: Driving to Montreal :

This is the first in a series of posts recounting my trip to Montreal and gender reassignment surgery with Dr. Pierre Brassard, which took place on January 8, 2007:

As a lot of things in my life lately, the trip to Montreal was quite the adventure, and unfortunately not in a good way.

First of all, I had to work pretty late on Friday night (Jan. 5, 2007), and then there was some kind of police investigation that shut down a lot of trains from Penn Station, which made the station a madhouse and caused me to miss my train home. So it was a pretty stressful night even leading up to the weekend, but at least I felt like I got everything done at work that I needed to do before I left.

Saturday morning I got up at 9 a.m. to pick up a silver Ford Taurus from the local Budget Rent-a-Car. Since Yoshi (my 1999 Honda Odyssey) is getting a bit long in the tooth, I figured it would be safer to have a newer car for the trip. Plus, it made it more convenient for me to disconnect Yoshi's battery for the duration of the trip and my recovery, since I wouldn't be able to drive anyway. I drove the rental car home and continued to pack, but I was struggling with my emotions the whole morning, crying a lot and such, not for any particular reason, just being emotional, probably from my lack of estrogen and the significance of the day. I had been instructed to stop hormones three weeks prior to surgery, and I did so with mostly minimal effects.

Once I finished packing, I ran some last-minute errands - dropped off my books at the library, picked up my dry cleaning and emptied my mailboxes. I went to my family's house, loaded their stuff and left around 3:30 p.m., a bit later than we had planned, but figured we would still be okay if we made good time.

Unfortunately, it was not to be. In upstate New York, a light came on the dashboard that read "Check Transmission." We stopped at a service station and checked the fluid level - it was normal. Since it wasn't something we could fix ourselves, we decided to play it safe and change out the car at the Budget office at the airport in Albany. This turned out to be a lot more difficult than we expected, as many of the same-size cars either did not have a CD player (a requirement), only had two doors, or had smaller trunks. After going back and forth on three or four cars, we finally found a silver Hyundai Sonata that we could live with. At this point it was around 8:30 p.m. and we knew we were going to be late, so we called Madame Chantal, our host at the Gite du Marigot bed and breakfast, to let her know what was happening.

The rest of the trip went well, as the Hyundai drove much better than the Ford. When we got to the border, we were surprised on how easy it was to get in - just a few questions and showing of our driver's licenses (and my new passport). Probably by next year, passports will be required for all U.S. citizens to re-enter the country from Canada, even by car, but as of Jan. 18, only airline travelers require passports.

Upon arriving into Montreal, we found our directions to the B&B to be less than satisfactory and we got lost several times. Once we stopped at a gas station for directions, only to find that the attendant, although he knew where to go, spoke hardly any English. Then a customer came in and tried to be helpful because he could speak English, but it turned out that he had no idea how to get where we were going. So we were able to communicate with the attendant through broken English and got back on the road. After a couple more wrong turns and a midnight phone call to Madame Chantal, we finally arrived at the residence at around 12:30 a.m.

We met Chantal and her husband Ivan, who showed us the apartment where we would be staying. She also gave me an enema to be administered the next day, and said Dr. Brassard would meet with me either Sunday evening or Monday morning before surgery. She also invited me to dinner Sunday evening to meet the other T-girl staying at the house who also is getting surgery this week. Since I had my two companions with me, we had decided to rent the larger apartment rather than stay in the main house so as to have more space and privacy.



As you can see from the photo and if you look at Apartment #4 on the Web site, the room is very nice, but this part of Montreal (Laval) is a bit run down, and looks downright scary at night. I liked the way the room is decorated with lots of exotic and whimsical items, plus it had a fireplace and a full kitchen and bathroom with a shower.

We planned to spend a few hours exploring Montreal on Sunday before my enema and dinner that evening. But Saturday night we were just glad we all made it safely. And so it begins…

Coming up - Exploring Montreal and undergoing surgery

: Finally, the big day! :

This is the second in a series of posts recounting my trip to Montreal and gender reassignment surgery with Dr. Pierre Brassard, which took place on January 8, 2007:

After our late arrival on Saturday night, we slept in Sunday morning at the apartment, finally rising to make breakfast. In the afternoon we went out for a few hours before dinner to explore the city. It was the first time in Montreal for my companions, but I had been here once before, in March 1996. Ironically, that was during my honeymoon, and I suppose it's fitting in a way that this city should serve as another milestone in my life more than a decade later.

