jcat (imported) wrote: Wed Dec 11, 2013 2:27 pm
Today I went to see a gender councillor......... and not to harm myself in the interim.
My wound continues to heal and looks clean.
The best news of the day!
Stay well, take care, and don't forget to enjoy life -if just a little carefully. It has a way of turning out better than you expected in the end. -You just gotta hang in there!
7 days and all looking good , a bit more watery bleeding going on, but all clean and tidy, no pain, no signs of infection.
I have been on the EA personals for years. Someone in Australia commented on one of my pictures and as a result we have entered into a really amazing dialogue and regular correspondence. We have never met, probably never will given the distance... But, it is a mutually supportive relationship and in the last week has proved to be an amazing pool of strength and sanity, not to mention common sense and counsel. Who would have thought that EA personals would open such a door.
Almost another week on I am still doing OK, still bleeding a little from the wound/drain but lessening each day and I think I am Ok. No infection. Of to councillor tomorrow and generally been really busy with work.
So what are my feelings? I am in a kind of limbo, waiting to see the counselling through to get some perspective on my journey and make a decision on which road I am going to go down. I have made some decisions about safety. I will be safe. What the horizon is. I am completely open right now.
well i aint going to say you are daft or mad i have had testicular pain both testicles for well over twenty years so i know for a fact that the pain can drive you to do this trust me i have came close to it myself many times good luck with it all
Thanks only3inches. There is a whole lot more going on than testicular pain. I am trying to get some perspective through counselling and I have found a really good one. A transgender person who has been helping others for years and is not trying to put me in a box, but help me to make my own choices working through all the turmoil in my head. Not easy....as I guess so many her will testify to from pram to mid-life!
For the time being I am resting up and just taking one day at a time.
Still healing, although some of my stitches have broken and I am not sure whether I should stitch up or let nature takes its course. I have no infection and minimal bleeding.
This may be as good a thread for adding to what I have posted in the past as any thread may be.
I have been doing some things other than posting on the Archive Forums for a while due to a wiring failure for the private wastewater treatment system for the rural home where I (and my wife and our two cats and various spiders, insects, and whatever reside). The wiring, which was direct-buried under the prior ownership of our home, corroded, and no electricity is getting to the effluent pump in the pump chamber of our "mound system." Not long after the ground froze, we were on the verge of having a very large "holding tank" for wastewater (or sewage, if you prefer), said holding tank being the basement of our house. That holding tank arrangement simply does not meet my standards for an acceptable way to deal with wastewater.
Some engineering and some electricianing, and we, and our cats and other marginally welcome pets (spiders, strawberry root beetles, and other such) have a place to live for the winter. Yeah, I am a licensed professional engineer and I am a certified master electrician. I am also a theoretical and applied biologist, given that I have both professional and research degrees in bioengineering.
What has all the above to do with jcat and this thread?
It is a long-standing habit of mine to grapple with problems and to resolve them. Putting the effluent ejector pump wiring in properly sealed underground conduit will have to wait until after the 2014 ground thawing is essentially complete; I have devised a temporary solution that I regard as not a building/electrical code violation.
By 1984, I had come to the view that testosterone posed a lethal threat to me, in the form of prostate cancer and, as a cancer promoter, other forms of cancer, this view having resulted largely from my undergraduate and graduate school bioengineering education, and my using that education to form a model of my personal cancer risk based on the family cancer history information available to me. By 1984, I had concluded that there was about a 50% likelihood of my having a rare, not-yet-accurately-recognized genetic proclivity for dying rather young from cancer unless effective cancer preventive things were done. In 1984, I was 44-45 years of age, an age older than some of my ancestors had abruptly died. My dad died from cancer at age 66, but came close to death in 1957 from prostate disease (which I understand included prostate cancer).
In the early summer of 1986, my brother, 3 years older than me, was found to have terminal cancer of the sort my use of biological pattern recognition approaches and my use of biosemiotics had led me to suspect lurked my my family genes. His terminal cancer led to a gastroenterological surgeon deciding, based on finding a cluster of four polyps in my cecum, that I did, indeed, have a cancer gene problem (the condition I have is now identified as "attenuated familial adenomatous polyposis, a diagnosis that did not exist in 1986).
As an aspect of my working in hospitals and in medical research settings while pursuing my bioengineering degrees, and my taking classes that medical students also took that included teaching surgical methods and techniques, I was well-trained in the ways of safe and proper surgery well before my 1986 bilateral orchiectomy. While physicians and surgeons need to gather a massive amount of medical information in order to be effective clinicians, my bioengineering focus allowed me to put vastly greater effort into understanding biology, both theoretical and applied, than is likely to be possible for medical care practitioners.
