12. I Left My Tits in Michigan: Part 3
2020Show notes
In the third episode of our titty chop series, Mattie reflects by himself, on the healing process a few months after surgery, and what the aftercare process is like.
Content Warning: Mattie uses a lot of physical terminology about chests and graphic surgery healing details in this one.
Support the show on Patreon if you can! Please don't feel bad if you can't. It's a weird time.
Show Notes:
Transcript
Tap a timestamp or any sentence to play from there · machine transcribed (mlx:mlx-community/whisper-large-v3-turbo), expect mistakesMattieThis episode is going to be just me talking about my post-op recovery during quarantine.
I'm at this small park by our house, and it's a little windy. There's some cars, there's some kids at the park, and I'm as far away from the park as possible. so hopefully you don't hear the little kids yelling. I wanted to come outside and record because there's not really any space in our apartment to record without Alex hearing it or without the cats and I just kind of wanted a moment to myself to reflect on what my recovery
was like after top surgery. So where we left off I think was right before my chest reveal and the first shower was awesome because you don't get to shower for six days because everything is all bandaged up and you know bruised and you have to keep gauze on it and everything and wear a vest. So I went back to the surgeon after six days and he undid my compression vest. I got to
look down and see everything. Honestly, it was pretty gross. People usually feel lots of euphoria when they see their chest the first time. But because I didn't have such a big chest, I was relieved that everything looked good and everything was in the right place. Nothing was infected and the doctor gave me the go-ahead to go home. All of those things really good, but I didn't feel like the instant euphoria of seeing my chest flat because the swelling didn't make it as big as
when I had a chest, but the swelling was definitely very noticeable as well as the bruising. When I got to shower, it was really great, but it felt like that a lot of people in my, in my surgeon, Dr. Wolf's support group said that this happened to them when they had smaller chests. What made it feel weird and like everything was going to slide off was the extra fluid because when my breast tissue was removed it wasn't really heavy and so people with smaller chests experience that sensation sometimes
because there isn't a lot of weight removed from their chests to begin with. After your first shower you can take and leave the vest off for an hour to two hours a day and actually just kind of be free and just have ointment on the incisions and nipples and band-aids over the drains and that hour a day that was one of the best things because I could finally sit around without a shirt on or anything compressing my chest after every shower I felt like
human like back to normal again even though I couldn't lift my arms above my head or really reach for anything myself. It was definitely after each shower that I felt more comfortable in my own body. One of the next things that happens is you get your drains removed. Everyone worries about that. They're like these long plastic tubes that go six inches into your chest, but you don't really feel anything. In the surgery support group I was in and just around the trans community,
people really worry about getting your drain tubes out and you just snip a stitch and you can pull them out yourself. Alex pulled them out for me and was really worried, but honestly it just takes a minute. It's really quick and you don't really feel it. Once all the bandages are removed and you get to look down at your chest. What I experienced is the scars are all puckered and raised. That's what they look like initially, kind of like how if you have a scratch and it scabs over.
The stitches that most surgeons use are dissolvable, so thankfully you don't really see them. However, you do see the ones around the nipple grafts, and they- and all of the stitches dissolve as you shower. It's kind of weird because there's these little like clear things poking out of your body, but the warm water of showers just makes them dissolve and fall out so you don't really have to deal with them. However, sometimes they like look like pimples and pop out of your skin
and you can like pull out the remaining stitch, which sounds gross, but it's oddly satisfying and it's really nice that the stitches and drains don't hurt. Honestly, it's the compression vest that's the worst and hurts the most, especially if you aren't used to binding every day. I guess for people that do bind, it's not as severe, but since I was just using sports bras before surgery,
it was a lot harder for me to deal with than I expected. During the time when I was wearing my vest, it was easy to remember not to lift my arms above my shoulders, but I needed to not lift my arms over my shoulders again for another one to two weeks. And most people in the community call this T-Rex arms because you're not supposed to stretch,
reach over your head. What was very surprising and very cool is the day that I got back from surgery, my parents came over and helped move everything down that I needed. So like deodorant, shampoo, food, my toothbrush. It was just really nice of my parents to come over and help carry all of the luggage upstairs and help move everything down to a reachable place. I was very lucky. I can't imagine what it would be like not to have someone get things like I couldn't get
things from the freezer. I didn't think about that. What really helped is I had a step stool, so I felt like I could have more agency over my life and my body because I used the step stool to get things out of the cabinets and to get things out of the freezer, to get things off the bathroom shelf. I had to take all of my clothes out of the closet and fold them into piles so I could grab them easily which is something I didn't even think of until the day that I needed to dress
myself. Post-op depression can be really common and it's usually right after surgery because of the anesthetic wearing off but what I found that I didn't expect is that I had anger and frustration because I couldn't do things for myself. And at first, Alex and I could not figure out why that was happening. Thankfully, I'm in gender therapy and was still having video therapy sessions.
