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.

3 days since top surgery

It's been 3 days since my top surgery. Among the jokes from my family about how it looks like I have tomatillos attached to my new nipples, there's more about nipples.
Because my breasts were large, I had double incision chest surgery. Because of some "extra" tissue (quoting the surgeon here) between my pectoral muscles, those incisions actual join together where some special extra cutting happened to prevent me from having a fleshy "nose" in the middle of my chest. Anyway, along with those incisions, I also had my nipples removed, grafts made out of them, and then they were moved to a more natural masculine positioning. There is much explaining about how there will be loss of sensation in them, (think about if that is important to you), etc. However, what no one explained about is how there could possibly be phantom nipple sensation. I repeat, phantom nipples. Apparently I am one of the lucky folks who can still feel the old nipples in the vicinity of where they were previously located. It's not pain though. It's like it's cold outside and they are contracting. It's a particular sensation that pretty much anyone with nipples has experienced. From what I read, it could go away, it may not. It's weird.
Other than phantom nipples, which is just strange, I feel pretty good. My right drain is putting out way to much fluid for me to be super hopeful about it being removed on Monday, but it could still slow down enough. Maybe.