The Caregiver

This week the roles get reversed and it is time for Paula Katherine Prichard to shine! For much of this year my partner and soul mate Paula has adopted a secondary role as a caretaker of yours truly as I underwent facial reconstruction through FFS in January in Boston and breast augmentation and gender confirmation surgery in May in New Hope Pa with Dr. McGinn. Each time she helped me through some very difficult struggles and way too much time in hospitals and hotel beds in recovery. In Boston, I faced the longest night of my life as I lay in that hospital bed wrapped up so tight around my head I thought I was going to mummified all while unable to see and looking like a freight train had run through my upper body. Paula stayed the night in the room and held my hand, rubbed my feet and talked with me trying to keep me distracted from the pain and darkness. She fed me ice chips- one at a time under my tongue as my only source of fluid or food. Paula drove me back to the hotel and attended to me for a week in the hotel, helping me bathe, applying medicines to my wounds and bruises and getting supplies and food when necessary. It all made my recovery so much less difficult. She also provided for me through her unique way she has in lifting my spirits so much. Paula is a wonderful caregiver!
This past May, I laid in a hospital for five days and nights and there was Paula again providing me with great comfort and tenderness, getting me drinks, helping me eat food for the first few days when I could not move my arms or raise my head. On the day I first stood up and my legs shook and wobbled as I rested on the walker and wanting so badly to just fall back into the bed, she again helped me focus on her and ignore all the light headiness and weakness in my lower extremities. For the next two days she helped me walk as I maneuvered around the hall with a walker visiting my sisters who followed me in surgery making sure I did not fall and helping back into my bed. She helped me freshen up each day and held a mirror before me so I could put in my contacts and do my makeup in my prone position. When we got to the hotel Paula helped me walk the halls, sit down and even get on the toilet and cleaned up some messes which resulted from some early issues with the same as well as some bleeding. Again, she also bought the supplies and went after the food and assisted me in so many ways even if it was just a phone call from my hospital room to her when I could not sleep from the drugs.
Paula even helped out some of the other girls who had surgeries that very week when she discovered they were alone. She did not need to do this but her heart led her to do so and the other girls appreciated her kindness and warmth. All of this up-close exposure to us girls struggling through the process even made her question her own strengths to do this great challenge. However, she found the resolve to do and focused on her goals. In order to do her surgery, Paula had to lose forty pounds and she did so in a manner so focused and all while building her strength and endurance through exercise to help her get through it and recover easier. She did so all while being my caregiver through these past months.
Now it is her time to undergo her lifelong dream of having her body finally matching her soul and essence of who she is with her gender conformation surgery and trachea shave at the skilled hands of Dr. Christine McGinn. And now after all this care and comfort she has provided me over the last six months, it is now my turn to be the caretaker for her. I get to be the chauffer and runner for food and supplies. I get to help her stand up and take her first steps after surgery. The night after her surgery I will be the one feeding her ice chips and cool drinks and holding her hands and rubbing her feet. It is my turn to help her dine during her hospital stay and assist her in freshening up and doing her makeup from the prone position. I get to be the one walking with her as she struggles to walk simple hallways for days and help her get to the bathroom and clean up the messes. I look forward to helping her through all this and letting her moment of rebirth shine. I will be the one calling the friends and letting them know all is well with her.
For the next weeks Paula is the girl of the hour and I am the caregiver. I hope I do this role well but I have had a good deal of experience watching and learning from her as she took so very good care of me!. Paula’s heart is so big and she cares so much about people and our love for each other has grown increasingly from day to day and all through our struggles and the emotions and challenges they bring in this process. I have grown as a person through my interaction with her in our relationship and learned more about love and letting my heart show as I evolved from the years of living in the confinement of the shell that seemed to cut off so much feeling.
Next Monday I will be one pacing the floors waiting on word from her surgeon that all has gone well and that she is recovering. I will spread the good news of her rebirth and the beginning of her healing process. I will walk into her patient room that will look all so familiar to me and hold her hand and smile down at her as she did me on the day of my physical rebirth. When this occurs my responsibilities of her caregiver commence in earnest. I look forward to paying back some of all the depth of kindness and care she provided me these past months as we also still dealt with the emotional losses and devastation of our transitions in the past years as well. I will lower my hand to reach hers and hold it so gently to let her know I am here for her and ready to attend to her needs as her caregiver.
