At the pre-op appointment on Tuesday, my nurse navigator tried to help me work out a plan to sleep away from the cats for two weeks. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the last time I was cut open for medical purposes, it was at 9 in the morning, and by 5pm I had become the Mumma of a micro-runt from a polyesterous litter (like internet sensation Baby Corn). And that I immediately started pottying him with the incision hand. I could have worn gloves. That occurred to me about the time he litter trained. oof, lightening this picture really showed off the bruise there… Anyway, that was in March 2024. He grew from a little 6oz kittenlet to a 12lb floofy wide boy. He loves the Christmas Tree. I don’t know how to tell him I won’t be able to bend over for Speedy Pets (that’s where he runs at me from across the house, and I have to be quick enough to pet him one time as he zooms by. Failure on my part gets an exasperated second try) for 12 full weeks! So much floof. So much. And considering this is how Penelope is chillin’ right now… Yeah, she’ll be easy to keep out of bed… 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

I had it confirmed today that I have to stay off of my birth control for six weeks - two weeks pre-op, and four weeks post-op. I’m not just ready, I’m not fucking around. Wish me luck 🤞🏼🤞🏼

Left was taken 9/28/25, Right was taken today, 12/12/25. Both show my hair stretched but not straightened, and freshly cut using the Manes by Mell Pigtail Cut. I took about 4” off in September, and 1” off today. That’s just 2 1/2 months of growth 🥳🥳🥳 Introducing my hair: 3a/b, ringlet curls about the diameter of a boba straw (it took me a minute to think of a comparison that wasn’t “middle-sized vaginal dialator,” guys), highly, HIGHLY porous, medium thickness but super fine. And I have about 8” of shrink, no shit, especially at the nape of my neck. My hair has been a real rollercoaster ride over the years. First of all, this is not a “biracial with a white mom” thing, I got the hair from my mom, and she didn’t know what the hell to do with her own hair as a French/Cherokee person in a white neighborhood, so when she gave it to me she basically kept me shorn like a sheep. I “grew my hair out” at 12, but in the age of covering up sulfate damage with silicones, and with a mother who just noped out of hair altogether, I had a rat’s nest. It was severely damaged from the hair products I blindly used, the sun damage from spending the entire summer in the pool, and the hair dye I used to cover up the damage… it was bad. I found the Natural Hair Movement around 2012 or so, and while I was able to rehab my hair into a healthy curl pattern through early LOC methods, I was still coloring my hair, and therefore still damaging it, not to mention while there were Naturalistias using scalp oiling techniques at the time, I didn’t get into it. It seemed “extra.” So, my hair was growing at around 1/2” per month, and the ends weren’t surviving much longer than my collar. I assumed I simply wasn’t able to grow long hair. I stopped dyeing my hair in 2021, and I cut the last of the colored hair off at the beginning of 2024… it took me three years to grow roughly the amount of hair I just grew in the last 2 1/2 months 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️ It was having to get my allergens out of my personal care products that led me to finally scalp oiling, and then properly cleaning my scalp regularly to remove the oil, not just shampooing my hair… all of a sudden, my hair grows like nothing else. But I wasn’t working on length retention, I was working against it with some habits. I went from being well on my way to having bra strap length hair by now, to yet another “big chop” and start over at the end of September. That start-over included scalp cleansing with kojic acid soap, scalp oiling with coffee-infused oils, a leave-in conditioner, and a chebe (apparently pronounced “SHEE-bay,” but please correct me if I’m saying it wrong) butter for length retention. I also put a heat hood on over all of this as it’s fresh, to melt the oils and butters down, and lock it into the hair follicle. Otherwise, I find the chebe butter just kinda sits on top of the hair, being needlessly greasy. I also started wearing silk/satin bonnets to bed every night, with silk scrunchies if needed. Another thing that I thought was “a lot” (like, really, I have to wear them over my ears, and that legit kept me from wearing them for years. It’s a dumb neurodivergent thing), but makes a huge difference in length retention. So, how am I planning on maintaining my hair growth while I’m healing a titanium hip joint implant? I make the scalp oil and chebe butter, and I’ll make a triple batch of both within the next couple of days. I’ll keep up my usual every 2-3 days routine with my hair up until the night before surgery. There’s also an internal component to my hair growth - I take daily collagen peptides, electrolytes, iron, buffered vitamin c, and omega 3-6-9 supplements to support a lot of things, hair growth and health included. I can do that until one week before surgery, so I’ll be diligent about taking them until I can’t anymore, and get back to them as soon as I can. I’ll give my scalp and hair a good cleaning as I’m taking that pre-surgery shower, and use a light leave-in and vegetable glycerine to seal it in (my summertime humectant go-to). After it’s dry, I’ll put it up in “boxer braids,” the easiest way to get it under a surgical bonnet. Once I’m out of surgery, I’ll switch to a satin bonnet. For upkeep in the days immediately following surgery, my friend Elfie came in so clutch buying me a Tangle Teezer and spray in detangler/conditioner 🙏🏼🙏🏼 That and a water spray bottle will keep my hair from turning into the Gordian Knot in the back, and I can do it all from bed 🫶🏼 Once I can get back into the shower (which really depends on my post-op pain levels, I have a transport shower chair, so I can sit in the shower all day), I’ll start up the scalp maintenance and chebe length maintenance again… and likely make it my post-op hobby. Right now, my hair is shoulder length, which is where I’m used to it being. I realize that makes me look like the girl from Encanto: When the first trailers came out for Encanto, everyone who ever met me said “why is Katrina in a Disney movie??” I’m hoping to be cleared from post-op with armpit-length hair, have it bra-strap length by by my birthday in early June, and celebrate my big chop anniversary with waist-length hair 🤞🏼🤞🏼🧿🧿 Mind blowing, seriously.

