My gyno ordered a CBC differential panel for pre-op, that's the one that looks at all your blood cells and makes sure it's all good, you're not having a reaction to anything going on in your body. Boy oh BOY do I have eosinophilia. Which, I understand just means "too many eosinophils," but my brain wants to read it as "these white blood cells love you SO MUCH!!" Really glad I was never tested on this word in college, it would be the one time my Ancient Greek would have screwed me up hard. Studying Ancient Greek and Biological Anthropology at the same time made both classes so much easier, by the way. Anyway, that means my body is in the throes of an allergic reaction. I take Xyzal every day of the world, and I'm still getting readings like that. Thing is, I'm feeling fine, or as fine as I'm used to feeling. The skin around my eyes is puffier than usual, and my ears are itchy and drippy and making a lot more wax than usual. All things easily ignored, or temporarily fixed with a little bit of rubbing alcohol or hydrogen peroxide. So, now I have a message in to my PCP asking her if she wants to see me before or after I see my allergist. One thing I learned about the Medicaid changes in January is that cases of "medical frailty" and other disabilities are going to be explored independently from SSI Disability application status, by the case manager reviewing your Medicaid application (which makes sense, as folks on SSI Disability are on Medicare). If I need monthly allergy shots, on top of everything else, and that doesn't cinch me on a "medical frailty" (which means having so many doctors appointments, medications, and routine procedures to maintain medical conditions that it would interfere with any set schedule) claim for the Medicaid work requirements... I've been getting all these YouTube tarot readers popping up in my feed with messages about a soul mate coming into my life... which I've always just kinda rolled my eyes at, as an asexual/aromantic (I leave the possibility open, because why not, but I don't actively seek it out, either, and consider myself whole and complete unto myself, not lacking an "other half")... who knew it would be the Hat Man? 🤣🤣

CW: if the title wasn't enough advance warning, I'll be discussing medical tests and procedures, weight loss, my (healthy but very large thanks to lipidema) breasts, and Medicaid/SSI Disability. Today is the last day I can take my Meloxicam. Pray for me 😅😅 Especially considering a storm system came in yesterday, and the minute the pressure dropped, the migraine started. As the pressure hasn't let up yet... I feel like shit. I have a CT angiogram this afternoon, not surgery related, and then a blood draw, that is surgery related. The pressure is supposed to lift by then, of course. I'm looking forward to feeling better, but kind of mad the scan will miss the worst of the symptoms. I was also craving Salisbury steaks yesterday, and purposefully made way too much refried beans and polenta for dinner tonight, so I officially have five frozen dinners pre-prepped for post-op! I've also figured out my instant noodle soup base recipe, which I'm thinking about pre-portioning into an old meds calendar dispenser, not that two powders and two liquids are difficult to assemble in the moment... Same with fish and rice bowls in my rice cooker. And that's food all set. Far less drama than last December! I'm also going on a cocoa butter, weed, and pain med run after the hospital trip this afternoon, and then I'll be set to hunker down for the next seven weeks. In body weight news, I got the bright idea to weigh my breast tissue with my kitchen scale, since that's obviously not going to go away without surgical help. Nine pounds. Five on the right, four on the left. According to this website, that is equivalent to: 1. A Gallon of Milk 2. A Bass Guitar 3. Nine Cans of Soda 4. Two Standard Bricks 5. A Domestic Cat 6. Three Bowling Pins 7. Nine Basketballs 8. Four to Five Pineapples 9. Three Toasters 10. Two Laptops 11. Three Bags of Apples 12. A Small Dog I'm carrying that around strapped to my chest 24/7. With hypermobile neck and shoulder joints. Yeah. And while I didn't lose any size to my breasts thanks to the tissue distribution, I did lose fat, my breasts are noticeably lighter than they used to be. I was likely dealing with 10lb tiddies. That also brings my actual weight down to around 190lbs (for reference, I'm 5'10"). I do still have around 5lbs each in the lipidema pads on my hips to lose, and I'm guessing once my uterus isn't a factor anymore, I'll drop a fairly substantial amount of water weight from my abdomen (which is starting to show looser skin lately). And while BMI is bullshit (see, my boobs), that'll actually put me in the healthy BMI range for the first time in my adult life. For a non-scale victory, I wore a pair of linen pants the other day that were tight in the thighs and a little short when I bought them last fall, nowadays they're perfectly baggy, and because my hips aren't stealing length anymore they're the perfect length. I wore them with a size XL top from Delia's that I found at swap (so, it's Junior's XL, more like a women's L), and it was a little tight in the chest (no surprise) but otherwise fits beautifully. I got a lot of compliments on my outfit! I also got the official notice in the mail yesterday about the Medicaid work requirements, as well as the new every six months renewal process. Considering how fucked the annual renewal process was last year... I'm sure doubling the renewals is going to go swimmingly! I theoretically qualify for the work requirement exemptions, but I'm not going to know until I'm able to re-apply in October, and they review my case. I mean, it's Medicaid, I would hope THEY would know how many specialists I see, and disabilities I have... But if I do get to keep my health insurance, I actually have a chance at taking that nine pounds of breast tissue down to a reasonable size, once my number comes up. In like three years. I'm also going to be re-applying for disability during my recovery period. This time with a different lawyer 🤞🏼🤞🏼