We looked in a guidebook and found a place called the Biodome that looked interesting. It was a combination zoo, birdhouse and aquarium that showcases many different ecological environments under one roof. It was located in Olympic Park, part of the complex constructed for the 1976 Olympics, which includes Olympic Stadium, where the Montreal Expos used to play before they moved to Washington D.C. The Biodome was originally constructed as a sporting arena. One of my companions observed that with the massive stadium now empty and with so many buildings still standing that were built for events long forgotten, this part of the city feels old and used up, sort of halfway between the modern downtown and ancient Vieux Montreal, the historic part of the city. It bears noting that the 1976 Olympics were the most expensive Olympic Games ever organized, and left the city in debt for years afterward.

Apart from the generally lackluster exterior, inside the Biodome was surprisingly entertaining. The cavernous domed space was separated into several large sections that were dressed as different habitats. The first one was a tropical rainforest that housed tiny monkeys, alligators, parrots and other animals in a soaring free space. Next was a forested zone that had a wonderful beaver exhibit where you could not only see underwater to watch the beavers swim (one took a big poop while he was swimming) but there was even a camera inside the beaver's dam where you could watch him eat his meals. There was also an otter exhibit, but unfortunately it was empty that day.



The next room held a tidal area exhibit that included a small seashore for gulls and other seabirds, plus a wonderful glass-enclosed tidal pool that housed an incredible array of starfish, hermit crabs, anemone, coral and other reef animals. A walkway led to a large aquarium filled with many kinds of fish. Finally, there was an arctic exhibit of penguins, a somewhat smaller version of the penguin exhibit we saw at the Bronx Zoo.



When we got back, I did my first of two enemas, and then took a bath in the small Jacuzzi tub, which was to be my last bath for nearly a week, so I took my time about it. While my family ate dinner at the apartment, I walked around the corner and had my dinner with the other two trans-girls at the main house. One is Gene, a woman in her late 50s who lives in Maplewood, New Jersey - she and I are surgery partners. The other is Kaylyn, a woman in her mid-30s from New York. Her operation was scheduled for Tuesday.

After dinner I went back to the apartment to pack for the hospital and then we took the 10-minute drive over there. As we came in the door one of the nurses spied my Chalice Well pendant around my neck and asked about it. It was comforting to find a Wiccan nurse there and reminded me of the hotel in Virginia run by pagans that I stopped at last summer driving up from Houston. I unpacked my necessities and settled into the room that I was sharing with Gene. My companions and I played some board and card games until about 10 p.m. when I had to do my second enema and go to bed. While Gene asked for a sedative, I was surprisingly calm and didn't need one to sleep. I just felt fortunate to have made it this far and I was ready to get it done.

At 7 a.m. Dr. Brassard showed up and we went into a private room for our consultation. As I expected, when I showed him my tiny genitalia, he confirmed that I would need a skin graft to achieve functional depth. He said that my male parts were among the smallest he'd ever worked on, and if I had been one of his first 50 patients he would have been a little nervous, but now that he's done over a thousand of them, he feels comfortable with me. As I said before, this didn't come as a surprise to me that I would need a skin graft. Having small genitals has been a great benefit to me for the past 15 months that I've been full-time, obviating the need for tucking, or hiding them while wearing form-fitting clothes, even certain styles of bathing suits. But now I had to pay the price for the convenience.

A few minutes after my consultation Gene went off to surgery, and then we sat together and played more games until 12:30 p.m. when the nurse came to get me. I went into the surgical waiting room, where I laid down on a gurney and she covered me with a warm blanket. Dr. Brassard came in a few minutes later and said a few words of reassurance before the anesthesiologist came to see me. Since all my work was being done below the waist, the anesthesiologist offered two options - general or regional anesthesia.

General anesthesia is where they knock you out and your brain is essentially shut down into a coma-like state. Regional anesthesia is similar to the epidural that many woman receive during childbirth and I was familiar with it because it was used on my ex during my son's birth. I decided that I didn't want to go under general anesthesia since I didn't have to. I had done it last year for cosmetic surgery, and I had some difficulty waking up from it. So I opted for the regional anesthetic, which is administered through a needle into my spinal column in my lower back. He explained that I would be in a sleepy, dreamlike state, but not completely unconscious. This seemed a little unsettling as it didn't sound like I would be sufficiently "out" to avoid possibly becoming agitated during surgery, and I certainly didn't want to twitch or otherwise move while Dr. Brassard was working on me. But he assured me that I would be fine.

