Dr. Sanguan just took a look at my wound areas, and he's said that before he can perform the surface skin graft, he's got to wait for the culture test on my vaginal swab to find out if I've picked up any bacteria that could damage the graft, and that'll take another two days, so it won't be until Thursday at least that I have what I hope will be my last surgery. Once that's done, it should be reasonably fast that I heal enough to remove the urine catheter, and then from there things should start to take on a reasonably normal tone.

Also, today I had my first experience with dilation. The surgically-sculpted vaginal canal has to be kept stretchy and pliant, or else over time it shrinks and penetration becomes painful and difficult, something I certainly want to
avoid. Thus, the vaginal canal must be slowly dilated through the insertion and gentle movement of increasingly larger stents to ensure that the skin is kept flexible and ready to accept penetration. This also ensures that the
opening itself doesn't shrink over time, so that I'll be ready to accomodate whomever or whatever, within reason.

Lying flat on my back, a mirror between my legs, I watched in fascination and a small amount of arousal as Dr. Sanguan pressed the first stent up inside me. Again, it's an experience for which I lack the vocabulary. I didn't feel this one against the sides of the canal, only the pressure at the tip when it bumped into the back wall of the tunnel. With that, he removed it and went up to a two.

I made it up to a five today, whatever that means. Five inches' worth, in fact, for what good that does me. Supposedly with practice, pressure, diligence and a bit of luck, I can gain an inch or so of depth by pressing back. Five, however, has left me sore; it actually stretched a bit, which is necessary to add diameter, but in so doing, it did hurt somewhat. 

Unfortunately, the nurses are going to have to do this for me at least for a while, because I still have open wounds in the area where the skin grafts aren't, and those are what really hurt right now. The nerve endings at the edges of the good healthy skin are raw, and the stretching and tugging against them caused more than a little irritation.

This is the sort of experience to which I'm going to have to grow accustomed over time. Unfortunately, right now, time is something I have in abundance.