End Of An Era, Or: Things Really Don't Have To Be That Difficult

I guess I still can't really quite believe it, even though it seems to be true. I have apparently slipped through a dimensional fold somewhere from a reality which was driving me crazier than Alice in Wonderland, into a reality where physicians actually exist to help people and not to inflict them with horrible psychological traumas. To summarize things very succinctly, I have found a surgeon who is willing to do the restorative surgery I need to regain use of my female side and it only took eight agonizing years.

Yesterday I went there for the first consult. As I mentioned in my previous post I was pretty nervous about it. While it was a long trip to get there, the consult itself was... how do I put this, pleasantly factual and to the point. I have a medical issue, the surgeon is, well, a surgeon. It's an issue he can resolve quite easily and it's a case which is unique to him, but the surgery itself is within his expertise.

Early next week I'll be heading there again for an appointment to plan the surgery, with the surgery likely to follow soon after. Since it takes place at a private clinic there are no long queues and no months to see a specialist or get a scan or treatment. With some luck I'll have the medical chapter of my being intersex story finished within a month. It all makes me wonder just why all the Dutch specialists I visited over the past eight years just had to make life so hard for me to the point where I had to spend nearly a decade of my life going through the horrible experience of knowing exactly what was going on and what had to be done about it, with not a single Dutch physician backing me up. Instead I got treated like I was spouting nonsense, and on multiple occasions it was suggested to me and my mother that I should be taken to the psychiatric ward for treatment. I was supposed to be delusional.

Now, after eight excruciatingly long years I get to look back and I don't know what to feel. Relief that it is all finally over. Sadness that I have lost all those years when there was no reason. Anger that other human beings whom I trusted betrayed me in such a horrific fashion. Frustration that I was so powerless and weak that I couldn't do more to help myself. Also the dawning realization that it'll take many more years to process the traumas of these years to a level where I can actually learn to live with them. I may have survived the war, but the war will always continue inside of me.

Some things are still a tad uncertain about the surgery. While it is known that I have in fact a vagina the surgeon won't know until he makes the first incision what the final result will look like. Basically in how far it will be functional like a fully developed version. The MRI scans are the best material to work with at this point and to prepare the actual surgery, but any surgeon knows that even the sharpest MRI scan can be deceiving or omit details. As for me, not until I wake from the drug-induced sleep and I am told the results of the surgery will I know whether I should feel overjoyed, happy, accepting or disappointed. I really do dread that moment.

First in Germany with the surgery in 2011 did I get the hope that this part of the surgery could be done, but the surgeon then had to disappoint me. Despite the vagina being visible after opening the perineum he was not able to do anything with it. The exact reason I wasn't told due to the language barrier, but I suspect it was a matter of specialization. In that regard my new surgeon should be perfect, with countless years of relevant experience. If he can't do it, it'll be very hard to find anyone who can do it. Even so, I'm crossing my fingers, toes and kitten ears that the news I'll get after the surgery will at least be somewhat positive.

Regardless, within weeks this chapter will come to an end. All one can do is hope for a happy ending.


Maya