I'm lying awake in the hotel room in Phuket for what will be our last night in Thailand, once I finally manage to get to sleep. In just under fifteen hours, we'll be en route to Singapore, and then to Heathrow to spend five days with Chloe before returning home. It's been nearly five weeks since we arrived in Phuket, and I've come down with my typical case of insomnia. I'm used to it by now; the night before any major trip I usually get three or four hours sleep at most, then crash immediately upon arrival. This will likely prove to be no different.

In a way, it's hard for me to imagine leaving. I've heard claimed in multiple print sources that it takes three weeks for the brain to adjust to any major change, from phantom pain in amputees to not reaching for the missing
cigarette pack in the pocket after stopping smoking. We spent just over that in the hospital, and leaving was something of a shock. Now we've been here over a month, and returning to England is going to be something of a culture shock, to say nothing of Philly. At least it'll be a few more days before I have to remember not to drive on the left side of the road. 

I woke up this morning incredibly aroused, the first time I'd actually been overwhelmed by raw physical desire since getting out of surgery, and it took effort to stop myself from trying to relieve it by whatever means necessary. I'm still healing down there, and Jessie and I are both under medical orders not to do anything for six weeks. We technically violated that two nights ago, but nothing got done that hasn't happened during dilation or showering, so that doesn't really worry me too much. Actively trying to climax, though... that's another matter entirely.

It's hard for me to believe that the changes are finished, in one sense. In another, it's hard for me to imagine how it was before the hospital stay. I can mentally remember how I looked, how it felt, et cetera. Just like the memories of myself from before my transition, though, the ones of my sex life prior seem... disjoint. They don't seem like mine. They are, and I won't try to pretend that I was always possessed of what I have now, but it feels alien to think about what used to be between my legs, even as I still find myself looking in the mirror and wondering why I look different.

I was hoping to see Dr. Sanguan one last time before departure, but the last time I called the hospital to arrange the appointment, I found out that Pim was out sick and likely wouldn't be back to work for the rest of the week.
Right now, I don't even know if they've scheduled a driver to come to the hotel to take us to the airport or if we're going to have to hire a taxi for the job. Being in the hotel has put all of the medical staff in the distance,
and things have seemed very out-of-touch as a result. I've felt stranded on a number of occasions. At least in the hospital I could hit the nurse call button if things got really bad. Out here, once the receptionist goes to bed,
we're cut off from the outside world unless I walk to a pay phone. It's made getting anything major accomplished seem more daunting than is necessary.

At least the hotel staff here has been very understanding. The front desk clerk asked us when we were leaving tomorrow and said we didn't have to check out of the hotel until 15h00 since flight wasn't until 19h. I've never
found that kind of accommodation in the US, or anywhere else for that matter. They've worked their cleaning schedule around our sleeping habits, and Jessie only had to remind them once not to turn off our air conditioning when they came into our room. It really is a nice hotel, and if we had been possessed by aliens or brainwashed by the government into coming to Thailand for a vacation, I certainly might have considered the Kata Poolside Bungalows for several seconds before turning it down in favor of someplace that had phones in the rooms. Still, it's hard to complain too much for under twenty American dollars a night, plus breakfast for both of us.

I should sleep, but I'm not tired. At least, I'm not mentally tired. I'm physically exhausted, but my brain is running on overdrive right now, freely spinning over a hundred ideas and never pulling anything conclusive out of any of them. Jessie and I talked briefly before zie fell asleep about the times in the hospital that I went into surgery, and how zie dealt with it all and how zie felt, and it's left me that much more aware of just what zie means to me, and how fortunate I am to have someone in my life that's so close to me. Right now, I almost wish zie were awake, so that we could cuddle more actively. As it is, I'll probably end up passing out snuggled up against zir back, arms around zir waist.

This whole trip is finally coming to a close, and I don't know how I feel about it. Everything I've done has, in the long run, been far more worth doing than I could possibly put into words, and at the same time there have been some experiences that I can only describe as traumatic and emotionally distressing, but necessary. I've felt alternately that I had made the best decision possible and that I had thrown away my only means of physical
pleasure. I've gone nearly two months with only testosterone, three weeks without even that, and now almost ten days with only estrogen and whatever my adrenal glands are generating, with all of the emotional rollercoastering
that that entails. I've discovered some wonderful local cuisine and spent nights dreaming of homemade chili and jambalaya. I've shared incredible emotional intimacy with Jessie and yearned for the company of others.
Ultimately, I think that this trip will fade into mostly pleasant memories, but a few bouts of pure terror will remain in my mind as dark patches in my rose-tinted hindsight.

I'm glad I did it all, but I hope I don't have to do it again. If I decide on the colon graft extension, I can't think of another surgeon I'd rather have do it than Dr. Sanguan, but that'll be many many months in the future, if at all.

---

I'm dating this entry according to local time back home in Philly, the time recorded on the computer, because at the moment I have no idea in which time zone I'm actually located and thus what time it really is. I'm on the plane,
stuffed into an economy seat nxt to Jessie on one side and someone sleeping on the other, one of the only people still awake on the whole plane aside from the cabin crew and hopefully the pilot.

I got, at most, four hours of sleep last night. I started to get cramps and pain around my groin at something like four in the morning, which necessitated me getting out of bed and spending an hour or so in the shower to keep the problem from getting out of hand, and then at some point after that I passed out cold, only to be jarred violently awake by a member of the cleaning staff pounding on the door calling me to the phone. I don't take kindly to being woken in that fashion, but as it was a call I'd been expecting, I can't really complain too heavily.

I spoke with Dr. Sanguan, and he told me that the insurance paperwork that both he and his assistant, Pim, said would be faxed to Hartford Life was, in fact, not complete and not faxed, which explained why I had received an email from my boss telling me to contact HR and find out why Hartford Life was balking at paying for my medical benefits. I explained things in an email to my doctor at home, and I can only hope that the matter will be resolved by the time I get back, but I anticipate much bickering with paperpushers when I return to Philadelphia.

Once the details of the insurance were resolved, Dr. Sanguan began questioning me about my progress with healing, how I was sleeping, whether I could urinate and control it, how often I was dilating, and so on and so forth. After he heard my responses, he said that there didn't seem to be a need for me to come to the hospital and that if I had any problems once I got home I could email him directly, which meant that we had only to wait for the hospital driver to arrive at 15h00 to take us to the airport. Needless to say, Jessie and I were both very pleased with that news.

