Whilst I miss the smell of my ballsack on my undies, rubbing the scar oil in everyday is making my pants smell of beautiful relaxing lavender. I don’t think I smell of wee, so hopefully I am not smelling like an old lady. It still feels a little sore when washing; there’s that tickling sensation, which is lovely but currently a little overwhelming, although I hope stays with me when I’m fully healed.

Last night was my piano lesson. As usual, my instructor made a cup of tea and have me a biscuit. He knew that is been away (because if cancelled a lesson), but didn’t know why. I decided to tell him something, but not be specific. I used the phrase “identity affirming surgery”, which I have used before. He didn’t quite know what that meant (which was my intention really), but made enough of a leap off what that meant to ask me to confirm my pronouns, which I thought was very considerate of him. We talked about a couple of trans-folk that he worked with and how important it was to use the correct pronouns – what a huge difference it makes to people. He is a sensitive soul, such I suppose you might expect from a musician. I may share more details with him sometime.

Of course, after tea and a chat, we actually had a piano lesson. I’m working on Ludovico Einaudi’s “Dietro Casa”, which is another beautiful tranquil yet emotional piece. I rather feel that I enjoy playing the slower more emotional pieces than the fast fun ones. My issues with this piece are making the music flow and putting feeling into it without sorting down just because the notes need to be played slower. The music is marked as tempo rubato, however I’m not in control of when I speed up our slow down.

I might love listening to lively piano pieces when they are played by others (my favourites being Beethoven Piano Concerto No 5, Rachmaninoff Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, and Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue), but my favourite pieces to play are Satie Gymnopédie and Bach Prelude in C Major. I know them well enough now to put expression and feeling into them. Sometimes, if I can’t sleep and my husband is downstairs, I might play something peaceful too help relax me so that I can sleep.

I’ve managed to bring forward my call with the doctor to this Friday (it was Monday week). I don’t know what she’s going to say; I think if it was anything simple (like your prescription for testosterone is ready), then she would have emailed, texted, it phoned directly (which she’s done before). I think it’ll just be a “sorry, I can’t do anything, you need to wait for endocrinology”. If that’s the case, then I think I’m going to have to get Health Watch involved because I think that I’m starting to enter dangerous territory with hormone deprivation.