Stage 2 - Oct. 15th
Waiting in pre-op, the surgeon confirms the side and the procedure and all that, you get the lovely anesthesia that makes you feel funny and knocks you the hell out lol. However, they tried to confirm the WRONG ARM! Then they tried to confirm the WRONG PROCEDURE! They tried to confirm the bone-in method; I just stared at my surgeon like “wtf!?” He tried to play it off like he was just messing around but 1) he didn’t sound like he was joking, didn’t smile or have a playful tone and 2) THAT’S NOT SOMETHING YOU JOKE ABOUT! I think he genuinely forgot that we weren’t going to do the bone method. Sheesh. Well, that’s why they do the confirmation in the first place, I guess.
So, he took the flap from my arm to make my neo penis. He took a vein from each thigh, and an artery from my abdomen, to be attached downstairs to allow blood flow through the penis. If there’s a clog/clot in them and the blood can’t flow, the tissue will die and I lose my penis. So it’s very important to have everything connected correctly because we’re not really going to have a second chance at this. Sure there’s another arm, but the veins and artery will have been used. You can’t just keep taking those out of the body.
For the scrotoplasty, he sewed the two previous labia major together, and injected them with some fat he got from my abdomen. I’m not sure I’m 100% with appearance, but it’s not awful, so I’ll wait and see how it looks.
The arm graft isn’t done during Stage 2, but later. I’ll be in the hospital for a good while, so the graft will be done at a separate surgery, then a week after that I can be released. You’ll see in the pics following that there’s an incision going up my arm above the skin graft. I wasn’t aware that would happen, but it’s just where the surgeon when up the arm to take some blood vessel for down below.