Violet, Michael Myers, and my new panties TW: weight loss, weight gain, weight loss medication. The problem with learning you need surgery in five weeks on literal Black Friday is that shipping isn’t any “two days” like it usually is. This is why we order early! As long as it’s here by January 4th, we’re good. I’m getting an anterior hip replacement, so my surgeon will be going in from the front… and I need Hi-Cut panties that won’t sit the leg seam right on the incision. But I need new panties in general right now. Buckle in, this one’s a story… The only thing I can think of that would ruin one hip, the left one in particular, is that days, literally an amount of days you can count on one hand, after graduating from my local rehab hospital’s outpatient Fibromyalgia Pain Program at the very end of 2017, my left piriformis muscle spasmed so hard, it triggered about 30 more muscle spasms down my left leg, that all had to be released in sequence before the piriformis muscle would relax. That took nine months, and one more go-around through the rehab hospital’s program. The program is a lot of strength training, and I started taking it really seriously as I started healing my muscles after that flare. The result was a 50lbs and 29” total loss, and me being in the best physical health of my life. Of course, that was until the ruptured discs in 2021, at spine levels T10-11 and L5-S1. Between not being able to exercise two hours per day like I had in my strength training days, and comfort eating, I gained that 50lbs back pretty easily after all those surgeries and nerve/spinal cord injuries. Until the food allergies were diagnosed in early 2024, after I went on the AIP diet in late 2023. I’m allergic to both dairy, and all nuts, two of the fattiest foods in the American diet. Cutting those out of my diet, along with basically every pre-packaged convenience food out there meant I dropped 30lbs with very little effort. Here’s where the panties start to come in. At the time, in the pre-tariff days, I had a bit of a dopamine issue with the Shein app. And since I fully expected to drop the other 20lb, I bought a bunch of panty sets in what is my current size. Thing is, I was a lingerie model at the time, so there’s a lot of flesh colored thongs… But then, the migraines and the comfort eating set in, just as the cortisol and perimenopause started to work together to pack a bunch of fat around my organs, and my weight went right back up again. My doctor decided that the solution was Wegovy in late 2024, I was one of the early users. The solution was not Wegovy. I have been in a gastrointestinal nightmare that shows no sign of ending since taking Wegovy. So, I tried Contrave in early 2025, which is a combo of Naltrexone and Bupropion, which, when powers combined, work on addiction in the brain. It’s like the dopamine handed the “I’m hungry” button back to my body, and I’m actually eating for the calories and nutrients now. I’m naturally eating small portion sizes, not snacking, and intermittent fasting. But now, down that 50lbs again, we are in the days of tariffs, and I cannot believe the price of women’s panties! I remember being able to get a 12 pack of cotton panties on sale for $8, that 6 pack was $9 on sale marked down from $20! WHAT THEE ACTUAL FUCK?? So, I now have two panty drawers (heh, two drawers for my drawers), one for “highly polyester but cute enough to wear to the doctor’s appointment where multiple people will see them” and “two sizes too big and getting holes but I have a moral objection to buying more at the prices right now.” Getting a new hip and new panties, what a day! I’ll keep them boxed (as they may be) until I do the surgery laundry, and after that I guess I can finally dump the old ones… Funnily enough, a big reason I wanted to lose the weight this go-around is because you won’t be considered a candidate for a breast reduction unless you’re at a 29 BMI or under. I just got the referral to plastic surgery for a reduction mastectomy about a month before I got the referral to orthopedics… but unlike orthopedics, it takes a full year to get in for a consult, and another year after that to get in for the surgery. That puts me firmly into Medicaid work requirements I’m not physically capable of meeting, so we’ll see if I ever get to ditch my literal Barbie doll proportions. Meanwhile, my Total Joint Replacement Handbook recommends aiming for a BMI 30 or lower by surgery date. Already there, baby! And so, so grateful for being so, this is already pure agony, I can’t even comprehend what carrying another 50lbs around on this hip would be like. And I’m very glad I don’t have to.

