CW: This one's trauma city... bullying for neurodivergence, sure, also medical trauma, medical neglect, gangstalking and social trauma, narcissism, and the literacy crisis. For the record, this blog is absolutely the personal diary of a hyperverbal person who needs to work out all the snowballing thoughts in their head. It just has a shareable link, not a cute little heart-shaped lock. I was just reminded again that my hyperverbalism, particularly as it pertains to my writing style, makes me sound, and I quote, "boring and narcissistic." So, I expect no one to read these boring and narcissistic ramblings of a madwoman, and will therefore just hyperverbalize away. Watch this be my first viral post ever. I say this with zero ego or narcissism, and I know that, because I have had it beaten out of me if it ever even existed : if I were a neurotypical person, I would be considered hugely inspirational. I'm sure a number of people do think I'm an inspiration, but they're a very small minority, and it's because I'm very easily hated. The person who called me "boring and narcissistic" was responding to a post I wrote that started with "after four spine surgeries" and ended with me losing 70 lbs and writing a cookbook. I shared it to be inspiring. Now, I know exactly why they think I'm boring. It took me some time, and a lot of discussion with other verbally gifted individuals to realize that the problem is the literacy crisis. See, it's not just that they don't want to read an essay. It's that they themselves cannot produce an essay. And it's not that I'm actually a narcissist, a word that has lost absolutely all meaning at this point... because understanding why I would share my story in that way, in that particular conversation, requires an understanding of context... yeah, it's going to look self-centered if it's completely devoid of context, but on a video discussion about dieting through personal crises where other commenters were sharing their own similar stories... For those of us who understand the importance of context, I was sharing a story about overcoming medical trauma and neglect, all while dealing with a complete loss of social supports in my personal life thanks to coordinated gangstalking efforts from multiple groups, and succeeding in my weight loss and medical recovery goals anyway. And this person came in to bully me for my autism in telling my story. Who looks the worst in this interaction, exactly? They're lucky I'm not a narcissist. They wouldn't have liked the bear they poked. Me? I understand that illiterate people don't understand context. And I just can't bring myself to be too mean to a person at such an obvious life disadvantage, even if they feel they have to be a bully to cover up their feelings of inadequacy about it. But this was not the first or the last person I'll run into who's going to treat me like shit simply for being able to write a grammatically correct, dare I say it even grammatically elegant, five point argument off the top of my head about any subject you give me. Or any other neurodivergent traits I display. I took on the unmasking project knowing full well what the outside reactions would be, and I own all of it. They're not my audience. And I'm certainly not dumbing myself down for them. I'd rather find the people who appreciate me, and I have to be kinda visible to the bullies to do that. But I would also like to point out that the literacy crisis is literally devolving our society. No Child Left Behind my significantly smaller and still lipidema cratered ass.

I watched David Cronenberg's Crimes of the Future last night. As a person who, and there's so much here I might as well break it out into bullet points... Has a long-term relationship with both chronic pain and chronic loss of sensation. Has multiple food allergies and digestive disorders. Had a laproscopic hysterectomy just one month ago. Where they found the second rare, non-cancerous growth my body had produced. which immediately made me consider our capitalist culture's relation to rarity and worth, which is openly discussed in relation to rare body growths in this film. Has tattoos. Regularly attends the kind of performance art the movie is constantly referencing. Has been a fan of Repo! The Genetic Opera for 20 years now. I thought it was absolutely hilarious. I loved it. I will likely re-watch it a few times. I'd imagine my laughing my way through this movie (after the opening sequence, of course) would come as a surprise to... just about everyone. But first of all, the movie is pure camp. It doesn't have the campiest of visuals, like Repo!, but it's absolutely just as campy. Secondly, Viggo Mortensen and Kristen Stewart both play awkward weirdos so well they don't even trigger my social anxiety response, which is incredibly impressive (or maybe they do and I was just laughing through it). Thirdly, absolutely all of the philosophizing all of these characters are doing about a science fiction topic are thoughts I've had that are very real to my life in the here and now, so seeing them presented in a fantastical way really struck my funny bone for some reason. And while the chair looks like Geiger designed a highchair for adults, after I spent a particularly sleepless night last night thanks to being VERY overdue for a steroid injection in my damaged sciatic nerve root, I want the bed. It FLIPS you?? I have literally trained myself to not move in my sleep, and instead wake myself up if I need to adjust my body, after flopping around in my sleep gave me a major back/hip injury. I want that goddamn Lovecraftian walnut shell bed. Speaking of the bed, they never really explained the technicians' motives, that's my one main complaint about the movie. We understand the purple candy bar cult's motives, we understand New Vice's motives, and we understand both Whippet and Timlin's motives... but not the tech duo. And they were fun characters. They were all fun characters, really. Anyway. It's been three weeks since my last post-op update. The first week and a half or so went as well as to be expected, I did start spotting a little when I started picking my activity up a bit... doing a small load of laundry, making a batch of snack balls (more on that in a minute), etc, etc. Which, I thought was fairly expected considering what I had been told about how to gauge my activity during recovery, but when I went in for my first post-op and not only was my blood pressure elevated but my gyno was concerned about the spotting... never mind, complications have arisen. A visit to my PCP and a change in how I take my blood pressure medication fixed the problem, and I finally feel like I