Once the decision was made, I was wheeled into the surgery room and placed on the table. An IV needle was inserted and taped into my left hand and they prepared my back for the anesthesia by scrubbing it with an iodine solution. Since I'm used to needles at this point from my twice-monthly self-injections of delestrogen, the needle in my back didn't really faze me much at all. Almost as soon as the needle was administered and I lay back down, I could feel my legs going tingly and numb as Dr. Brassard put them in stirrups above his head. That was pretty much the last thing I remember because seconds later the anesthesiologist gave me a sedative through the IV that made me fall asleep, although not to the point of having to assist me with breathing. Despite my concerns, I was completely insensate during the entire procedure and didn't feel or remember anything.

Coming up - recovery in the hospital

: Waking up female :

This is the third in a series of posts recounting my trip to Montreal and gender reassignment surgery with Dr. Pierre Brassard, which took place on January 8, 2007:

When I awoke back in my hospital room, I couldn't move my legs or wiggle my toes, even though I was fully conscious and remarkably coherent, compared to how I was after general anesthesia last December. I felt like Uma Thurman's character "The Bride" in Kill Bill Vol. 1 when she wakes up from a coma and she's trying to get her big toe to move. Other than my lack of motor control, I remember it being painful between my legs despite the ice packs, but not as bad as I'd expected. The most painful part was when I had to move around so they could change my blood-soaked dressings and spent ice packs.

On Wednesday, the second day after surgery, I took my first step out of bed, just one step before settling into my chair with the inflatable donut on it. That part was pretty excruciating, but I managed it. The problem is that the donut doesn't do much good because both my genital area and my skin graft site on my right inner thigh both hurt - in fact, the skin graft area hurts more - so the donut transfers my weight from my genital area to my thighs.

When a skin graft is required, the surgeon removes the top layer of skin, the epidermis, leaving the raw skin underneath exposed, much like a severe burn. For me, this area is about the size of a piece of sliced white bread. A piece of gauze was placed on the area, and the blood and other fluids soaked through the pad and dried, bonding the pad with my skin like forming a scab. However, when I move I can feel the raw flesh rubbing against the pad as it flexes, and it stings and burns quite a lot as you'd expect from such a wound. The genital areas are sore, but the pain is more of a dull throbbing pain compared to the sharp burning pain of the skin graft. I was very glad to have a catheter for my urine so I didn't have to get out of bed to use the bathroom - it makes me feel a bit like Homer Simpson.

While Demerol was available for the pain, taking it made me nauseous, so I resolved to wean myself off that as soon as possible. The pain was quite manageable except for the few times I had to get up and walk or take a shower, and on those times, I would just take Tylenol just to take the edge off. When I wasn't dealing with getting out of bed, I spent most of my time with my curtains drawn and listening to my iPod, trying to relax.

Aside from the pain it caused, showers were problematic for another reason. The skin graft pad on my thigh had to be kept dry, and Dr. Brassard said it would slowly come off by itself. Unfortunately, it was impossible to take a shower without soaking the pad, so after bathing I had to lie in bed and use a hair dryer to dry out the pad. The constant wetting and drying also caused the padding to harden and stiffen, which increased the pain of movement. Fortunately, in the hospital I didn't have to move very much.

The food at the hospital was probably better than you'd expect for hospital food. For lunch I had sausage and vegetables with potatoes au gratin, along with some chicken broth and ice cream. This evening dinner was vegetable lasagna, vegetable juice and ice cream again. Since this is the first I've ever been confined to a hospital overnight in my entire life, I don't have much basis for comparison.

Coming up - Moving on to the convalescence center

: Recovery at the convalescence center :

This is the fourth in a series of posts recounting my trip to Montreal and gender reassignment surgery with Dr. Pierre Brassard, which took place on January 8, 2007:

On Thursday, January 11, Gene and I packed our bags and trundled off in a black Lincoln Town Car to a private convalescence center a few miles away from the hospital. The exertion of this activity was extremely exhausting, and took almost a day just to recover from. Earlier in the day Dr. Brassard came in and cut some of the stitches that held gauze over the upper part of the vulva and took that gauze out. There is still a small amount of gauze over the clitoris and the packing inside the vagina remains that will come out on Sunday. The packing consists of a condom about five inches long filled with gauze, and having it inside me makes walking and moving even more uncomfortable.