I made a slide show as a tribute to her life, our times together and her work as my caregiver and emotional support and friendships she built over the years. It’s your turn to shine now girl and fulfill all that you dreamed of and never thought even possible a few years ago- with me by your side and in your heart as your best friend, your partner in life, your love and for the next few weeks….your caregiver!
Hugs to all our friends who helped so much in our journeys and being a a wonderful part of our lives

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

New Hope and New Birth

My ole my……………… a whole lot has occurred in the past couple weeks since I last wrote just before my departure for my long- desired surgeries which took place in Pennsylvania. Not long after I last wrote and posted my closing thoughts and thanks to many who affected my journey to this point Paula and I loaded up my CRV and headed off for New Hope Pa. I truly love the name New Hope for the promise it offers and upon arriving there Friday evening we strolled the streets of one of the state’s most eclectic LGBT friendly cities where we found neat little shops, bistros, galleries and clubs nestled in a scenic community along the river. The rainbow flags flew everywhere for every little nook and cranny of this exceptionally friendly city. We also discovered something else upon our arrival – we had arrived during New Hope’s pride week celebration. We dined on the patio of a restaurant after site seeing a bit and purchasing some sundries. The weather was awesome and it would be my last real meal and night of fun for awhile so after our exceptionally delicious meal we strolled the streets looking for ice cream and then took in the sounds of a local all female band at local brew pub. We returned on Saturday for the Pride Parade and did some more shopping for clothes and Paula found the Holy Grail of clothes at a shop along the way and I did a little damage there myself. The parade was great fun and we ate out for lunch and dinner but by that time my diet was limited to “liquid diet” so all I could have is soups. The people of this community are fun loving and diverse and we took quite a liking to this community. It is defiantly a place to celebrate and enjoy life and frames the new beginning that I was about to undertake.
Sunday the diet got worse. It started with a breakfast of vegetable broth and a lunch of chicken broth followed by the administration of a disgusting substance known as Magnesium Citrate which was designed to clean my bowels out with repeated trips to the toilet and the early morning hours of Monday were topped off with the last purge induced by an enema. I knew these were sacrifices that would have to be made to get where I wanted to be in my journey. On the early dawn hours of Monday morning we left the hotel and traveled the three miles to the site of Lower Bucks Hospital where my surgeon Dr. Christine McGinn awaited my arrival, I checked in fairly easy and after undergoing some blood work it was off to a place they called “Short Surgery”. This area is not named for the length of the surgery or anything else but the area where preparation and meetings with doctors would take place and was only steps from final preparation. DR. McGinn marked my body with outlines of where she wanted the breasts to lie after surgery and the incisions to be made. The surgery would be about 5-6 hours since I was doing both the GCS as well as the breast augmentation. I met with the nurse and lab tech and more blood was drawn and finally the meetings with the physicians including the house physician as well as Dr. McGinn and her assistant.
Paula got to stay with me here but soon we had to separate and we departed with our usual embrace and kiss and message of love and support and I was laying on a bed in final preparation. I did the opportunity at this point to take one last glance on the defective parts that had defined me for so many years and caused me so many problems over the years and which were the source of my conflict and struggle. Most of them would survive but in the reformed way – the way they should have been from the start to avoid all these problems. The ones that have caused me the most problems would however be gone and marked for destruction in and incineration in a medical waste bag! Good riddance! I was still conscious as the aestheticians asked me final questions and my IV was started and final arrangements made for surgical procedures to be performed. I remember being wheeled to the OR where they started strapping me down to the table all spread apart and I looked at the clock and saw it was about a few minutes after 8 AM. It would be the last thing I remember. Lights out ….time warp……..and what seemed like a few minutes later but was actually 6-7 hours later I again her nurses call my name from above me …”Melissa” …..I am groggy and sluggish but I am awake and saw the staff and nurses and my doctor. I immediately felt deep severe pain all over my body with some pockets of numbness. Dr. McGinn had gone down the hall earlier after the surgery to inform my loving partner Paula that I was fine and that it had gone well. Soon I would be moved to 4E on the building to begin my life of living in Room 469 for the week.