The flight from Thailand to Singapore was easy, but the leg from there to London has been hell so far. I don't sleep well on planes in general; I never have. However, with so little sleep this morning—or is it yesterday now?—I feel utterly exhausted. Unfortunately, because I'm still healing from surgery, no matter what I may like to claim, there aren't any really comfortable positions for me. Every way I've found so far to squeeze myself
into this chair has put pressure somewhere uncomfortable, and a few times has led to outright pain. I'm back to sitting on the donut seat, which has a slow leak leading me to have to stand and reinflate it every so often, and either my neck or my back or my butt hurts from something not being supported or getting pushed into the wrong position.

At some point within—I hope—the next hour or so, I'm going to simply pass out cold from sleep deprivation, but it's equally possible that I'll be awake from one source of irritation or another until the plane touches down and I walk to Chloe's car. I'm almost certainly going to nap on the drive back to her house, though, and likely well into the local afternoon.

Three days left in Thailand, or rather three nights, and I do feel well enough, thankfully, to get up and go walkies on a pretty regular basis. We've seen very little of the local area, still, but that's mostly because the climate itself is inhospitable, and there really hasn't been much of interest that we've wanted to find in the area.

Actually, that's a misleading statement. We've both been very keen on the idea of finding clothing in the local style, but doing so in our sizes is no easy task. We easily tower over most of the natives, and the typical Scandinavian tourist looking for Thai clothes visits one of the numerous "quick tailors" that pepper the island, and apparently the country. Finding one-piece swimsuits—the specific item for which Jessie and I have both been searching—that would fit us ultimately took us to the local Tesco's, the British version of WalMart, where we found one item that would fit our needs.

Speaking of Tesco, we've been doing most of our shopping there since we got out of the hospital. It's not American by any stretch of the imagination, and yet in the short time we were staying with Chloe, we both felt so comfortable and at ease that Tesco's here has quickly become "a taste of home." Jessie's fallen in love with the store-brand ginger nut biscuits, and I don't start the day without a box of pre-mixed Milo, complete with hypodermic straw. It's a small comfort, but one that's helped keep us sane while we've both felt
trapped in this strange country.

Dilation is now at twice a day for about an hour, less often than suggested but for longer periods of time. I couldn't face doing it three times in the same day; if I did, I wouldn't be able to get anything else done at all. It's
not like I have anything to do but dilate, granted, but there's a limit to how often I'm going to do this to myself. There's still something debasing internally over spreading my legs and forcing hard plastic objects into myself to see how much I can take for a given timespan.

Dilation really isn't the big problem I have now, actually. When I went into surgery, I had long before resolved the self-image issues, but learning to actually adjust to my new physical arrangement has taken some effort. It's not that I didn't really want it. Far from it, in fact. The sensation of Jessie's finger within me, rubbing against the inside walls of my sex, has made it all worth it. However, everything has been repositioned, and stimulation that goes to one location might set off old nerves in my mind. Plus, arousal right now hurts, or it did for a while, while the tissues were still healing, and it's not helped that Jessie's been even more sexual than normal.

Everyone that's said I've been so lucky to have a mate that's been with me through the whole of the transition hasn't seen this side of things, I suspect. Healing after the surgery takes time, and it's only been two weeks, tops. Every time I've gotten aroused, it's caused me a great deal of pain. There really isn't any blunter way to say it. And with Jessie being more active than usual, it's been a lot of stress having to say "I can't do this right now." Turning down my mate, saying that zir advances have been physically distressing in ways I don't like, has really been upsetting. This is the sort of thing that I've never heard discussed, and I'm not sure myself how to handle it. I'm doing my best, and as always Jessie has been nothing but understanding, but that only makes the situation manageable; it doesn't make it go away. Only time and recovery can do that.

I heal quickly enough; I can only hope that this holds true this time as well.

We've been in a hotel—more like a bungalow room—for three nights now, and more than ever I'm ready to go home, or at least into some kind of accomodation that has a truly hot shower, twenty-four hour front desk and
cleaning staff, and phone lines in the rooms. To be sure, the hotel Pim found for Jessie and I is nice, but it lacks just enough basic amenities to be irritating without lacking enough basic Thai necessities to make our complaints sound real and not just like whiny American tourists.

I've again contracted food poisoning, again from the Heinz salad cream, and this time I've managed to run myself out of toilet paper at such an hour that there was no way for Jessie to fetch more from the front desk. I thus spent
the night more or less awake, getting up every hour or so to purge my intestines and then stepping into the shower to clean myself. As soon as Jessie is awake enough for me to shake violently awake, zie's going on a mission from Goddess to retrieve several bog rolls from the hotel staff.

I tried yesterday to call about getting the tickets changed myself, but the local QANTAS/British Airways office—which is in Bangkok—isn't open past 13h on Saturday, meaning my call missed their agents by an hour. Neither Jessie nor I could justify spending $1.40/minute, the best rate we could find, calling England to argue with their emergency staff over flight details, and so at the very least it's going to wait until tomorrow. Also on the agenda for then is a call to Pim to discuss the details of our accomodation and a request to find someplace more... well... American, for all the the word connotes.

I should've done this yesterday, but Jessie and I have been having some strange undiagnosable computer problems that appear to be related to hardware failure on the laptop. I hope the drive doesn't die on us; I'll be very upset if it does.

The surgeries all appear finished, so now of course I have the indignity of stomach flu or food poisoning or something to add to my discomfort. I haven't been able to keep down anything but water for the last thirty-six hours, and the aftertaste of some kind of weird salad dressing on the "salad" I got with dinner from a local restaurant a day or so ago, probably about the time the migraines really started getting bad, so I wouldn't be surprised to find out that I'd picked up some ptomaine or something else of the like.

I've given some samples to the nurses here and they said they could find out what was wrong and give me something for it, one advantage to getting sick while staying at a hospital. Now I just have to wait for them to do it and hope that it happens sooner than later. I don't want to be sick on the flight home.

---

Events transpired so fast today that it scarcely seems like we've had time to process them all, but at the end of the day I've had a little time to think about everything.