might actually be cleared at my six-week on the 18th. Which I can't believe is in just two weeks! As for what I've been doing with all that down time... I've been compiling recipe zines. Three zines, to be specific. I've been wanting to get into recipe zines for some time, before my current diet, even, and my Canva account is full of discarded ideas that I either couldn't bring together or couldn't get excited about. Why zines? I missed out on the birth of riot grrl in the 90's because I was too young and too Midwestern, but I found zine culture very soon afterwards, and have been following it ever since. My career taking me into the "cool media job" where I actually worked in producing magazines not only gave me a lot of insight into the nature of periodicals in general, but also in how to communicate in brief, collected short-form. And I was in this job when I was introduced to and started working with the Standing Rock Movement and learned the ropes of decolonization, too. A traditional zine is something I can publish very easily with my available resources, and is a useful format for sharing recipes - recipe pamphlets are a classic vintage kitchen staple. I just never had a "voice" for my recipes until now. I've known that my diet is too useful to market just to the allergy community. But exactly how to do that was the issue, how do you market a diet without the most popular foods in it to a wide audience? Particularly when "diet" has been the most fraught word in the culture for decades, long before my existence. So, I'm over here living my best decolonized life, organizing my clothing swaps, and wearing the clothes I find at the swaps to drag bingo, where I'm bringing along a homemade charcuterie board to munch on while I play... But it took consuming just the right content and having just the right conversations with the right, random people to put the diet together with the rest of the lifestyle, and figure out the pitch. The pitch? Decolonize Your Diet, Feed The Revolution. You may have already realized that my blogging is hyperverbalizing my way through an idea, in essay format, to a faceless audience (I'm one of those internal dialogue people, "talking to myself" is always kind of complicated...). So, I already kinda worked this out in a post about a week ago, but here's the full elevator pitch: Fuck the corporate conglomerates. We're always told to boycott Nestle, but when Nestle makes EVERYTHING, what are you supposed to eat? This. This is what you're supposed to eat. You're eating like the human being you are. That means, very satiating quantities of low calorie, high nutrition foods. Are there food rules? Yes, see point 1. But those rules prioritize a diet that regulate leptin and ghrelin production and release, so you can truly eat intuitively, and focus on energy, and health, and things that aren't food and hunger, not restriction and size. Is it "gruel"? No. I know how to season food, thank you. I don't even rely on seasoning mixes, for the most part. You're about to have a very plush spice cabinet. High nutrition food produces real, lasting, quality physical energy with no drop and no chance of addiction. This means you have the extra energy to put into organizing around social justice goals. This is the most affordable diet an American consumer can eat right now. It's also easily scale-able for community food situations, like potlucks, cookouts, disaster relief, organizations... I understand there's a dad-type at Gathering of the Juggalos that hosts a free meal tent all weekend, if he wants to message or email me his address, I have some very scale-able vegan recipes to send him in zine form. Same for anyone who runs a community food outreach like that, drop me a message, I want to send you some free recipes. When I was an anthropology student, any kind of extracurricular Anthropology Department event focused on two things - a guest speaker, and food. The guest speaker part is obvious, the food part is because anthropologists understand - and take great pains to teach by demonstration to their students - the social importance of sharing a meal. Potlucks aren't just traditional, they're an ancient social custom, and social organizations preserve them as a bonding ritual very deliberately. Having accessible community recipes is a boon for social justice work. The people who eat together, stay together. As for the three zines themselves... Feed Yrself: the intro guide to a decolonized diet switch. Features around 20 fully from scratch recipes for iced lattes and other drinks to fill 40 oz tumblers that don't use artificial ingredients, a pumpkin spiced latte syrup made with natural sugars, various breakfast concoctions of oatmeal, seeds, fruits, natural sweeteners, and dairy/nut/soy-free yogurt that can be made in a microwave, and seven nights of flexitarian dinners prioritizing beans, rice, polenta, barley, and minimally processed meats if used. There's tomato-free spaghetti & pizza sauce, and tomato-free barbecue sauce. For dessert, there's cacao cake, and raw pudding and ice cream. And I share my dough recipe that will make you break up with the bakery for good. yr Auntie Cooks Seventh-Day Adventist Favorites! : I cooked my way through religious and diet trauma, and ended up with high-protein, low-cost, incredibly scale-able vegan foods without any dairy, soy, or nuts, that can serve a family of four on a weeknight, or a gymnasium of 400 after a flood. If we're talking food + social justice, you can't get more useful. This has another 20-ish recipes. Eat My Balls: my family's favorite snack, that I now make a double batch of around twice a week since I developed the recipe, is a canned bean, ground seed, raw coconut oil (which, I can't control if you infuse or not before using in the recipe...), and either ground cacao or oat flour based snack ball with natural, nutrient-dense sweeteners, fruits, spices, and all kinds of goodness, that only take a food processor to whip up, and a bit of time in the refrigerator to set to a truffle or cookie dough kind of consistency. And you can't beat the middle school puns. It's full Christmas 1998 again. This is a mini issue, so far there's 8 ball variations, which I'll probably stay at since the number as written looks like a pair of balls turned sideways. When it comes to the practicalities of things like printing, assembling, distribution, and cost/price I haven't quite gotten there yet. They will be a bit heftier than the average zine, since I'm insisting on 16 point Open Dyslexic font, for ease of use. Details forthcoming, of course. So, that's my update. August 2026 was... quite a lot, but it sure was productive.

