This morning, after lugging myself to the bathroom, I looked in the mirror to see something of a stranger. First, because one of my roommates had put my hair into two braided pigtails last night, before I went into surgery. I’ve been way to lazy to remove ‘em, so they’ve stayed the last 24 hours. Second, because the IV fluids, coupled with little food, have given me a simultaneously gaunt and water-bloated look. On top of that, I haven’t really bathed all week, so my color is way off and I’m all blotchy.

Most obnoxious, though, was the little soul-patch beneath my lower lip, a  remnant of my facial hair that the laser removal hasn’t been able extinguish.

My hospital stay has actually been pretty gender-affirming. As usual, my dad has “he”d and “him”d me tons more than any of the hospital staff. My mom or I would usually correct him right after. It’s also the hospital where I was born, so they initially had me in the system with my old name and gender. But the staff very quickly and efficiently changed those on my records and wrist-band, and one staff person actually apologized they had even taken as long as they did. Bonus points, Evanston hospital!

All of my nurses and aides and doctors have similarly used “Ms. Kling” when referring to me, which has amused me to no end. I also had fun when the anesthesiologist asked me if I could be pregnant. “Nope!”

“Oh, you’re on the pill?”

“No – I don’t have a uterus or ovaries.” I probably didn’t need to be so snarky, but I was tired and cranky and he didn’t seem thrown by my response.

So I’m more than a little bummed that I looked into the mirror this morning to find such a stark reminder of my transition. My arms and legs have  slowly regrown their hair this week during my hospital stay, but enough has been removed via laser that what does regrow doesn’t gender me in the same was as I think my facial hair does. And I know it’s not tons of hair, and lots of women do have a patch or two of facial hair. But it still wasn’t what I wanted to see when I already feel so icky and sick.

On the up side, I should be leaving tomorrow. And I’ll just need to schedule an appointment to get that last little bit of facial hair zapped, once and for all.

I’ll cut to the chase: Was it it worth it? Hell yes.

I’ve tried shaving, Nair, NoNo, and waxing, in addition to biting the bullet and doing laser. All of those work, to varying degrees, but I can’t put a price on how it feels to go from shaving my thick, bushy legs (and arms, and chest) 3+ times a week to doing so maybe once every two weeks, and only because I’m anal and there are a few spots that the laser didn’t quite hit. (Patches of thinner hair here and there on my otherwise-mostly-hairless legs, for example.)

Yes, laser is expensive. Yes, laser hurts. But, were I starting my transition over, I absolutely would do it again, and sooner if I could. The mental shift of not feeling hairy, regardless of whether I needed removal to “pass,” is wonderful. As I said, I still shave my legs, arms, chest, and face on occasion to catch hairs that still haven’t been zapped. But I’m not sure I need to, or that anyone would notice, just that it makes me feel feminine to be that much more hairless. And it’s not a full-on “this takes fucking forever” procedure, it’s a few spots of shaving cream and a few swipes with a razor.

I still catch myself getting upset at jokes on TV about hairy men, because – at some level – I still think of myself as hairy. But then I look at my arms, feel my legs, think about the sensation of water over my body in the shower, and remember that my being hairy is a thing of the past.

First, should you spend money on a No! No!?

No. No. You should not.

(Sorry, I had to.)

I’m not convinced that it can’t work, but it must take forever and was difficult and unsatisfying to use. I don’t think it contributed to any hair removal for me, and buffing afterwards did not leave me smooth and clean as promised. It also ended up smelling like burnt hair, which wasn’t particularly pleasant. (As a side note, if you want my No! No! let me know and I’d be happy to hand it over.)

So what should you do instead?

Well, as much as it’s expensive and painful, I do have to recommend laser. I’m unfortunate in that I’m very hairy, but I’m fortunate in that my skin type (not super pale but also not super tan) and hair type (very dark and thick) work well with laser.

I’ve had a number of rounds on my face (I’d have to check to see exactly, but I think four or five) and most of my face continues to be smooth a few years later. I have some hairs that just won’t go away – above my upper lip and right below my lower lip, as well as a few along my jaw line – that I’ve gone in for minor touch ups, but the vast majority of the hair that was there is gone. I now shave much more because I’m anal and don’t like even the little hairs appearing than because I really need to.

