I Smell Wounded in Planting Trees

I mean, I am, but I didn’t expect I could smell it so strongly through the compression vest. Today is my first full day home after yesterday’s bilateral mastectomy with nipple reconstruction and grafts, so the site is right under my face and as I’m sitting, I’m smelling blood and… something. I can’t describe it other than a “wound” smell.

Everything went great. I finally met the doctor, who I’d spoken on the phone with almost a year ago in September of ‘21. The surgery had been set for the end of the year, but something happened with the paperwork (I don’t know the full story, but the person that handled it the first time dropped the ball and was no longer working for them, so the process had to start over.) and after months of trying to communicate between my main doctors and the team that’d do the surgery, we finally got it all together and set the date for November 10th.

Great. It was six months away at that point, but I was glad to finally have a date. I thought, “hey, maybe I can lose a little weight in that time and put on some muscle.” Then, maybe a month later, I got a call saying they needed to move it up to October 27th. Darn right, that’s amazing timing. I have to take 8 weeks leave to heal because my job is nonstop lifting, and that’d put me out of work for the big retail dates: Halloween, Black Friday/Thanksgiving, and Christmas. I’d have returned December 27th ish.

Then, literally on my lunch break last Thurday, they called again. “We have an opening, we can move you up to the 22nd…” Me, thinking October 22nd, was alright with it. Then, I thought, “Hey, wait, does she mean September?” And before I could even ask, she added, “…of August?”

That was in four days.

Screaming internally, I told her I’d have to speak to my employers. They were on lunch when I got back inside, and after an hour, the office was blowing up my phone because they needed an answer ASAP. But I found one, delivered the news, and was given the green light to go file my leave of absence. The rest of that day and the next was filled with calls from both the team of surgeons and the medical facility I’d be having the procedure in. One call I took while bagging someone’s groceries. One I had to run to the back and hold my hand over my other ear because they were dropping pallets down to unload the truck. The call that they made to give me directions to the day surgery building was taken squatting in the corner of the meat cooler under a loud ass fan. Thankfully when Saturday rolled around, they all shut up, probably because they have nice jobs with weekends off, but it was greatly appreciated.

The weirdest part–and the part that made me much more nervous about the procedure than I had been–was all of the congratulations I was getting. My main boss stopped to talk to me about it on Friday or Saturday and was very positive, told me he’d approved the leave of absence and gave me a big congratulations. I guess it made it seem more “thingified” than it had been. More real. It really hit me Sunday evening, when I no longer had work between me and the date. Waves of anxiety mixed with some kind of good anticipation. I’m not used to physically feeling anxiety. I could feel it in my veins.

Anyway, my folks took off work for it and they drove Shane and I there so we had one less thing to worry about. Shane was the only one allowed to enter the facility with me, though. I got wrist bands, a check in number, then got taken back and swapped into a gown. Had to put my hair up in a net. The nurse was absolute goals, though. She spoke quick, with confidence, even the way she pumped the medical bed up with her foot while putting her gloves on screamed “I’m a badass.” It was funny, though. She had to read me the type of procedure I was undergoing and have me confirm it back for legal reasons, and she stumbled hardcore when she got to the word “areolar” then, after getting the whole thing out and me confirming it, she laughed and said “that word gets me every time and I have two of them.”

I had to lay on the medical bed for awhile after getting hooked up to a saline drip, but that’s when they brought Shane back to stay with me. He was so sweet. Kept holding my hand and talking to me. I was trying to convince him of how freaking amazing the air blanket they had over me was (it was a thin blanket of pockets that had warm air blowing into them to inflate it with a cotton blanket laying on top of it and it was DIVINE.) He was gushing over the gown they put me in, it was an odd green color with a pattern that reminded me of the 90s.

I had to take a cup of pills and then they gave me the “stuff that makes you feel good.” Shane was dismissed and I was rolled back into a new room under two large bright lights with a pit crew of scrubbed nurses and doctors around me. I was asked my name and birthday, then explained they were about to put me under and that it would happen fast. I didn’t have to count backwards or anything. They told me, they did it, and I was out. The only time I’ve been out was having my wisdom teeth removed, and that isn’t a true “out.” This? This was nice. This was a great nap. I dreamt a little bit and woke up in recovery feeling great with a song stuck in my head. (My dad asked me what song it was later, and I had to tell him the chorus and we looked it up. It was Maps by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, lmao.)

From there, I got in a wheelchair and was wheeled out to my folks car and off we went. I was very coherent and talked on the way home. Dad had put it on a spotify playlist that was Sonata Arctica for me. I remember laughing because Elvenking’s cover of Heaven is a Place on Earth came on and they hadn’t heard it before.