Decolonization isn't a thought experiment, it's an applied lifestyle. You see it discussed a lot in social justice spaces using really big concepts of societal change, but it's pretty rare to hear people give practical advice on what a truly decolonized lifestyle in the middle of a colonized culture looks like. Particularly considering decolonization is a bottom-up process. We are literally working colonization in reverse here, it has to be. And it's one of those "eat the elephant one bite at a time" scenarios - we all do the work, one small step at a time, until we all complete the journey together. But we ALL have to do the work. No riding on coattails. "Decolonize Your Mind" is a big slogan, but any time I've seen or heard it interpreted for the public (i.e. not in a scholarly work, we are in the middle of a literacy crisis here), it's things like "see non-white people as beautiful" or "recognize money is the root of all evil." None of that is helpful. If you want to decolonize your thought process, you need to understand where your thought process came from, how it relates to colonialism, and where the answer lies in pre-colonialism. The last part is the most important part. Because, then you have to start doing it the way a non-colonized person would. Because you, yourself, are striving to be a non-colonized person. That's what decolonization is. And, for the record, it's a lifelong process: lore time, and CW for medical procedures and pathology... After my hysterectomy earlier this month, they sent the organ to a pathologist for full inspection before incineration, and what we thought was my biggest fibroid was actually an exceptionally large example of a rare, benign tumor, found in less than 1% of hysterectomies. This is the second rare, benign growth my body has produced, as I have a rare cyst sitting on my brain stem. My first thought upon reading my pathology report? "So, I have the ability to produce something extremely rare, but it's worthless. There's no way to make money off of it." I've been decolonizing my mind for 10 years, and that's still where it went at a pathology report. This is going to be a lifelong process for everyone. And that's okay. Good things are worth fighting for. To break decolonization down in the most basic way, these are the steps: Identify the problem that colonialism caused. Identify how colonialism caused the problem. Research how people did it pre-colonization. Go back to doing it the pre-colonial way. So, to take yesterday's blog example of food and put it through the steps: A two-pronged problem: a diet of ultra-processed convenience foods that are high in calories and low in nutrients, depending on dopamine reactions instead of actual nutrition. And a culture that rewards the ability to restrict the dopamine reactions to stay not just average weight, but extremely underweight. The ultra-processed convenience foods can be traced back to the Industrial Revolution, through 1950's housewife culture, 1940's war rationing, and 1930's Great Depression desperation meals. Root cause: corporate capitalism, aka colonialism. People got used to it in times of turmoil and hardship, and so it was pushed as the "modern ideal" to keep the money flowing during times of plenty, when people could go back to their pre-industrial cultural diets. And the cultural preference for thinness comes straight from the Puritan ethic of self-denial for religious salvation. We do have the modern convenience of international food trade, which is good, because for the American Diaspora, "indigenous" is going to mean from a lot of different climates and food systems. But, it's all going to be based on whole grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables, seeds and nuts, maybe dairy and eggs, and minimally processed meats. And that's the order you should be eating it all in, in terms of volume. We also have the modern convenience of blood testing for an ideal individualized diet, which should be part of preventative health care for everyone. Period. And as for the religious aspect, people are going to have to address whether that's a belief they truly hold sacred or not. You realize that humans evolved eating pretty large amounts of food that's low in calories and high in nutrients... no wonder the ultra-processed food doesn't work for our brains or bodies. Okay, how about another obvious one... overconsumption. Break it all down, it goes back to capitalist dopamine manipulation, same as the food - I'm a 1982 American baby, I grew up going to the mall to wander around as a leisure activity to pass the time. We've been conditioned to see shopping as a hobby in general, the scavenger hunt aspect of finding a deal or a rare item adds an additional opportunity for a dopamine hit, and we have the added social manipulation of needing to have the same status symbols as everyone else to retain the same status as everyone else - the same coat, the same stand mixer, the same new fall decor, the same new perfume. Mall culture was one thing, but influencer culture turned it into a whole other monster. Getting the body wash, body lotion, and body spray set from Bath & Body Works used to be the full kit for an "Everything Shower" for the next six weeks, nowadays influencers have whole rooms to store collections of skin and body care that they can never use before it spoils. Shopping wasn't a hobby before the malls were built. It was an errand. You bought things when you needed them. That doesn't mean that you can't have nice things or have collections, it just means that if you take something into your life, it has a use and a purpose. And when it comes to status seeking, well... that one's an internal breakdown. And this does extrapolate out into a cashless local economy based on swap and barter, such as Buy Nothing Facebook groups and item swap events. But it also takes into account the "will I use it?" factor - many people overconsume at thrift or swap because it is free or cheap, it's possible to splurge because many capitalist limits have been lifted... but that also means that you can't approach the system from a capitalists' scarcity mindset, or you'll be buried in shit you don't need. Here's the secret - community-mindedness can come later, personally realizing the balance of "stuff" that you actually use and that actually brings you joy is a reasonable first step to decolonization. I think that's what Marie Kondo was getting at, she just didn't have the framework of decolonization to hang the concept on, which meant that capitalism could grab it and skew it to their messaging. You find yourself surrounded by things with meaning and purpose that you actually enjoy having and using. You have more time and money for hobbies that give you actual joy, not just dopamine hits. How about entertainment? We each pay for 10 different subscription services each month to spend our precious free time watching and listening to the same rehashed and recycled shit so the corporations can keep the money flowing in to fund what we're quickly discovering is some of the sickest stuff on the planet. And then we go on social media owned by the same corporations doing the awful shit to discuss what we just consumed, while we get further propagandized in a political information war. Does this one really need step 2? It's... kind of obvious. The big one here is live, local art. Instead of 10 different subscription services, get season tickets to your local theater company. Become a regular at drag night. See who's doing stand-up or improv. Go to a few local concerts. Also, look into independent artists when it comes to books, music, and film - it's so easy to self-publish nowadays, both Curry Barker and Kane Parsons, the two biggest horror directors of 2026, got their start on YouTube with passion projects. You not only enjoy the art you're consuming, you're also creating real community with artists and other fans... not a faceless, toxic, parasocial fandom. So, the next time something starts to sound like colonizer bullshit, run it through the four-step decolonization process, and make the anti-colonization choice. You'll know it's the right choice when you're genuinely happier with the result.