I was two weeks post-op and you have to lay back and either change bandages yourself or have someone do that for you. I was getting really irritated and frustrated and it was because I kind of felt like The best way I can put it is it was like giving a baby a diaper change where I felt completely helpless and like I couldn't do anything myself, especially right after surgery. but more so for me when I would lay down after a shower, have to put my vest back on,
and it was really tight and really uncomfortable. I think getting that freedom of being able to not have anything on my upper body, to go from that to having to put on this really tight vest where it was hard to breathe, really added to the loss of feeling like myself, like feeling more free, especially after having to wait so long for surgery and then for the reveal of my chest itself. Still having to be
taken care of for another whole four weeks was really hard. What helped me and what my therapist suggested was helping Alex change my bandages, helping get the antibiotic ointment ready, helping put on the gauze afterwards, doing physically tangible things to help my body heal and not just completely be taken care of really helped. And it also helps your body heal because
you're using those muscles again. So it didn't only help me mentally, but it helped physically. it wasn't until two months post-op that I could start working out and obviously we were still in quarantine. It was end of April beginning of May and since then I've been working out consistently for about seven weeks not using any weights but just using my body weight and that helps you heal faster and also most people when they get double incision surgery these scars are under where your
pec muscles would naturally be and surgeons do that on purpose so that if you decide to build up your upper body strength after surgery the scar naturally goes around your naturally goes around your pec line so that when the scars lighten up they're less noticeable scar healing is different for people with different size chests my scars are now that
i'm four months post-op were mine were swollen uh towards the center of my chest where my like collarbone is but for people with larger chests it's the part that usually sticks out is under their armpits and they kind of call those dog ears because it resembles a dog's ears sticking out sideways and there's sometimes with larger chests a little bit of tissue left there or it's just swelling but that also settles after a year. So with how my chest is healed aesthetically I'm
only really speaking to what happens when people have smaller chests because that's my experience. Now that I'm four months post-op my scars are a lot flatter and a lot more pink than red. My nipples are completely healed so I don't have to do anything with those but daily I massage my scars on my chest with bio oil which is made for any kind of scars or stretch marks. There's a lot of things in trans support groups or from surgeons that doctors recommend but it's usually silicone
strips or a silicone gel that you rub on and that's what helps the scars fade. For a lot of people that's a really big deal. Scars fading especially when they're contoured to your pecs because then it's a lot harder to see them. It takes a different amount of time for everybody but usually the scars are pretty well faded if you keep up with massaging them and silicone treatments at about a year.
An interesting thing that happens as scars begin to heal is chest hair starts to grow, And sometimes, even without having chest hair before, it'll start growing from or closely around the incisions. A lot of people speculate that's because even if you're on testosterone, removing the breast does remove male hormones. And it causes another hormone shift, which can also contribute to post-op depression.
