Where did my boobs go?

After a late afternoon run, I decided to take a nice shower this evening. As I was washing up, I noticed that my boobs are smaller...at least 25% smaller. That sucks. I barely have any boobage anyway, and here it is disappearing while I'm off the hormones before surgery. It's almost 2 weeks down, with still over another week to go.

OK, so how do I tell the rest of this without getting totally gross. Hmmm...so, Junior has basically always been able to rise to the occasion when sufficiently aroused. Now it seems like it is about 25% bigger and gets all excited anytime I have to touch it for anything....ANYTHING. It hasn't been able to "spit" at all for quite some time. So, now that I have been off the hormones for two weeks, Junior seems to be regaining more abilities...including the ability to spit again. Two weeks. Damn, I was really hoping to avoid this. Hopefully I don't start sprouting chest hairs again.

Tired

Going back to Sunday morning, I've basically had about 21 hours of sleep. That's 110 hours and I've only slept 21 of them. The Vagina Monologues practice has really kept me busy....that, plus flying out of Oakland Monday morning for a day trip to San Diego. You'd think a 6:40am flight out of Oakland wouldn't be that packed, but the airport was a huge mess. I guess everyone was doing their weekly commute or just starting the work week off early.

So, every night this week, I've spent an hour each way making my way to Berkeley. We had an open rehearsal tonight where we performed in front of a smaller audience, but still in front of an audience. It was basically an opening show. I only messed up slightly at one point early on in my piece, but as another cast mate said, no one probably noticed. Another cast mate told me later that she counted the 'dilates' tonite....19. I jokingly told her I'd have triple digits tomorrow. I'll post my monologue after next Monday's final performance.

It has still been hard memorizing my monologue since I just wrote it last week. I've got it pretty much memorized, and can perform it pretty decent, but the hard part is throwing in that added little extra to make it really nice. I don't have that yet, and if I try to do it, I'm afraid that I'll mess up the rest of it. As I get more comfortable performing it, though, I'll hopefully add in a little.

But, yeah, I'm tired. And when I get home at night, I need a little time to just wind down....which usually pushes me to 1 or 2am on getting to sleep. I plan on sleeping in Saturday morning. When I do get home at night, though, I've been reading a friend's SRS journal. She had her surgery last week and I've been following her recovery. It's nice to read it and get another positive experience so close to my own surgery.

When I mentioned how busy I have been to Amber the other day, we both kinda mentioned that this has kept me distracted, and prevented me from worrying about the upcoming surgery. It does to a degree, but I think it has also helped me to look back at things a little. On my drives to and fro, when I'm not practicing my lines, I'm definitely doing a lot of thinking...and reminiscing about life before I addressed a lot of the T stuff. Life was miserable. I simply was not me. I was uncomfortable with who I was, but was comfortable enough to let people see what they wanted to see. I feel so much better as me now. Let me just say again...surgery sucks, but it's currently the only option with moving on with life.

Ironicarma

OK, I'm not saying Good or Bad Karma anymore...it's all just coincidental or ironic, or whatever....from now on.

Last week, I noticed that 3 Doors Down will be playing Phoenix the weekend Amber and I arrive. So, after prodding Amber to go, I now have two tickets for their show. I like a lot of their songs that have been on the radio, and picked up two of their CD's this past weekend. After looking at their site yesterday, I found that they were releasing a new CD...thus the tour. The CD came out yesterday and is entitled '17 Days'. Guess how long I will be in Scottsdale/Phoenix? Yup, 17 days.  Totally coincidental.

I listened to the other CD's earlier this week, and the third one today...although very quietly at work. I'll probably have to listen to it again sometime at home. From what I heard today, though, nothing really stood out. :\ In fact, a lot of their songs on the first two CD's that didn't end up on the radio are just a little too hard for me. I guess I'll just hope they play most of the radio songs and not the other ones.

OK, so, some other things that I have noticed about my surgeries....they've all fallen around holidays of some sort. I went full time on Valentine's Day last year, then had FFS two days after President's Day, went with Amber on her SRS which was 2 days after the Fourth of July, had the hairline revision the day after Veteran's Day, and will have SRS the day after President's Day. My scheduled labiaplasty is also the day after a holiday...of sorts, I guess.  How ironic?

Bad CAR-ma

On my way to the Vagina Monologue's practice tonight, I was rear ended. I was turning right at an intersection behind a few cars when one of the ones ahead suddenly stopped when they noticed people in the cross walk. I was able to brake in time, but I worried about someone behind me smashing into me. I saw the car rapidly approaching.....WHAM!!!!!!!! Dammit! Sure enough, I was hit. And pretty hard I must say. I tried to put my car into park, but my garage door opener had been dislodged from it's normal place and ended up in front of my shifter. I moved it back to its normal location, and also noticed the passenger sun visor was disproportionally forward due to the jolt. I opened my door when I made sure the traffic was clear and asked, "Are you ok?" to the man standing outside his car. He was.