I'm just going to say it. Fat Acceptance can't fix anything. I've been following it now for 20 years, and I started watching it in the infancy of the modern movement as I had a freshly earned anthropology degree. And Harvard, we need to talk about your most visible influencer graduate. Because you're not exactly promoting yourself as a great education with her content. See, Samyra (she seems to be a single-named celebrity, like Madonna or Cher) is probably the most prominent Gen Z Fat Acceptance activist out there. She's a Harvard Grad, and loves to drop that she's read scholarly texts on the intersection of fatness and race, class, feminism, etc, etc. Her brand is angrily calling out all of the "fatphobia" in society, particularly in large corporations. Here's my issue with Samyra's content - it was revolutionary 20 years ago, when she was in preschool. She's so far added nothing new to the conversation. Despite that Harvard education, which apparently never taught her critical analysis, just made her read books. Because, see, life made this a special focus topic for me. I was raised Seventh-Day Adventist, not only did I have a front-row seat to early American diet ideology, I had it snowballed in with concepts of religious purity. And the prescribed diet was based on soy, eggs, dairy, and nuts - all foods I'm allergic to. My obesity was caused by a literal Holy Trinity of religious, medical, and diet culture trauma. And I was experiencing this during the 90's and 2000's era of fad dieting and extreme thinness. I have a very unique lived experience and insight here. So, combine this with formal training in cultural study (maybe not from Harvard, but I'm obviously still doing okay here), and exposure to the principals of decolonization early through the Standing Rock Protests, and my AuDHD brain let the pattern recognition take over: Truth: we moralize "thinness" and "fatness" thanks to our Puritanical history. Where did that come from? Colonization. Truth: the standard American diet is addictive poison. America's extreme capitalistic culture prioritizes convenience foods over homemade, and even when we do cook, we're so used to cracking open a can of Campbell's soup or Ragu red sauce that we're still adding corporate trash to our meals to cut a corner or two, because that's how grandma did it. Not to mention the stabilizers, preservatives, and other additives we allow, again for the convenience of transportation or shelf life. And the refined fats and sugars that do double duty as those preservatives, and triggers a dopamine hit when you eat the food to boot, making you buy more and making the product more profitable for the company. And what is capitalism? The modern expression of colonization. Truth: we have been taught to look at food superficially as calories and nothing else, and to look at weight gain and weight loss as a matter of eat more/gain more and eat less/gain less, when the reality is far more complicated, and the consumption of the right combination of nutrients for optimum health should be the goal of eating. Why did we do this? Go back to the Puritans. We have science now. We know how to know what each unique body needs in its diet. We need to champion access to scientific diets over religious dogma. And again, dogma's the colonizer's beliefs. We're right back to colonization. I do believe we've identified the root of the issue here: a colonizer's mindset, and a colonizer's diet. So. How do we fight colonialism? We decolonize. And here is where Fat Acceptance is wrong. They're all eating the colonizer's food. And they're proud of it. Before hopping over here to write this, I saw another influencer (not Samyra) claim that her morbidly obese body was a rebellious act against Eurocentric beauty standards. How are you rebelling against the colonizers if you're eating so much of their food you're carrying excessive weight? See, the "Mediterranean Diet" is a decolonized diet. There are versions for every culture, of course, but the diet by in large is based in whole grains & tubers (rice, corn, oats, barley, potatoes, taro, etc), beans and legumes (lentils, chickpeas, etc), nuts and seeds, fruits and vegetables including mushrooms, and minimally processed meats. Dairy and eggs are okay for people not allergic, but the dairy is generally kept to yogurt and kefir, and hard cheeses. If you're obese on a diet like that, there's an underlying medical issue that needs to be addressed. Same with being underweight. You'll look fed on a decolonized diet - the point here is true health, not starvation for effect, either way. And that's the mindset switch that needs to come with the diet change - you're eating to give your body the mix of nutrients it needs to function at its fullest and best capacity. You're eating so you have real energy and real focus to put into things that matter to you. You're eating so you can perform at work, so you can have better sex, so you can enjoy your personal time, so you can have clear skin and strong hair, so you sleep better at night, all things that will genuinely improve your life. And that doesn't mean you're not still eating for pleasure - whole foods are incredibly low calorie while being nutrient dense, you can eat very satisfying portions of food that you can season to your liking, that will truly fill you up and make you feel satisfied and energized. Notice weight or size has absolutely nothing to do with any of that. It's all about health, energy, and quality of life. But it's very, very hard to stay morbidly obese on a decolonized diet, if you don't have any underlying health issues. Same with being underweight. Morbid obesity is the natural result of eating a diet of majority ultra-processed foods, the human brain still craves hearty portions of low calorie/high nutrition food and we're feeding it the opposite, high calorie/low nutrition and expect morality to overcome biology and restrict our eating. Staying underweight in a food system where the food itself is an addictive, harmful substance is a flex because morbid obesity is so easy to attain. Everyone - fat, thin, I don't care - needs to step outside of the colonizer's framework if they want to break the cycle on body image and relationship with food. And that means doing the personal work of decolonization, so we can build a communal base for real cultural evolution. And you can't do that as you're pounding a bag of Doritos for the camera. That's not food freedom. That's just the other side of the same coin of the colonizer's diet. We need to change together. Everybody. And that means everyone taking responsibility for doing the work of decolonization. Now, what could an influencer do to inspire real change, not just rage bait their audience with tired arguments? An influencer could focus positive energy on people and small businesses and co-ops centering decolonization in their lives and business philosophies, introduce their following to people they need to connect to. An influencer could show their own decolonization journey, share their research into what their ancestral foodways were like pre-colonization, record their recipe demos and reactions, and discuss how amazing they feel after eating whole foods and how much it has improved their life and their bank account. And before you start in on "these are all big words for someone with no audience" do you really think corporate owned social media is about to give me an audience with this? Ha! That's why I'm getting into the zine community, real change isn't going to happen on a corporate-owned product. Speaking of, in my two week absence from this blog, I did not die, I just got really into three separate zine projects that are just about ready to print. All are lil themed mini-cookbooks from my recipe blog of decolonized recipes. So, I am walking the talk here, not just shitting on a popular creator for the sake of clout. This is something I really believe in. Let's start building the future we want to live in.

