My sex change

This document contains two sections. The first is a description of events and feelings related to my sex change that I feel are important. This section is in chronological order from the day I entered hospital to the day I left.

The second section describes the surgical procedure of my sex change. I am not a surgeon, nor was I awake during the surgery, but this section provides a basic idea of how the surgery is done. Note that this is only one method of SRS. Different surgeons use different methods, and Dr. Schrang is constantly improving his method. This section includes pictures which are quite graphic. If you are going to have surgery, you should probably look at these so you have some idea of how messy the surgery is. Otherwise, if you're squeamish, you probably don't want to see.

Unfortunately, the camera used had a fixed focal length adjusted for taking pictures at a distance. As a result, many of the original pictures were blurry. In 2005, I used Focus Magic to focus close-up sections of the images, then manually combined pieces of the original and resulting images for best results. I recommend that if anyone else decides to have photos of their surgery taken that they use a good camera.

Pre-operative

These photos were taken the morning before the surgery. My skin had been painted with Betadine, causing the yellowish color.

I arrived at Dr. Schrang's office at about 1:00 PM on Monday, the day before the surgery. I met Janelle, another transsexual who was having surgery the next day. I filled out the necessary paperwork, and then Dr. Schrang saw me. After reviewing my psychological workups, he did a brief physical exam. He approved me for surgery, took a few pictures, and sent me to the hospital.

I checked into the hospital at about 2:30. I was given a gallon of NuLytely 1 :

Medical researchers have developed a better-tasting gastrointestinal lavage solution which will thoroughly clean your colon. It is called NuLYTELY, and it is the solution that your doctor wants you to use.
-- the tag on the NuLytely bottle.

Despite the Crystal Light lemonade mix the hospital staff had added to dilute the taste, NuLytely was disgusting. It rivaled club soda. The bottle's instructions said that within an hour, it should have been providing effects. About an an hour and a quarter after starting consumption, I began to wonder if something was wrong, because nothing was happening. Another 10 minutes cured my worries, and for the next 7 hours I learned just how pleasurable it feels to have NuLytely thoroughly clean my colon.

About 6:00 PM, I was served a liquid dinner. As I ate the only solid thing I was given, Jello, I wondered just how my body was supposed to get nutrition out of the food before it was expelled. I never did figure it out.

Later that night, I was sent to a shower, where I washed myself with disinfecting soap. Afterwards, my genital region was shaved and I was painted with Betadine, a solution intended to reduce bacterial growth. I was given a final chance to drink water. Finally, I went to sleep, worrying about the possibility of a NuLytely induced disaster. Fortunately, the effects had worn off and I had an adequate sleep.

Nothing much interesting happened in the first hours of Tuesday. Around noon, they began to make final preparations for surgery. I was given a shot of something which made me sleepy, after which I wasn't supposed to stand any more as I might have fallen and hurt myself.

I realized I really wanted pictures of my surgery, so I willed myself to stay awake long enough to tell someone. They wheeled me downstairs to the surgery, where someone asked if there was anything I wanted. I asked them to take pictures, and the person made a note on their arm where my camera was.

Next, the anesthesiologist checked out my arms and stuck me with an IV. He turned on the drugs, and

Post-operative

I awoke at midnight. I had a roommate, and knowledge that my camera was in the drawer next to my bed. I took it out and looked at the picture counter. I had surgery pictures, and I was happy! I also had a dreamlike memory of being awake earlier: I knew I had been awake, but I didn't remember what had occurred.

I did things that are probably standard - I called a nurse to ask how things went, got a mirror and checked things out, and thanked the appropriate deity. I don't remember much, probably because of drugs dispensed by the nifty machine I was hitched to. It automatically pumped me full of a certain amount of pain medication, and if I wanted extra, I only needed to push a button. It also beeped and made neat noises.

The other machine I was hooked to made even better noises. It was to help circulation and prevent blood clots in my legs while I was inactive. It cyclically pumped up some balloon-like things around my legs, then deflated them. It made lots of relay-clicking noises, and got peeved and beeped a lot the day I moved and disturbed it's hoses.

On Wednesday, the roommate to whom I had woken up to was taken away to surgery, and never came back - I guess she wanted to room with someone else. She was replaced with Adina, who was rather demented and who I liked a lot.

Adina had a friend named Sonya with her who was also a strange and likable character. Sonya was transgendered, but had no plans for surgery. I think she scared me a little, as she posed an alternative to surgery and the possibility that I'd made a mistake.

I was quite scared that I had made the biggest mistake of my life. I wondered what I should do if it was true, and thought about the possibility of suicide. Suicide had changed: before surgery, it was bad because there was always the possibility that I could have surgery and become happy. After surgery, the only hope was that I was wrong about my feelings, which thankfully was the case.

