Merry Christmas (VFS Transition Update)

Hey everyone,
I'm writing to you from on the road visiting several families for Christmas, and I hope you all have a wonderfully merry time with your loved ones and a good slide into the New Year, as the Germans say. (We say "Guten Rutsch".)
If you're a little versed in Trans Twitter, you may realize this picture above is my obligatory "How I look getting he/him-ed at the Christmas dinner"-photo, and while getting misgendered still sucks and hurts, I know that I have come a long way this past year and that I can be proud of the progress.

It's been over a year since I've come out to my wife, friends, and family and almost a year since I started HRT. My body has changed much more than I could have hoped for already, and getting through FFS this summer has given me the confidence to feel like I pass as myself now and then. No matter how many times everyone around me tells me that I look passable, the doubt (and probably internalized transphobia) is still strong in my mind. But I can appreciate that Facialteam (in Marbella) did an amazing job with FFS, which has made me a lot happier overall.

Since the only time off I have had this year was my surgery recovery, and that was certainly not a good rest, we took a little Christmas vacation to Sweden last week. That was a great little holiday, and now I'm recharged for the new year. It was only a little bit scary to take a hike in the mountains and suddenly see no human footprints and only very big paw prints in the snow. But we eventually found our way back down after grabbing some sticks, just in case. Other than that, we had a great time. Especially visiting a Sami reindeer herder who told us the difficulties and racism of being one of the last Indigenous people in Europe and how the Swedish government works to eliminate them was really touching.

Anyway, I've been back to work for a week between that and the whole holiday traveling, so I had hoped to get the latest progress report for V0.7.1 ready for you. However, I want to finish a few more things in the game first so I can better visualize what's to come. So I'm aiming for a January 1st post now.

After that, the new year will have to start with another little recovery time for me, though, because I'm getting another surgery done on January 9th.
I'll be undergoing a glottoplasty or Vocal Feminization Surgery (VFS) in Hamburg with the Medical Voice Center there. Dr Hess seems like a good choice for this surgery here in Germany. He is renowned in Europe, so I'm hoping for a good result since opening my mouth and speaking is still my biggest remaining gender dysphoria.
However, surgeries are always risky, and the vocal cords getting damaged is an especially bad prospect, so the risk makes this surgery one of the less common ones for trans women. As I mentioned before, I'm confident in my surgeon's abilities, though, so I'm looking forward to the date. Two weeks to go, ahhh.
After surgery, I won't be able to make any noises at all for at least two weeks, after which I have to travel to Hamburg again so they can check out if all went well. I really have no idea how well I'll be able to work during that time. During FFS recovery, I wildly underestimated how bad I was going to feel, but VFS is a lot shorter. The whole procedure is estimated to take a little under 2 hours, and there is no need for me to stay in the hospital at all afterward, so I assume that overall recovery will be much easier. Well, except for the voice work, of course. No coughing or sneezing is allowed for six months! They showed me a little exercise on how to suppress sneezing, but I'm really unsure how that will work for so long. It can take the same amount to hear the final result of my voice, and I'm curious how I'm going to sound before that. I don't expect that to have a negative consequence for work. Probably more likely the opposite. If I can't talk to anyone, I'll be spending more time at the computer, right?

Alright. Now you're up to speed with the plans for the immediate future, and I hope I didn't bore you too much.

Again, I wish you a wonderful holiday season. I'll be back next week with the V0.7.1 progress report. I'm really excited about this one again.

All the best, and see you in the new year,
Kim