| Montr�al On My Mind It was a difficult ride back to my sister�s home in more ways than one. Spending five hours in my car was uncomfortable to say the least. The sadness I felt from leaving Montr�al was almost intolerable. It has been said that home is where your heart is. My heart found a home in living at the residence. I knew I was going to miss being there, and for obvious reasons. I suppose it was prudent to actually start getting on with the rest of my life, but my heart was still back at the residence amidst the warmth that I felt while I surrendered my male life forever. It would take me a very long time before I could let go of my desire to find comfort in my memories of my stay there. The fondness for that miraculous time in my life will never fade. To this very day something will inevitably remind me of some aspect of my stay there, many of those reminders will result in a tear in my eye. I feel so grateful my two weeks in Montr�al were such a wonderfully memorable experience for me. I was happy to be spending a few days with my sister before heading back to my own home. This gave me a chance to slowly acclimate to life away from the comforts and care of the residence. She set me up in one of her spare rooms and offered me the use of her spacious garden bathtub in order to get in my twice daily baths. It was my desire to be extremely diligent in following the dilation schedule provided by Dr. M�nard. For the next month I was supposed to dilate four times a day with the three smallest stents in my set. I managed to get in two more dilations that evening, and a bath before I hit the hay. It was odd sleeping away from the room at the residence that I had grown so fond of. I woke up the next morning with the same task at hand---dilation. After I finished my first dilation of the day I got a taste of how my life was changing since my surgery. My sister came into to the house nearly hysterical. She had backed into the passenger side of my car with her car as she was exiting her garage. She just felt horrible about it and wanted me to see the damage. I had done something very similar many years ago, so I could relate to her anguish. I stepped into the cold outdoors to survey the damage. It was odd how I felt, it just seemed so minor compared to what else was going on in my life. I just shrugged, telling her �it�s just a hunk a metal, in another month when it�s fixed no one will ever tell the difference�. The fact that my car was damaged didn�t even seem important to me at that juncture. I was more worried about soothing my sister�s angst. She called the incident into her insurance agent, and in the end I was right, it�s repaired and no worse for wear. My priorities were completely focused on doing my best to heal properly, and on spending the required time for dilating. Things like car accidents seemed so trivial at that point in time. What was not trivial was my concern for the skin graft on my inner labia. The black color was not going away, and each time I bathed the tissue seemed to be disintegrating. I couldn�t figure out if this was just my imagination, because I was so adamant it would heal correctly. In the back of my mind I knew exactly what was happening, and yet I was in total denial. The thought of losing a part of me after going through all of that trauma was indeed frightening. I didn�t know what to expect as far as the post-operative healing was concerned. During the next few months so many things would be left up to me to determine whether the healing process was copacetic. This was just the beginning of many doubts I had concerning my healing process. I just put it out of my mind until I could get a hold of Dr. M�nard the following Monday. I didn�t really do anything those few days except for the usual, and spending a fair amount of time on the phone. I talked with Randy (the FtM from the residence) for a couple hours that weekend. It was so nice to hear his voice, and to hear how he was doing. We shared many of our special memories of each other from our short time together in Montr�al. He was so sweet and kind. I had hoped for a long lasting friendship with him, but that�s a whole another story. <<BACK<< >>NEXT>> @ |