The following day I had my first look at my new genitalia using a mirror. I was actually quite impressed with how real they look, at least in basic structure. It's such a thrill to see that and know that it's mine. There are two nasty scars running up onto my pubic mound, but they should fade and the scars will be covered by pubic hair once it grows back in. I apply ointment on those twice a day after bathing. The clitoris is still stitched up with gauze, so I can't spread the labia to see it, but overall, I'm satisfied with the initial results. I didn't have very high expectations to begin with, but it's really the functional aspect that concerns me the most. That will take a while to figure out, so no use in worrying about it now.

Upon leaving the hospital, I could no longer have a urine bag next to my bed, so I had to start going to the bathroom myself. I still had a short (appropriately-colored) yellow catheter tube sticking out of me, and the end was plugged with a white plastic cap. In order to pee, I had to stand over the toilet, unplug the catheter (being careful not to let the plug touch anything to minimize the risk of bladder infection) and let the urine flow out of the tube into the toilet. Ironically it was the first time in more than a year that I stood up to pee.

Kaylyn is still at the hospital today, along with her surgery partner Linda, who is a redheaded T-girl from Montreal. Both had their surgeries a day after me and Gene, so they will arrive tonight. The best thing about being out of the hospital is that we each get private rooms with remote control adjustable beds - at the hospital we had to call the nurses to adjust our beds for us. Also, the TVs here have cable, which means English-speaking channels. However, the ESPN channel is called TSN (Toronto Sports Network) and focuses almost exclusively on hockey. But we do have the major networks and CNN, which is a big upgrade from the rabbit-ears equipped TV at the hospital, not that I felt like watching much TV the first few days after surgery. We also have a lot more space for our own stuff, and private bathrooms with sinks and toilets to boot (although the shower is still shared).



Today I had my first sitz bath, which is basically a small basin placed in the toilet and filled with soapy water where I can wash between my legs. The hardest thing was sitting on my graft pad, which I tried to avoid by shifting my weight to one side and holding myself up using the handicapped bars and a stool next to the toilet. The exertion meant I couldn't soak more than about four minutes before I would become exhausted.

After each shower or sitz bath, I still had to lay down with a hair dryer to dry the skin graft pad, which started peeling off after a couple days. Eventually it got to the point where the nurse would come in after my shower and trim the edges of the gauze off one small piece at a time. This was not the most pleasant ordeal - aside from having a stranger's head down between my legs, after a while it became necessary to actually pull layers of the gauze off the wound. If you're old enough to remember when bandages used to stick to wounds before Curad pioneered the non-stick bandage, you might remember how excruciatingly painful this is, especially when you're dealing with a bandage pad the size of a slice of bread.

Being cut off from the outside world was hard, as there was no wireless Internet access available. I missed checking my emails, and reading about what's going on with my friends. The lack of access compounded a problem that sprung up when I found out that I was supposed to leave on January 18, not the 22nd (which I had made my plane reservations for). Since I made my reservations on Orbitz.com, I had to have my family get me the phone number so I could make the change over the phone.

On Sunday the nurse removed the last piece of gauze from the clitoris and cut the stitches holding my vaginal packing inside and removed that. As most people report, this was not painful at all - it was actually a bit of a relief. I had been issued a pink bag containing a set of five Femistent dilators. The first attempt at dilation wasn't very successful - I simply could not insert the smallest stent into my vagina. The nurse gave me some muscle relaxants to take, and after about 30 minutes we tried again, and this time it worked. I also had to start douching twice a day with a vinegar and water mixture. With all these routines, I actually became quite active during the last week of my stay. A typical day went like this:

8 a.m. Breakfast
8:30 Shower and douche
9 Dry graft pad
9:30 1st dilation
11:30 2nd dilation
12 Lunch
1 p.m Nap
3:30 3rd dilation
6 Dinner
6:30 4th dilation
9 5th dilation
9:30 Sitz bath and douche
10 Dry graft pad
11 Bedtime

In between I read a lot, and watched a lot of movies and episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on my laptop. In fact, I watched the entire Season 6 (22 episodes) of Buffy while in the convalescence center. Once Dr. Brassard walked in in the middle of one and asked what it was. When I told him the title, he thought it sounded like a horror show, but when I explained that the heroine was a young woman, he looked positively confused. I guess the show didn't have much traction in French-speaking Canada.

