So. My mom and I screwed up and missed my latest appointment with my gp (who is actually an internist, but that is neither here nor there at the moment). So we need to get that rescheduled. And will probably, at that point, present him with a copy of the list we made of “here are the physical and psychological reasons Ames wants/needs her boobs to be gone”. Which makes me a little nervous because he doesn’t emote much which can be somewhat anxiety inducing.
My next appoint with my psychologist is in a little less than a month and is the day before my birth day. I am thinking I will make a copy of most of the “boobs be gone” list to give to her as well. I will probably spend the rest of that session gazing intently at her intricately carved desk and stemming with its texture like my life depends on it.
And on my birthday I see my endo. I have no fucking idea what my A1C will be, but hopefully better than it’s been.
Also need to set up appointment with gyno. Need also to give her the “boobs be gone list”.
And I know I want the first two doctors and the gyno to be aware of this, at least, even though it will probably be ages before I have that kind of money (I managed to put away $500 towards it while I worked at the call center, but that’s pocket change compared to what I’d need.) I’d just…I’d like to manage it before I’m 40 (I’m coming up on 32 now, no job, no idea what I can or could do for a decent living that wouldn’t make me want to die), but idk.
And I know that fund raiser thingies exist, but I also feel like other people deserve to use those for this way more than I do, and would feel guilty as hell about it. Also, it wouldn’t be something I feel I could show to most of the people I know/have known offline. Because a lot of them are the kind of people it would be easier to deal with showing up sans tits and then sort of explaining than trying to explain why I need Tits-Be-Gone surgery.
“I have a funny shape to me that makes people stare,” she says, her voicing trailing off.
According to Fitz, when she asked her surgeon what happened, he explained that he was worried she would change her mind and want to reconstruct later. “I’m told that I’m lucky to be alive—but this isn’t living,” Fitz says. But because she has an autoimmune disease, she’s decided she’ll have to live with the outcome. “Surgery is incredibly hard on my body,” she says. “I just can’t go through a revision.”
After reading stories like Fitz’s, Bowles was determined to make sure her doctor respected her wishes to go flat. She messaged women, listened to their experiences, and took their advice. They told her to clearly state her desire to go flat (she did), to put it in writing (she drafted a letter), to take a witness (she took her husband), and to provide photos of the smooth, flat chest she was hoping for (she provided six).
“When I met with my surgeon, I told him that I had seen other women left with skin to facilitate reconstruction and that I couldn’t live like that,” Bowles says. “I didn’t want to be reminded of what I’d lost. I told him I needed to be completely flat with no extra skin at all.”
She chuckles at the memory of her husband pulling her aside and telling her, Enough already. I think he gets it. But she stops laughing when she describes what happened next.
To state what should be obvious, you do not have to have boobs to be a woman. But experts say there are long-held beliefs around femininity and sexuality that are in direct conflict with the request to go flat. The surgical world is very paternalistic, says Clara Lee, M.D., an associate professor of plastic surgery at Ohio State University. “Many surgeons don’t know how to deal with a woman who’s deeply engaged in her own decision making.”
And they’re not always subtle about it either. Women who have stated their intention to go flat report that doctors can be pretty explicit in their anti-flat bias. In one case, a woman’s surgeon called her at home the night before her surgery begging her to change her mind, saying she was too young to live without breasts. Another said her doctor implied she’d never be able to get married if she didn’t opt for faux-boobs over going flat.
There’s a notion that “surgeons know best,” Sulik says. And many of those surgeons happen to be men. A report by the American College of Surgeons found that women make up only 15 percent of general surgeons and 13 percent of plastic surgeons.
But it’s not just misogyny bleeding into medicine: The majority of breast cancer surgery in the United States is done by general surgeons with no specialty training on how to handle breast disease, according to a study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The study pointed out that when breast cancer patients were treated by a surgeon that lacked specialization, they reported a lower level of satisfaction with their care compared to those who were tended to by a specialized surgeon.
