yes, I highly recommend an orchiectomy from a skillful surgeon, ideally someone that also performs vaginoplasties (so they are more likely to know how to preserve options for a future vaginoplasty if that becomes a possibility and desire later).

The temporary timeline was at most a year, since in the U.S. insurance requires a minimum of 1 year on supervised HRT before allowing any trans gender-affirming surgeries.

Anecdotally, I never found monotherapy as stable for my mood as having more normal estrogen levels post-op, but most of the stability just came from my body no longer occasionally producing testosterone levels I didn't tolerate well. (High estrogen definitely made me more emotional, but in some ways I enjoyed how it felt - once my life calms down enough, I plan to incorporate occasionally more frequent or higher doses to simulate a monthly cycle.)