Coming up - the journey home and my first orgasm

: Coming (at) home :

This is the fifth and final entry in a series of posts recounting my trip to Montreal and gender reassignment surgery with Dr. Pierre Brassard, which took place on January 8, 2007:

Leaving the convalescence center I had mixed emotions. On the one hand, I undoubtedly could not wait to get home, even to the point of having to pay a few hundred dollars extra to get a plane ticket that left Montreal four days early. I looked forward to the comfort of my own bed, and being with my family again (they had left three days after surgery). Also, I was running out of DVDs to watch. On the other hand, I worried about the pain of the journey, and I would certainly miss having my meals catered and having a staff of people on call 24 hours a day to assist me.

The day I left the convalescence center began with a shower as always and it was time to finish pulling off the gauze on my skin graft. By this point the only thing left of the pad was the very last layer, the top layer of plastic mesh that sandwiched the absorbent padding of the original gauze pad. This mesh, which is quite similar to a piece of window screen, had become embedded in the scar tissue of my healing graft, so removing it was going to be difficult, but it had to be done. I didn't want to have to deal with it at home all by myself without my nurse, Anne (she was my favorite nurse, and the only one I wanted touching the graft area).

Anne carefully removed the last of the mesh, which was very painful and caused the area to start bleeding a little. Then she taped a fresh gauze pad to the wound so I could travel home without it bleeding through my clothes. Anne and I both marveled at the resilience of FTM patients, who typically must endure several skin grafts on their arms and legs in order to harvest enough skin to create their new anatomies.

Around 10:30 a.m., Robert the driver came to pick up Kaylyn and me for the trip to the airport, since our flights were about the same time. Going through customs was a breeze, and sitting in the tight confines of the airplane wasn't too difficult. Having the fresh pad cushioned the area and made it more comfortable than dealing with the open wound.

The first couple days at home I was pretty reluctant to get out of bed, since the exertion of the trip completely wiped me out. But the worst part was when I accidentally urinated on the graft pad and I had to take it off myself. I can say unequivocally that ripping off that pad caused the most excruciating pain of this entire ordeal.

For the first week or so I slept on plastic-backed hospital pads because of the bleeding, but eventually the routine of drying the area after each bathing, combined with my family's help in trimming off the excess scar tissue that formed, helped the graft area to scab over and finally heal. While it will always be discolored from the surrounding skin, today this area that has given me so much grief is finally healed and doesn't bother me anymore.

Four days after arriving home, I touched my new parts for the first time, and I was pleased to discover that I am indeed sensate and most likely capable of orgasm. The feelings are not all that different from before, only that the method of touching to produce those feelings is different for obvious reasons. Also, I felt like I couldn't really reach orgasm this first time because I didn't have anything that would lead me to ejaculate. Part of learning about my new body will involve understanding that orgasm is not equated to ejaculation or anything else that happens physically. Orgasm has to occur in my mind first, and whatever happens with the body will follow naturally.

The second time I experimented with self-stimulation was Monday, Feb. 5, and I did manage to experience my first orgasm post-op, further indication that my surgery was successful. I attribute this partly to reduced swelling and dissipation of the numbness in my genital region, plus my overall healing progress that resulted in less painful and more pleasurable sensations.

So the real question is, how did it feel? In a word, wonderful. In some ways it's the same as prior to surgery, and in other ways it's very different. The lead-up part, or excitement phase, feels pretty much the same, and there's the same urgency to build to climax that there was before. However, the actual experience of orgasm was quite different for me, and I have some theories on why that is, which I will share after my description of the physical sensations.

The simple description is that the orgasm lasts longer for me now. Whereas before surgery the actual point of orgasm was a very quick sensation lasting maybe one or two seconds, now it felt like it lasted for five to seven seconds of sustained orgasm. Also, pre-op there is the tangible, physical sensation of ejaculation where I could feel all the "plumbing" in action, although this sensation was greatly reduced after prolonged HRT. Post-op, this physical throbbing deep in the pelvis from the various organs and glands used in ejaculation, plus the movement of the seminal fluid itself was absent, so the electric pulses of the nervous system generated most, if not all of the feeling of orgasm.

