Dilation or Reality Sucks

Don't let the title fool you, I'm not here to whine about how annoying and time consuming dilation will be. I had looked this all up before I even started taking hormones, though I'd forgotten the details over the years. I decided to give myself a refresher recently. I started somewhere close to here, or the links within:
http://wiki.susans.org/index.php/Vaginal_dilation

Which leads me to the Reality Sucks part.
"This is due to the body treating the vagina as a wound [...]"
Ouch. It's pointed, but you can't really criticize it. It's reality. Naive pre-ops like myself (for the next 31 days) have a foolish sense of utopianism where everything will be perfect in the end, aside from the dead obvious issues that result from not having ovaries. For everything else, we cover our ears and yell LALALALALALALA as if that'll make them go away. Now that it's all about to happen, I can no longer do that. It's not to say I'm not absolutely looking forward to it still, but it's kind of like getting a world record and then someone putting an asterisk next to it.

So back to the dilation part, isn't it strange how "Dilation" is a buzzword to pre-ops? You see it everywhere and yet it's never actually explained unless you dig deep. Well I'm going to make it meaningful to any preops reading here right now, and then a month and a half later I'm going to revise it and make it WAY more meaningful, having the real experience behind me. But for now, I gather it to be:
1. Start with the smallest stent that fits, but not too easily.
2. Place it inside the "gaping wound" :P slowly.
3. Twist it around gently, I'm not sure though if you actually leave it stationary for a bit after though. (assuming no) Your scientific goal is to get tissue microtears, similar to methods used for little people to elongate their limbs during childhood and adolescence though not as extreme, promoting more tissue growth in its place. I'm not sure how one would personally determine this.
4. Take out, repeat, and if feeling comfortable enough, move up a size.

So there's my "hope everyone's telling me the right thing" version.

Gaping wounds have made me realize why the level of cynicism is high in our community. As a perfectionist, I certainly won't be an exception. I'll be mocking that well into my 70's if I make it that far. In the last year or so, I've met a number of people who have broken down the facade of utopianism and false perfection that's rampant in our community which only gives those of us approaching the end of the road a "santa claus isn't real" type syndrome.

Oh well, in some ways it might be better that I couldn't afford this as a teenager when I started HRT, seeing how many of life's other facades break down around that time. But most every other way is screaming at those "some ways" phrases like "ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FREAKING MIND??"