In my introductory postings, back in 2011, I indicated that I found a way to get a licensed doctor to do my orchiectomy. I accomplished that by starting with a urologist, then going to a psychiatrist to be sure that my desire for an orchiectomy was based mainly on cancer risk and not mostly on the fact of my being somewhere within the transgender spectrum. After some sessions with the psychiatrist, I went back to the urologist (who is now deceased) and explained, with my acquired from the Sears Farm Catalog Elastrator and bands, that I was intent on not dying as my dad nearly had at age 51 or as he did die at age 66. The fact that I had the Elastrator and bands, combined with the fact that I could clearly demonstrate having been trained in the ways of surgery and how to deal with surgical complications led the urologist to suggest how I might get a doctor to do the orchiectomy. I followed the urologist's suggestions, and, after calling a number of vasectomy clinics, came upon a doctor whose dad had died in consequence of prostate cancer, and who was willing to do the orchiectomy as prophylaxis for prostate cancer, given my family history and his understanding that, if no doctor would do the surgery, I could and would.
I had access, as a bioengineering graduate student, to one of the best medical college libraries in the U.S., and I had come upon references to Dr. Spector, in Philadelphia. However going there would have inconvenienced my family and interfered with my graduate school work. The arrangement with the doctor who did the surgery was simply that I would agree to never identify that doctor to anyone else.
I have been labeled as an "autistic savant" by a psychologist, now retired, who worked in educational psychology in a very large city, and have been labeled as an autistic savant by other people who have worked professionally with autism spectrum folks.
Because I can easily "brain-fry" most clinicians with my understanding of biology, both theoretical and applied, and was able to do that in 1984, I have a sad suspicion that the way I got my orchiectomy in 1986 was, for more likely than not, effectively impossible for anyone else.
That having been stated, I am about as vividly familiar with what it is like to live a life that conflicts with (and perhaps utterly defies) reality as defined through social consensus as I would guess anyone is.
In 1986, I became absolutely unwilling to take the risk of committing suicide by testosterone contributing, if not mostly causing, lethal cancer. In retrospect, I got the cancer risk figured with stunning accuracy. The methods I used, biological pattern recognition, Bayesian statistical methods, and biosemiotics, combined with a deep and detailed grasp of relevant biology, are about as powerful a way of assessing future risk probabilities and risk reduction strategies as anything I have ever yet heard of.
The Archive "Jesus" has stated it well, and I here use paraphrase: while nature loves variety, the contemporary social construction of reality is an exercise of virulently vicious hatred of the biological variety that makes human life possible.
Free information, not advice, "Steri-strips" or some equivalent, may do better, in terms of healing, than replacing broken sutures.
Had I not found a capable and willing doctor, I would have been a member of the "do it myself" community.
What I am working at, as a member of the Eunuch Archive and a person with professional and research degrees in bioengineering is doing my part to make it easier for people who find they have a valid need for an orchiectomy to get it in safe and proper ways.
I will be making my bioengineering work very much more public, as I find ways to do that, so that human society can be far safer for people who, rather like me, do not, because I cannot, comply with social constructions of reality that deny my right to exist.
jcat (imported) wrote: Sat Dec 21, 2013 1:45 pm
Still healing, although some of my stitches have broken and I am not sure whether I should stitch up or let nature takes its course. I have no infection and minimal bleeding.
Do as you wish but the right answer medically is if a wound has been open for more than six hours you should not close it as you can trap bacteria in the wound leading to a severe infection. It should be packed and covered to keep it moist and allow it to heal from the inside out.
Happy Holidays All!. I Have not checked in for a few days being busy with work and stuff before Christmas. I took a long look at the wound. Removed the other sutures and decided to continue with dressing and lots of antiseptic cream as I have done until now.
The edge of the wound wound has healed so steri strips would not be any good, so I just let it carry on healing. It is getting there slowly and I think Neutered's advice is right. each day the would is getting smaller. There is a small amount of puss, but nothing to be concerned about. I will have a big gash there after it heals.
The main thing is not to panic and use common sense. Something told me not to try and stitch up or seal the wound or it would seal in infection and then I would be in trouble.
I will keep you up to date. Worth remebereing about open wounds after 6 hours either got to to A & E or keep dressing it until it heals naturally.