CW: discussion of weight loss through caloric restriction, food cravings, potential surgical side effects, medical trauma and mental health. This might be the most chill I've been before any surgery, major or minor. I absolutely prepped more for my carpal tunnel surgery than I did for this hysterectomy. I mean, having a total hip replacement exactly eight months before certainly helps. This one is an outpatient surgery as long as there are no complications. I'm going to pack my normal hospital bag expecting not to touch the dopp kit, but being overly prepared anyway... which never hurt anyone. I'm even getting that started today - I just mended my surgery robe, which has become my favorite summer robe in general, even with the dropped hem in the corner I've been conveniently ignoring because only my family ever sees it. But, if my surgery team is going to see it, I had better actually take the 20 minutes to fix that 😅😅 I also rescued my cervical pillow and my sugar skull lap robe from my cats, who had dragged them under the bed... I rotated my mattress last night, which made getting at them a lot easier than crawling under the bed. All of the above is currently in the washer getting cleaned and sanitized, before it gets packed and stashed in my closet, away from the cats and their protest peeing. I'm not staying overnight this time, guys!! Probably. I asked my surgeon what she recommended for preparing the house for post-op, and her number one recommendation was to have a few days worth of meals in the freezer. My mom, of course, blanched, considering she hit a good sale and stocked the freezer to the gills not long ago... but I learned last time that having a rice cooker was just as good as having pre-prepped meals. I'm definitely planning on eating a lot of fish, rice, and frozen veggies, all I have on hand already, so I don't even have to go out and stock anything beyond a few Bare Bones bone broth sticks. I will likely bake a couple of loaves of bread, make a couple of batches of my fudge balls for easy, healthy snacks, and put some lentils on to sprout right before going on the operating table. Not a full meal prep, just making a few things easier on myself. And, of course, my mom also has a much better handle on cooking for my diet than she even had back last January, so her planning meals that I can eat helps a lot, too. Recovery time is six weeks, and in that time I can't take a bath or use a hot tub (that's pretty standard), do any swimming at all (the actions of swimming use the core and pelvic floor muscles in a way that can tear the vaginal cuff open as it's still healing), or lift anything more than 10-15lbs (that's my normal weight max, anyway). I do have to get up and walk around as much as I can to prevent blood clots, which is fine, I get depressed if I can't get out of bed after surgery, you can't keep me in bed. I have my post-hip replacement walker on standby, just in case I need a little more support getting up and down than normal as the incisions are healing. As for the eliminating of the meds and supplements, I've been off of my iron and magnesium supplements now for two full days, and I'll be giving up the Meloxicam and the rest of the supplements - including the flaxseeds I eat for breakfast every day - in another three days. Meanwhile, they haven't said a word to me about my marijuana use in two pre-ops. I guess they've decided cannabis and anesthesia don't interact with each other. Back when I started the Major Surgery Merry-Go-Round in 2021, they made you quit using THC two weeks before surgery. Then it was one week, then it was five days, then it was three days... Unlike Certain People In American Society, I'm not going to be pissed off that I was inconvenienced by rules that were later found to be an abundance of caution based on a lack of science in the area at the time. I also know full well, because a nurse navigator flat-out told me, that I don't HAVE to go off of every single supplement, it's just so confusing to cherry pick which ones you can and can't have, it's easier to tell patients to abstain from all of them. Do I have the time to cherry pick? I sure do. Does the nurse? Hell no, and I respect that. As for how my body is handling not getting the supplements its used to, it's starting to throw tantrums via cravings around 7pm. I keep telling myself that as long as I feed the cravings nutritious food, I'm okay - I'm about 20 lbs smaller than I was when I had the hip done. I am to the point where a few extra calories before surgery would give me some extra energy for healing. But, it's weird going from a year and a half of eating in a calorie deficit, to eating definite maintenance calories... that's the difference of a whole extra meal, I'm just not used to being this hungry anymore. I'm not judging myself or anything, I'm just kind of afraid of making myself sick 😅😅 And because you really do need to think of every weird little thing, considering I have a good six weeks of not being able to reach my toes coming up, I'm still deciding whether to very carefully do my own toes (at my podiatrist's encouragement, I've gotten a lot better at it!), or whether I want to go get a real pedicure before the cut. I have eleven days to decide, the countdown is on! And I know I haven't done a hair growth update in a while... I'll likely go down to every other month updates at least for now, with June/July going up next week, and August/September going up after hysterectomy recovery. After a whole month of cancer scare, and preparing myself mentally for the possibility of losing my hair and having to start the challenge over again after I finished treatment... not having to lose my hair was a relief it's taken me a fair amount of time to come to terms with. I didn't really want to talk about my hair at all, I felt like I would jinx such amazing news. Particularly considering I have a LOT to share about my hair. As I've been distancing myself from it, and then re-introducing myself to it, it's been growing like a weed in the background. My initial goal of chin-to-waist length in one year, that I calculated based on my end of 2025 hair growth rates and after some thought walked back to bra-strap length because it sounded so audacious... at the halfway point of the challenge, it's not sounding too audacious anymore. Even with a six week slow-down coming up soon. So, that should be quite the update.

