A quick update on life. Last Tuesday, my beautiful wife had vocal feminization surgery. Not all trans women have surgery as a part of their transition process and those that do have surgery, don’t have the same kind of surgery. Some may even have multiple surgeries addressing different areas. As a trans women, the adam’s apple and the voice are strong indicators that they were assigned-male-at-birth (AMAB). The particular surgery my wife had took care of the reducing the prominence of the adam’s apple, and will hopefully result in a voice with a higher pitch that resonates in the head instead of the chest. Now that the surgery is over, we are playing the waiting game. She cannot make any sounds with her vocal chords for two weeks as her body recovers from the surgery. Then, as she begins to use her voice box again, she has to gradually work back up to her normal amount of speaking over the course of 4 weeks. The voice will most likely be all over the place, like a person recovering from laryngitis and it may still be months before we get to hear her new voice. But I am so excited. I can imagine if my own voice caused me discomfort, I would spend much of my life self-silencing. I would hide my thoughts from those around me because in order to share those thoughts, I would have to experience the sound of my own voice. My wife is a mom to two children. I want our children to hear their mother for who she truly is. They need that. She needs that. I need that.
Physically, her recovering is going well. The doctor reports there is very little swelling. She has slowly worked back into eating solid food. She still has pain when swallowing but it is less. She is completely off all pain meds. She has one more week off work but will be able to resume her normal works schedule next week since her work is done online and she can chat through instant messaging services.
I know that for those of you who knew ahead of time this was happening, some of you have asked how I am doing. This week has been harder than I had anticipated. When I first saw her after the surgery, there were two things I noticed. The first was how beautiful and slender her neck looked without the adam’s apple sticking out. The second was how much pain she was in every time she swallowed. It hurt me so bad to see her in pain. I wanted to take it away, to fix it but I was helpless. I wanted to run away so I didn’t have to see it but I was stuck. Later, when I told her about my desire to fly, to go back into the waiting room in ignorant bliss, she told me about how much my presence in that surgery recover room grounded her and reassured her that she was going to be ok. It took us longer than normal to leave the outpatient surgery center but eventually we made it back to our beautiful Airbnb that is on a hillside overlooking downtown Portland, OR.
For the next two days, my wife rested. I made sure she had help when she was moving around, prepared soft foods for her, and got her medications when needed. I thought I would love this time without little ones needing me every second of the day but I grew restless. I didn’t know what to do with myself without being needed constantly. At one point, we were sitting out on our patio and I just lost it. I was an emotional mess but I couldn’t quite figure out why. I went inside to hide my tears and text a few friends. I didn’t want to burden my recovering wife. My friends responded right away. I tried to put myself back together and get some dinner made. My wife noticed my absence. She texted me and asked what was wrong. But my thoughts were so jumbled, I didn’t know what was wrong. I didn’t have words. I, the person that could physically speak in this relationship, could not formulate any coherent thoughts in that moment. So she wrapped her arms around me and we just stood in the kitchen in silence and she held me. And slowly, her physical touch calmed me down. As much as I didn’t want to need anything from her while she was recovering, we discovered that I did still need her. We ended up spending the rest of the day on the couch binge watching Queer Eye and snuggling.
Communication and conversations have been hard since she is not speaking. But with some trial and error, we have found ways to make dinner conversations possible. I know it will be hard for the kids when we get back since they can’t read the text that she types out but we will make it work. We will learn and adapt. A smile on her face and a gesture with her hands can communicate more than a thousand spoken words.
Thank you to all of you for your thoughts and prayers and support. There are countless people, mostly family but not exclusively, who have loved on our children this week while we were gone. We couldn’t have done it without you. Thank you. And friends who have supported us emotionally or by caring for our animals back at home. Thank you. We feel loved.
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