So... not daily updates for this one 😅😅 My biggest update for the day is that as of yesterday, my pain wasn't really getting any better at the end of the Oxy, and I pretty clearly have some decent abdominal swelling... so, I'm skipping the Tylenol altogether and taking Ibproufen every six hours instead. After 24 hours of steady anti-inflammatories in my system, I maybe, might actually take that shower today that I've noped out of since Monday thanks to the pain. That's about it, really. I'm napping a lot, around 2pm I crash until dinner, and I still turn in for the night around 8-ish. I'm chatting with friends, and working on design and communication projects when I am awake. I'm also consuming a LOT of fall fashion content, and getting excited to put pieces in my closet together. Summer used to be my favorite season, and my summer wardrobe used to be my favorite to wear... what happened? 😅😅 Rhetorical question - climate change, a spinal cord injury, perimenopause, and a significant body weight change happened. But so did 2026 trends, which happen to fit my personal style perfectly. I haven't been this excited about dressing myself in a very long time, and I've always loved fashion. Which means, I'm also planning places to wear things, too... time to heal up, body, I've got things to do! So... I'm having a much better time today than I was a week ago!

This video pops up on my feed this morning... "if patients have catheters, or maybe central venous devices... we virtually never see this in patients who aren't in nursing homes, or hospital settings..." Yeah, I was in the hospital overnight on a Foley catheter and double-fisting the IV's just a few nights ago... I absolutely don't have it, by the way. Zero symptoms. I just think it's funny I've been flirting with every single public health risk summer 2026 can throw at us. I then went further into my notifications, and realized that my tissue exam results had come in from my hysterectomy. Not only did I have so many fibroids they didn't even bother counting them all once they got in there, the 3.7 centimeter growth was actually a rare, benign adenomatoid tumor. Considering I also have a rare cyst sitting on my brainstem, snuggled against where the artery forks off, this is basically lightning striking twice, as far as rare growths are concerned. I'm just amused, and grateful they're not malignant. Now, I'm also kind of wondering what the third thing is going to be. I'm not scared of cancer, my track record is pretty great there, really, I'm just wondering what other weird thing my body could grow next. Just how creative my cells want to get. I read Lucy A. Snyder's Sister, Maiden, Monster a couple of years ago as part of a reading challenge, and it was easily my favorite book of the year, simply because it is far, far too close to home... First of all, there are enough clues that those who know, know it's set in Grand Rapids, MI. Where I'm from. The "Maiden" character is an asexual, AFAB person with a rare tumor condition. I celebrated this new one's discovery by putting a copy of the paperback on order. I think it's time for a re-read, while I'm convalescing. As for the convalescing, it's going. Today is a painful day. I can really feel the incisions today. I had to take a mid-day Oxy, and the shower I intended to take today is getting pushed to tomorrow, I don't need to stress myself out.

CW: I had an organ removed, and I'm gonna talk details. Welcome to day 3 post-op, where it starts getting properly gory. I mean, it was pretty gory on Wednesday, but I was born with that uterus, it's definitely one of the more visceral organs to begin with. So, more gory than expected, but not so much to be concerning. The pain has kicked in, I wouldn't be surprised if today was peak pain day, or maybe tomorrow. It feels like a pretty average period, for the most part. So, painful, but very localized pain that isn't worrying me at all. THC + the Ibuprofen & Tylenol isn't perfect pain control, but I also don't want to think I'm feeling better than I really am and do too much. The combo takes it down to acceptable if I'm behaving myself, so I can see why they don't load a hysterectomy down with pain meds the way they would a joint replacement. You do need to be able to feel what's going on enough to not injure yourself, unlike with some of the recoveries I've done. If it gets worse, I can take more Oxy than I am, and if it gets worse than that, to the ER I go, because something is wrong. I should probably describe my suture points. The big one, the one that obviously reacts to movement, is through my belly button. The one that doesn't like my guts as they're getting used to moving solid food through again is on the left side of my upper abdomen, over that left bend in the bowel as it goes to its final destination. I then have two other incisions directly below the upper abdomen incision on the left, and a matching one on the hip bone on the right. And the invisible one, the vaginal cuff, which has now replaced my cervix. None are very big, maybe 1/2" to 3/4," it's just a "death by 1,000 cuts" kind of thing when you consider that's 5-6" worth of incision, total, not incomparable to my hip replacement incision from January. They just don't have to be held together by industrial-strength closures like one big one, so dissolving stitches are a nice change. I went from 36 hours with empty bowels to my body just absorbing nutrients from any source, and I made sure the easy sources I have available to me are full of probiotics and prebiotics to build my gut flora back up after all the prophylactic antibacterials and fasting, so I know my bowels are active, but they're... confused right now, especially with the evening Oxy dose. So, I'm guzzling Miralax, and have added some Ex-lax to the party to get things going, heh, on top of the regular wanderings out around the house to keep my legs active. I did this after trying to pass whatever was giving me cramps in my bowels, especially around that upper abdomen suture, caused a blood clot to loosen. ANY pressure is a bit dicey right now, which was what made my peeing problems on Wednesdays so concerning. I'm also shedding this kind of beige-colored film when I'm peeing, though I'm sure it's from the vagina. It's odorless and almost colorless, and not coming with any weird smells or excessive bleeding behind it, so I'm guessing it's some kind of biofilm my body is putting off while it's healing. Do