Well, shit, Christopher Nolan. Of course, The Odyssey, Homer's great reflection on aging and legacy, is made into a star-studded summer blockbuster movie that takes over the discourse as I am the same age as the actors playing the human women roles, 20 years after my first reading of the epic poem in college... the same amount of time Odysseus spent literally and figuratively fucking around the Mediterranean while Penelope was at home weaving her heart out and fending off suitors. I even did my Capstone comparing and contrasting various authors depictions of "Penelope" throughout the years, from a medieval story to Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad. It seemed particularly poignant at the time, as the Afghanistan War was raging, and probably 3/4 of the girls on campus were wearing their boyfriend's dog tags with fancy silencers they bought at Claire's. So now, here I am, telling some bro in the comments who thinks that Lupita Nyong'o, who plays Helen of Troy in the new movie... by the way, this is Lupita Nyong'o at the movie's Paris premiere: Born in 1983. That woman, right there, this bro believes is "too old" to play Helen of Troy in The Odyssey. You know, that story that takes place 20+ years after the Iliad, where Helen is in her late teens? Bro's argument is that Helen is compared directly to Artemis in the Odyssey, you know, the perpetually teen virgin huntress goddess? So, that means she's a forever teenager, duh. My argument, and yes, I made this, is that I enjoy the same perpetual youthfulness that Helen and Lupita both have. It's a combination of lucky genetics, disciplined physical care, and personality/energy, but it doesn't mean we're forever teenagers. We (not Helen of Troy, obviously, but us modern Artemisian 40-year-olds) don't get randomly carded because we don't look 21, we get randomly carded because they're trained to card you if you look younger than 30. No one can confidently say if we're 30 or not based on our physical appearance and irl energy, so we get carded even though we're over 40. Being able to pass for 29 at 44 is pretty great, really, but that's nowhere near being able to pass for 19. And I think this pulls right into the current discussion among Millennial women about going on TikTok claiming you "don't look your age," asking people to guess your age, and having them humble you quickly because frankly, you're purposefully putting yourself right out there wide open for it. Me? Here's 17 vs. 41: I don't care how well you age, you're going to mature. Change is going to happen, even if it isn't wrinkles and skin sagging. For instance, I used to get so tan in the summer... 😭 Three years later, I don't even look like that anymore. I'm somewhere around 75lbs smaller, and my hair is quite a bit longer now, and has actually darkened up some thanks to my iron supplementation. Age is so much more than just wrinkles. I know bro is on because he's dunking on other commentors. So, I asked him if he realized that his insistence on Helen of Troy never aging in any way to remain the most beautiful woman in the world was directly correlated with the Epstein-ification of Millennial culture that we Millennial women have all had to confront and come to terms with since the latest release of Epstein Files information? He's taking his time trying to figure out how his "I'm not racist about hating the Helen of Troy casting" stance turned into an "I'm a pedophile" stance, whoops. And no, I have not seen the movie. If I see the movie, it'll be here at home once it hits streaming. I'm waiting for a hysterectomy, three hours without a bathroom break is too much to ask of me right now. Especially considering I've already written about how I hate what I've seen about the movie design. But damn, that very Millennial college degree sure is coming in handy right now! Especially considering that time spent in the Classics department spent surrounded by all these feminists led to further study into intersectional feminism as time went on... it cracks me up so hard that the Manosphere wants to adopt the Classics as their own dude subject, when my actual degree in the subject is absolutely the root of my feminism and activism. Suck it, boys. Update: that son of a bitch in the comments responded by having ChatGPT formulate his argument for him, and just copy and pasted it in response to me. I fucking hate AI. I responded that I didn't spend multiple years learning dead languages and using my human brain to access other human brains throughout history to study this very subject to have some fucking dudebro in the comments think he can win an argument by copy and pasting from an AI chat bot. Particularly when he completely ignored my challenge to defend his position against pedophilia. Because he can't. Because here's the main point of Homer. Here's the reason why The Odyssey is making Christopher Nolan summer blockbuster numbers in 2026. Here's what you actually learn about these epics if you seriously, formally take up the study of Classics - the stories are important, because they're still relevant. Our discussion of what Helen of Troy should look like in her 40's in the shadow of how Jeffrey Epstein shaped Millennial culture through pedophilia is exactly the conversation Homer wants us to have right now. According to BroGPT, Nolan gave his Helen a scar on her face. Again, I haven't seen the movie, and I didn't notice a scar in the production stills I've seen of her, but whatever. My own face is unmarked thanks to Kojic acid and full spectrum vitamin e oil, but the rest of my body is covered in stretch marks, surgical scars, and tattoos. Shit happens. You eventually realize you can't be quite so precious with something so fragile that you're expected to live in. It's called maturing. Now, here's the thing - bro's argument is that an aging, scarred Helen is contrary to how Homer depicts her, which even the AI says is very generalized. Nowhere in any of the citations the AI gives does it say anything about her looking like a teenager, just that she does not look "haggard." I don't look haggard. I still have scars. Lupita sure doesn't look "haggard." And most of Homer's depictions of her are of her charisma and personality, not her physical appearance. But what bro is completely missing is that The Odyssey is a living story. It does not matter that the original story has been told for millennia, or that the current re-telling is set in a Mediterranean so ancient there's monsters everywhere, this particular retelling is being released at the same time as The Epstein Files. This particular retelling is going to be regarded within the same culture as the one that Epstein shaped, and that we are now learning just how much of a hand he had in its current condition. This Helen, and this Penelope, both grew up under the influence of Epstein, same as the rest of us Millennial women. One responded by pumping her face so full of Botox that she can't properly emote anymore. The cleverest woman in Greece, and the most talented artist, played by the woman who sacrificed her art for youth and a beauty ideal shaped by a cannibalistic pedophile. As far as I can tell, Lupita has kept the cosmetic enhancements to a minimum, if she's indulged at all. The aging, ethereal beauty playing the aging, ethereal beauty, both making men confront themselves with their morals and ideals. Welcome to the world of Homer. It doesn't die. Because it's the story of humanity itself. And might I point out to bro, who is likely Gen Z, that this movie is coming out 20 years after Millennials ended their own war? Like, literal war. There was a reason Troy was the sword & sandal blockbuster back then. I remember the veterans' therapeutic reading circles. See my Capstone project, referenced above. We're kinda used to this. He may want to get used to it, considering America's back fucking around in the Middle East again. There's a reason Homer's in the zeitgeist. He's showing us who we are, again. Oh shit. I just realized that this guy keeps invoking ARTEMIS to defend his pedophilia and racism. Oh, buddy. My asexual, teenage archery champion ass knows her WELL. I just let her know she has a new hunting dog ripe for the training, if she wants him. This is how she responded. Hope he has fun 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 If that surprises you, you may want to look into the link between asexuality and BDSM. Yeah.

CW: If you determine "summer" as the months of June, July, and August, we're at the halfway point, and so far 2026 has been the summer of Expelling Things From Between My Legs. If you don't want to read about that, skip to the bold print. I made a run for the border after my neurology appointment a few weeks back, and got served the Michigan Taco Bell Cyclospora-coated lettuce on our tacos and crunchwraps. My whole family ate it. Looking at my calendar, I'm betting this thing has the lifespan of about a week... our symptoms coincided with a heat wave coming in, so we assumed it was a reaction to the heat, but it hit a week after we ate the contaminated food. And there's a definite upswing/downswing in symptoms since, so I'm guessing we've got the Circle of Life happening in our small intestines as we speak. Something tells me the "explosiveness" of the diarrhea has to do with the host's diet. We eat a lot of whole foods around here, I've definitely noticed those symptoms get worse the more processed the food is that I eat. There's also a lot of nausea, gas, and I'm waking up in the middle of the night with hiccups almost every night. And if you've ever heard the old wives tale that if your butthole itches, you have parasites... it's your butt crack, actually. Considering this is coming after a year and a half of GI issues, and I'm going into surgery in exactly three weeks where they'll be pumping me with prophylactic antibiotics and opioids that will both kill the parasite and mess my guts up hardcore, I'm going to give the good old fashioned cult remedies a try. Well. To an extent. Black walnut is obviously off the table, and while I have had plenty of absinthe in my time, I'm not too thrilled about the prospect of making my already plenty vivid dreams any crazier with wormwood. So, my grocery order today included the following: Oil of Oregano with Black Seed Oil capsules. The use there is pretty obvious. As of mid-morning post delivery, I've taken two doses, one before bed and one with my 3 cups of electrolytes when I woke up this morning. Raw, shelled pumpkin seeds, and hemp seed hearts. 2 liters of Mexican vanilla extract, one clear, one brown. I've been making a lot of desserts lately. With 2 & 3, I've made this version of my No-Bake Fudge Balls: No Bake Sweet & Spicy Seed Balls 1 15 oz can white beans, drained and rinsed 8 pitted medjool dates, chopped 1/2 cup raw pumpkin seeds 1/4 cup raw hemp seeds 1/4 cup ground flax seeds 1/3 cup raw honey 5 tablespoons raw coconut oil 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 1 tablespoon ground ginger 1/2 teaspoon ground tumeric 1/2 teaspoon sea salt 1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper heaping 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves Place your pumpkin seeds and hemp hearts in the food processor, and process until they're a fine meal. If your food processor doesn't get the pumpkin seeds fine enough, a clean coffee grinder should do it. Add the rest of the ingredients to the food processor bowl, and process until the mixture is a smooth, stiff batter. Using a small spoon, portion out onto trays lined with wax or parchment paper, cover the balls with plastic wrap, and refrigerate until the spice balls set, 2-3 hours. Store in the refrigerator in a well-sealed container. I actually tried doing these bar style in an 8x8" pan, turns out they don't set properly when they're not individually balled out, even if you let them chill overnight. Speaking of my diet and my recipe blog, I may need to figure out how to edit videos... this is how it's been in the YouTube comments lately: Them: "Only rich people can afford to eat a whole foods diet lately, grocery prices are so high, and no one has the time or energy to cook from scratch." Me: "I'm the poorest person in this conversation, and I'm physically disabled so I only have so much