There’s a good piece by Doc Impossible on Stained Glass Woman about the other kind of surgical recovery: your mental recovery, and how to try and help yourself handle the aftermath of what is a very big deal. Surgical recovery isn’t just physically difficult and debilitating; it’s very tough on your mental resources too, and post-surgical depression is very common (after all kinds of surgery, although this piece is talking about gender-affirming surgeries). Many trans people are already quite isolated in their everyday lives, and that makes being housebound for a few weeks and unable to go far for a while afterwards very, very hard.

I had major surgery in February and I’m still recovering from it: physically, because it takes a very long time to heal; mentally, for many of the reasons outlined in the Doc’s post, and financially, because I couldn’t work for 1/12th of the year; we freelances don’t get sick pay or holiday pay, so time not working is time not earning. And as ever, I think I’ve had it easier than many people.