things I was most looking forward to was finally having my own bulge filling out my underwear, and how that would look and feel. Now I'm back to mesh underwear and a mountain of gauze.

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I was told I could start putting Aquaphor on the split thickness donor site on my leg.

Huuuge mistake. Last week when I started moisturizing it, the skin was a decent-looking smooth pink with barely any flaking left. Dry and itchy, but otherwise coming along nicely.

After a few days of Aquaphor, it became incredibly crusty and scabby. Even now that I stopped using the Aquaphor, the crusting is still so bad that sometimes my leg bleeds just from bending or straightening it. It's painful, it's itchy, and I'm limping everywhere. I had to cut a big window in an old pair of pajama pants because if anything, even a non-stick dressing touches it, it pulls on the scabbing and my leg starts oozing all over again.

It's a little discouraging because I'm at a point where I should be getting more mobile and now I'm back at square one with my leg. Pictures below, if anyone's interested.

Last Saturday on the left, today on the right. It now looks worse than it did when the original post-op dressing came off.

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It took almost 9 years on testosterone and a 6-week chunk of time to get it started, but I have a beard! A scraggly one with no cheek hairs, but it is nonetheless recognizable as a beard to others. So that's cool!

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I feel driven to record this mildly irritating and somewhat amusing twist of fate:

There is no nicer sensation than feeling the warmth of my new penis when I hold it in my hand, and yet, between right arm surgery and left arm nerve damage, neither of my hands has full tactile or temperature sensation right now.