energy to prepare my food each day, and I eat a whole foods diet out of necessity thanks to having five food allergies. You're describing a skill issue, not a money issue, and a skill issue is a lot easier to remedy than a money issue." And folks are starting to take notice. The other thing I learned via YouTube the other day is that Riot Grrl Is Back, just in time for my food content!! I'm absolutely greatly influenced by riot grrl ethos in all of my community work, including insisting on keeping un-monetized blogs that are accessible to use. People see the feminist punk music veneer right off the bat, but riot grrl and punk in general is based on the DIY/DIT (that's "do it together") philosophy, where alternative culture is constructed by peer education, where people in the community who know how to do something useful - everything from sewing clothes, to fermenting food, to your rights as a conscientious objector - share that information through semi-formal workshops (often held in conjunction with punk shows) and handwritten, Xeroxed "zine" booklets that could be passed around the community and mailed around the country. For the record, I was too young and too Midwestern to truly experience Riot Grrl v.1, but v.2 actually took off around the time of the recession, so I participated in a few Riot Grrl festivals in the early 2010's, and definitely used the connections I made there when I started community organizing in 2016. Wait long enough, and you go from the baby sister of the movement, to the Auntie writing the zines and leading the workshops 😅😅 Heh, speaking of, I also discovered MenoPunks this week, which seems fortuitous. It makes sense the OG Grrls are hitting peri & past and being like "yup, time to riot again." Anyway, I've had recipe zines in the works as a fundraiser for the 3 Witches Clothing Swaps (yet another riot grrl inspired community project I run) since our last Spring Swap, so this is perfect timing for a movement revival, thank you zeitgeist 🫶🏼

If I have personal experience with something, I can't enjoy a fictional account? Christopher Nolan's Odyssey movie just lost me with this picture of Anne Hathaway as Penelope: The casual reader is probably like "how the heck can you have personal experience with ancient Greece?" Well, casual reader, I have a BA in Classical Languages. I studied Attic Greek in college. I have a poster for a 24 hour performance of The Odyssey I participated in in 2008 hanging on a bookshelf in my bedroom. It was the first time I performed The Odyssey, but not the last. I've performed as both Odysseus and Penelope. Knowing the kinds of reactions Penelope can get from a crowd, and what I was doing with my face when I got those reactions, I do have concerns that Hathaway's chemically frozen face can do the job, or look at all authentic to the time period. But who cares about that last part? As someone who has not only researched but re-created and worn clothing from the time period... that dress is a big no from me, dawg. It looks like it's from Shein, sheesh. Now, at this point, you're probably thinking "it's a fantasy movie, did you freak out about the Lord of the Rings movies not being authentically medieval?" Coincidentally, I also have very similar experiences both studying and re-creating medieval life, and I can tell you that not only did they have better researched costume designers who knew how to nod to history properly, but fantasy-maxxing The Odyssey is like fantasy-maxxing Amazon's House of David series about the Biblical king. You're working with history so ancient it's been fused with mythology and religion. You have to be more respectful than filming a modern fantasy. Keep it kind of realistic, at least. This is The Odyssey, not Dune. That dress would be perfectly appropriate on Arrakis. And that's the problem for me. And yes, I realize that I'm one of a handful of people in the audience who even knows what all of this is supposed to look like, or has any familiarity with the source material. I'm not who they made this movie for. But it would be a better movie if I was the person they made the movie for! So say I, at least. And if it's "just a dress," it's going to be the whole design of the movie. And it will destroy me. I won't be able to enjoy anything else about the movie. By the way, this is not reserved just to adaptions of Classical literature. I got maybe 30% into Donna Tartt's The Secret History before giving it up. It was absolutely nothing like my own experience as a Classics student, and I wasn't in the mood to suspend my own experience, especially when the characters were all so unlikeable. I'm still friends with my fellow Classics alumni. And it's not just my college experience. I worked event security for IHL games from 2002-2007. I am absolutely not touching Heated Rivalry 😅😅 That security job also has me a little bit concerned for AMC's new TV adaption of The Vampire Lestat, which is sitting on my DVR waiting to be binged during my hysterectomy recovery. The job was for an arena, that hosted the city's IHL team as well as large touring shows, and I discovered and read through Anne Rice's books early in my time there - any backstage positions were allowed to have a book with them to kill time, I read Interview With The Vampire while working backstage when Barnum & Bailey was in town (boy, did that combo lead to some wild dreams), and read through The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned over a few concert load-ins... which means the show needs to nail both the source material and the backstage concert vibes, or I'll be mad 😅😅 And if you think that's bad, horror movies love/hate to see me coming. I actually adore horror movies, I use them therapeutically as a release valve for my anxiety. But as someone who actually does what Lorraine Warren did, and then went on to study how to do it with Hoodoo, too, and who has the obviously documented insistence on being "realistic"... I'm critical. Especially when the movie is about witchcraft. In conclusion: hey Hollywood, I'm right here! You have to work around my lemon body, but you get my crazy brain and backstory in exchange.

