I realised that I hadn’t posted a general update post on here for a while, and since I’m five days in and five days to go before the vest comes off, that’s what you get tonight!

The swelling around my chest is much reduced, so much so that during the day I have to pad the compression vest with a folded scarf or towel. I don’t do that at night because I’m much less at risk of a dressing shifting out of place. You can see each one of my ribs, which you couldn’t a few days ago. There’s still a significant amount of swelling along the sides of my body, although I’m pretty sure the drain sites have closed up entirely.

There are still purple maker pen spider lines around my graft sites but the skin has started to peel, which it will do a few times before my natural colouring comes back. The only line in my aftercare instructions in all caps is: “DO NOT PULL OFF ANY AUREOLA GLUE!” …So I’m doing my best to leave everything alone, cover it with bacitracin when I change my dressings and let everything happen naturally.

My nerves are gradually rerouting their pathways through my chest, and sensation is starting to come back. This feels like little tiny shoots of sensation now, but a few days ago I kept getting these strange shivers across my whole back that made it feel like I was cold the whole time and couldn’t get warm. Caveat: I may have just been really cold, since my roommate and I are both pretty broke and thus only keep the apartment at 62 degrees.

I can lift my arms straight over my head, although it still stretches and pulls a little bit and I wouldn’t want to have to do it in a hurry, or against any kind of resistance. I can lie in bed and almost comfortably rest my head on my arm, but I’m still doing a lot of propping myself up with pillows so that i can lie comfortably without pulling or crushing anything.

Emotionally… boy, that’s a tough one. My nerves are coming back before all the healing has happened, and today more than any day previously everything feels like soreness and burning. I am not dealing with pain very gracefully, and I am beginning to be frustrated with the limitations on how far and fast I can walk, run, stand, and be out and about in the world. I’ve been off ibuprofen for a while now and I want to go back on it for a few days, but I’m torn because that also means I have to be super careful with how I use my body, knowing that I might not be getting all the feedback I need. I think that all dancers in particular know how frustrating injury is, and how it can get you down. I’m a little bit got down.

No-one has asked, but I want to address the question of why I’m not showing pictures of my chest as it heals. Again, I’m torn. I know that it would be really really helpful for some people to see what the healing process looks like, but I don’t want to use my body as that example. Because of privacy, because of the new facebook rules about “sexualised” content, because I teach people who know how to use google, because I am not a human who gets their body out a lot, or takes a lot of photographs of themselves. But also because I look injured, and in process – I feel in pain and I look like I should feel in pain – and there is so much pressure on trans people, and non-binary people in particular to perform their gender successfully that it feels like too much for me to pull back the curtain right now.

It’s like the stereotypical transgender coming out story that many people have heard: “I put on a dress for the first time and I knew I was a girl.” That story exists, and I’m not slighting the people who experienced that kind of epiphany, but there are so many more ways of coming to the knowledge of your gender, and many of those are fraught and soul-searching and prone to doubt in a world that requires us to be really really sure of who we are – so sure that we can be called upon to defend ourselves and all like us at any given moment, and be articulate, clear and reasonable when we do. Being transgender is not actually like that. We have our doubts, and our “but what ifs,” and the compromises that we make to get by in a way that is survivable. Like the recovery process I’m going through, it takes a lot of time and frustration even to do the things you love and are excited for. But in a world that requires certainty, it feels like too much of a burden to put up forever the visual evidence of the more murky place that my body is in.

Maybe I’ll change my mind, but that’s where I am right now.