We have just learned that my surgery is to be around 11am tomorrow which is about 18 hours away! For some reason it feels so much different from the last lot, I know it’s not going to be as invasive as the first surgery but there are now 5 issues which Kathy is going to sort for me so will still be a lengthy surgery. On one hand I know how the process works and when the doomsday moments as my psychologist calls them will be, hopefully the the strategies she has given me work and I get through without too much trouble. On the other hand I really don’t know what to expect when I come round after the surgery, I’m hoping that it will be a much faster recovery time this time as we only have 2 weeks from me leaving hospital to when we fly back home and I know I couldn’t have dealt with the flight home after two weeks last time, I was in far too much pain so fingers crossed! I am about half way through my pre-op preparation, hopefully I will get some sleep this time unlike last time when the taxi came to collect us at 5.15 in the morning, we are still waiting for a call from the lady who organises the transport to get a pick up time but we would expect it to be around 7.oo \u00a0so not too bad.<\/p>\n
The weather here has been kind to us up to now, bright sunny days but only around 12 degrees although it feels warmer than that. We have done a little bit of shopping but not gone far really, Ardmore is a lovely suburb, very clean and well kept with some nice shopping areas and coffee shops about 30 minutes in a car from the city centre. Everywhere is tastefully decorated for Christmas and the shops seem busy, Christmas is obviously a massive thing over here and it actually feels like Christmas should feel unlike Christmas in the heat of Australia, I wouldn’t swap it though, I have got used to it in the heat and anyone who knows me would know I’m not a big Christmas fan, all too commercialised for my liking! The people here are really nice, not just at Dr Rumer’s clinic but everywhere we have been, all very friendly and when they say “have a nice day” they sound as though they mean it!<\/p>\n
Well I will sign off now, Denise will most likely do the next post while I am sleeping my anaesthetic off and hopefully feeling very relieved that it’s all over. Having said that, I didn’t ever expect to be back in Philadelphia anytime soon so nothing is set in stone, the one thing I can say is that although this year has been very tough for both of us, the six months I have had since my first surgery have been some of the happiest I have ever had and I’m sure things will only get better. I love my life as Stephanie more than I ever believed possible which just goes to show transitioning was the right thing to do and to be accepted the way I have been makes me a very happy girl!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We have just learned that my surgery is to be around 11am tomorrow which is about 18 hours away! For some reason it feels so much different from the last lot, I know it’s not going to be as invasive as the first surgery but there are now 5 issues which Kathy is going to … Continue reading “Tension mounting!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.steps2stephanie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.steps2stephanie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.steps2stephanie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.steps2stephanie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.steps2stephanie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=393"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.steps2stephanie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":704,"href":"https:\/\/www.steps2stephanie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393\/revisions\/704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.steps2stephanie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.steps2stephanie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.steps2stephanie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}