First, Dr. Sanguan came to the room this morning to make a last-minute inspection of the surgical site, and he said that one of the grafts was looking very good, and the other had a few problems but they were minimal and that I wasn't going to lose the graft, only the outer tissue around it, which means I have what looks like a crescent-shaped gouge around it. However, that won't take surgery to heal, only time and antibiotic ointment, which I'm to apply after dilation and showering. Further, he said I was in his medical opinion ready to leave the hospital and could check out tomorrow.

Pim then came to the room to collect the money for everything, the stay, the procedure, et cetera. The total came to USD5,500, almost half of what I had been expecting to pay at the outset. This puts me far ahead in the money
game, which means when I get back to the U.S. I can afford to pay off one of my credit cards almost immediately, and more importantly that when I get back to England, I can afford to take my sister and her friends out to a really nice meal somewhere.

Pim also said she'd take a look at our tickets and see what arrangements she could make to get us back to England as early as possible. I can arrange the onward transit from there to Newark by calling Continental's offices, but Pim's the expert in getting the out-from-Phuket routes hastened, and Jessie and I are both eager to get home, or at least out of Thailand. We've had our fun here, as it were, but now it really is time to go home. We'll probably have to spend a few days in a hotel here waiting for our flights, but that's far preferable to two weeks of delays.

I got up and about for real today for the first time since getting the first surgery, and Jessie and I got dressed and went to the local Tesco/Lotus market for lunch, and we picked up some tidbits here and there for other people,
which I hope will be well-received when we do get back home to deliver them. I of course overtaxed myself thinking myself to be Ms. Marvel, and by the time we made it back to the room I was on the verge of collapse, but it just felt so good to be mobile without that damn catheter that I was willing to push things, even if I shouldn't have done so.

I then came back to the room and handled dilation, by myself, for the first time from beginning to end. Unfortunately, I can now only handle Borodir; Aaden is just too big for me. I seem to have lost some diameter in the few days I wasn't actively stretching myself, but I'll get that back with reinforcements. I'm going to need it if I ever intend to put my new body to its intended task. It still feels a bit like a chore, three times a day every day for at least half an hour, but I'd rather do it and get used to having something up there of the appropriate size than not do it, lose more depth and diameter and then get torn the first time Jessie and I try to make love.

Then for dinner, we got dressed again and went down to the Big C, the other major shopping center in the area. This one doesn't involve a taxi, just a short walk down the road behind the hospital. We ate at the Japanese restaurant, during which we had a rather interesting talk that led to a few odd conclusions. I've often made the statement that what someone has between zir legs was unimportant to how that person should be perceived and treated socially, and thus Jessie has presented me with with challenge, or perhaps the order would be more accurate seeing as it did come from my master, of telling people "does it matter?" when asked if I've had the surgery yet. Having made such a big deal of my transition, now to work to elude the question of whether I've taken the "final step," or to avoid giving a direct answer, will be challenging.

Of course, I say "final step," when really the final step of my social transition was several months, perhaps even a year ago. This is isn't even the final step in my physical transition; I have much more electrolysis to do, and I anticipate more changes from the hormones now that I don't have the testosterone to fight. So, why then is this called the "final step"? What is it about the surgery that makes it the all-encompassing conclusion to the process? It's not the only irreversible step. It's not even the last in many cases, including mine. Why does it matter so much
what one has between one's legs? Others before me have said that we live in a society that intertwines the notions of sex and gender, and others after me will say it, and doubtless I won't be any more loudly heard than they
have, but still I feel the compulsion to point it out and decry it, even knowing that my protestations will be futile.

At any rate, everything for me to do in Thailand is finished, at least for now. Perhaps in the future I'll feel ready and interested to come back for the optional hardware upgrade, but for now the trip is finished, and in my
opinion, not a moment too soon. It's a wonderful place, but I'm ready to go home.

Dr. Sanguan stopped by the room about an hour ago, and he said that tomorrow
he's going to change the dressing on my side and my groin, and if everything
looks good he'll let me stand for a bit and walk around, but he still wants
me to take things carefully for a day or two, and then once he's removed the
catheter I should be able to get up and walk around without discomfort.
Already I don't hurt much, though I am sore from just lying still, and the
packing inside me isn't helping any with that.

Mostly what I'm fighting for pain right now is the steady but inconsistent
stream of migraines that have been hitting me at odd hours. It's always in
the same place, too. It feels like someone's shoving an ice-pick through my
left temple, and my vision swims while it's happening. I've had four of them
in the last two days. I have no idea what causes them, or how to get rid of
them other than lying back and trying to nap or else asking for massive
doses of painkillers that I don't even need for my surgical sites any more.
It's a little distressing to think that the headaches hurt worse than the
surgery wounds; the latter will heal in time.

Now it's just down to a waiting game. Waiting to change the packing. Waiting
to check the graft. Waiting to get the catheter out. Waiting to go back to
England. Even, as much as I'm looking forward to seeing Chloe again, waiting
to get home. I'm very weary right now, and I want to spend a night in my own
bed without any tubes or nurses around.

Hopefully it won't be too much longer.

I've apparently overcome the sleeping pill I took last night, and the pain medication doesn't seem to be doing its full potency job this morning. Then again, I should get another around of medication to take after breakfast
that includes pain meds, which should help.

My groin, already still somewhat sore from the first two surgeries, hurts the worst. My side is a hot ache, but not so intolerable. However, the cumulative effects, along with my sore rump from being bedridden and the chill in the air have all fused into one grand hurt that refuses to go away regardless of what pills arrive to make the pain more manageable.

I'm also concerned about the amount of pain medication I'm taking. I don't want to become reliant on the stuff to get through the day, but at the same time I have trouble focusing well if I don't take it because everything simply hurts too much. I'd go back to sleep as it is, but, of course, my back hurts on top of everything else and there's just no finding a comfortable spot in this bed.

It really is the home stretch now, assuming everything goes according to plan, but it's hard to see it that way sometimes. This is, at least in memory, the worst—and the most different places at once—that I've hurt since
getting into the hospital, and so it's difficult for me to say now that from here it all gets easier, since it's really only gotten more painful the longer I've stayed. However, there shouldn't be any more surgeries, they do keep me
doped up when I request it, and I've got someone here to help me make sure I don't request it too often.