That said,  as I’ve mentioned before, hair removal isn’t particularly fun. It does get easier each time I go, because there are fewer hairs growing back in the first place and the ones that do grow back are finer, but it’s still not easy or painless. And the first time doing any area – my face, my legs, my chest, my arms – it was very painful. Get numbing cream and slather it on before, and save some to slather on afterwards (and possibly the next few days for itching).

But is it worth it?

For me, there isn’t a question: yes, it’s definitely worth it. I’m looking at my arms right now, almost a month since my last laser treatment (the fourth of a package of six) and they’re almost hairless. I do have some hair around the bones in my wrist that the clinician must have missed, and some finer hair growing back elsewhere, but they’re miles from what they were before. (I’ll probably start shaving the little spots that are growing back soon, I just want to wait and see what places still have hair before I shave it all off.)

As for my legs, they’re not quite as good (that is, quite as hairless) but they had a lot more hair to start with. They’re definitely much better, much less hairy, than they were when I started. Although, in the interest of full disclosure, I have some irritation on my legs – particularly on the shins where there’s not much meat between the skin and the bone – that still hasn’t totally disappeared a few weeks after my last session. Next time, I’ll need to slather on more numbing cream beforehand, and be better about putting on lotion and neosporin stuff after.

Likewise, my chest has much less hair, too. (Although some stubborn hairs, embarrassingly enough right around my nipples, do keep coming back. Grr!)

All that said, hair removal isn’t cheap. My package of six sessions on my arms, legs, and torso cost $4,390. That’s a heckuva lot of money, and I would have rather had it to spend on a moped or something else a little more fun than laser hair removal.

But if you really want that hair gone, and have the skin/hair type to make you a good candidate, laser is the way to go.

First, I was at the beach today for a friend’s picnic birthday party and, when nature called, went to the disgusting port-a-pottys.  The Surgery has been occupying my mind lately but, all sorts of deep and philosophical body-image and personhood discussion aside, peeing standing up rocks. Those port-a-pottys were absolutely inhuman in their filth and I could barely manage to stand in them for the thirty seconds it took to pee. Had I needed to sit down, I would have held it (like the cis girl who did try to use ‘em and instantly gave up upon opening the door).

Second, I had another round of laser on my legs this weekend (and need to go back because they only booked me for an hour when I said it would take an hour and a half…grrrrr…).  The woman performing the laser, who I’ve known since I started going to this place four or five years ago, is really nice and we were chatting about this and that. She obviously knows I’m trans, since I’ve been going there since before I started transitioning, and has been really sweet about it. Well, yesterday she also had someone in training in the room, and we were all chatting. One of the two women was complimenting me on my skin, and I said something about how estrogen helps it. The woman-in-training said, “Oh, are you on birth control?” Score one for passing! (I said, very simply, “No, I’m trans and am on lots of hormones,” and she responded, “Oh, ok.”)

On passing, there was a post about the subject over at the blog Xoros, titled Passing By. It’s pretty brief, but worth a read. From the post:

So what is it about the attempt to pass that is so attractive? Quite simply it’s the lure of just being a face in the crowd. Not being obviously trans, not being someone people stare at and get confused by. Not being visible. It’s something that hetero cis people take completely for granted all the time. It is their judgement that passing appeals to, their approval that yes, you look “normal” that is being sought. It’s also the desire to be accorded the courtesy of being addressed as the gender you are, like they are.

Any thoughts from the peanut gallery?

-R

As I mentioned in the previous post, I recently went in for my third-of-six session of laser hair removal for my arms, chest, and stomach. It was less painful than it has been in the past, and didn’t take super-long, either.

Unfortunately, four days later, my arms are still covered in little red bumps and itch like crazy! This is a known possible side effect of the laser, but I haven’t had it so strong before, and it’s driving me insane. I’ve been using hydrocortisone, which is what the hair removal place recommended in the past, and I’m also using perscription lidocaine and prilocaine, which is a topical anasthetic which is supposed to be used before treatment. I’m not sure if it’s actually effective for this, though a Google search seems to indicate it could be, but I want the itching to go away!

I’m going to maybe try a cool washcloth as well, and if it’s still driving me crazy tomorrow I’m going to give the hair removal place a call. It’s a ‘good’ reaction, in that it means it killed the foliciles, but it’s less good if I gnaw my arms off at the elbows…

-R

I’m all prickly and red now, though, which is obnoxious. It usually fades away in a day or two. I should rub hydrocortisone on the parts that are really itchy.

