First off all, if this is offensive, let me know and maybe delete this post.
This is a thought both me and the SO had while we were just in bed.
We were talking about phantom pain, and how the brain can still feel pain from body parts that have since been removed. Think leg amputations etc.
You can see this coming, im sure, but do any trans have phantom pain after surgery? Like, pain in balls, penis, boobs, … After they have been removed?
We legit want to know, as we are very intrigued in this stuff and (and i quote) “are freaky people” :p
Signed: cishet and queer
Edit: thanks for all the replies! Very insightful and interesting! Sorry for the ‘freaky’ comment, that was not intended to be hurtful. We are weirdos to even think of this stuff, but please remember we see you as human beings and not as freaks. We wish you all the best and a happy life!
I had SRS. Full orchiectomy/penetctomy/vaginoplasty/vulvaplasty.
I’ve never felt any phantom sensations. If anything, I sometimes felt the opposite, like a phantom vag before I got surgery. But afterwards? Nothing. The only similar effect was a bit of neural remapping that took a few days. Your body has an internal 3D representation of its own shape. That’s why if something touches your skin somewhere on your body, you can instantly know where it is. SRS is basically genital origami. Things get cut, shifted, repositioned, and sewn back together. Individual bits of tissue and nerves end up in radically different locations than pre-surgery. And this requires a bit of spacial neural remapping. For example, in the technique that was used on me, a clitoris is formed from the head of the penis. Initially when I felt it, there was incongruity. My eyes could see that I was touching something right on the surface of my body. However, the spatial awareness part of my brain was saying, “this nerve correlates to a location several inches outside the main body.” This mismatch was quite uncanny. However, thankfully it only lasted a few days. After a few days the body learns the new locations of all the relocated nerves and the uncanny sensation disappeared. I’ve never had anything that could be described as a phantom penis sensation. And I had SRS back in 2013.
Oh wow, thats uncanny! Thanks for sharing that experience. Makes perfect sense now that i ( and we, SO thinks the same of it ) think about it further and you explain it so nicely.
Thank you!!