“Breast cancer is still considered a true general surgery procedure,” says Julie Margenthaler, M.D. the director of breast surgical services at Washington University School of Medicine and a spokesperson for the American Society of Breast Surgeons. “But achieving a cosmetically pleasing outcome requires nuance that is hard to learn if you’re only doing a couple of mastectomies a month.”
Growing up, I was told from many sources (books, tv, parents, teachers, inspirational quotes) that you should never half ass anything. That in everything you do, you should give your all. Honestly, that’s a recipe for misery and burnout. You need to half ass most things so you have enough ass left to give your whole ass to the things you care about. Or at least I do.
Executive function is absolutely a thing. But there’s a lot of things that are Done Better if you do them carefully, and doing them badly ends up being a spoon drain. The trick is learning to figure out which ones…
also asking yourself occasionally, “does this deserve my whole ass?” because quite often the task deserves about 28% of the left cheek
Jolene by Dolly Parton except it’s playing downstairs while you’re laying up in the loft of a cabin listening to the thunder and rain hitting the roof tiles above you
Also my brain really did not like this long post I just saw of super sketchy/highly disturbing toilet room set ups.
reminder that 30 isn’t old, it’s very normal to not accomplish everything in your 20s, and that it is never too late to learn that thing you’ve always wanted to learn. you’re always growing. that’s a good thing.
Who the hell accomplishes everything in their 20s? Who made that a thing?
I was 48 when I started my apprenticeship to become a tattoo artist. I was 50 when I married the love of my life.
You’ve got time.
I needed this right now. I’ve got time!!!
I didn’t get my first book published until I was 38. At 53, I’m about to sign a contract for my tenth. You have time.
Triggered by another post I didn’t want to hijack:
Excalibur.
In the legends, Excalibur comes out of a lake (although some versions have Excalibur as the sword in the stone, those are later…the sword Arthur pulls from the stone breaks and he goes to get a better one).
From the “Lady of the Lake.”
Here’s the thing.
In northern Europe in the Iron Age all the way through to the early Medieval period, most iron came from bog iron. It was hard to smelt, because it was a rather low grade ore, but you didn’t have to mine it and it was a renewable resource (in about twenty years you could just come back and get more, because it formed constantly).
Meaning that the iron used to make a sword came…out of water.
In most fairy stories, fairies don’t like iron. So the vision of the Lady as some kind of fairy or elf? Not likely.
The idea of her as a druid? Maybe.
But what’s far more likely is this: The Lady of the Lake was a smith.
But….but…
The Celtic deity in charge of smiths and ironworking was Bridget, a goddess. The mystical associations with the Lady would fit with her being a priestess of Bridget…and thus, a smith.
IOW, Arthurian people, maybe we should not be visualizing the Lady of the Lake as a slender, graceful woman in a gown…
Dinotopia is a fictional utopia created by author and illustrator James Gurney. It is the setting for the book series with which it shares its name. Dinotopia is an isolated island inhabited by shipwrecked humans and sentient dinosaurus who have learned to coexist peacefully as a single symbiotic society. The first book has “appeared in 18 languages in more than 30 countries and sold two million copies.”Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time and Dinotopia: The World Beneath both won Hugo awards for best original artwork.
God these images still send this ENTIRE thrill through me. They just evoke that feeling of being a child with a book too large for you, staying for so long on a single picture that you feel like you could turn around in it.
Gurney consistently produces a world that feels completely reasonable and real. The color, the light, the relationships between fore- and background,
the fact that it seems like a real world, where people are engaging in perfectly reasonable cultural activities…
The natural gestures, implying the personalities and relationships of characters in a single image…
And it’s quite creative. I mean, look at this pair of bagel sellers. WHAT A GREAT WAY TO SELL BAGELS?
Kirkwall Was Totally Built On a Hellmouth 