In more exciting news, I’ve almost saved enough to pay off the hair removal. When I signed on the dotted line in August, I was committing to pay $4,390 by the end of August, 2009, or start facing interest charges. I’ve been saving money in an interest-bearing ING account, and plan to pay them off in mid-August to get as much interest money as possible. Although interest rates have been dropping, a little ‘free’ money is better than none! (If you want an ING referral, let me know! If you join with something like $200 in a savings account, I get $10 and you get $25!)

So yeah. I have something like $4200 in the bank right now, and I figured if I get around $4300, most of the remaining will be made as interest. With my next paycheck, next week, I should have that off my back!

Which is good, because this weekend I am going shopping! I sent out an email to some girl friends asking for help to find me a wardrobe. I have, like, four pairs of pants and five tops that I’m just cycling through, and it’s getting ridiculous… So, as much as it pains whatever testosterone that’s left in my system to do it, I’m going on a shopping spree! Round 1 is tomorrow, with NP (and possibly a friend from work), and I might be doing more on Saturday and/or Sunday.

Ridiculous.

-R

First, every time you go back for more laser on the same area it’s supposed to be less painful, and that was generally true when I did my face a few years ago.

(Although a thought just occured to me – for my face and now my body, they started on a higher level of power than they ended up using for the rest of the sessions. It’s possible – and probable – that this was to test my tolerance and then pull back when it was too much, but it could be to make the remaining sessions more pleasant by comparison…how sneaky…)

Second, they used a new laser machine they purchased since the last time I was there, in August, which was supposed to be less painful.

Third, I only did my arms and torso today, while last time I did my arms, torso, legs, and face.

Finally, I had my iPod with me and was listening to This American Life. Specifically, I was listening to a really interesting episode, Harold, about Chicago’s first (and only, thus far) black mayor, Harold Washington. Distractions are, apparently, a very good idea.

All in all, I think the session went smoother for those four reasons, basically in that order. The previous (horrible, hellish) session was between 2 and 3 hours and this session was maybe 45 minutes. Likewise, I was able to go out to dinner after and enjoy myself rather than running home and sobbing my eyes out in the shower.

Sunday is my legs, which I’m still a little nervous about (mainly the…northerly…areas) but I’m feeling a lot better about the whole process.

-R

• $45/month for hormones (assuming I stay on a similarly good insurance plan)
  • May go up to $60/month if/when I go on progesterone
  • TOTAL COST: Somewhere around $650 so far…going off for a while this summer makes calculating the exact amount a little difficult…probably somewhere around $30,000 over the rest of my life (making a lot of assumptions, including that the cost of drugs will never go up or down)
• $1,000+ for facial hair removal, so far.
  • I need to go back and do some more touch-ups, each one running an additional $100 per session
• $4,390 for body hair removal, including chest and torso, arms, and legs
  • Like facial hair, I’ll probably need to do additional touch-ups at some point, each running hundreds of dollars
  • This also doesn’t include my back, neck, or shoulders, all areas I may want to do someday
• Around $45/month for therapy
  • I’m counting this as an indispensable part of the transition, and once I use up my insurance-alloted number of sessions it’ll go up from $15 out-of-pocket per session to the full $90 (unless I can talk my therapist down from there…)
  • TOTAL COST: Somewhere around $750 so far
• At least $6,700 spent so far
  • More than my rent for a year
  • More than my car is worth
  • More than I spent going to Paris twice last year to visit G

To complete the picture, I’m not sure that I want SRS. I’m trying very hard to avoid thinking about it until I feel like I’m in a place where I could even consider such a decision. (Namely, when I’m living full-time as R and feeling considerably more confident doing so.) But, as the old joke goes, “If it weren’t for the cost of transitioning, I’d have enough to pay for SRS by now.” (Not quite true, but I’m getting there…)

Just food for thought.

-R

First, lets cover how it works. Laser hair removal works by “selectively heating dark target matter, (melanin), in the area that causes hair growth, (the follicle), while not heating the rest of the skin.” (So sayeth Wikipedia.) What that means is they shoot a laser at a small area of skin and the wavelength is tuned to be absorbed by the melanin, destroying the follicle’s ability to grow hair. The area hit by the laser varies between specific lasers but (from my experience) is generally a bit smaller than the size of a dime. This means doing a large area (say, arms, legs, and torso) takes a long time and the denser or thicker the hair (facial hair or thick leg hair) takes longer. In addition, hair grows in cycles, meaning the hair growing now is not the hair that will be growing two months from now. So even if laser hair removal were 100% effective on active follicles (which it probably isn’t) you’d still need multiple sessions every couple months to cover each set of follicles as they become active, usually around every two months.

