Martina Bellucci is 27 years old and doesn’t hold anything back.
She grew up in Tafí Viejo, 12 kilometers from the capital of Tucumán, Argentina, started hormone therapy at 18, and at 26 underwent the gender reassignment surgery she had been waiting for all her life. The operation lasted between seven and eight hours.
The night before, she had to fast and take laxatives to empty her colon. Upon waking from anesthesia, doctors placed a cotton-filled condom shaped like a phallus inside the new cavity to keep it open during the first few days. She spent five days hospitalized, unable to get up, with a urinary catheter.
“People think it’s just cut and done”, Martina says, debunking the most repeated myth: it’s not an amputation; vaginoplasty works with existing tissue.
She married the man who accompanied her through every surgery; they separated after the operation and are now friends. She works at the Ministry of Health in Buenos Aires, helping other people understand what she experienced firsthand.