Daily journal: facial feminization surgery

the surgery is done, the healing begins

It turns out so many thoughts can run through my mind at the same time while healing from gender affirming surgery.

So much around my healing is psychological. There is definitely a strong need for access to safe physical healing but also a need to be able to feel sad and scared throughout healing and still feel reassured that what you're doing is the right thing.

Making a $30,000 for myself isn't easy and doesn't come without piles of regret and questions about whether this is something I should have done. Will results ever "be enough" to justify putting myself first? Will your happiness from surgery ever amount to enough for all the other things I could have done with this?

I'm almost one full week into healing and I got to shave and see a bit more of the changes as the hair went away and the swelling receded a bit. So now I get to start answering these questions in my head a little more day by day and hope I keep feeling happy when I see a smile show up instead of worrying each day about worth. To see the lips I wanted and to put makeup on my brows and style my hair around the line of stitches on my forehead. I even put lipstick on these cute little bowed lips for a couple of hours just because I wanted to and walked around the house just feeling super pretty.

I've worn a dress every day since surgery because I just feel, well, more me. More dress me. More ready to walk outside in dresses and to just let people see whatever they want to now.

As a reminder of the work that got done on my cute little face, in my five hour and 45 minute procedure, I underwent a brow lift (with stitches all along my hairline, meaning I got bonus hairline work done), a rhinoplasty, an upper lift lift, and chin contouring. Having done this all in one shot means that while I did mention above that a lot of healing is psychological, holy heck, is a lot of it physical too. On my first night home, I fainted for the first time in my life. I’ve spent so much time with cats on my lap it’s been wild.

I’m to the point of weaning off the big pain meds now, and I’ve run my course of antibiotic treatment. Honestly, I think I’m doing well. My surgeon thinks I’m doing really well. I get my stitches out in a few days and continue the nose healing and swelling treatment for, well, months. And from there, we’ll just keep on growing.