I GOT A DATE!!!! (Finally)

[justapup (imported)]

For me, standing wasn't a problem. It was sitting. My first 48 hours was laying in bed. I didn't sit straight for about 2 weeks. You do know your body better then any of us, we are just giving reasons based on experience.

[WheelyCurious]

For me, standing wasn't a problem. It was sitting. My first 48 hours was laying in bed. I didn't sit straight for about 2 weeks. You do know your body better then any of us, we are just giving reasons based on experience.

Believe me, I'm not arguing, and I do appreciate the advice and wisdom from those of you who have already gone through this...

I'm also a bit of an odd case given my disability (which includes somewhat less pain sensation - I once broke my femur and went around with it for 3 days thinking it was just a bad sprain - and probably would have gone longer except that I'd had a routine Dr's appointment by chance where they asked if I'd had any recent falls...) which means I have a different set of daily activities than you walky sorts...

At the same time my surgeon is telling me that it is not a huge deal and claims to have done a lot of orchies... It is a little bit inconsistent w/ my doc at the TG center who says I'm her first M->E patient, but I know that some M->F types do the orchie as an intermediate step to help w/ making the hormone management easier, and of course the full transition surgery also gets rid of the balls... I know the surgeon is the specialist that does all the gender surgeries at the hospital so he probably also gets to do the prostate cancer cases...

Among other things he says current technique doesn't even use stitches, just 'surgical glue'. MGH is also a major teaching / research hospital, so tends to be using the 'latest and greatest' techniques and equipment....

Not the same thing, but a few years back I had carpal tunnel surgery... The folks at one of the SCI support sites said I'd have several weeks of non-load bearing recovery time... The surgeon for that said that was only with the older methods - he did the robotic assisted minimally invasive approach and had had patients that were pumping iron a couple of hours after surgery... I know I was doing necessary transfers right after, and the only problem I had was cathing that afternoon because it's hard to manipulate things when one hand is still mostly numb from the anesthetic...

At any rate I can pretty much take it as it comes as I don't have any definite 'absolutely can't skip' commitments for a couple of weeks and that one is pretty minor...

[justapup (imported)]

Ahh, yeah. You make very good points. Wishing you the best and for smooth sailing.

[WheelyCurious]

More slow progress... Since I'm not going to be allowed to drive home from the hospital after getting and the GF is no longer allowed to drive, I have to do extra stuff to get transportation, fortunately covered by my insurance... Usually this is done by a paratransit service, but the hospital doesn't allow this after procedures w/ anesthesia, so I need to go through extra hoops to get an actual "Chair Car" from an ambulance service...

I called my primary care Doc's office to ask them to start the process of setting this up, and they got back to me today - according to the current schedule I am supposed to get to Pre-op by 7:45 am, and go to surgery at 9:45..

This may change, but currently nails the schedule down more...

WheelyCurious

[WheelyCurious]

More minor progress... Had a bone density scan a few hours ago, which will give me a baseline of sorts - hopefully it will be about the same as it was the last time, which wasn't great but was somewhat OK....

I also dropped off a sample for a urinalysis which they wanted me to do before my urodynamics and cystoscopy next week - hopefully they will find a cause and something they can do to help w/ my leakage issues...

WheelyCurious

[WheelyCurious]

Got the urinalysis test results, and am slightly puzzled... The first quick part of the test came back w/ all sorts of things out of 'normal range' like turbidity, white blood cell count, and other things that have typically come back abnormal when I definitely had a symptomatic infection... But then a day or so later I got a "No Growth" result on the actual culture test where they usually say what sort of bug is getting me this time... At any rate I got a message from the Urologist today saying it was a negative test....

This is a different team than the ones that will be doing my surgery, which makes me very glad as I'm very unhappy about the care they've given me...

WheelyCurious

[WheelyCurious]

Got the results on my bone scan from last week - reasonably good news, I still score as having osteopenia, which I've had for years, but they say I'm 'stable' so it's not getting any worse... Given that there isn't any really good way to increase bone density w/o the load bearing exercise I can't do, I'm happy...

Today I had my 6 month check w/ my PCP and TG docs, w/ a bunch of labs, including hormone levels...

T is still undetectable (not sure what it would take to get my adrenals kicked into gear again?) E was 129pg/ml, which is pretty much exactly what the TG doc wants, so I will keep going with the 0.15 mg/day estradiol patch routine. (other blood work was normal) I'm happy...

Urodynamics and cystoscopy on Friday... Then I get a doctor break until my surgery prep calls at the end of the month...

The countdown continues...

WheelyCurious

[Paolo]

Glad to hear about your progress!

[WheelyCurious]

Well, I was supposed to have gotten a call from the Urology Dept. an hour ago in relation to the upcoming operation, and it hasn't happened yet... (I have a second call from the surgery people in about 15 minutes)

However, when I went onto the hospital patient portal, an hour BEFORE the appointment time, I saw a 'visit summary report' and a bunch of scheduled tests put in by the nurse I'm supposed to be talking to...

I've called the Urology Dept. twice, and they tell me she WILL call, but when???

FRUSTRATING - I hope this doesn't screw up my dates...

WheelyCurious

[WheelyCurious]

The surgery dept didn't call me either! The appointment was supposed to be at 5:00PM - I called at 5:30, and they were CLOSED - and the voice mail said they closed at 5:00PM...

Now the patient gateway says it has been rescheduled to the 14th, still at 5:00PM...

The surgery date in the gateway is still the same, but my GF was told that they are supposed to require the phone calls 30 days pre-procedure?

MORE FRUSTRATION!

WheelyCurious