Oh Carp!

I was thinking about not posting this as events have moved on a bit, I've added an update at the end.

A friend told me that I would have no problems with my SRS. As much as that was meant with the best will in the world, and in fact my stay in hospital went relatively smoothly, things haven’t gone smoothly. I’ve written about everything that happened after I came home from hospital so I’m not going to repeat it here, suffice to say I’ve got to meet a lot of new nurses, a new GP from my doctor’s surgery and had contact with my own GP a couple of time.

Right now I’m on antibiotics, and banned from alcohol for the next week because the particular tablets and alcohol do not mix at all well. No problem with that, I had to give up alcohol for long enough due to my surgery. The reason I’m on antibiotics is because I’ve picked up an anaerobic infection which manifests as a green coloured discharge.

Of course if having picked up an infection isn’t enough I’m now having to deal with the possibility that my lovely new neo-vagina has a hole in it that leads to the bowels. The only way to confirm that will be a proper examination, and that will mean a trip to Brighton for them to take a look.

I’ve spoken with Brighton and was told that after dilating I needed to sniff the stent and see if there was any fecal smell. Having done as asked there was a very faint odor, so faint that it’s hard to tell if it’s a really is fecal or whether it’s the natural odor of a neo-vagina. Either way, because of what I’ve described to them they are concerned and will want to see me. I’m hoping that it’s going to be something that can be dealt with really simply because the other option that I can envisage is one that almost fills me with horror and will make my life so very hard. A temporary colostomy, at least I hope it would be temporary. My Dad has had one for about 30 years so I know you can live with one but for me it would make life so much harder and would mean that I would be unable to do a number of things that I love to do. Let’s be honest, how many burlesque dancers are there that have colostomies. Not many, if any, I bet.

Triathlons and running would be possible to do but I’m simply not sure that I could cope with doing them if I had to do them with a bag attached to me.

If it came to it I’m really not sure how I’d manage full stop. I think it would be a real struggle to go on if I had to have a colostomy bag permanently. I really do.

Add to that the fact that my family still have a tendency to refer to me as he when we’re at home, my son did it several times the other day, and I think I would give serious thought to getting some help to allow me to come to terms with things, before I did something incredibly stupid.

And so to the update:

Yesterday afternoon Brighton contacted me. From the description I'd given them they didn't think that I'd gone through into the bowels. If I had then there would have been fecal matter coming from my neo-vagina. Also if I broke wind, you'll have to pardon me for that, then it would have come from the vagina as well as its normal location. Finally if I had gone through to the bowels then I would have been seriously ill and certainly wouldn't have been talking to them on the phone. As I'm feeling pretty well it doesn't sound as serious as my darkest thoughts had made it seem.

So Monday I have another visit to the doctors in order to see the Nurse Practitioner. This time its to have a vaginal swab taken and also for her to take look inside my vagina to see what she can see using a speculum. This is what the last nurse I saw didn't really want to use, and I agreed with her. Now I have no choice. 

Its possible that because of the stage I'm at with my healing that I'm experiencing granulation inside the vagina. The only way to really see what is going on is to take a look so that will be the plan on Monday. I'm really hoping that it is granulation because that would be something normal and expected.

Fingers crossed.