Ok. For this whole #TransAwarenessWeek yoke I might spend tomorrow writing up a history of the (first as far as we know) trans women run somewhat underground but weirdly legal surgical clinic for trans women that I ran.

Me and my long ago ex with the clinic in the background (door is near the docs POS pickup truck).

yes, it was basically a converted barn.

Before I go into this (maybe today, maybe tomorrow, time permitting), cis folks, go look up the word orchiectomy and get back to me. I ain't explaining it.

Also look at 34 year old me, awwww. I still have the hat btw.

I'll start with some background. 2001, me, being the sly mfer I am, convinced the doc, who was in residency at the time, that shuuuuure, orchies are no big deal, we could do one in my adopted ma's sitting room.

She's normally smarter than that. Anyhow, supplies bought.

So yeah. Funny thing about orchies. All the procedures are written for cis dudes and the bandaging procedures aren't written for someone who had been on years of HRT. So bandaging slipped after the doc left, blood pooled, I got an infection, got gomered out of the ER, almost died

You'd think that would have dissuaded her from ever listening to me again, right? NOPE. We both end up moving out west and somehow (I'm fairly sure tequila was involved) we get the bright idea to take what we learned (against the body compression bandages, drains, antibotics)...

... and do this shit again. So, me and the ex are renting this old ass farmhouse outside of olympia and say fuck it, we build a surgical room in the side of a barn.

Like, a LOT of this concept was taken from the Jane Project in Chicago since the doc is training to be an AB doc.

It's been a long time, so I forget how many people passed through. I do know we generally charged like 500 quid. That helped cover rent and supplies. Orchies were going for 2500 at the time.

I think it was 16 women passed through? Might have been 14. I dunno.

14 women. zero complications. zero infections. which is a damn good rate.

Anyhow. Like. Look, I can talk about this now cause it was so long ago, but there are some weird fuckers attracted to this shit. I wish I has saved this one email....

"I cheated with by brothers wife and he will not trust me again unless I get castrated. If you do not help me, I will do it myself.... blah blah insert weird castration fantasy shit"

Seriously, the job was never fucking dull.

Like, we had that *one* patient (ok, two, one of whom is a POS and actually lives in Ireland and lied to us about why she was filming it and used it for a fucking performance art piece. Fuck that girl, she can go jump into the fucking sea).

Anyhow. the one patient....

She was... odd. Like, middle of surgery, I'm sitting there holding her hand and she asks me when her voice is gonna raise. Um...... ummmmm..... ok, it's the drugs.

Nope. It wasn't the drugs.

There are two ways to do orchies. Through the scrotum (what we did) and through the belly (fuuckkkk no). Through the scrotum leaves little stumps.

Anyhow, patient was bitching about the stumps months later and we were explaining "umm... you knew this would be the case"

She goes to her doc and is bitching about it and the doc looks at the site and is like "wow, good work, who did it"

"two trans women up a logging road"

While TECHNICALLY true, is absolutely not accurate. Like, clinic had all the stuff needed (electrocautery, autoclave etc)

So, a while after this happens, we had just done a surgery the night before and the patient was crashing out at my place and she had had a fun reaction to the vicoden (aka needed help getting into the house) which bodged my entire process up.

Which meant I didn't grab the, ahem, remains immediately when I got done with things, and put them on the shelf to help her in the house, and then came back out to clean. Which is like, no biggie, I would have found them when I did my autoclave run the next day.

Early the next morning, a car pulls up. Dark sedan. I'm barely awake. Government plates. Ut-oh.

"Are you xxxx?"
"Um. No. Who are you?"
"We're with the board of health. We want to see the clinic you're supposedly running."
"Um... ok... could you wait right there."

Ok, I'm gonna save the rest of this for tomorrow cause I want to go read someones poetry. :P

I of course broke the thread. https://twitter.com/dirtycitybird/status/1327655250917007360

Since people are asking about the book around this....

https://twitter.com/dirtycitybird/status/1327998431919550470

Fuck you, I'll finish it when I'm not doing 1000 different things.