Pain aside, my biggest issue is the whole bedridden thing. I've done this before while being here, and it's just not easy for my head to accomodate. Despite my fantasies and my desires, the reality of being medically incapable
of taking care of myself is painful to accept, and it's frustrating in the extreme. I had to awaken Jessie to ask zim to get me something out of the refrigerator with which I could take some medication; I couldn't go get it myself. I'm under strict orders not to get out of bed for three days, not even to use the bathroom.

Jessie assures me that zie understands and doesn't mind helping me, but that doesn't make it any easier, even though I believe zim. The block is in my own mind, and I have to learn to overcome it. I just hope that I'm not in bed long enough for me to have to learn to overcome too much of it. I really could not face another round of this, not for a long time.

At 14h15 this afternoon, the gurney arrived to take me down to surgery. This time, Jessie came with me, as well as Praxis, and they both helped pass the forty minutes that I spent on the operating table waiting for Dr. Sanguan to arrive and get started. There is little so daunting, in my mind, as the time spent in anticipation of something one doesn't want but must have, like sitting in the waiting room at the dentist's office in anticipation of a root canal, or in the boss's office waiting to be fired.

The first time I went into surgery, I had a general anaesthetic. The second was supposed to be under an epidural but ended up being general when something went wrong with the spinal block. This time, I had the option of going totally under again—an idea no-one particularly liked—or having everything done solely under a local where needed. Now, in the past I've made my share of jokes about watching the procedure as it was happening. I even wanted Jessie there to take pictures or get a video or something. However, faced with the idea of being awake while the surgeon cut on me, I began to quietly panic. Unfortunately, the epidural wasn't an option this time, and nobody was happy with the idea of me having to go under general anaesthetic three times in such a short span, and so I agreed to have it done with just the locals.

Lying on the bed, Dr. Sanguan testing areas on my side to find out if I was numb enough for him to remove a hunk of flesh to act as the graft donor site, I about fainted, I think. Jessie kept me mostly coherent, telling me I was doing well and reminding me to let zim know about any pains or twitches, letting me squeeze zir paw when I felt something unpleasant or just needed to release tension. I think if Jessie hadn't been there, I'd have had a
full-blown panic attack.

In hindsight, the whole experience feels like having been in-scene to an unsafe master, Dr. Sanguan. Let me state right now that the man has brilliant hands and that I can't think of anyone I'd recommend more highly for the procedure than him, but because of how my head is wired, about half an hour into the two-hour process, I began to get very nervous and twitchy. I'm in very poor shape, and so limbs that lie still too long begin to lose
circulation. My arm started to tingle after about half an hour, and I had to ask one of the nurses for permission to move it because it had been tied down to the bed to keep me from flailing around with it. Shortly thereafter, my
butt started to get sore from lack of motion, and I tried to shift it but Dr. Sanguan told me to stop moving, and of course there was no option for me but to comply and wait.

I told him what the problem was, and he said when he was done with my side he'd let me adjust myself while he worked with the graft tissue. I did get the chance to move around on the table when he'd finished sewing up my side, but not very much, and by the time he was ready to numb up my groin to do the graft itself, I was still sore and not looking forward to another bout of enforced stillness.

He removed my catheter, something that hurt very briefly, then put in a new, shorter tube, which hurt a little more, but neither pain lasted very long. Then came fresh packing into my vagina, to keep me nice and stretched for the
three days I'll be stuck in bed, which he inserted with a speculum and nowhere near enough lubricant, or maybe it was just a larger size than to which I was accustomed. Either way, the insertion was stressful, even painful at points, and then he had to pull it out and do it again because he'd made it too long, which was another round of pain ending in discomfort at having something just slightly too big stuffed between my legs. On top of the catheter change it felt very much like I had to go to the bathroom, though I couldn't have done so even if I'd really wanted it. 

After all these steps, the nurses put my legs up in stirrups, effectively cutting off their range of motion and the circulation below my knees, which meant that inside of fifteen minutes of Dr. Sanguan stitching on the grafts, my legs went numb and I had to get Jessie to explain to the nurses what needed to be massaged. Then my butt followed suit and what followed really was little more than forty-five minutes of extreme discomfort, but no way to safeword, no way to say "stop" and have it mean anything, no way to pause while I got my bearings, my breath, my sense of safety. All I could do was lie there, let Jessie stroke my hair and endure the sensations.

Nothing ever hurt, except for the pinpricks of the syringes and a few misplaced jabs with the suture needles. That was, I think, the worst part. If it had hurt, I could've said something it all would've stopped right there. Nothing ever did, but they were as annoying and discomfiting as possible without passing the line at which I could've legitimately complained and been heard and had something done about the problems.

As I said before, I'm back to enforced bedrest. Dr. Sanguan's said I can't stand, can't walk, can't do anything that would put the graft or my side at risk for three days. After that, he'll remove the packing, check all the stitchwork and let me know how things have gone. I hope like hell that the grafts take this time. If they don't, I'm going to have to do this again, and I'm really not looking forward to that.

If I do have to have surgery again, I'm requesting the general.

Last night, I woke up at about midnight, and then again at two in the morning, in pain. I have no idea what caused it; it had happened a few times prior but it had always gone away fairly quickly. This time it wouldn't stop, and after about ten minutes I asked Jessie to go ask the nurse for a painkiller and a sleeping pill. Whatever it was, it went away and it hasn't come back since.

Dilation is basically routine now, but it's frustrating. It feels a little dehumanizing with the nurse helping me do it, though at least she doesn't stand and watch me now. I get about half an hour between when she leaves me with one of the stints inside and the next prepared, and when she gets back to clean the area and change my bandage. That half-hour is one of the most boring imaginable, because I can't really do anything more than watch TV or participate in any activity that takes more than one hand, I'm stuck on my back with my legs in the air during it, and I've got something probing uncomfortably up inside me at the same time. If it weren't a chore, it might be enjoyable, but then, usually when something becomes a job for me, it stops being fun.

Dr. Sanguan came by the room while I was trying to work on this entry, and he just confirmed that I did indeed have a bacterial infection, which is probably what cost me the penile graft. He's assured me that the scrotal graft is safe, and he's switched me onto a specific antibiotic to fight the infection that I have, and so I should be set to go under the knife again on the first. He was cheerful about the whole thing, and so it was kind of hard for me not to be as well, at least then.