After a session, the hair will seem to be growing back at first but then (hopefully) the individual hairs will fall out. This is because there’s a little bit of hair still existing below the surface that doesn’t get removed with shaving (hence why waxing works for a longer period than shaving) and that little root beneath the skin still needs to get pushed out. Then, there’s a relatively hairless month, followed by a gradual return of hair as the next wave of follicles become active. (But hopefully less hair than was growing before!)

After that, it’s rinse and repeat.

For my face, I did six sessions (I believe…I’ve sort of blocked them from memory as much as possible) over about two years. This was slightly less often than was recommended, but I really didn’t enjoy doing them and didn’t do them as often as I might have. I’ve also done a few ‘touch up sessions’ since then, to cover a few hard-to-get areas like jawline, right below the nose, or right below the lower lip. For my arms, legs, and torso I’m going to be doing six sessions (likely with some touch up sessions afterwards), and did all of that in the session on Sunday.

For the removal sessions, I have to shave the target area first, so the laser can hit the follicle well. Doing just my face originally took around 45 minutes a session (lots of closely packed, thick hair!) with touch ups taking more like 20 minutes. For the big session on Sunday, my arms took about 40 minutes, the front of my legs another hour, and my torso and back of my legs another 45 minutes (those measurements are all ‘ish’). For particularly sensitive areas (torso and face, in this case) I put on some numbing creme first.

For me, it’s actually been pretty effective. I just did a facial hair touch up on Sunday along with the big session, and my facial hair has been sneaking back more since I’ve been off the hormones, but I have drastically less facial hair than I did before I started, and I’ve definitely been happy for the results. As such, I’m holding similar hope for the rest of my body.

So I think I’ve danced long enough around the actual feeling with the ‘how the technology works’ and the ‘how the experience goes down’…

It hurts. It hurts a lot. The first time I did my face, I had to stop before it was done and reschedule a later date to do my neck and below the jawline because I was dripping tears and couldn’t continue. This past Sunday, I barely made it through and pretty much left and went straight home to cry in the shower. I kept myself together that long (although not by much…a tear or two might have leaked out while doing my feet, which hurt like crazy) but at the expense of kind of being lost the rest of Sunday evening. (Though G took amazing care of me. Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind (a Chicago theatrical institution) and Empire Records make good salves.)

It’s not that the pain lasts, because it doesn’t. Within a few seconds – maybe a minute, tops – the pain is gone. And after the worst it’s been for me is a bit tender and red, like a sunburn. Today, 36 hours later, there’s still some redness (particularly on my face) but it doesn’t really hurt that much at all.

But the pain is relentless, over and over and over. And I could have stopped it, but didn’t, because I want the results so damn bad. I think that’s what finally worked me into a near panic attack close to the end of the session (when I was almost done!) because every physical fibre of my being wanted to get the hell out of that office but I knew I’d regret it more if I didn’t.

I was also naive enough to think that, because the hair on the rest of my body (at least, what I was getting removed) isn’t as thick as my facial hair was, it would hurt less. I suppose that may be true, as I’m not great at comparatively judging pain, and I was able to get through the whole session, but it hurt an incredible amount. And, again, it was just the summation of all those little pains. I’ve broken bones, I’ve stabbed myself in the head with a pair of scissors (a story for another time…), I’ve had crippling headaches, and I can’t honestly rank this on a scale of pain. But I’m still sort of in shock that I want the hair gone bad enough to do this.

The next session, in about two months, I’m going to do over a couple days. That is, one day for my arms, one for my legs, and one for my torso, because that’ll keep each session under an hour (the amount of time I seem to be able to go and still come out pretty solid).

But even breaking it up, I’m going to keep going back, over and over and over again, until the hair is gone. (Or gone enough for my tastes.)

And I am excited about the results. I’ve never really shaved my arms before and I keep being distracted by how clean and, if not feminine, then not-masculine they look. And hopefully going back on estrogen will help (it did thin some of my body hair a little, and going off certainly brought some facial hair back, so we’ll see). I also have to note that, because there isn’t as much hair in subsequent sessions, they don’t hurt as much. None of my facial sessions were ever as bad as the first one, and I can’t imagine any of the rest of the body sessions being as bad as this Sunday.

But gods does the first session hurt.

-R