The next few days were pretty uneventful. We watched MST3K, ate, and slept. I worked on mailing surgery cards, which looked like birth announcements, to friends. I got to know a few of the nurses, most of whom were very nice. I tried to use bedpans, although I never passed solids. The bedpan did help to pass gas, which felt good.

Over the nights, I had strange, paranoid dreams. They seemed to center on the hospital staff being slave masters, who were forcing us to build Ford automobiles. The hospital staff changed some of the drugs I was on, but it didn't help much.

On Sunday, the fifth day after the surgery, I began to have hot flashes - apparently one of the withdrawal effects of testosterone. The hot flashes were unpleasant - one moment I would be freezing, the next moment I would be sweating, the next moment I would be warm inside but my skin would be cold, then things would start over. To make things worse, some blood ran between my buttocks and solidified, forming a painful lump.

Monday came, and I waited eagerly for Dr. Schrang to remove the catheter and gauze covering my vagina. Finally he arrived, and asked me to call a nurse. The nurse arrived, and he explained to her that he had someone waiting in surgery so he had to move quickly. This did not inspire braveness in me, so I closed my eyes, grabbed a pole attached to my bed, and wished for minimum pain. Things were quickly and somewhat painfully removed.

After he left, I checked out my vagina and the dilator he had left, which was just a Multi-speed Slim-line Smooth Vibrator, though it didn't come with batteries. My dilator was the color of banana creme pudding, one of 11 colors it could have been.

When done, I began to try to get up with the help of a nurse. It felt wonderful to be off my back. However, standing up straight stretched the skin graft, which was painful. Further, after a week of being on my back, I'd forgotten how to walk - or maybe the coordination was difficult because of the changes. I eventually managed to hobble along, bent over as if I had osteoporosis.

I used my limited mobility to use the bathroom. I was finally able to defecate, which was very satisfying. Urination was another story. I was given this plastic pan that fit over the toilet into which I was supposed to urinate. However, my urine didn't want to go in that direction. It would go everywhere else, but not in the pan. That is, when I could figure out how to urinate. I had no idea what to do with the new hardware. I felt like I should contract a certain muscle, so I did, but nothing would happen. I'd try another, and another, and eventually, after about 20 minutes, I'd find the right one. Later I found out that if I waited until I really had to go, finding the right muscle was a lot easier.

I felt too weak to take a shower, but the nurses insisted. I wasn't strong enough to stand for long, so I was given a chair to sit on while showering. It felt good to become clean, to get the crusty blood off my bottom, and to shampoo the rats nest that formed in hair after a week of neglect. It felt even better to breath fresh air afterwards, since the tiny shower's ventilation system was nonexistent.

The hot flashes became more intense, hitting their peak on Monday or Tuesday. I was lucky - my roommate was also having intense hot flashes around that time, but she was confined to bed until Wednesday.

Tuesday, mom started to try to untie my hair. Soon, Janelle came in and became upset about how much damage mom was doing to my hair. She sent mom off to buy a variety of hair products. On return, Janelle was ready to attack my knot, equipped with a battery of shampoos, conditioners, and mouses. Using tools from Adina, Sonya, and herself, Janelle spent well over an hour working on my knot. Finally, a lot of pain later, a brush could make it through most of my hair.

Wednesday was the scheduled day of my release. There was much anticipation that day - Janelle was also being released, and Adina was going to become mobile. We were all nervous because Janelle and I had been talking about our bad experiences on Monday. I got to be first, and was plenty worked up by 2 PM, when Dr. Schrang arrived. However, he wasn't in a rush that day. He removed the 27 feet of 3 inch wide gauze from my vagina, then quickly lubricated the dilator he'd given me and stuffed it inside. He showed me what to do, and told me to try.

I was a bit scared, but did what he said. I reached down with my left hand to spread the outer folds of my vagina. As I did, my index finger ran along the smooth, moist tissue. In that instant, I realized that I now had everything I had been working toward for the last few years. All the worries I had been having disappeared.

Before leaving, Dr. Schrang suggested I get a bigger dilator as soon as possible, as my vagina could support a larger diameter.

Post-Hospitalization

Having been approved to leave, I said goodbye to all the friends I had made, and left. Equipped with a donut2 , ice packs, and some pain pills that looked fit for a horse, my family and I began the drive to Connecticut.

We stopped for dinner and dilation at a rural McDonald's around 6pm. After my family went inside to eat dinner, I began the task of trying to get the dilator back into my vagina. It didn't want to go. I checked and rechecked where my vagina went by inserting fingers, and after about 20 minutes managed to insert the dilator. When done, I cleaned myself up, and went inside for my first cleaning of my dilator in a public rest-room.