Realistically, though, right now I'm just very upset, or at least I was when I first heard about this. Originally, I thought I'd be in the hospital for five weeks, and I was grimly determined to survive it. Then suddenly it looked like we'd be out in three, and Jessie and I were ecstatic. Now it looks like we're back on our original schedule, and for some reason we're both just incredibly bothered by that. Ennui has settled, and I'm still catheterized and tied to the hospital as a result. Jessie is going stir-crazy, and I'm having to fight to keep from getting incredibly frustrated at my inability to go out and do things away from this room.

At least hopefully we won't have to extend our stay.

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.

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.

Two days have passed, roughly, since I last updated my diary, and I'm of mixed feelings on that. On the one hand, I did promise that I'd generate a thorough recording of the trip here, and on the other nothing "unusual" has
really happened. We did identify that the bedsores on my rump have been standard pressure sores that have gone away over time, and last night I was able to lie in bed comfortably for the first time in several days which I have
to say has been a blessing unto itself.

Last night, we ordered Thai pizza online, which I must say was far more of an experience than it needed to be,
but well worth the effort in the end. One of the local pizzarias had left a laminated menu at the nurses' station, and at the bottom they'd listed their website, amusingly hosted by the same company providing our dialup access. So, we decided that rather than try to go through the nurses, ordering through the staff and then dealing with cash hassles and such, we'd just take care of the entire transaction online and pay with a credit card, as they said we
could, which would make things nice and convenient.

Of course, nowhere on their site could I find a place to enter my credit card information, and then it said that it would email the details of the transaction to my listed mailing address, which I had marked as nobody@menagerie.tf to prevent any unwanted advertizing. So, I went through the entire ordering process again to get the details of the order, only to fail to have the email materialize at all. Right after that, I managed to
knock my catheter bag into the floor, and shortly thereafter I had a crying fit all over Jessie's arm.

The pizza itself was quite good, once it did arrive, though. I was so shocked when the delivery man arrived at the room—ahead of schedule, no less—that it tasted far better than I expected it would, even given that the sausages on my "meat deluxe" were curried. The cocktail sauce that came with our breadsticks tasted sufficiently of peanuts to give me pause, but Jessie adored it, saying that zie lacked any equivalent in Western cuisine and that for that alone it was brilliantly weird. 

This morning, I got myself out of bed and did my own cleaning in the bathroom. I still can't shower because of the epidural needle, so my hair is a horrendous mat on the top of my head, but I could take a washcloth to my own
skin, brush my teeth without having someone hand me the spit-tray, et cetera. There's something heavily empowering in being able to do one's own toiletries after so many days in bed. I could have gotten up any time along the way and done this, but until now sitting up hasn't been an option because of the bedsores, and before that I couldn't get out of bed at all.

Of course, now I'm getting out of bed and able to really walk around and such just in time for another few days of enforced bedrest. Dr. Sanguan came to the room just after I'd finished cleaning myself and inspected things, and he said everything looks set for the skin graft either tomorrow afternoon or Friday morning, so either I can have breakfast and not lunch, or lunch and dinner but not breakfast the next day. However, it also means that I'll be three procedures down, and only one to go before I should start being able to look at return flights to England to see Chloe again.

In a way, this whole trip has been an incredible vacation, despite the painful medical procedures under which I've gone while I've been here. I've gotten to see one of my extended family, I've gone through the last major stage in my transition, I've gotten to see two foreign countries I'd never visited before, and I've actually met a number of people here that, in one way or another, I'm glad to have gotten to know.

In a very small way, I'm going to miss Thailand. Not much, and not often, but it'll probably happen.

I have once again hit the point at which no matter in which position I put myself, something's going to hurt, so I might as well hurt sitting up at the computer. Getting sleep consists of putting my arms under my buttocks to try to relieve some of the pressure sores and then getting between fifteen and thirty minutes of nap until my arms go numb from the weight on them. Then I remove my arms, shift onto my side and crush the packing between my thighs for a few minutes, shift to the other side to do the same, then lie back again on my back, return my arms to beneath my rump and start the whole process over again. This worked remarkably well for the first day. It hasn't
worked since.

Tomorrow, hopefully, Dr. Sanguan will clear me for short walks out of bed, and at that point I can stand up and move around some and take the pressure off of my rump so that when I do lie down it isn't an instant muscle cramp with numb soreness along my buttocks. I haven't had weight on my feet in the last three days, give or take, I think. I was still walking around on Thursday. Today is Sunday morning, so it hasn't been that long on
recollection, but it feels like it has been.

The packing is, in and of itself, a minor demon sent from some level not quite hell to torment me. It's wedged up into the neovaginal canal, which isn't lined yet with anything, to ensure that the opening heals properly while the
skin which is to line the neovagina is in the skin graft bank, being carefully stretched and measured. Every time I shift positions, I can feel the thing rubbing painfully against the exposed nerves within, and it's needless to say
an unpleasant sensation. 

In the interest of completeness, I'm doing my best to keep these diary entries as genuine as possible, but if I keep typing on this one, it's going to degenerate into unpleasantries. I know when all is said and done that I'll have considered this whole experience worthwhile, but as it stands now I can't help but wish in some small part that I'd never started down this road. I know that's the pain talking, not my true feelings, but at the moment, there's a
lot of pain and it wants to have a say.

---

I've been out of bed three times now since Dr. Sanguan came around to check on my recovery. I'd managed to pop the covering to the packing, and he came in on his day off to check on my packing, tape it closed again and then clear me for short bouts of standing on my feet and walking around the room. I still have to be exceptionally careful, and my balance isn't too good because I still have the packing in place, but it has been wonderful just getting out of bed again, even if only for short bursts.

Tomorrow morning I go back to the OR for Dr. Sanguan to change my packing, which should be only under an epidural. The anaesthesiologist put in a special tube for that when I had the vaginoplasty performed, so with any luck I won't ever be totally unconscious again for the rest of the time I'm here, except when I'm sleeping, and that should become easier as well as I continue to heal. I'm really not in that much pain any more, despite what I was saying earlier today. A lot of that, I think, has just been from the ability to get off of my butt for short stretches, something I've been doing a lot lately. 

