Greetings, and welcome back to my recovery updates. It's been a bit since I've posted, but things have kind of leveled out and there hasn't been much to report. Feel free to check out my profile to find my previous posts. For those new, I had GCS at Mass General on Nov. 10th.

This is something I was a bit worried about early on, but I'm already back to working in the office 3 1/2 weeks post-op. I have a very easy desk job with a comfy task chair and I'm able to semi-recline. I went back for the first day yesterday and felt perfectly fine throughout the day. I've heard 6-8 weeks up to 12-14 for a lot of people but I simply couldn't afford to take that time off. I actually worked from home on the couch after the first week and a half which helped keep me from going crazy.

Dilation has been going extremely well. I hear a lot about folks struggling with this aspect of recovery, and from my experience, if you follow your surgery team's recommendations diligently, you have a much better chance of success. For the first three weeks they require 3x a day, using only the smallest (purple) dilator to keep depth and avoid injuries around the stitches, etc. At the three week mark, I moved up to the blue dilator for the last 10 minutes of each session. I find it much more comfortable as it's less pointy than the purple. I find myself able to get to the fifth dot with both dilators without much issue. At the 2 week mark, I did find myself struggling more to get to the fifth dot even on the purple, likely due to swelling going down and things trying to heal. Keep at it with a reasonable amount of pressure! That phase really was short lived, as at three weeks it takes me 30 seconds at worst to reach full depth. I plan on continuing my current schedule until my next follow up appointment in January.

Speaking of my schedule for dilation, I switched up from 7-8am, 12-1pm and 7-8pm coming back to work to moving my middle session until after work at 5pm. As of my first run at this, I had no issue with things getting tight.

As far as my mental state, my self confidence is through the roof. Not having to worry about tucking anymore is huge. Underwear actually fits now. Pants fit better. Overall everything I hoped is now reality, and it's made my quality of life so much better. The first few weeks are rough, but beyond that point, barring any major complications, it's absolutely a worth while procedure, and I can't thank the team at MGH enough for making this a reality.