We looked over the damage to our cars. His looked like it was leaking fluid from under the engine...but he said it had been leaking for a while. Mine had a lot of scuff marks, and cracked paint all over the plastic section of my car that's supposed to be a bumper. Damn. Luckily, though, there appeared to be no structural damage.

We pulled into the Jiffy Lube-type place right at the corner and traded information. He was just a kid, and the insurance card he handed me belonged to someone else. I guess I was fortunate that he stopped, though. So, now I have to call up my insurance company and deal with all of that crap again...sorta like last year when my mom had a little accident with my car. It's all sorta deja vu.

This is the second time in my life when I have been rear ended. Both times have definitely shaken me up. It all makes me realize just how fragile we are...how close we are to death. It could all end just like that.

I feel dirty

I went to another electrologist today. My usual one is out of town...running around in Asia somewhere. Since she won’t be back before I have SRS, and since I’ve noticed a few hairs pop up here and there on ol’ Junior, I decided to get them cleaned up by someone else. I’ve been to this other electro before, two and a half years ago, to get some hairs zapped after I had laser on my chest. She actually remembered me when I called her yesterday to schedule the appointment. When I showed up today she was amazed at how far I had come.

Like before, I allowed her to use blend - thermolysis and galvanic. The hard part is that I recently left my Emla and pain meds at my main electro and forgot to re-obtain them before this session. Luckily, the settings weren’t that high, and I was able to make it thru OK. I had her get every one of those little buggers that I could see. Every one. Even the small tiny gray ones that you can’t see unless you have a black background and enough light in order to catch the contrast. I would pull the skin up and look at the edge of it against the far wall to see where the hairs were. We did that about a dozen times in order to get them all. Hopefully the ones that do return can be zapped by Dr. Meltzer during SRS....the rest, I hope, will be small enough to never cause me any problems.

As I chatted with this other electrologist, we talked about the demographics of her business. She said about 40% of her business were men, 5% tranny, and the rest were women.

I usually just say ‘T’ for anyone that is transgender, especially transsexual men and women. After I’d said it a few times, she said she kinda liked that better than ‘tranny’. I then had to explain to her that the word tranny was kinda similar to the N-word. It was OK for a transgender person to say it, but some people feel that it is derogatory if someone that is not transgender (or lesbian/gay/bi) says it. I don’t see a problem with ‘tranny’, but since my non-T friends hear my own verbiage, they tend to use ‘T’ as well. I’d hate to get them stuck on something that will cause them trouble later on.

I’ve also instant messaged here and there with a few TS friends lately...especially if they know I am having SRS soon. They ask me if I am nervous, excited, anxious, etc. Yes. I am. During some of the conversations, I’ve used some of the terms I have used over the years: Junior and the boys. I think it’s kinda obvious what those represent. People laugh when they hear me use that reference. I told one person recently that I should come up with a new name for after SRS. Hmmm....Muffy?

good KARmA

Today is February 2 - Groundhog Day. He saw his shadow. I didn’t even look for mine...I saw winter last week. I don’t need anymore.

My surgery is on Tuesday (Two’s - day), February 22nd, 2/22. I’m the 2nd surgery that day. The woman before me that morning has the same pair of initials.

I’m not one to believe in the whole number mumbo-jumbo, or fate/destiny stuff. Sure, some factors do control our destiny, but we still control what we do with most of our lives. When I saw the 22 thing when they scheduled me, I really warmed up to that date.

But, yeah, I kinda like the 2 thing...it’s good karma. I was born on the 22nd...just not February.

I'm melting...melting...

I stopped hormones today. I’m still taking spiro, but Dr. Meltzer advises discontinuing the estrogen 3 weeks before surgery. So, no more Premarin...for a while. And in the future, I won’t be taking Premarin anymore anyway. My healthcare provider called with a message tonight that they are switching me over to Estradiol/Estrace instead of Premarin. A lot of people think it’s really bad to be taking horse estrogens, which might be right, but there really hasn’t been many studies on the HRT programs for transsexuals. Most oral estrogens work about the same, and as long as you’re smart with your prescriptions, there typically aren’t any problems. That means limited drinking, no smoking, and staying in shape.

Since stopping the hormones, though, I don’t feel any different, and probably won’t for some time since it takes quite a while to remove the estrogen from the system. It will hopefully be a slow decrease, but it could be similar to menopause.

I warned my boss last week that I had to stop the hormones this week, just to give him warning in case I start acting any more unusual than normal. "If I get out of hand, just yell, ‘Kara, stop it! It’s the hormones, remember?’ " I told him.

It’s kinda funny, on my way to the Vagina Monologue’s meeting two nights ago, I was getting really irate with all of the slow ass Sunday drivers. I laughed, thinking, “If I’m this pissy and moody with hormones, what am I going to be without them?” Actually, though, I’ve always been rather moody around bad and slow drivers. If you see me on the road, just pull to the side.