I started by washing my hands, hoping the children already present in the rest-room would leave. More children entered, so I decided to wash the dilator regardless. I directed myself to act like washing a vibrator in a McDonald's rest-room is an everyday task. The children didn't react, probably because they had no idea what the thing was. I finished up and left.

We decided not to stop on the way home, to drive through the night. We put the rear seats of the hatchback down so two of us could sleep, and continued on. Along the way, I got to practice dilating in a variety of places, the most interesting being O'Hare Oasis on the Tristate Expressway.

I first tried to find a place to dilate inside. There was no clean, private place to lay down, so I decided to do it in the car. As I was trying to insert the dilator, my parents returned. They figured we could start on our way, which, before surgery, I thought would have been possible. In real life, there wasn't a chance in hell of the car moving. My parents stood outside the car, talking. My father leaned against the car, and occasionally shifted his weight. Even those little shifts didn't settle well with me, so I asked my nephew to get my parents away from the car. Left alone, I finally managed insertion.

Douching in a public rest-room is also an interesting experience. While dilating at the McDonald's, lots of disgusting things came out of my vagina. They looked like bits of the baked fish you get in high school. In any case, I had that not-so-fresh feeling, so somewhere in Indiana I decided to douche. I locked myself in a stall, and began to try to figure out how to make the water come out of a Summers Eve disposable douche. Failing, I asked mom for help, which probably weirded out woman who was cleaning the bathroom. Finally we got the thing open, and I managed to clean myself. I wasn't completely convinced that 4.5 ounces of fluid got all the icky things out, but I felt a little better.

A few days later, I went about trying to find a larger dilator per Dr. Schrang's instructions. I never found one I liked - I wanted a plain, stiff plastic object 3  I found plenty of others, all shaped like huge, mutilated penises with veins popping out 4  I finally gave up and bought a disgusting one which had a shaft of the required diameter. However, when I tried using it for dilation, it wouldn't fit because the glans was too large. It frustrated me, both because it wouldn't fit and it was disgusting, so eventually I got mad and bit the end off it's latex glans - an amazingly satisfying act.

At present, my vagina moves around inside me, something I don't understand. It's depth also changes, varying by about 2 or 3 cm. These changes worried me for the first few weeks. Dilation continued to be difficult because of a certain part of my vagina, which contained ringlike tight section. As the dilator went in past the ring, all the lubricant was removed. Lubricating the vagina with a finger before inserting the dilator seemed to help.

The surgery

An IV was connected and I was placed under general anesthesia.

My legs were placed in stirrups. My abdomen was washed and covered.

A thin layer of skin was removed from a 14 cm * 10 cm (5 in * 3.5 in) area of my abdomen, starting just bellow the belly button. The area was then covered with gauze.

An incision was made, bisecting the scrotum and continuing toward the anus. Some unneeded tissue was removed. The skin was separated from the shaft of the penis. Unneeded parts of the shaft were amputated. A catheter was inserted.

My testicles and part of the vas deferns were removed, along with unneeded tissue around the base of the penis.

The vaginal cavity was constructed and filled with temporary packing.

Left: The skin tube from my penis was inverted, and the end cut open. The skin graft was attached to the end of the inverted skin tube.

Right:The corpora cavernosum (the tubes which fill with blood, causing an erection in men) were separated and moved inside 5 . After surgery, they will allow my vaginal walls to become engorged with blood during sex, similar to those of non-transsexual females.

Left: The abdominal skin was pulled lower. The penis was located farther forward than the vaginal cavity, so the skin needed to be pulled lower to compensate. The locations of the clitoris and urine outlet were located, and holes constructed. The catheter and clitoral tissues were passed through the holes. Right: The temporary packing was removed from the vaginal cavity. The inverted penile skin tube was inserted into the cavity and sewn into place, forming the permanent walls. The vagina was repacked with 27 feet of 3 inch wide gauze.

Adjustments were made to the clitoris. The remains of the scrotum were formed into labia, and sewn shut.

The entire surgery area was rinsed clean, and the wounds were dressed. Ice packs were applied to reduce swelling and pain.

Miscellaneous

Ice packs were used to minimize swelling. The skin graft, covered with gauze, appears bright red area on my abdomen. A hoop ran above my bed to keep the sheets off the graft site.

I examine my vagina for the first time after removal of the external dressings. The nifty drug machine 6 appears in the background.

My Sex Change
Copyright © 1994, 1996, 2003, 2005 Perette Michelle Barella
All rights reserved.

Unauthorized duplication is illegal. The author grants permission to copy this document for personal use only. Please contact her to obtain permission if you wish to use this for other purposes.

Originally written in 1994, this article was converted to Web format in 1996. Minor grammatical, editorial, and formatting changes were made in 2003. Images were re-scanned from negatives and photo enhancement done in early 2005.