I actually know what it is? Nope, I'll ask my gyno at the post op in a couple of weeks. But. that's a pretty good day 3, all things considered. My mood is high, I got a good night's sleep and a 2.75 hour nap this afternoon, so it's been a productive day, recovery-wise. As for the cats, they seem to have accepted that Mama isn't as fast or flexible right now, but they're also mad about the inconvenience of the whole affair. And we're back! This is getting published 12 hours later than intended, because Elon Musk's internet is hella unreliable. But, that means that I can report that I'm to the phase in healing where the incisions itch. I know this, because I kept waking myself up last night by unconsciously scratching at them (thankfully over my clothes) as I was falling asleep, which of course hurt enough to jolt me back awake. Rinse and repeat until I'm finally able to fall asleep without the instinct to scratch kicking in. I did sleep pretty well once I got there, getting there was the issue.

I've spent my day monitoring my urine color, and water and electrolyte intake, because my body is doing its damnedest to flush all the anesthesia out. Exciting stuff, I know! I also have so far consumed a monster sized fresh peach for breakfast, and a refrigerator oatmeal for lunch, the latter after getting pretty woozy and wobbly and realizing that I was concentrating so hard on hydration that I hadn't kept up the caloric intake. I'm very glad I jarred those up to have on hand! My guts are responding very vocally to waking up properly with all that fiber, but not in a bad way, just in what would be an embarrassing way if this were a board meeting 😅😅 I've also re-upped my body's THC content, and that has helped a TON with the post-op pain. To the point where combined with the Tylenol and Ibuprofen alternating has me not really needing the Oxy right now, as I'm taking it easy. I am getting up to walk around... mostly to get to the bathroom or refill my water tumbler, but I wander a little as I can tolerate once I'm up! Especially since I've had some gas to work out of my shoulder joints. My hands are also doing a lot better... my right hand is almost back to normal size and is definitely back to normal range of motion, and while I have some puncture spots that are individually swollen on my left hand, like bug bites, they've all scabbed over and are obviously starting to heal. Something tells me the bruising will be absolutely stunning in both hands in just a few days. So, rough start, but I'm on the upswing!

I'm on day two without a uterus. It's been a rough couple of days. The surgery itself went perfectly, it was probably the easiest yoink of the day. It was the absolute freak-out my body decided to have after that was the issue. The biggest issue was my blood pressure. Pretty much the minute I came out of anesthesia, my blood pressure went up in the 210/120 range, and stayed there no matter what, so I was admitted for the night on the heart ward for observation. Second biggest issue was my bladder, which needed a foley catheter for around 10 hours after the operation. It didn't go to sleep with the anesthesia, I was well aware of it the whole time, it was just swollen and shifted to the right thanks to the inflammation in my abdomen, so I couldn't release anything. Third biggest when it came to actual danger but number one for me was that they pump your abdomen full of air for the surgery, and that made me so nauseous until my body decided to release it, which took laying flat, and switching from laying on my left to right side every half-hour or so. Though, my BP went back down to normal after a night of belching every time I rolled over. Because of that, nothing more than small sips of anything would sit on my stomach, so I got real dehydrated. Now, I'm a hard enough poke that I have Vascular Access on my chart for basically anything that involves needles. My veins roll like gas station hot dogs. And I was so dehydrated that not only could they not even pull from either of two IV sets (one in each hand), but anything they did get congealed immediately. That got me two more bags of saline... and also four lab techs and a whole lot of pokes. To where my right hand blew up like a balloon after they removed the IV yesterday, it's gone down considerably but is still a little puffy today. And taking out the left IV made one of the lab pokes start to weep, that took all night to finally congeal. It soaked the gauze they put on it. And, of course, the anesthesia leaving the body coupled with the hormonal shock gave me the sweats and chills for about 12 hours post-op. I sweat out a lot last night, too, thankfully without the teeth-clattering shivers. And the shock gave me leg tremors until yesterday morning, which my nurse said are pretty severe as tremors go. Ironically, we passed a billboard driving in from the OTHER hospital system (which I'm also connected to, so I do have access to this) advertising a new sonic treatment for essential tremor, which I may ask my PCP about when I see her in a few weeks. Mine really only manifests when I'm stressed physically or emotionally, but hey, if I'm a candidate, I'd love to dial it down. Pain-wise, I take bone pain better 😅😅 The high-dose Ibuprofen works better than the Tylenol, which, duh. And I have Oxy if it gets too bad. As for bleeding, it was pretty intense for the first six hours or so post-op, but I'm not even spotting right now. I'm told spotting is my signal that I'm going too hard for the next few weeks, and considering I'm not moving too fast right now, no spotting is a good sign. Am I happy I did it? Fuck yeah. I survived, I'll heal, and I don't ever have to worry about the family cancer or having another period again. How did the cats handle it? I am told Penelope, Violet, Hamish, and Milosh spent the entire time protesting my absence. Violet and Milosh are still mad at me, despite being extra cuddly. I would like to start camping and travelling again, but with this co-dependent crew... And as a final lol, my discharge paperwork had this big warning about how they used a medicine in anesthesia that makes oral contraceptives ineffective for a dose or two, so I'd better use a condom if I don't want a post-op baby... you know, for the sex I'm not allowed to have for six weeks, because they just removed my uterus and cervix. That was pretty funny. Oh hey, no more pregnancy tests before my nerve root injections, either! Whoo hoo!