We have a baby transmasc at work that has a friend who’d recently gotten this procedure. He said his friend had planned to kick back on his laptop during recovery but was so sore and stiff he couldn’t even do that. Compared to that description, my first day at home went remarkably well. I wasn’t just using my laptop, I was even carrying it around with me. I mean, the first thing I did (other than get food and water because I hadn’t ate since like 18:30 the day before) was sit down at my computer, open Runescape and another game on each monitor and play like I’d just gotten home from work. I did need a little help walking to the bathroom because the anesthesia had me a bit wobbly/woozy. Eventually, that went to my head, too, and I had to lay down.

I’ve been sleeping in brief waves. I am a side sleeper, and right now, I have to not only sleep on my back, but at an incline. My neck is killing me today from how my head rests in this position. I’m probably going to have to use a travel neck pillow. This morning, it noticeably hurt in my chest with every step I took. Getting out of bed, the whole area under the compression vest moved down slightly and a way that felt like moving a mass of toppings on a pizza around does, all sliding together on the sauce like a tectonic plate being sped up. I’ve had one nap today, and while making some macaroni (I bought a host of soft and recommended foods for the throat part of recovery, since they had me intubated) Shane convinced me to go ahead and take some of the pain medication I’d been prescribed for post-op.

I went to move a pillow behind me like a moron by raising my arm and felt the whole right incision tug, so I’ve got to be more careful about that. I went to put my hands behind my head yesterday while sitting on the couch, bad idea. I’m supposed to lift no greater than 5-10 pounds for a good while. I can’t take the vest off, either. One of the instruction sheets said I could, but only to shower, and I had to keep my back to the water because if the nipple grafts got wet, they could be rejected by the body. I’ll go with what the actual people told me. We bought full body adult sized wipes for this.

I didn’t end up with drainage bags either, thankfully. He said they try not to do that anymore, but the site might drain a little on its own, so if it does, not to worry.

Oh, the part that warmed my heart. Before the doctor marked the grid on my chest with a marker, he was talking to me about what all we were going to do, seeing if I had any questions, all that. He said I was going to be the fifth one this week. I wouldn’t have expected that in Arkansas. Now I know there are four others out there like me, recovering this week, going through it together. Before I applied for this procedure, I wasn’t able to find any information on before-and-after pictures of his work. Everything in Arkansas is kind of hush hush, though, so I expected that. Even the gender clinic is held in a certain building, on a certain day of the week, and not openly broadcasted, just in case folks wanted to cause a stink and shut them down. It’s why I don’t refer to any of them by name openly, either. I did find two via google, though, that proved his work was great. And now, a year later? There’s a page on his website with some of the results. Maybe things are getting a little bit better in this state.

Anyway, I have to say, that doctor was an absolute angel. I mean angel in the flesh, even his voice. What an absolute sweetheart. Seems a little young, too, but I don’t know if he’s younger than me or anything. Guy drew those grids on me like he was laying down the outlines in figure drawing to draw people. It felt like an artist prepping his work, and he was, it was just more… sculpture than drawing, I guess.

The patient portal was updated with a very clinical document between the doctor and the hospital it was performed in. It goes step by step, every action in the whole procedure, from which size blade he used, how he used it, and even when moving me, like sitting me up during suturing. It really caters to the OCD in me that has similar traits as autism. One odd part was under Diagnosis. I don’t care what they put, they probably have to word it certain ways for legal or insurance reasons, but it just sounds strange to me. My diagnosis is “Trans-sexualism with asexual history.” …as much as I deeply, profoundly idolize asexuality, I am not asexual and if they’re implying that I’m a virgin… well… Yeah, really strange way of wording whatever they were meaning, there.

I’m so glad I can function really well already. I can pet my cats, type, write, draw, play the Switch, be on my phone. I expect to finally settle into my new laptop and start drawing more than just figure sketches. Hopefully put some comics together, even if just little comedy ones. I’m in a strong writing mood after rereading some short stories that I had written four years ago, too. I plan on making random entries on here, too. Maybe daily. Just to talk about whatever is on my mind and get me writing.

I can’t wait to see what’s under this vest. The scars are going to be massive and gnarly. It’s going to be awesome. I go in Monday to have it taken off, I think. I wonder what color they’ll be… some people get pink, red, or purple incision scars. It’ll probably be bright bloody red for awhile. I’ve been looking at shirts like this one to get: https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/My-scars-are-my-story-by-sketchedlizard/25974433.1YYVU

There’s also several with the “glad I got that off my chest” dad joke that I was totally going to use in my before-and-after picture post. I think I should make one that’s a shirt that’s all black with two scars, maybe nipples, and the words “ask me about my scars” on it, but the marks and letters are rainbow would be neat.

Oh, and my new laptop decided to be shit from a butt and forget how to connect to the internet after a windows update. What a convenient time for that to happen. Shane tried to fix it, I tried to fix it, we have a few more ideas to try… I just hope it’ll get working so I can relax in bed with it. Right now, because I had only installed two programs, I can only really use photoshop and make mind maps using freemind. Or write on notepad, I guess.

Anyway, long post is long, I’ll update on my condition as I recover and make more morbid wound smell observations if they occur.