What It's Like to Get a Vaginoplasty: Emily's Story
“The day before my surgery, I wasn’t even nervous. I was just so excited.”
For as long as she could remember, Emila Tressa knew she wanted to undergo a vaginoplasty, which is a type of a gender affirmation surgery.
“I’m as happy as I can be,” she says. “Finally, I feel like how I feel on the inside matches on the outside.”
Gender affirmation surgery is a procedure in which a transgender or nonbinary person changes their physical sex characteristics to align with their gender identity. During a vaginoplasty, a surgical team creates female genitalia, often using penile tissue.
How did Emily choose a surgeon for her vaginoplasty?
Tressa says she felt very comfortable working with Jess Ting, MD, as her surgeon. Dr. Ting is the Director of Surgery at Mount Sinai’s Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery in New York City.
One reason Tressa chose Dr. Ting is because he had plenty of experience operating on youth like her who have been on hormone blockers. These are medications for trans adolescents to suppress unwanted bodily changes from puberty. Hormone blockers also result in less penile tissue to work with during the surgery, which can create an additional challenge.
How did Emily prepare for vaginoplasty?
“Emily was 100 percent prepared for surgery,” says Dr. Ting. “She had done her research, she had been thinking about it for years and years, and was very prepared for the consultation.”
In addition to other forms of medical assessments and treatments that happened in advance of the surgery, Tressa had to do a number of things to prepare for her vaginoplasty, including:
Letters of support from doctors and therapists: Tressa needed to provide letters from her pediatrician, her endocrinologist, and her therapist to affirm that she is transgender and that the surgery was something she wanted. Many states require these types of approval letters from health professionals in order to qualify for gender affirmation surgery.
Laser hair removal: She needed to get laser hair removal on her genital area to make the surgery easier.
Bowel prep: She had to take a laxative to empty her colon the day before her surgery.
Fasting: She wasn’t allowed to eat for a certain number of hours before her surgery (but she could drink water).
“The day before my surgery, I wasn’t even nervous,” Tressa says. “I was just so excited, and focused, and happy that this moment in my life was about to happen.”
What was Emily’s recovery like from vaginoplasty?
Tressa’s vaginoplasty occurred in June 2019, and she couldn’t be more thrilled with the result. That said, the first few days and weeks after the procedure were challenging. A vaginoplasty is a major surgery with a long recovery time.
“There were moments after the surgery when I was in a lot of pain,” Tressa says. “But I know, to this day, it was so worth it.”
Tressa’s advice for anyone interested in having gender affirmation surgery is to do your research, keep your options open for surgeons, and to have multiple consultations so you can make sure you figure out exactly what you want.
She also stresses that not every transgender person wants to have surgery. “Every trans person’s journey is different, and every trans person is different,” Tressa says. “There’s no right way to have a transition.”
Dr. Ting says that the majority of his patients still want to proceed with surgery, despite hearing about the recovery time and potential complications. “I think that just shows how important these operations are to our patients,” he says.
- Jess Ting, MDJess Ting, MD, is a Reconstructive Surgeon at Mount Sinai Hospital.
References
Callen-Lorde Community Health Center. (N.D.). Gender confirming/GRS surgeon list and resources for preparing for surgery.
Ferrando, Cecile A. (2018). Vaginoplasty complications. Clinics in Plastic Surgery.
Lindqvist, Ebba K., et al. (2017). Quality of life improves early after gender reassignment surgery in transgender women. European Journal of Plastic Surgery.
National Center for Transgender Equality. (n.d.) Letters from health care providers.
Pariser, Joseph J., et al. (2019). Transgender vaginoplasty: techniques and outcomes. Translational Andrology and Urology.
Selvaggi, Gennaro, et al. (2011). Gender reassignment surgery: an overview. Nature Reviews Urology.
University of California, San Francisco. (2016). Vaginoplasty procedures, complications and aftercare.
Zhang, William R., et al. (2016). Laser hair removal for genital gender affirming surgery. Translational Andrology and Urology.