And the Tumor Twins are certified benign, as of about 15 minutes ago!! And as of August 5th, everything but the ovaries gets removed, anyway, so there's no chance of it going bad, ever. This is the best health news I've had in years. I am also in possession of the Devil's Diaper Wipes, as well as the Ensure carbohydrate drinks they load you down with before purposefully traumatizing your body in the name of health and healing. And I have been cleared by the Surgical Optimization team for my hysterectomy. After being checked in for my appointment by the young receptionist-in-training, I could hear her yelp behind me "she's 44???" so that was a confidence booster 😁😁 Now I get to go make more chebe butter... I admit to holding off until knowing if I was going to be keeping my hair or not... A length check will be coming soon, as well, you'll forgive me for being rather pre-occupied the last eight days 😅😅

I went from having a very open summer to having a whole lot of appointments yesterday 😅😅 Hysterectomy is happening August 5th, which was exactly the time frame I assumed I'd be on. I'll have two pre-ops, one with my gyno and another with anesthesiology. I also went ahead and scheduled the MRI and CT Angiogram my neurologist wants to see, so the hospital is about to get sick of seeing me and my teeny-tiny veins that outright reject IVs. My last post-op is six weeks after the surgery, so that basically takes my summer out. The scheduler was starting to get at how I could schedule in September so I wouldn't miss the whole summer, but I'm not exactly able to enjoy myself when I'm bleeding and in pain, anyway. I happen to know, thanks to talking to the scheduler yesterday, that all but the most essential OB-GYN staff have today off for US Independence Day, so that means that I'll either get my normal biopsy results through MyChart sometime over the weekend, or any bad news will be postponed until Monday. Between that, and having my surgery date, I'm actually emotionally settled enough to enjoy the weekend, so whew! This also means that I now know what I need to schedule around, which means I took my schedule to a few planning committees so we can put some fall fun on the calendar, too! Just a month left of all this bloating! It's almost a cruel joke that this happens just as I'm to the point in my weight loss that I can enjoy having a flat belly for the first time in my adult life... if I didn't have a uterus measuring at 2 months pregnant with tumor twins. My belly rolls don't look any different than they did 70-ish lbs ago, even though I know logically that they fit into a much smaller waistband. Speaking of, I got the belly band... and I was being overly optimistic with the small 😅😅 That's why we do this early! I'll be returning it for the medium once the UPS Store re-opens. Monday will be a busy day!

I was referred to surgery to have my uterus and fallopian tubes removed today! Glory hallelujah! First steps? At the recommendation of a friend who has done it recently, I got myself a postpartum belly band that even comes with a hip stabilizer... in size SMALL. I'm between the small and the medium, and considering I'm bloated AF right now, I figured sizing down for the support garment I want to wear after having the source of the bloating removed was probably a good idea. But, I also have time to return it for the next size up, if needed. The nice thing about just having a major surgery six months ago is that I have everything I need beyond that, and a few safe snacks already. I'm so freaking prepared.... It'll be robotic assisted, and outpatient if all goes well, which will make Penelope very happy. I'll have a couple of pre-op appointments before the big yoink, and of course a few post-ops. I'll have those all scheduled in the next few days. And in a testament to my pain tolerance, I did the uterine biopsy without having anything more than my morning bowl. My doctor wanted to send me home to come back loaded down with Tylenol and Advil, but honestly, I doubt it would have made it any different, and it really wasn't too bad. Probably a 6 on the pain scale. Not pleasant, but could be breathed through. Absolutely worth not wasting the time or gas money going back later. Lasting impacts, eight hours later? I did start bleeding immediately after the swab out, and haven't quite stopped yet, but it's not heavy bleeding. And I have been extra crampy, and it's kind of bouncing around my lower abdomen and lower back... there's a spot over the back of my right hip that's sore, and another one just to the left of my belly button and more to the front. Very bizarre feeling, honestly. I then came home, and had my loader dose of Emgality delivered for my migraines. That's a monthly injection, apparently it's in the same delivery system as Zepbound. That? Solid 8. And that's for both the needle and the injection itself. Thankfully, it goes away pretty much the minute the needle retracts, but that is an intense 10 seconds. The result of starting a new self-injection as getting approved for surgery? Realizing that those injection pens and Zydrate guns are not dissimilar. My traditional day of surgery referral jam. Now, I just need to wait for those biopsy results. I don't think I'm getting them today... and I'm doing my best to tell myself that they probably had to send it out to another lab, or that they're just kinda backed up, and I'm just waiting my turn...