I can't believe its Back To School season already. I have no skin in the game, I've been out of even higher education for 17.5 years and I don't have my own kids going back to class... because I don't have my own kids. But, the pop culture commentary channels are already starting to talk about Bama Rush (and sorority rush season in general), and I'm seeing the high school upperclasswomen putting out Emergency Kit stocking videos to put the younger girls on, which is fantastic of them and I love to see it. I think everyone knows by now that a good, useful bag stock is my JAM, so here's my list of what I include in my own Emergency Kit to this day! Do you need to stock yours with every single thing listed here? Not at all! This is what I find useful, you may not find some of it useful. These kits are very personal, I'm sharing what I fill mine with simply to give you ideas for your own bag you may not have thought of on your own. I know people hate qualifications nowadays, but I'll still give you mine when it comes to day bag preparedness: I mean, it's been literal decades, but I was a high schooler at one time. I even went to the tech center for half the day, so I commuted between buildings. I was a college student, too, and I didn't live on campus... so I had to pack for 12 hour days. My summer job was at Renaissance faires. Using banks of port-o-pots all weekend, all summer. Not to mention, I was one of those day-to-evening Millennial "#GirlBosses" for 10 years. And as someone who has survived in those conditions and lived to bring you these tips, I myself carry with me: Your favorite menstrual products. That's where this whole thing started. I also recommend a spare pair of panties (and maybe also a pair of period panties, in addition to the pads and tampons/discs) folded into a plastic sandwich baggie... if your cycle is unpredictable like mine was, there's no reason to not be fully prepared for everything. Also, keep some extras on hand of the pads and tampons/discs for sharing. You know how the Ladies' Room is. Condoms, dental dams, and sample packs of silicone-based lube. Look. I'm asexual myself, but I'm also a realist. If I'm not going to use it, someone around me will. So, yeah, I do usually keep a Planned Parenthood condom in my Emergency Kit. And yes, I am fine with nebulously giving this advice to high schoolers. Like I said, I'm a realist. I know "the kids" are less promiscuous "these days" than my generation was at the after football game bonfires, but I also know how hormones work. NARCAN. Same as above on all counts. Vulva-safe wipes. You can get them packaged like baby wipes, or you can get them individually wrapped... individually wrapped makes them easier to hand over with the pad/tampon when you're fulfilling your Period Hero duties, just saying. A pocket pack of facial tissue. Sometimes, the stall's out of TP. Flushable toilet seat covers. Your favorite hand sanitizer. Those one-time-use sheets of hand soap. A travel toothbrush with a good cover. A travel tube of toothpaste. Individual tubes of mouthwash. A roll of dental floss. 2oz spritz bottle of HOCL. You can use this as a hand sanitizer, a surface sanitizer, spray it on your toothbrush and toothbrush cover before and after use to keep it clean, and spray it on the crotch of your panties or under your arms as a deodorant. Speaking of deodorant... a travel stick of your favorite deodorant. A travel bottle of talc-free powder, to keep damp areas dry and rubbing areas from creating friction. I like Gold-Bond, but YMMV on the menthol sensation. If you don't like using loose powders, check out "liquid baby powder" in the baby care section, it's a silicone-based lotion that dries to a powder finish. A Poy-sian inhaler stick. Not super common outside of Thailand, I know! Not only does the camphor and menthol smell act as an energizer and help cover bad smells in the environment, you can screw off the inhaler stick and use the oil dropper to apply the oil to your insect bites, which is one of the few things I've found that disrupts the itching sensation. Again, YMMV on skin tolerance to camphor and menthol. A travel bottle of your favorite OTC pain medication. Now, if you're in school, I know a lot of school codes call for all medication to be dispensed by the school nurse, so obviously leave this out if you're bringing this to a school with these rules. If you're not, however... if you're AFAB, you know why. A small brush or comb, a scrunchie, and a few bobby pins. Individually wrapped alcohol swaps. You can use them to clean your glasses, to clean minor wounds and prep skin for a bandaid, for spot disinfecting any surface, and for removing any adhesives or sticky, oily substances. Band-aids. You can usually get a little plastic clamshell with like six bandaids in it for this purpose at a Dollar store, in the travel bins, or with a full-sized box of bandaids as a bonus. A small tube of Aquaphor. Sunblock. Some days, you find yourself outside. Make sure you're ready. Perfume. Why not? We all have random tiny bottles or rollerballs. As for the kind of bag to keep this in... The search terms you're looking for are "makeup bag," "cosmetics bag," "pencil bag," or even "electronics pouch" if you want something water resistant with lots of pockets for stashing. You're looking for something fairly flat, and generally in the 8"-10" size. You will likely find something fairly easily while thrifting, but if not, they're particularly affordable for Back To School. If you know the bathroom stalls you'll be using the most don't have a lot of places to set things down, you may want to consider looking for a small purse with a wrist loop, or cross-body strap so you can wear it while you're using it, or a pouch with a caribiner so you can clip it to the outside of your backpack while you're using the stall. And you're probably wondering where the makeup is? I prefer that to be a second kit. I don't want to risk dropping my mascara in the toilet as I'm digging for my tissues. The toothbrush is risky enough.

