The thing that struck me most was the astonishing speed of it.
That’s a strange thing to say about a process that took between 11 months and 25 years to complete, depending on how one counts, but you spend that long chipping away at a thing like that, and you expect something to happen, to slow it down. I’ve spent longer waiting to have a tooth filled. I spent longer, in fact, circling in the hospital parking garage, where a solid 2/3 of the spaces were—surprise!—closed for construction, than I spent actually waiting my turn to take my clothes off and pee all over my hands in a cup. I checked in at the front desk; and then at the surgical desk, where even a quick gender update took all of thirty seconds; and then upstairs, in the surgical waiting area—and then had about five minutes to make a post about the color-coding on the patient-name monitors, on the wall, before my name clicked over to blue.
Nothing about hormones happened this quickly. Hell, even a name change or passport update comes with half a dozen waiting periods, after you’ve done as much thing as you can do.
The thing I was the most anxious about, in the end, was my own anxiety; but I had hardly any time for it to percolate. We’d packed based on the timeline of my partner’s recent, minor surgery, so I brought a journal and crochet project and iPad and a couple of battery packs for my phone... but once the surgeon sketched out the shape of my new chest in purple Sharpie, and the nurse-anesthetist ordered me some gabapentin and pre-emptive pain meds (she was the only person I asked a question, and it was, “Will I wake up in pain?”), I had maybe five minutes before they wheeled me away.
The “something to relax me” in the IV hit me before we reached the hallway, and I got about 3 seconds of awareness in the OR—long enough for my nurse-anesthetist friend to tuck a cap over my hair—before I was waking up to graham crackers and Sprite, and a recovery nurse who was visibly impressed and maybe a little concerned by my capacity for !!EATING!! right after surgery.
After I put away my second tumbler of Sprite without visible difficulty, she asked if I’d like to go home. I responded with a (probably moderately incoherent) narrative about the variety of snacks in our hotel room; was wheeled down to the car; and drank so many soups before falling asleep until my next dose of pain meds.
I was waiting for significant pain and overwhelming exhaustion, but it never showed up. Soreness like I’d done too many push-ups the day before; the best sleep I’ve had in years; and an appetite like high school cross-country always gave me—and an overwhelming sense of well-being, accomplishment, and smugfuckery, for however long I was awake.
I walked 1000 steps, napped a lot, and texted a few friends about how weirdly easy it all felt. It all felt weirdly easy.
Plus, my surgeon covered the sutures and bandages with the same kind of waterproof dressings my most recent tattoo artist used. This both meant that I had absolutely no wound-care requirements till my next-Tuesday follow-up appointment, and that I felt like I’d already been through this once before.