Did I mention Canva is one of my favorite hyperfixations? And that I got a one month free trial of Zazzle's premium membership, so I have free shipping for the next month? Yeah. I've been having fun. Introducing, the resurrection of my small design business: To begin! I'm starting at three digital products, with three different price points and multiple levels of customization. Product Number One: The "Hello, My Name Is" Name & Pronouns badge: Starting at $5, customize-able up to $15. Perfect for anyone re-introducing themselves, or who work closely with the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. Order Form Here. Product Number Two: The Fully Customized Name & Pronouns Badge: Starting at $15, and customize-able up to $45. Perfect for small business owners, especially those who vend at street fairs and flea markets - instead of endless business cards, include a QR landing page with your business and payment information that folks can favorite from their mobile web browser on the spot! Also perfect for fellow community organizers, no need to use disposable nametags for every networking event. Order Form Here. Product Number Three: Medical Information & Neurodivergent Self-Advocacy Badges: These are the cards I made myself for chronic pain and hyperverbalism, but I can also work with my customers on designing communication cards for non-verbal neurodivergence, as well. I'm also open to collaborating with you on any communication card design that you think will be useful to you or a loved one. My only real design constraint is that I can't use Braille. If you'd like to see how I'm using these cards for my own safety and advocacy, see this blog post. Because these aren't quite as cut-and-dry to design, I'll be requiring a non-refundable down payment of $30 to cover the first design, and then bill at the end of the project at a rate of $10 per hour put into the project after the first design. Each design typically takes 1-3 hours to complete. Please use my contact page to make your project request! Again, this is for DIGITAL PRODUCT ONLY, delivered by email in PNG image format. You can then take it to any printer you'd like to support and put it on whatever medium you'd like. Another thing you can use that contact page for is to discuss full or partial barter for my design services, especially if you live in the West Michigan area! I'm particularly looking for: Gently used or new clothing, particularly in natural fabrics: sized XL/0X / 2X Chinese, 34" inseam, shoe size women's 9 US / 40 EU / 25.5 JP. Tailoring and cobbler services. Handmade clothing, jewelry, and accessories. Antique cast iron cookware. Mani/Pedi services. Home grown or foraged food (unfortunately, no dairy, eggs, soy, nuts of any kind, or tomatoes/tomatillo). Friskies canned or dry cat food, or Temptations cat treats. A few hours of help around the house/yard, or a few hours borrowing your Bobcat. And finally, keep an eye on my blog for product announcements! I'm already working on hospital room info signs for extended stays, as well as flyers for mutual aid fundraising campaigns. And I have lots of experience with designing event flyers for local art performances and vendor markets. Support Human Creativity and Communication! And support yr Auntie's income as she's Going Through It and could use the happy distraction as well as the financial help.

When I tell people to prepare for the inevitable negative thing on the horizon, I usually get a lot of ostriches promptly and firmly planting their heads in the sand. It is IMPOSSIBLE for them to prepare for a negative thing. It is TOO MUCH. This video came up on my feed immediately after a tarot reader with a message about living wills the other day. It's been a little over two weeks now since I was discharged from the ER with heavily bleeding uterine fibroids and a very strong matrilineal history of this being cancer, yes, this young, I even held out 10 years longer than my mother and grandmother. Why was I discharged? Excellent nutritional health, and a neurodivergent pain reaction. I started bleeding again today. Perfect day to chill out and solidify the designs I made for info cards, as suggested by pretty much everyone in the video comments above. Step One: Collect Underpants. I kid in Millennial. Step one is to acquire a Hidden Disabilities Sunflower Lanyard. Step two: Head on over to Canva.com, and use my free account to design personalized information cards. They look like this: Font is Inclusive Sans, 3.37 X 2.13" was the perfect size for the 5 X 3" card size, though I did have to retool the designs a bit from my original concepts, around the hole punch at the top of the badge. I also went ahead and designed myself a new name & pronouns badge, while I was at it: The QR code goes to the contact page on this website, if you were curious, but not so curious as to scan it. The Pride flags are, l-r: asexuality, aromanticism, disability, autism, and ADHD. Let 'em know who they're dealing with right off the bat. Step 3: I took the whole shebang over to Zazzle.com, and used a new customer discount and free trial of their premium membership to print it all on two 5 X 3" blank employee ID badges, and one 3 X 1.5" employee name badge blank. Total cost, for the lanyard, two ID badges, and one name badge? $30 even. Things I already had, that are now hanging from the lanyard - a small RFID blocker wallet with my critical ID cards and migraine rescue meds, a pair of earplugs, a lip balm holder, and a Little Ouchies mini grippie stim toy. I also have one of those watertight phone sleeves that you wear on a lanyard, that will likely be added to the mix... though I got the version with the breakaway clasp on the back of the neck, as a grown woman with a dangly thing problem it might get Gorilla Glued shut 😅😅 So now, no matter what state I'm brought into the hospital in, all of my most critical information and self-advocacy is