My hysterectomy will be an outpatient procedure, unless I need to stay overnight for some reason. So, I'm packing my bag for all eventualities, mostly comfort eventualities. Going over what I packed last time... second verse, same as the first, really. Cervical pillow, which makes lying on your back with a hypermobile neck a lot easier. Sugar skull lap robe - yeah, they have blankets, but they're not fuzzy blankets, and they're only warm when they're fresh out of the warmer. Surgery robe. Apparently, the only time I might need a drain is if the vaginal cuff develops an abscess as it heals. I've never had abscessed sutures before, and I've had plenty of sutures, so I doubt a drain will be used. But it's still the best robe I have for post-op, for a number of reasons, including the knee-length and the exposed forearms for IV access. Dopp Kit, which I don't expect to touch, but it's still nice to know I have it if I do need an overnight, or a touch-up on anything hygienic while I'm there. A paperback copy of Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber, which is a collection of short stories retelling classic fairy tales from a feminist lens. Seems appropriate for hysterectomy reading! A new playlist of upbeat music, and a freshly charged Bluetooth speaker... I'm bringing my external instead of my muffs this time... it's much smaller than the muffs, mostly, also it doesn't cut me off from conversation with my mom (my surgery buddy) and my care team. My pouch of charging cords and a battery charger that usually lives in my adventure bag. A pair of light absorption period underwear - I was told to expect a little vaginal weeping from the sutures for the first couple of days. A silk bonnet, because the hair growth challenge continues! I'll wear my hair into the hospital in dual cornrows to keep it tidy under the surgical bonnet, and change into my silk bonnet ASAP for length protection. A small box of Bare Bones instant bone broth (not a sponsored link). They like to see how your digestive system handles broth after you wake up from anesthesia, but most chicken bullion cubes have soy protein... so I bring my own. And that's my bag. As I type this, I have 3.5 days left of prep... which is good, as today is a rainy, low pressure day, and I'm only allowed Tylenol at this point, so I'm planning on spending a lot of the afternoon in a hot salt bath. I can get busy later. Though there's not a lot to do... I need to wash the clothes in my hamper. On Monday. I need to wash my bedding. On Tuesday. I need to make a few jars of refrigerator oatmeal, and a fresh batch of fudge balls for snacking. Probably on Monday. Day before surgery is usually pretty exhausting already, between the bedding and the shower. And then, I'm ready.

CW: yeah, in a post about food prep. Because I also discuss orthorexia, religious trauma, trauma from alternative medicine, trauma in general and how it affects the relationship to food, gastroparesis, enemas... and yeah, I have links to my recipe blog in here, too. I kinda forgot about refrigerator oatmeal. You know. The summer time meal prep darling. I do remember the last time I made myself refrigerator oatmeal, and it was honestly pretty traumatic (the situation, not the oatmeal), so it's not surprising it dropped off my radar. I was eating the hot version last January after the hip replacement, because it was January, and a blizzard the entire month, and a cold breakfast wasn't really sounding great. But once spring rolled around, that turned into a simple coconut yogurt with ground flax seeds and honey, mixed on the spot, there you go. Problem being, I can't have flaxseeds until after surgery next week. tfw your diet is so nutritious, the nutrients would screw up the anesthesia. I know I wrote the recipe with flaxseeds, I'm not putting them in for this week. I will definitely put them in for the cups I prep next Tuesday as I'm doing the Laundry From Hell. I'll need as much added fiber as possible post-op! My mother, who did this in 1991 - "I don't remember having to stop taking or eating anything weeks before my hysterectomy. But then, I might have been taking a multi-vitamin." In 1991, we were still Seventh-Day Adventists. I wasn't even baptized until three years later, so, this was a good five years before we formally left the church. Now, obviously, medicine has come a long way in 35 years, as has the medications we use in anesthesia and our understandings of how those medications interact with substances normally found in the human body. But that would have been the peak of her hanging out with the church ladies and their orthorexic diets, not to mention the older lady with the Shaklee supplement shop and the colonics rig in her suburban basement. WHO'S THE CRUNCHIEST BITCH IN THE ROOM NOW, MOM??? Speaking of, apparently an enema used to be part of the deal. As someone with gastroparesis issues, I have a deluxe electric enema system and would be ready if that were a requirement nowadays. I'm not sad that I don't have to add a half-hour to The Shower the night before the procedure, but damnit, I am prepared for the possibility! Which is good, because speaking of things you have to give up, my daily magnesium citrate gummies are a whole week out of my system, and I have a week to go before I can take them again... ugh. So, after that less-than-appetizing narrative diversion... that'll be five cups of refrigerator oatmeal, plus five dinners, three Salisbury steaks with whipped white beans (that's not on my blog, because it's a friend's recipe), and meaty refried beans over polenta, for like a deconstructed tamale bowl. That's probably all I'll want to eat, those are pretty filling! So, that's food set through the first five days. And then, lots of frozen fish and veggies to make rice bowls, as well as somen noodles and broth fixings. And potentially going back to my simple yogurt bowl in the mornings, idk. Refrigerator oatmeal is pretty delicious... It's kind of freaking me out, how casual I am about all of this. Surgery prep has obviously gotten pretty easy. I shouldn't have to be this familiar with the process to be so comfortable with it, damn.