it's just kind of a funny aesthetic thing that I I think is is weird but also super cool because hormones and and bodies are just strange sometimes I remember the first picture I posted online of myself post-op was right after my first shower and I waited until I was about a month healed up before I posted a picture of just my chest and my
scars so that like the bruising and blood had gone away because I didn't want to trigger anyone and also it was a really difficult time because a lot of gender affirming surgeries had been postponed. As far as I know, with my surgeon anyway, he started doing surgeries again back at the beginning of May. But since everything is going crazy again, I think he's probably
going to shut down again. So it's just been a really weird time because right as I got my surgery, all of the people I knew in the community weren't able to get their surgeries and everything was postponed and then I opened up again for a little bit and now it's going to be everyone's going to have to wait and their surgeries are probably going to be postponed again. I was incredibly lucky and can't imagine having to go through that roller coaster of being ready for surgery, having to wait, and then having to go through the cycle again. I am grateful every day
that I got to have surgery before the lockdown and I can't imagine how difficult that must be. When I put my photos online, they got positive reception. At first, I just posted with close friends and family. And my parents kind of just don't even want to talk about my chest or see it as long as it's healthy and healing. Because my mom's a nurse, so that's really all she cared about was that my chest was healthy. But since then, they don't really want to see or know about it at all. And like, I get it. That's a little weird, I guess. But all of the responses I got
online were really positive and happy for me and it made me feel really great. I tried not to share it too much because of all the gender-affirming surgeries that were being postponed, but also it felt like I could finally see my entire body. I don't know how to describe it. It was a very, a very affirming feeling and it just made me really happy and the fact that my friends and And people I knew received it well also contributed to that.
It's really common for people to post lots of shirtless pictures after surgery. And I've posted a few, but I just haven't really felt comfortable posting a bunch. And part of that was because gender affirming surgeries were postponed due to COVID. right after I got my surgery. And another part of that is because getting top surgery doesn't make all dysphoria go away. It can actually, for some people, make dysphoria about other parts of your
body worse. I find that fluctuates for me. Overall, I have a lot of gender euphoria and feel a lot more comfortable in my body, but sometimes I notice my hips more or my stomach more or other parts of my body that I don't particularly like and this is something that's really common and tends to come along with some post-op depression. Out there there are a lot of lists on what you need for top surgery and most of them helped me and were completely accurate and I'll post the most common ones in
the show notes but what I found helped that I didn't expect. Step stool, definitely being more hands-on with my own aftercare, making sure I stocked up on a lot of easy food to cook for myself, and giving yourself more time to recover if you're able to. I definitely, I definitely needed the extra time to heal and I wasn't expecting that either. right now recovery is really about aesthetic and how my scars look if you don't massage them they
kind of get bumpy and they're really just sort of pink and not as gross initially healing there's just a lot of trauma to your chest because it is a major surgery and as you heal i feel like for most people. It's more about the aesthetic process. A lot of people worry about how everything looks like right afterwards and right away, but it really takes a year for everything to settle. I've definitely been guilty of this, of worrying how everything looks, and I've messaged other people in my trans support group to get reassurances, but everyone's body heals different
and it just takes time. I'm not worried about my scars fading so much as I just want everything to heal and and be healthy. I just want everything to heal properly. And now that I'm farther along in the recovery process, it's really just about sort of reconnecting with my body and getting re-acclimated to it. What was really eye-opening for me was seeing myself how other people saw me like in shirts for the first time.
Shirts that I used to think were too tight were all of a sudden too big and I was like swimming in them. And I remember asking Alex if this is how they always looked and they said, yeah. And it was just, it was like that part of dysphoria had completely gone away and I could wear any clothes that I wanted. I'm working with my gender therapist about not wearing a shirt outside. I haven't really done it at all, but definitely now that it's super hot out, I've been walking around my apartment without a shirt, and that's given me a lot of gender euphoria.
It's really nice to be far enough along in this healing process that I can just throw on clothes and not have to worry about anything, and I think that's the biggest relief for most people. I really feel like I can wake up and get dressed in the morning and look in the mirror and see the person that I want to be and want to present as. And it makes me incredibly happy and euphoric.
And I know how lucky I am to have gotten this surgery. And I really never want to take that for granted.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Two Headed Girl. If you like what you hear, subscribe anywhere you find your podcasts or consider donating to our Patreon. Thank you to our friends and family near and far who helped with my top surgery preparation and aftercare. And thank you to those patrons who donated. Black Lives Matter. Please consider listening to the POC podcast listed in the show notes. Take care of each other and wear a damn mask.
Speaker ATo make you whole Satisfied Keep you from getting bored So before you take That leap of fame Leave no road unexplored
Speaker BThank you.