hanging around my neck, professionally printed on a durable surface, and suspended from an internationally recognized symbol for neurodivergency and hidden disabilities. Will it help? I don't know. But it certainly won't hurt. Are you a neurodivergent chronic illness patient who understands why the sharing of pronouns is important, too? Does this kind of a set-up sound amazing for you or someone you love, but designing it is not your thing, even if you just crib the language I used (which I am happy for anyone to do, for personal use)? May I direct you to that aforementioned Contact page, where you can send me a message and we can discuss my putting together a PNG file with your customized information for a very reasonable price, that you can then take to Zazzle or anywhere to print, no restrictions. What price? Let's talk! Why would you want to hire me to do this design work for you? I mean, I am kinda pioneering the whole concept here. And I am obviously a thoughtful designer and communicator, as evidenced by my personal work above. And I have a LOT of rest and recovery time ahead of me, this is something I can do from my Chromebook and the hospital wifi. I did the above from my own bed, after all. Like I do everything, including writing this blog 😅😅 Canva has also been one of my favorite hyperfixations since I was introduced to it by my Water Protector partner back in 2016. I have genuinely enjoyed putting together the designs above, and get completely lost in perfecting them, to the point of complete time blindness. Now, what would I rather do right now, hyperfixate on a design that will improve someone's life, or worry about what may or may not be happening in my uterus right now? I'll take The Fun Option for $500, Alex. And I get that any AI program could design this for you with the paid account you already have, but if you are pro-human creativity and ingenuity, I would hope you would rather support a flesh-and-blood person with a neurodivergent brain, who could use some serious financial help at this point in their life. Stay tuned for the finished product, whenever Zazzle mails it to me!

CW: cancer, medical trauma. Remember when my digestive system went full Pepsi & Mentos just after I had my hip replaced in January? And at the time I was blaming it on the meds, the food, even my sister bringing the Norovirus home from her grocery stock job. Absolutely TMI, but I've started throwing up whenever I empty my bowels. Yesterday was the third time this happened, but instead of feeling better after getting rid of everything, I was severely nauseous and gassy until I got 12 capsules of activated charcoal on my stomach. Since it subsided, the heavy ache in my lower gut has gotten heavier. I also pulled out the scale yesterday, simply because I knew I was running on absolute empty, so I could get a true weight. I weighed 206lbs at the ER on the 4th, and 203lbs when I saw my PCP one week later, which I wrote off to having one of those gastric emptying instances right before the appointment, and the pukes happened during the appointment in her exam room. Today? 190lbs even. That now makes more than 80lbs of weight loss from my heaviest, and puts me just 15lbs away from a "healthy" BMI range. But I have never lost so much in one week. I had a good week if I lost 8lbs, but 5lbs was more realistic this whole time. I don't think dropping an entire BMI category in two weeks is healthy, even if that's the category it brings my weight to. It took me most of a year to go from obese level 2 to just into the overweight category, I plateau for five months, and then suddenly I cleared half the overweight category in six days? That's not healthy. And if I must go through cancer treatment, I'd rather do it with some extra meat on my bones still. So, I Googled uterine cancer symptoms. The bloating and rapid weight loss seem to indicate that if it's cancer, it's in the later stages already. And I have that family history. My mom was precancerous at 34 years old, my grandma was at stage one by 34 years old, and my great-grandmother died from uterine cancer in the 60's, when she was about my age. I still have two weeks before I can see a doctor who can do anything about it. My PCP can only prescribe medication to treat my symptoms as they come up between now and when I see my new gynecologist. At least they have what they need to make the call on treatment, thanks to my ER visit, but who knows how long it'll take to get me on a surgeon's table after that? It's usually a six to eight week wait. "Emergency" spine surgery a few years back was a three week wait. And if they don't bother with a biopsy until then... Isn't cancer one of those things that you have to act fast on or it can kill you super fast? I'm not particularly scared of what's happening. I think I've proven I can survive anything at this point. I'm just mad AF that the system is letting me suffer because they refuse to hire enough doctors to cover the patient load. I'm also mad AF that just about every other country (except maybe Canada and England) would be taking this seriously, and not making me wait an entire month with Schrödinger's uterus potentially trying to kill me before seeing someone who can do something about what's happening, as I'm steadily worsening. And that kind of mental stress on top of physical stress is brutal. Isn't it great that modern medicine can cure all of these diseases, you know, if they'll take you seriously enough to catch your symptoms early? It also pisses me off that had I not been supplementing with electrolytes and iron the day I went to the ER, because I knew that I was bleeding way too much, I would have had very different labs and probably would have qualified for emergency surgery. So, now I'm being punished for being too health conscious, when I was literally just trying to stay alive. At least I know I'm doing this at the pinnacle of physical health. Sheesh.