Today has been an adventure in more ways than one.

First, this morning, around 09h00 give or take, Dr. Sanguan arrived to change the dressing on my surgical site and remove the packing and such from my vaginal canal. The moment of truth, as it were. The nerve endings around my groin are, at the moment, generally irritable both from hair regrowth—the nurses shaved me there for surgery—and just the amount of surgical abuse that's been done to the area, and so I clutched rather tightly to Jessie's paw during the tape removal. Dr. Sanguan commented as he looked that around the outside, some of the external grafts didn't appear to have taken very well, which meant that I'd need a skin graft from probably my hip to cover the open areas. However, this is, he assures us both, a very simple procedure and one that can be done under an epidural, hopefully this time a properly administered one.

Removing the packing itself from the vagina was odd to say the least. When I had a cystectomy performed at the base of my spine, my mother had to pack the wound with fresh gauze every night and then remove it the following evening so I could shower and wash out the wound. That hurt, in no uncertain terms, and so I was exceptionally tense as Dr. Sanguan positioned his surgical tweezers. However, when he began pulling, I only really felt a sense of pressure, a bit of friction, and a strange release as the amount of gauze stuffed into me slowly subsided. Jessie quipped at the time that any minute now zie expected the doctor to pull a hat out of this bunny. Then the "solid" core came out with a wet slither, and everyone present, Dr. Sanguan included, made a slight gagging noise at the smell.

The nurse pointed a flashlight at my groin, and Dr. Sanguan peered and probed inside of me for a few moments while I sweatily clamped onto Jessie's paw in a death-grip, until Dr. Sanguan announced very pleasantly that my internal skin graft appeared to have taken without a hitch. My mate and I breathed sighs of relief, and then the nurse gave me a mirror and Dr. Sanguan let me look at my new arrangement.

I almost started crying right there.

Right now, four long rows of stitches run the length of the genitalia, holding everything in place, which make me look like Frankensnatch. However, Dr. Sanguan gently pulled apart the labia minora, still somewhat swollen beause of the surgery, and pointed out my clitoris. In so doing, he poked it with the end of the tweezers, maybe an accident or maybe to confirm that it was sensitive, but either way I jumped, rather startled by the sensation, which made him smile. Then he moved his fihgers down and showed me my new vaginal opening, and then without any foreplay he proceeded to push almost all of his middle finger into me.

I quite literally cannot describe the sensation now. Physically, there was pain, pressure, pleasure, a blend of signals that seemed totally irrelevant compared to the mental sensation of having someone's finger inside me that
way, of having the capacity to be fingered in that way. I just sort of went into autopilot for a few seconds, staring up into Jessie's face who was smiling at me, watching my response. Both Sanguan and the nurse seemed quite
amused.

After that, he changed the dressing on the remaining open areas and said he'd schedule a fresh skin graft from my hip for a few days from now to give everything the chance to heal a bit more, and then he said I could get out of bed, walk if I felt capable, even get a shower if I thought I could handle it. More enticing words I had never heard, and as soon as the dressing was finished and everyone save Jessie and I were out of the room, I got up and hobbled to the bathroom.

Now, not two days ago I had spoken with someone else about experiences just coming out of surgery, and she warned me that her stamina was next to nil and that taking a shower required her to sit down regularly and recuperate. I, however, felt myself invincible on having received such wonderful news, and proceeded to get into a tile shower, still attached to the wall by a urethral catheter, absent of any safety bars whatsoever, and cranked the heat up to just shy of scalding, after three days of enforced bedrest following a bad run-in with mixed anaesthestics.

As one might predict, hijinks did indeed ensue.

Inside of about five minutes, I started to feel light-headed, and I commented as much to Jessie. Zie said I should sit down, but by the time zir statement had registered in my mind, I realized that I was too unsafe on my feet to risk moving or else I'd fall over, and I was too far from anything useful to grab to sit down. I suggested to Jessie to grab the wheelchair in the bedroom that had been doubling as our adult bedpan, and so of course as my body went into power-save mode, I dutifully sent away my only possible point of stability to fetch an awkward implement too large to fit into the bathroom. 

It is a small miracle that I did not die falling face-first into the tile. 

I did, however, suffer a short-term blackout and when I awoke, I was on my butt, the urine catheter having been pulled loose, thankfully not from me but from the rubber tube to which it was attached, the one leading to the bag
hanging on the wall. None of my stitches were damaged, and I don't think I suffered any concussion, but whatever dignity to which I may still lay claim will likely be laid up in traction for a while.

Ultimately, I ended up sitting in the shower on the inner tube that Jessie bought for me to serve as the donut cushion that Dr. Sanguan advised we bring with us on the trip that I had forgotten to get before leaving for Thailand, head down, letting warm water run over my body. I washed my hair twice and had Jessie scrub the last of the medical tape remnants from my back. I think that's the most glorious shower I've ever experienced.

The rest of the day from there is kind of a blur. After that harrowing experience, I've just been on a sort of glaze, not really focusing on anything. Jessie and I spent the better part of the afternoon talking about video games and my simultaneous inability to get along with the majority and desparate desire to be part of it while zie sat on IRC, and then we experienced the wonders of homemade peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches with Milo while I again sampled something "exotic" off of the hospital menu: spaghetti.

My meals are part of the package deal for which I'm here, so there's no reason for me not to order something at every meal for Jessie and I to experience, even if we've ordered out for pizza or zie's gone for KFC or something, but most of the menu items, I won't eat, and of the ones I won't that Jessie will, zie won't enjoy eating that much. Every morning now is scrambled eggs and bacon for me, pancakes or eggs and bacon for Jessie. Lunch for me is chicken fried rice if I think I can face it again, maybe chicken with baby corn and steamed rice otherwise. Dinner is whichever I didn't have at lunch, usually, but I'm going to start ordering breakfast for dinner if I can't find something on the menu I can enjoy that isn't something I've already grown sick of eating. Jessie has taken to buying things at the local shopping center and putting food together on the fly, which is why the PB&J was such a treat for me.

The trip appears to have been extended for a few days, but nowhere near as long as we'd originally planned.