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Tag: Health

Posted
May 17, 2022
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Another Important Blog Post on Health, Listening to Women about Their Health, and More Surgery!

My Health Journey As A Woman…

Just under two years ago, I wrote a blog post about getting a Vertical Sleeve Gastrectomy because doctors not taking my period and other health complaints seriously for decades led me to becoming too obese for a hysterectomy. I was hopeful, based on the research I did (much linked in that blog post), that the VSG would be enough of a body reset to fix all the things doctors said it might.  Hopeful, but not convinced. I even said that hysterectomy wasn’t off the table if the VSG didn’t fix the hormone issues.

Sometimes it really fucking sucks to be right. It’s time to evict the bitch, yeet that uterus!

Leonardo Da Vinci’s depiction of a uterus on as part of a special showcase of his anatomical art at Buckingham Palace. It looks like it belongs on a metal album cover.

(For even more information about why I’m excited about this particular surgery, here’s some background and even more emotional thoughts on how having a uterus has made my life miserable, particularly in the past decade…)

For those of you who’ve managed to see me in the safe windows of a pandemic, you’ve seen that I have, in fact, lost a lot of weight. About 100 pounds, give or take.

Give or take being the key phrase.

You see, there’s this thing called “body homeostasis.” In short, the body has natural systems that work to keep it in a standard functioning state even when the world around changes and endangers the body. However, if your body ends up functioning in an unhealthy manner for years and years and years, it can potentially reprogram itself to believe that is the state it is supposed to be its best functionality, even if it’s not. This is one of the many reasons weight loss is so damned difficult: Fat cells hold onto certain hormones, like estrogen, so being fat actually changes how your body releases and uptakes hormones. And the longer you’re fat—and on a constant schedule of weight loss and gain, because what fat person isn’t always under pressure to lose weight?—the more the body starts to normalize its functionality for being fat.

And if you’ve had a hormone imbalance for most of your life too? Or—and, in my case it’s an and—you also have a neurodiverse brain with its own special biochemical cocktail needs?

Your body is pretty fucking certain that your survival depends on a fucked up biochemistry.

That’s why, the older I got, the less helpful any chemical birth control was in period regulation.

We were at the point that any birth control we tried would work fantastic for 6-8 months, and then slowly stop working. Periods would stretch back to eight days, ten days, two weeks, three weeks… And I was back to buying wholesale club-sized pads, pain meds, and whatever herbs and other drugs seemed to cooperate with Adderall for the brain fog, emotional roller coaster, hot-and-cold flashes, anxiety, depression, forgetfulness, fatigue, and so-bad-I’m-in-bed pain.

About a month or so after my VSG, I literally had THE WORST EVER of ALL of the abovementioned symptoms. Yes. ALL. OF. THEM. Oh, and with the tiny tummy, I also got my first-time-ever hypoglycemic episode because, apparently, I’m one of those people whose body doesn’t function in full ketosis. And post-bariatric surgery involves basically a keto diet.

And that’s not even getting into discovering a sensitivity to sugar substitutes and getting seriously sick from that.

It was fucking hell. I was on the phone, in screaming tears with my whole damned medical team. They couldn’t do anything… I had just had serious surgery. All we could do was wait it out. Then, by about the 3-4 month mark, everything started getting better! Periods went away; I was getting more energetic; I WAS NOT IN PAIN!!

There’s a thing about chronic pain people don’t realize unless they’ve had it and then managed to actually get rid of it for a while:  You absolutely forget what it’s like to function while not in pain. It’s almost scary. You don’t believe it’s real. You are stunned: “This is what life is like for other people? Other people live like this?! No wonder everyone else gets so much done!”

I mean, we’re still talking about it being 2020, so I was feeling physically awesome while living in Dumpster Fire World, so there’s that.

In any case, there was an absolutely glorious six months where I felt like what I guess a normal, healthy, fucking human being feels like. And despite the world only mildly abating from Massive Dumpster Fire status, it was, in fact, glorious.

And then the bleeding started again.

At first it was spotting for 3-4 days. I told myself, “Well, this is normal-person period stuff. I can totally live with this.” I also told myself, Every other time your birth control started to fail, it started like this. But, like all the other times, I wanted this to be the exception. I wanted this to finally be the thing that worked. I went through heavy-duty surgery, FFS! I supposedly reset my whole gut biome!

Just under a month later, it was just over 5 days of spotting. Not heavy, at least, but enough to be annoying.

Less than three weeks later, it was 7 days, not all spotting.

And so it went.

And then I was bleeding again for 2+ weeks. And worse, my weight was creeping up again.

I had my food and activity journal. I had my Fitbit activity / calorie-burning data all saved and on hand because the logical, OCD part of me had had a feeling this would happen.

I was vindicated; I was furiously crestfallen.