As I type this, we've had yet another brown-out. I say yet another because it's been the fourth since our arrival. Jessie was asleep for the first one, so when the second happened during dinner a few nights ago and zie noticed,
being able to say "You missed the first one" generated the most beautiful expression on zir face. I didn't say it to be mean, though; at the time I was pretty doped up on painkillers and in the middle of enjoying the first meal I'd had in several days that actually tasted good.

I said at one point that the worst thing about this place was the food. I lied. The worst thing about this place has been the company. Dr. Sanguan has his own ward in the hospital where all of his patients stay, and the general
attitude of everyone within the wing seems to be "We're a little family here," which I'm sure most of my extended family will realize doesn't sit well with me even under the best of circumstances. One of the girls in the group looks like she's had one too many facial reconstructions, her breasts are too large for her body in my opinion, and she claims to be an expert on the process because she came out as female at age nine and has been in treatment for twenty years. I managed to put up with her coming into my room for a brief visit while she detailed her experiences, but it was only by supreme force of will that I didn't ask her to kindly shut up and leave.

I'm probably going to have to speak with Pim about getting our return tickets changed. We're almost certainly not going to be here the full five weeks at this rate. I probably won't be able to extend the trip to England by much since I have to be under a doctor's care at all times or else I'm no longer on medical leave, but I can justify some amount of travel time based on the fact that my hospital stay took less time than expected.

I just hope when I get back to work that it hasn't all blown up in my face and that I'm not out of a job.

I've just met again with Dr. Sanguan, and he says that he thinks he can get me five inches of depth with my scrotal tissue, which means that even a second-stage colon graft is less advisable. This time, I agreed. Part of me feels like I've accepted a lesser solution, but at the same time I remember everything that he said could go wrong with a colon graft, even though those were one-stage surgical complications.

Am I giving up on my goal? Am I accepting a more sensible surgical result? Jessie and I have talked about it, and zie pointed out that Dr. Sanguan probably wouldn't be advising against the colon graft procedure if it were positively indicated by my medical conditions. The fact that I have as much scrotal tissue as I do means that there's no medical "need" for the colon graft to extend depth, and the desirable effects of the colon graft are for
the most part outweighed by the invasiveness of the surgery to get it.

Also, there's the fact that I've got at least one more surgery while I'm here, the scrotal skin graft into the cavity that's been carved out of my abdomen and packed. I've had a tube in the packing to drain out any bleeding, and I've been cathetered to keep me from needing to go to the bathroom since I left the OR on Friday afternoon. I've got no interest in extending my stay or putting myself into any more undue pain.

I think, of everything that's happened here, the worst honestly has been trying to find something on the menu that I can eat and enjoy. Jessie's the true neophile in the family, and even zie's had trouble keeping up with the spices, heat and flavorings in the food. I finally discovered the generic chicken fried rice, and the roo tried the chicken with baby corn, which I found I liked quite a bit. Everything else I've had has either failed to satisfy or tasted unpleasant.

The nurses will change my packing on Monday, and Thursday I'll have the second-stage skin graft. I have no idea how long I'll be here after that, but I've scheduled for five weeks if I need it. I hope I won't at this rate, but if that's what it takes, I'll do it. 

Phuket International Hospital is an exercise in surreality. A nurse delivering hot water woke us up this morning an hour ago, and we asked her to bring us more towels. When she came back with those, she informed me that Dr. Sanguan—what the staff call him and what I suspect is his actual family name—would be meeting with me this morning but that she didn't know when. I mumbled an affirmative and she left, at which point I commented to Jessie how strange it felt to be undergoing an intense and invasive procedure in a country where nobody spoke my language natively. Jessie's only comment in response was to consider the reverse, where any knowledge of foreign language would be near-accidental. I had to concede that point.

The shower in the bathroom here isn't a recessed stall, or a raised tub with a curtain around it. The whole bathroom floor is sunken about two inches, and the shower area is little more than a waterproof curtain isolating about a third of the floor space. We got a shower, and while I was toweling off, it occured to me that, if I didn't know better, I could easily see the bathroom as being located in a moderately priced hotel. Only upon stepping out into the rest of the room and seeing the single-occupancy white-sheeted gurney with attendant cot beside to remind me of precisely where I was and why. That only added to the disconnected feeling. It's not upsetting or bothersome, just... noteworthy.

The bed arrangement led last night to the first real recognition of what was happening. As I said last night, we met several people all here for the same reason. "Hotel Phuket," Kimberly called it, which brought to mind thoughts of "Hotel Saigon" and branching outwards from there. When Jessie and I finally went to bed, neither of us could sleep at first, despite the sleeping pill a nurse had given me an hour prior. I had to sit up and hold Jessie's paw for a while, just talking, and suddenly it struck me just how much I really was scared. The procedure itself doesn't bother me, but the idea of spending the next five weeks in a bed without my mate upset me heavily. Jessie and I both began crying, something I never expected to happen, and as zie curled zir arms around me, sobbing into my shoulder, zie called me something I'd never heard zim say before.

Wife.

I've faced surgery before. I've had my gallbladder removed, two cysts removed from the base of my spine, and an ingrown toenail fixed, as well as a number of minor procedures only requiring local anaesthetic like wisdom teeth and stitches. I know how much what I'm going to be doing will hurt, and that I can deal with the pain. I don't think I ever really quite understood just how frightened Jessie was, of being with me, next to me, here to hold my paw and yet totally unable to help or do more than offer reassurances that the pain would go away. I don't think zie did either.

Zie said the only thing that could've been harder than watching me suffer, even for something we both knew I needed to do, would have been not being here. Zie said zie finally understood and had learned to respect zir father for what he had to face with all of his own wife's medical problems. Zie said zie'd be with me, until the end, and that zie never wanted me to let go until I wished to do so. I don't think I ever will.

Surgery at this point is going to feel almost anti-climactic.

---

I've just finished the consultation with Dr. Sanguan—which is his first name, the equivalent of "Dr. Harry" in the US—and I'm not too pleased with the outcome, but at the same time I find it hard to argue with his analysis. He said I have ample scrotal tissue but negligible penile skin, and that I wasn't a good candidate for one-step colon vaginoplasty. We talked briefly about possibly doing the colon graft later this trip, or perhaps coming back in six months to a year if I decide I'm not happy with the lack of depth or the lack of self-lubrication, but he said full-stop that tomorrow would be the normal vaginoplasty and that we'd discuss later in the trip further options.

