"Hi, I'm Owl and this is my vagina" is a phrase I used to introduce myself at the hospital after I had my genital surgery over four years ago. You see, trans people having surgeries in Iceland isn't exactly and every day occurance so whenever the doctor came to see me, about 3-4 interns scurried behind them to get a closer look at this remarkable spectacle that was my vagina. I hadn't actually gotten used to the fact of having one at this point and those 10 days at the hospital were probably the most weirdest, terrifying and comical experience of my life.
As expected after big surgeries, there are a lot of bandages. My bandages were more in the form of some weird-ass celibacy plaster cast that I could literally knock on. Eventually they had to come off though, which was as horrifying as you might imagine. When they took them off I also realized that they had been SEWN to me in two places. They also removed two drains, which I made a conscious decision not to inquire where exactly were placed.
Now, my doctor had neglected to tell me that they were going on leave and wouldn't be able to take care of me the entire time of my stay. This meant that a new doctor that I had never even met was now in charge of taking care of my vagina, which is not as exciting as it sounds. He was probably in his 60's, was quite tall and seemed to be a nice guy. It wasn't until he asked for extra large latex gloves during his first inspection where I realized there might be a slight problem. Never in my life have I ever seen hands so big. He could've cradled my head in his palm. And now he was about to remove two pads that had been previously placed into my vagina that was five days old. Five. Days. Did I write "five days" already?
His little venture into my vagina with his monster hands wasn't quite as successful as he seems to have thought. I don't know if this is a common problem with him and vaginas, but his estimate of his hand size must be something that has occurred before because that was just unreal. After about fifteen minutes and a very tasteful and professional comment about how tight my vagina was he managed to get one of the padding out. Getting the second one was going to prove quite the feat for him, so he decided that getting tweezers and sticking them in there was a sound idea. And not just any tweezers. The kind of tweezers with a pointy end. As you can imagine, I wasn't quite down with that but nevertheless he ensued. Eventually though I told him that this was not okay and I was hurting far too much. His response was that I just had to endure and get over it. Now, I was already quite drugged up at this point, so social constraint was a bit more free ranged than usual for me so I responded with: "Look, pal. Why don't I cut up your penis and create a vagina out of it and then get a basketball player to stuff his monster hands inside of you 5 days later and tell you to get the fuck over it." He didn't really respond, but just as I said that, his tracker beeped and he was called for surgery.
When he returned, one of the nurses came up with a new game plan that didn't involve sharp things or monster hands in my vagina, surprisingly. This was some sort of a long clamp that they used to get the padding out, which literally took about two minutes. At this point I was so furious however, that the nurses had to literally hold me down and tell me to breathe. In hindsight it was probably the closest I get to giving birth, which is just as sad and pathetic as it sounds.
The remainder of my stay wasn't quite as eventful as that. The most exciting thing was getting to pee without a catheter, which was a bit like the Gullfoss falls in Iceland: golden, spraying and all over the fucking place.
After that graphic story about my vagina, I just want to emphasize that not all trans people feel the need to have genital surgery or any surgeries for that matter. Different people need different things to feel right about themselves or their bodies. For me, this genital surgery was a part of that and my reason for sharing it with all of you is to give you a tiny bit of insight into one trans person's life that had access to and decided to have genital surgery. Stay tuned for more stories soon!
P.s. Here you can see before and after pictures for reference.
Before:
Full credit: Móa Gustum
After:
Full credit: Móa Gustum