Paula came in minutes after I got there and she had bought me a little gift…...it was a cute, little cabbage patch doll that said “It’s a girl” on it and I held the adorable little doll and thanked Paula for the doll. In my mind I remembered my father denying me a request for a GI Joe Doll when I was a child on the grounds that “ boys don’t play with dolls”…….I liked my doll and named her Marie after my middle name and she stayed with me all week in my bed. Morphine is a great thing when it arrives self-dispensed and I was in great excessive pain – maybe the worst pain I had ever felt and that night the upper body bothered me far worse than below the belt as they say. I could not even move my arms. I calculated that the morphine came out ( it made a beep when it did ) every six minutes so I watched the clock…and squeezed it at 6:00 PM then 6:06 ….then 6:12, 6:18 and so on. Due to the severity of the pain the nurse called my doctor and I was administered supplemental morphine on the hour…MORE PLEASE…..I simply could not get enough….No food was allowed but I could have fluids so I drank water and fruit juice and Paula fed me ice chips and put balm on my parched lips caused by all the anesthesia. She also slept the night in my room on the chair and held my hand some throughout the night that is when it was not squeezing the morphine dispenser. I thought to myself …do I feel any different? Well I felt a sense of peace over what had transpired on the day of my rebirth but the full effects of the same would be forthcoming in the days ahead!
I remember also I was allowed a sleeping pill which I ingested and drifted in and out of consciousness throughout the night. Morning came and I was allowed juice and cream of wheat and I pumped in more morphine. By noon that day they finally pulled the drip and IV and I began a regime of Vycadon ingestion every four hours. By the time Christine came in that afternoon, I could barely keep my head up from all the drugs….I was floating so high it felt better than anything I had ever done in college. I barely recall eating my first decent meal in four days on Tuesday evening and sleep was so disrupted I woke up at 3AM and remained awake until the nurse came in at around 6 AM. I decided on Wednesday morning that I needed to stop hitting the drugs so hard and begin weaning myself off the pain meds. I reached that goal in days when I took my last pain pill on Friday night before going to bed. Other girls who had surgery that week were still pumping the pain pills well until the next week. The drugs were disrupting my sleep and I needed to get back to some sense of regular pattern again and get all this stuff out of my system. Beginning Wednesday and even over the objections of the nurses I began slowing down on the pain pills .Wednesday also meant removal of the tape and temporary sutures designed for two days which prevented me from moving my legs since I came out of surgery Monday. Unfortunately the heat and moisture caused by laying on one’s touché caused my skin to tear off when the tape was removed leaving bed sores which began bleeding even though the weekend. Unbelievably some people in the world out there actually think we “choose” to be transgendered. After all we go through emotionally and physically to correct the birth defects that plagued us all our lives I now must say these people are clearly incapable of intelligent thoughts in my opinion. Yes I did just call you a moron if you even believe this in the slightest.
Wednesday morning I actually put in my contacts laying face up and did my makeup by a small mirror held lovingly by Paula. I was a bit more awake and ate better and even got to stand up for the first time which took every ounce of strength and energy just to get on my feet and stay there for a minute of two with assistance before I collapsed back into my bed exhausted. That afternoon I was visited by my dear friend Alice who just four weeks earlier had been undergoing her rebirth at the same hospital. She brought a friend with her named Jackie and we chatted for hours. Paula had been angel to me all week and in every way possible. She also took it upon herself to visit the other girls that week as Dr. McGinn had one new arrival to our wing each day through Thursday. I was so proud of her and her heart is so big and so full of love. On Thursday I took my first steps in the morning and again a longer run in the evening actually visiting each of the other girls I shared my rebirth week with and chatted briefly. Friday I grew stronger and walked twice more again visiting with the others and hugging them and walking without assistance and making laps around the halls as the nurses encouraged me on.
The nurses at Lower Bucks Hospital were incredible and I received some of the best care I had ever received anywhere anytime by these beautiful angels. Each one before they left their last shift before I was to be discharged came in and took my hand and said they wished me well. It touched me deeply that these people actually cared more for me than my own family members who had tossed me away into nonexistence. I intend to write a letter to the facility telling that what a great job their nurses did during my stay and how caring these ladies were in their work and attention to the level of care! Friday night meant I was cleared by my physician to be released. I remember Paula helping me dress and get makeup on and I popped up and walked behind the wheelchair with a nurse by my side as I proudly existed the building and Paula had the car waiting there all cooled down and helped me get in the vehicle. We were driving about ten miles away to a town called Bensalem where we stay another week in a hotel only a few minutes from Dr. McGinn’s office. My follow up care and exams would take place there. Living for a week there reminded me of the base camp Paula and I established following my facial surgery in January. A whole new set of challenges, awakenings, experiences and friendships awaited me upon our transfer………………………………….