After spending six months or more psyching myself up for the pain and suffering of the one-step colon graft, to be told "you don't qualify" is a let-down. At best, I'm looking at having two surgeries while I'm here, something I'm certainly not happy considering. At worst, I'm looking at having to schedule a second trip to Thailand, which means getting more time off from work, more money into the flights, et cetera. It's... disappointing.

At the same time, I'm relieved that Dr. Sanguan was honest with me. It would have been far worse to come away with some of the complications mentioned for people who weren't a good fit for the procedure. Jessie and I have been doing our best to downplay the fact that my results won't be what I expected and talk up all of the positives that result from this. I won't be in the hospital as long, I won't be in pain as long. I may have more time in England. I'll be able to use it more quickly after we get back. Best of all, sayeth my mate, it won't cost as much, so once again I'm saving money.

At times, I feel like I'm constantly fighting this battle. I never quite get what I want, only what will suffice. This is probably the biggest instance of this happening to date. I feel cheated, but nobody's to blame. If anything, it's my genetics at fault, but then that road leads to the "I should've been born female" path, and going that way just degenerates into nailing my paw to my forehead. I'm disappointed, and yet there's no way to argue with it. I can either accept what I'm offered, or I can live with what I have now. I can't have what I desire, but I can learn to make do with what I can get.

I wonder if everyone faces this, or if I'm the only one, or if everyone else does but nobody else thinks it's unusual.

---

This afternoon at 15h, a nurse came to the room and left me a shotglass of what I can only describe as lemon battery acid. I forget exactly what it is, but anyone who's had any kind of intestinal surgery knows precisely to what I'm referring when I mention it. Essentially, it induces a good case of diarrhea, forcing everything in the intestinal tract out of the body. I then got another dose of it at 17h, ensuring that my system's been totally flushed.

The only hitch, of course, is that I'm not having the colon graft procedure, thus I can't see the need for cleaning out the colon. I suppose that it's always a good safety procedure to make sure that there's nothing that could cause contamination of the surgical site, and I know it's normal protocol to stop all food and water intake at midnight the previous day, but this somehow seems a bit ridiculous. I've had two bowls of chicken broth, three glasses of tea, one can of Diet Pepsi, and close to two liters of water with this reverse purgative to ensure that I'm clean from one end to the other.

At 20h, a pair of nurses shaved the surgical site in preparation for tomorrow morning's operation. They pulled the curtain around and blocked Jessie's view of the proceedings, which seems a bit silly to me. It's not like zie hasn't
seen it all before. Then again, I was mildly irked at being asked to change into a hospital gown in front of strangers, and even though I did it with a minimum of complaint I was a bit flustered over it. For as many claims to lack of body conscience as I've made in the last few months, it was a bit surprising for me to discover this last remnant of what some might call dignity. By now, I'd figured I'd gotten over that sort of thing.

It's now twelve hours to surgery, give or take fifteen minutes, and I'm about to go to sleep. Last night, I crashed out at 22h00, and I was up this morning at 06h30 when the nurses came to clean the room. Hopefully tomorrow morning I won't have three hours between when I wake up and when I go under the anaesthetic. Jessie's asked me to make sure zie's awake before I go under the knife. It feels a bit unreal, even now. This was always something that would happen "someday," and now even if it's not precisely what I'd hoped, someday is tomorrow, and there's the possibility of getting the rest of it before I leave, or once I'm fully recovered from this and have a bit more money in the bank.

I don't know if I'll write a diary entry tomorrow. Dr. Sanguan estimates that the surgery will be about five hours, and after that I'll be in the ICU for most of the afternoon and possibly overnight. Hopefully on Saturday I'll be able to get back to the computer and detail how I feel. I won't have any details of the surgery itself, seeing as I'll be unconscious for it. At least, I'd damn well better be unconscious for it. I've awoken once in the middle of surgery already; I've got no desire to do it again.

I really don't have anything more I need to say about it. I've been asked for a detailed report on the process, and this is really it. Most of the time, we've been alone in the room, aside from the visits from nurses and Dr. Sanguan to take blood pressure, clean the room, deliver fresh towels and sheets, and generally keep the place clean. I've had one surgical consultation, and tomorrow is the operation. From here, the rest of the time in the hospital is recovery, and now probably much less of that than planned. I'll keep up notes of what happens and how things proceed, but there's really nothing more about the preparation for the surgery itself.

I need to update my site design, too. As of tomorrow, I'll have burned the bridge.

The jet lag is taking its toll, but I want to put this down somewhere before I forget to do so. Anji asked me to keep a detailed account of the experience, and I've agreed.

The flight from Heathrow to Bangkok was uneventful, though nine hours in any plane is enough to drive me crazy. There was no power adapter for the computer, so after working for an hour on some commissions, I got the warning light telling me that the battery was low. It was fully charged when we left Chloe's, but it doesn't last long.

I'm worried about her, honestly. Seeing her again was wonderful, and going to Brigg to visit her mother's house felt a bit like coming home, but I know she doesn't get much contact with other people, certainly not people with whom she can really be herself. I wish I could spend more time around her, and I know I'll be seeing her again in a few weeks, but after that I have no idea when next I'll have the chance to visit the siscoonie, and that's upsetting, even now. Leaving yesterday evening—twelve hours ago, give or take—was painful. I almost started crying twice in the airport as we entered the secure area.

Bangkok's a sauna compared to our normal environment, and Phuket, being an island, feels even worse. When we got to our room at the hospital, it was raining, but not normal rain. The air holds so much water during the day
that, when the temperature starts to drop after sundown, less moisture can be held in the atmosphere and the excess condenses out and falls to the ground. I remember seeing this effect in Singapore, but that was only two days. This will be five weeks.

One of the other patients in Kunaporn's wing came over to our room as soon as we were situated and semi-insisted on taking us around to meet everyone else in our wing, the others here for the same procedure or related surgeries. I mentioned my desire to have the one-stage colon graft because of the quality of the result, and Kimberly, our guide, began trying to dissuade me from it. I was rather annoyed, and a little unnerved. I got to meet someone else that had had it done, and she's now on her fourth day in bed, cathetered to within an inch of her life and still in pain from the operation. I tell myself I'm a tough chick, that I've had my gallbladder, two cysts and an ingrown toenail removed, but I'm still a bit spooked.