Another difference I observed pre- to post-op is that pre-op, orgasms tended to bring about feelings of relief and lethargy, whereas now it was accompanied by sheer joy. After my recent orgasm I was overcome with laughter, something that never happened after pre-op orgasms. I don't think I've ever felt quite like that before in my whole life. Perhaps it was partly due to the fact that this was my first one, but I just had the sense that without all the physical activity involved with ejaculation, I was able to enjoy the experience more as pure sensation, without all the societal significance and, let's face it, messiness of ejaculation.

This brings me to my theory on why I might have perceived this orgasm to be longer than those pre-op. There is an evolutionary theory that male orgasm is nature's way of rewarding successful breeding behavior, i.e. ejaculation of sperm a necessary action on the male's part to produce offspring. Orgasm is the little treat that motivates us to engage in sexual activity long enough to reach that goal.

However, in my case and other post-ops I've heard of, it's possible that what happens is that we trick nature into giving us more rewards. When we reach orgasm, our bodies are still attempting to ejaculate, but obviously nothing is happening. Faced with this obstacle, our brains try harder to get the body to ejaculate by prolonging and increasing the orgasm. In a way, the brain is tricked into feeding us more reward because the evolutionary imperative is not being delivered the way it should be. So I'm not sure how long my brain will be fooled in this way before it catches on that my body doesn't ejaculate any more. Obviously, I'm hoping that from an evolutionary standpoint, I'm a very slow learner.

Aside from the workings of my female anatomy, things are progressing nicely for me otherwise as well. I am sleeping more because it's no longer painful to shift positions in bed. I use a "C"-shaped pillow called a Boppy to sit, but sitting in a normal chair without it is still very uncomfortable. In the next few days I plan to go to an office supply store and test out some ergonomic kneeling chairs that might be more comfortable for me. If so, I can request one for my office for when I go back to work.

This week I've taken my first couple of short car rides with my family, and I haven't had much problem with that. I can walk at a leisurely gait, but any faster is painful. I plan to carry a walking cane when I go back to work so that New Yorkers don't run me down or get aggravated at my slow pace.

I don't really have a lot to say about the significance of being post-op, other than I'm glad the ordeal is mostly behind me. It has been a trying experience, and I'll admit there are times during the recovery when I wondered if it was worth the pain I was going through. But now that I've come out the other side of the tunnel, I feel satisfied and content. To repeat an analogy I've used before, this has been a long pit stop in the race of life. Now I am looking forward to living without having transition hanging over me, and ready for the next big adventure that life has in store for me.

: AN ANNOUNCEMENT :

As with all things, there is a beginning and an end. And for this blog, the end is here.

Waterlilies started on September 30, 2005, my final date of employment at my last job as a supervisor for a large Houston PR firm. It was the eve of starting my Real Life Test of living full-time as a woman, and the day after I'd come out as transsexual to all of my co-workers all at once, in public, in the middle of a crowded Mexican restaurant. Looking back, that was probably one of the bravest things I've ever done.

I started this blog site for two reasons - one was to help educate people about transgender issues and the second was to let people from my old life know how I've been progressing in my transition. Now that my sex reassignment surgery has been completed, my transition is basically over in terms of it having a major impact on my day-to-day life. While there will always be minutiae that I deal with as a trans-girl (such as my upcoming first OB/GYN appointment), there's not much else to say about the journey of transition, at least I hope that's true for me. So the first reason for this blog has been fulfilled as far as I'm concerned.

The second reason, to let people from my old life know how I'm doing, has been slowly fading after a sharp initial drop-off. The first couple of days after my dramatic announcement, I had as many as 50 visitors in a single day, but that quickly tapered off and today, only about four or five visitors read this site. Who these people are, I have no idea, but I highly doubt that they are people who actually know me, and if they are, I'd suspect that they know me well enough to not need this site. So while it's possible that there may be one or two of my old friends reading this, I find it highly doubtful, and therefore the second purpose for this site is no longer valid.

If you are indeed a regular reader of this site and you want to continue following my post-SRS life, you can send me an email with the word "Waterlilies" in the subject line and if you're not a stalker-type I will let you know where to find me online.

Whoever you are, I hope you have enjoyed reading about this journey, and that it has educated, entertained or enlightened you in some small way about the ups and downs of gender transition. Life is truly a miracle, and we all get to experience it.

Peace,
Michelle