One thing about being a middle eastern dancer in the 90's is that the Algerian pop music scene was happening, and I was there for it way more than a teen girl from Michigan should have been. I discovered I was hypermobile when I started an Arabic dance class at 16 years old. I could bend in ways no one else could… and also just could never develop the muscles in certain places to do certain things. While this led to frequent muscle spasms in my lower back starting at 19 years old, in between spasms I was quite the brilliant dancer. But nowadays, I have literally had my twerk joint removed, thanks to the hypermobility. I had some hopes of finding just the right therapist who could teach me to compensate and dance safely around the missing joint without causing damage to the remaining spine, but the pursuit of that is what let me know my hip had gone past the point of no return. People don’t talk much about the grief that disabled people go through, with every new chronic diagnosis to incorporate into your sense of self, every new boundary you encounter with your body, every time you have to miss a social event you’d never have missed before your condition worsened… disability makes you a new person in a lot of ways, and not with your consent. And working through that hits absolutely every stage of grief, and definitely not in anything resembling any linear progression. This usually comes with the loss of friends and sense of community, too - you’re not a coworker anymore. People ask you what you do for a living, you have to tell them you’re too disabled to work, not about the awesome job you have. Or even about the mediocre job you have that at least makes you seem productive in the conversation. Can’t go out with the girls? They’ll keep going out without you, and you won’t talk as much. Etc, etc. And when you were raised to be a “girl boss” who just needs to “hustle harder,” there’s now a lot of work you need to do around the idea of personal productivity and value/worth, along with wondering who the hell you are now that you aren’t an employee or or a volunteer or in a book club or a long-distance hiker. I’m not writing this because I have any answers, I’m personally three years into the really big disability questions, and I feel like a pinball in action, emotionally. I’m writing about it mostly just to get it out, talk out the feels, and hopefully my talked out feels make someone else’s unspoken feels feel less alone. And here’s to who I am becoming! 🥂 I have absolutely no idea what that is, but I know it’s something and I know I’ll get there eventually once I properly mourn the old me and put her to rest, and get to a place of acceptance of the new me. Whenever that is.

Penelope was rescued from living rough in a McDonald’s parking lot by a daily patron who couldn’t bear to see such a little cat suffer through a Michigan winter without a home. Said patron connected with me through Facebook, and made a late-ish night Penelope drop around this time of the year in 2023. I have been Penelope’s Special Human ever since. She likes the other humans in the house well enough, but everyone jokes that I’m her emotional support human. The thing about having a deeply neurotic cat when you’re physically disabled is if you spend a lot of time in one place - like me in my bed - her whole world crumbles if anything is out of place… including me, say, getting out of bed to make dinner, or do the laundry. I’m definitely not allowed in the backyard. Bath time is sus. Toilet time is together time. She seems to understand that I may leave the house for a few hours sometimes, and I am very patiently led back to my bedroom the minute I am back in the house. So. What are we supposed to do to impart to her that Special Mama is going away for a few nights, but she’s coming back and will be spending lots of time in bed thereafter? Feliway infusers? A pet psychic?

