I Underestimated Facial Feminization Surgery — Aftermath
If you haven’t noticed, I have been off Medium for approximately the last week plus not responding to comments or reading/replying to stories. That is due to the fact of of my recent Facial Feminization Surgery (or FFS) that I had done on April 4th (Hooray!) What’s not so “Hooray” about it all is I definitely underestimated FFS and its aftermath which I will dive into further below.
First to make sense of it all and to understand what particulars of FFS I had (as every surgery is different), I wanted to let you all know what was done which was more than I thought. I am going to post a screenshot of the medical stuff that they did below for posterity and keepsakes sake (so if you’re a doctor, you can probably grasp the full scope of the procedure better).
But in layperson’s terms, here’s what I had done in no particular order:
1. Jaw line reduced/angled — jawbone shaved down on both sides of my face
2. Chin angled/bone shaved down
3. Forehead reduction/hairline advancement/bone in the middle of my forehead setback
4. Eyebrows shaved down (i.e. no more hooded eyes)
5. Facelift to accomodate the hairline advancement
(NB: If any of the above sounds off medically, please do not shoot me as this was my understanding of everything as it was explained to me. Always happy to be corrected in the comments section).
If the above sounds like a lot, it’s because it is. They basically operated on my entire face less my nose because my surgeon deemed my nasal canal is quite narrow (which I agree) and a rhinoplasty just adds another level of complication on top of everything else. Also not done was a trachea shave because fortunately I was blessed with an adam’s apple that does not protrude seemingly at all.
The surgery was a success according to my surgeon who told my friend who was with me at the hospital that day. My surgeon was amazing and really cared about my transition journey and why I needed to do this. At my first consult, he sat on a stool and pulled right up close to me and just asked about my entire journey really listening. After that came the medical diagnoses, feeling around my face and giving surgical notes to the PA who was taking notes on the computer. Afterwards, he was explaining what he was going to do and whatnot and then at the end of it all flat out looked at me and said “You are going to be aestically pleasing woman…” I know what the word means but then almost as if he cut the bullshit and medical jargon out he immediately said “You’re going to be a good looking woman.”
As to the understimating the surgery part, I think what I am alluding to is the recovery part. This is my first gender affirming surgery and probably not one that most transwomen start with because some let the HRT do the work but more importantly their gender dysphoria may lie somewhere else i.e. breast augmentation or bottom surgery. For me, this was kind of serendipitous as from my recent articles you can clearly get a sense that all the misgendering was driving me crazy to say the least…and for gendering it really starts in the face. Simply put, I thought I’d be doing much better by a week to week and a half tops i.e. feeling normal and that is definitely not the case.
My recovery simply put eight (8) days out has been extremely difficult. My eyes swelled shut the first two days after surgery which I was completely unaware of as the surgeon never said it was a possibility. So I was unprepared to go the first two days without seeing. I managed by pulling open the one less swelled eye to see walking around and constantly icing down both eyes which finally two days later I could open them regularly. Not to mention the constant bombardment of texts/calls/social media wishing me well and asking how I’m doing…at that point really terrible because I can’t respond to anything and I pride myself as a person who gets back to people rather quickly as it’s a sign of respect.
Since then my jaw and chin are all still numb so eating anything even mashed potatoes or soft foods has been a struggle. I have meal replacement shakes but I want to get real food in me if I can as it’s not the same. Also after surgery my appetite has seemingly been surpressed so at least I haven’t been craving food, lol.
I also had to wear a gauze headwrap after surgery which I was initially told not to take off for a week till my postop where the stitches in my head would be removed (I do have absorbable sutures as well, but they had to stitch my scalp back together the old fashioned way, lol). But in the instructions they sent home with me, it said I could take it off after 2–3 days and wash and rewrap with some more gauze they gave me. Personally, they had that thing wrapped up so tight and perfectly with my hair in a bun, I wasn’t touching it…nor was I really physically able to at that point as I was still quite weak.
My forehead and the top of my head to the back hairline is all numb (all the numbness is normal according to the doctor). What’s funny is I still get some itching up there and I go to scratch it and I literally can’t feel it but mentally if I don’t do it, the itch will remain. I also have the headwrap off finally and you would think a proper shower would be amazing to wash my hair but since I can’t feel my scalp, it takes away from the pleasure in that. I also have a postop ace bandage headwrap that is much more manageable to wear for at least another week.
As far as pain goes, it hasn’t been bad at all. The nurse asked me what my pain threshold was in the OR and I was like it’s pretty hight, like an 8 out of 10. I mean once you’ve had galvanic needles stuck in your face and then plucking out hair follicles, there isn’t much more pain left to endure that that, lol.
They prescribed me tramadol which I only took at night to help knock me out because the headwrap from surgery made sleeping quite difficult (other than that it’s been a steady dose of Motrin to help reduce the swelling which has been amazing really). The only real pain has been from my inner mouth and gums. To shave the jaw/chin lines down, they went intra-oral to laser the bones down so any scarring is in my mouth. So any leftover food partiulates has exascerbated the gums but mouthwash has helped with that.
With respect to the mouth, my mouth was not draining properly according to the PA at my one week postop. I had a ton of saliva build up after surgery and with being intibated for four hours naturally a sore throat occurred so swallowing/spitting anything became difficult…including the excess saliva/drainage. Luckily there was no mucus or puss buildup or blood, but my mouth is supposed to be able to drain those fluids a little better…all the more reason why I have a follow up in a week with the surgeon but the antibiotics they gave me now seem to be helping heal all that much faster which I am super thankful for, lol.
One last odd thing that happened to me is I had bruising across my breasts which the PA nor the doctor had never seen before. I told them I still had those electrode sticky pads on my chest from surgery and after I took them off (three days after surgery), that is when the bruising appeared. But they don’t think it was from that. Their only thoughts were it might have something to do with the concept of “dependent bruising” which the PA explained to me that normally if you get abdominal surgery, your genital area will have a lot of bruising as the body needs to bruise/heal somehow and it can’t in the abdominal area because of the surgery. So because it was a face surgery maybe it was because of that? They said so long as I have no shortness of breath, no trouble breathing (which I have zero symptoms of) it’s not a major concern…plus the bruising is dissipating each day so but it’s getting monitored and looked at in my follow up in a week.
While I am no stranger to recovery as in the past I have had several broken bones to my shoulder, my wrist/fingers, foot, knee ligament strains (which prevented me from walking around). But I learned to deal with that level of frustration of just not being able to do simple tasks. So too will I learn how to deal with this level of frustration and take this as a learning experience and apply to any future health related issues that may come up.
So yeah, to all of those of you out there that want any kind of cosmetic surgery to the face albeit trans or not, it’s not an easy recovery road. I thought I would be able to see after surgery, nope. I thought I would be able to eat normally a few days after surgery, nope. What this whole experience has taught me is nothing always goes according to plan. There can be complications and bumps in the road to recovery so this has been a truly humbling yet teachable moment for me. But knowing what I know would that deter me from getting FFS again regardless of the end results? Absolutely not as it would have been one more thing added to the regret pile and I’m done with adding anything else to it anymore. All the Best!