I'll have to consult with Dr. Kunaporn tomorrow about surgical options specifically. Apparently he doesn't like doing the one-step colon graft unless the patient insists or he can see no other way of doing the surgery. I intend on insisting, even granting the increased recovery time and the risk of infection. I'm here for the results, and I'm willing to do what it takes to have the body I want. I can't help but feel that, were I to go back with a less-than-ideal result, I'd end up resenting and regretting the whole trip, instead of planning on coming back for a repeat visit to have my depth extended. Plus, the idea of the procedure I want is to get me away from relying on artificial lubricants; skin grafts from the thighs and tummy won't give me that.

I know what I want. Now I just have to get the surgeon to give it to me, and then deal with the consequences of my decision. I just hope I'm healed enough to go home by the departure date.

We arrived in England last night or this morning or something, and then shortly thereafter Chloe brought us the three hours give or take out to Brigg. We stopped somewhere on the M25 for a traditional breakfast—eggs, bacon, sausage, fried tomatoes, and tea—on the way home. Shortly after arriving, of course, Jessie and I crashed heavily since we'd been up since 10h00 the day prior, and by the time we got to the raccoon's house we'd been awake for close to twenty-seven hours.

So far, everything here is going well, though last night I did have a bit of a hormonal breakdown. Before I left home, I had put on a few pounds saying I'd been good and that it was going to be a while before I had any of those things again. Then last night, I was being something of a hormonal bitch and Jessie was eating cookies, so I grabbed one and noshed it. Then I went for a second and zie said zie'd have no sympathy when Kunaporn told me I was too fat for the operation. Needless to say I put down the second cookie.

Later, though, when I was curled up in bed next to Jessie, I couldn't get the thought out of my mind. What if he did refuse, for whatever reason? I almost started hyperventilating over it. To get this close and then be denied... I
don't know if I could handle that. It took much coaxing and petting from Jessie to get me to relax enough to sleep, and I spent a while sobbing into zie shoulder anyway.

I'm too close to success to fail now. Things could still go wrong, but I can't allow myself to think about them. We leave for Thailand on the twelfth, and three days later I go into surgery. I can't consider things happening any
other way.

I've been off of my hormones now for four days, and while I'm not doing nearly as bad as I feared I might, I'm certainly not doing as well as I'd hoped. I won't say it's hubris; I didn't walk around saying I wouldn't notice being off my pills. I will say that it's a lot worse now that I'm aware that I'm not taking my usual dosage. Before, when I had the pharmacy screw-up, I didn't know I was supposed to be having this many problems, and so it didn't feel
like I had them. At least, I don't remember having them. Jessie says I was a living terror, but I honestly don't remember.

At any rate, I've been all over the map emotionally. Mostly I've been going from intensely frustrated to miserably depressed at my loss of control, and then irritated at my own hormonal swinging and then frustrated at my inability
to control my emotional state, and so on and so forth. It's a weird road to walk, knowing that I'm irrational and unstable and being unable to stop it, only to watch as it happens. It's a bit like a roller coaster, unto which I have likened my mood swings before.

Tomorrow—later today, really—I'll be boarding the flight to England, the first leg of the trip. Hopefully I'll have bottomed out by then, or at least this bloody headache will have resided. Maybe.

This time, I'm writing while I'm awake enough to do so. Jessie's out cold in the cot next to the bed, and I have no idea how much longer I'm going to be awake. I hate being up at such an odd hour, even on vacation, but this time
I think I've earned it, at least in part.

As expected, the orderlies arrived this morning at nine o'clock, and after much last-minute fiddling I was on the gurney and headed to OR reasonably on time. When I arrived, I got to watch two of the nurses picking the hairs out of my scrotal skin with scalpels while the rest of the staff got me positioned up onto the bed. The anaesthesiologist came in, opened up the tube at my shoulder and begin administering the epidural drip, just like last time.

Then the fun and games began. The nurses realized that, in their initial positioning, I was too high up on the bed for them to be able to get my legs into the stirrups, and so they started trying to shift me down further onto the OR bed to make room. Because of my size and unhelped by the fact that I was already losing control of my legs, they simply hefted and tugged me down the length of the bed. Shortly thereafter, a loud crash brought all motion in the OR to a stop. The epidural needle attachment at my shoulder had fallen to the floor and broken. My epidural was stopped. 

The anaesthesiologist came into the room, took one look at the situation, facepalmed and begin measuring out backup dosages. Mostly not awake still because of the hour and the drugs already in my system, I didn't say anything to him at first, and I guess everyone must've thought they had some time to get started, so they did. Then I shifted my leg once, and then the other. For those of you who've ever had an epidural, or any kind of proper anaesthetic, being able to move your own limbs is a Bad Sign, because it means the nerves there aren't asleep. Since I was able to move my legs, this meant I would feel it when they began trying to do anything to me. I attempted to convey this much, but the OR nursing staff was by now too stressed to pay attention to the patient babbling in some incomprehensible foreign language, and I don't speak a word of Thai, so there was no way for me to get my questions answered.

The first time the suture needle pricked me and I felt it, I hissed. The second time I did it again and they asked me if I was in pain. I said, "A little" and they began hurriedly talking amongst themselves, and then the anaesthesioloist put something into my IV line. By the time it occured to me that it was more anaesthetic, I was unconscious.

Unfortunately, apparently nobody told Jessie that this had happened, and so when they brought me out of surgery, instead of leaving in ICU to recover like last time, they wheeled me back into the hospital room so that Jessie could get the full effect of seeing someone waking up from a drug-induced sleep, including the shakes and the mostly-incoherent babbling of someone complaining about being too cold. Needless to say, my mate was not very happy about this. When I did finally regain consciousness—around 17h—and explained what had happened, zie calmed down a lot, but we were still both rather upset over what had occured.

At least the only thing I really have left is one packing change. I don't even have the vacuum tube any more, just the catheter. Hopefully by next Tuesday the surgeon will change my packing, and then by next Friday I should
be able to start looking at return flights.

I'm glad I came here, but I'm getting more eager to go home every day.