Old transguy living in Portugal

 My wife and I left the US and moved to southern Portugal officially this year. The move made it easier to escape the Covid crisis, but we decided to move here mostly for safety and health reasons before Covid. Portugal has actual laws that protect LGBTQ people in employment, housing, and health. Portugal is one of the safest countries on earth. Portugal has universal healthcare. Portugal is relaxed and extremely beautiful ❤️. 

My wife has been here since February 2020. We had a 2 month stay planned so we could explore and decide what area to get a house Then the pandemic happened and we were trapped for about 5 months. At that point we found a place and I returned to the craziness of the US and made arrangements, packed, sold stuff, and got paperwork done. 7 months went by many cancelled flights as well. No US airlines were flying pets that didn't fit under a seat so I drove from Oregon to NJ with our dog through a few blizzards in Feb. 2021. Barely made my flight back to Portugal and reunited with my wife! 

We have been renovating our house (built in 1840s) and socially distancing in a rural area. Portugal is now over 70% vaccinated. I have met a couple transguys on a FB group and met up with them in person. The pics in this post of the coast are from that visit.

Ok, more trans related stuff now. After a year of wearing a shirt and protecting my scar tissue from sun I go without a shirt enough to have evened out my skin tones. Top of chest used to be white, belly brown. Now all tanned!  My right nipple graft decided to grow a little more nipple tissue and is no longer exactly "round". I don't care. I have a considerable amount of chest hair, a few if which are grey. Hey, I'm 57 now! My beard first came in brown, now I have about 10 gray hairs in it. That is less grey beard than my 35 year old son has 😂. My hair has thinned slightly and my hairline changed a tiny bit, but I think I'm not rushing towards baldness. I am still using intramuscular T injections and the T comes in single use 1ml glass ampules here. I prefer the kind in bottles with stoppers, but it's not available that way. My doctor speaks English and acts somewhat bored with me. She was interested in seeing a chart of my T levels over time. She said "Oh? You have that?" I'm bringing her a printout next visit.

It still feels like I'm wearing a binder: Physical therapy and stretching helps

It's been 7 months since my top surgery. I already talked about "cording", learned about what might cause it, and then had a couple visits with a physical therapist to deal with it. Apparently you can break the tissue under the skin, but it will often grow back. The way to make it less noticeable is to do stretching until it is loose enough under the surface to not be taut and appear raised from the underlying tissue. So, the point is, it's eventually not a big deal if you do the stretching and can no longer feel any constriction when moving your chest or arms. The stretches consist of sticking your chest out as far as you can and bringing your arms and shoulders back for 10 reps, multiple times a day. Lifting your arms up in a sweeping motion as far as you can reach, again, multiple times a day. I had complained to the physical therapist about how it still felt like I was wearing a binder (24 hours a day!), and that the top surgery was supposed to give me a break from that. I asked her how long it would be before that feeling of tightness would last and she said that the stretching should alleviate that feeling in 3-4 months. So if you do not have access to PT (physical therapy), find chest stretching exercises and DO them. That binder feeling will go away eventually. I am including a gratuitous chest pic below. It is very obvious that some of my skin was NOT tan. I'm looking forward to being able to even up my skin coloring after I am finally able to go in the sun!