Hey, look! I actually went to the Secretary of State and got my handicap hang tag this morning despite having the application paperwork from my doctor in hand since August! 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️ Bob displays my snazzy new parking hang tag. Yeah, that ADHD is something sometimes. I fully could have benefited from having the tag in the intervening months, yes. Anyway, that’s a big one off my pre-surgery checklist! ✔️ Here’s the rest of the checklist, for those of you playing along at home: Watch the “total joint replacement” video that’s sitting in my MyChart inbox between now and 10am Tuesday, when I go in for my pre-op. Pre-op, this coming Tuesday morning! Where I will hopefully be offered a Covid vaccine. If not, I’ll need to get one from Meijer by 12/22. And no one wants to be at Meijer that close to Christmas, so I’ll make that appointment ASAP if it’s not included at the pre-op (I already got a flu shot). The Procurement of Stuff, which has to happen Sooner Rather Than Later since we are on A Timeline. My mom has appointed herself as On That, which I very much appreciate since I have No Money. “Stuff” comes in a few categories here: Consumable stuff aka toiletries and bougie allergy-safe pre-packaged hospital snacks, and reusable stuff aka robes and cervical pillows and slip-on shoes. I have an Amazon Wishlist for these things, and will likely do things like “unboxing” and “what’s in my bag” videos on my YouTube channel . Meal prep. I debated whether I would do this or not, and decided on making and freezing a few meals that are packed with nutrients and easy to freeze and reheat, for convenience’s sake. They’ll each have their own blog post as I make them over the next few weeks. Hair products prep. I purchase pre-made shampoo and leave-in conditioner, but make my own scalp oil, and chebe butter for length retention. I fully intend to have bra strap length hair by summer 2026, and I won’t let major surgery get in the way of regular steam treatments. They’ll also get their own blog posts as my hair journey goes on. Have a fresh oz of cannabis ready and waiting for me when I get home. That’s the only thing that kills the healing itch for me, I want to make sure it’s right there. Get a pedicure. Bending more than 90 degrees is verboten for 12 weeks while the bone heals, so other people are in charge of my feet for awhile. That’s why slip-on shoes have such high priority in the list of Stuff. Keep on keeping on for the next four weeks. Eat nutritious food, stay hydrated with electrolytes, keep up with medications and supplements, keep up with hair and skin care (I was also recently diagnosed with perimenopausal roseacea, so I need to take care of that now, too), get lots of rest, basically make sure I’m taking my healthiest possible self into the operating room. And that’s just my list! I’ll get the official medical checklist at the pre-op, too. Between All This and the holidays, I have a busy month ahead of me! And now you have a good idea of what's going to be featured in this blog, too.

Hello! I'm yr Auntie, the hospital system knows me as Katrina. I'm 43 years old, and I learned exactly one week ago that I need my left hip joint completely replaced. The past week has been a flurry of planning and list making, and part of the planning included a blog/vlog component. Why? This ain't my first rodeo, creampuff. Between 2021 and 2023 I had four spinal laminectomies on two levels - two on the lower lumbar level, two on the lower thoracic. I know what major surgery is like. And I know how my fibromyalgia body and brain respond to it, and what to prepare to make it all easier. But I'm also discovering that a lot of the details are fuzzy two years later, so this is my record for Future Auntie, because I already have a reduction mastectomy planned , I just have to wait two years to get in for the procedure. And with my core joint hypermobility? I'll be darkening orthopedics' doorway again after this, same with neurosurgery... Original plan was for a YouTube vlog, but I have always been better expressing myself in writing, and writing a script to record feels like extra steps. So, anything that requires a visual will get a video, and anything more long form will be written out here, and they'll all be linked to each other. New this time is five food allergies to eat around, so preparations are a bit more complicated than they were in the past, as well. Thankfully, I've been blogging my recipes all along , so meal prep and quick low-effort meals won't be too hard, but the hospital stay does require I provide a few bougie, expensive, pre-packaged goods. I'll talk about that more in-depth in future posts. Alright, signing off to go to bed, I have a few pre-op appointments tomorrow morning that I'll be telling you about!