You can’t really gloat about being right all along when the physical pain and misery you’d thought you escaped comes back; you’re too busy remembering all your coping mechanisms to living while in pain and with lower functionality. You still have deadlines and people depending on you; you still have to live.

At this time I met with no argument against the hysterectomy. I even got surgery on my preferred date based on conventions and Scott’s work schedule, so I have the time to recover and Scott is available to take care of me.

After chatting with my doctor, we decided we’d keep one ovary in there as a buffer in case my body decides to seriously flip out after years of functioning on overproduced levels of estrogen.

This all happens in a week!

Intersection of My Health and Women’s Health…

I was all set to post this about two weeks ago. I had contacted most of my clients and / or planned projects with my surgery in mind.

And then there was that little leak from the Supreme Court, and I was thrown into one of those paralyzing emotional Cat 5 tornado of a caliber only people with neurodiverse brains can appreciate. (Not saying neurotypical folk can’t be thrown into a paralyzing emotional tornadoes—particularly uterus-owning folk in regard to this particular thing—but part of the brain chemistry of many neurodiverse conditions, particularly ADHD, is that our emotions are literally “turned up to 11,” beyond what neurotypical people feel.)

I would have been hit with this emotional storm regardless, but less than a month away from a surgery I have fought years to get—even living in one of the most freaking liberal of states when it comes to women’s reproductive rights—that…that was… A. Lot. 

To say the least.

In fact, I do have a lot to say…but I also have A. Lot. to do before my surgery. I also need to look at the emotional energy it takes to talk about this, the potential arguments and having to monitor comments…those are all important considerations when I have limited time and limited energy. I state this, too, because I have friends who feel I should say more.

My short response for this blog:

I respect a woman’s bodily autonomy; there should not be legislation that prevents her from making the best decision for her health and her whole family’s well-being. A woman should not have to fight for access to the best health choices for herself and her situation. Limiting women’s access to health care affects all women’s access to health care. There is SO MUCH INFORMATION showing how the more restrictions we put on women’s healthcare the worse women’s health is. There is a massive, massive, massive correlation to states with stricter laws for women’s reproductive health and higher death rates for women and lower overall health. The fewer restrictions, the better women’s and children’s health is.

Beyond that, I need to respect my own health and body. So please don’t make me moderate comments on this. Be kind to each other. When I’m in a better health situation, perhaps I can put in the emotional and mental work of the post I want to make, along with all the research I’ve collected.

So, with that… I am counting down for my hysterectomy with joy and more hope. I fought hard for this, and I shouldn’t have had to. But the time is finally here!

For those of you with other uterus-owning persons in your life, particularly if they are young, listen to them when they talk about their periods and issues. And help and support them so they don’t have to suffer what I went  through.

Love and health to all of you!

Posted
August 11, 2020
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Where I’ve been, What I’ve Been Through, and More Surgery

So, yeah, it’s “been a minute” (to borrow a Southern phrase I learned in said “minute”) since my last blog post. Sorry. But this one is the whole explanation why!

Back in 2017, I shared this post about surgery I had to have because of a big ole fibroid making my life super, extra, mega miserable. That’ll give you a few more background details.

Where to start…

Continue Reading →
Posted
November 18, 2017
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Life
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“Controlling” Emotions

Maine Retreat Terri

I’m at a Broad Universe writers retreat this weekend with a bunch of friends, among them the fabulous Rona Gofstein, who also writes as Rachel Kenley. And in my all-important “procrastination before writing” time, where I was glancing through Facebook, I saw her recent blog post, “Emotions Don’t Need to Be Controlled.”

I gave a “quick” (i.e. 4 paragraphs long) response on the post here, but that only dealt with one aspect that I think is important in this discussion.

She said in the blog that it was probably an unpopular topic, but I don’t think it should be. It’s a many-faceted topic that I had about ten different replies to flying around in my head. In summary, I think our relationship with emotions needs to be more openly and readily discussed. Not just if we should and should not repress them or control them, but how they affect us, how we create emotions, the physiological and psychological importance of a good relationship with emotions…

Our relationship status with emotion, of course, is best filed under “it’s complicated,” but I also think all good relationships are. And as a writer, I love exploring those complicated relationships… and a good blog response should pick one particular aspect and discuss it. And perhaps save other aspects for future blogs.

Having had my surgery and a long history of period / hormone issues, though, what’s foremost in my mind and has been for the past year is physiological causes for uncontrollable emotions. (Basically, almost the opposite of what I ended up responding on Facebook.)

Our current culture in modern America, and many other places across the world, takes the stand that we should “control our emotions,” as Rona puts forward in her post.

I agree with her that we shouldn’t control our emotions and that it is a problematic, if not dangerous, thing to do so. (She has a great example of following her instinctual emotions on her blog.)

Emotions cause physiological effects in the body that we cannot control—blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, tears or laughter are some examples. (Breathing, too,  but we have some control over that, at least.) These are part of your autonomic nervous system—the things your body does that you don’t have to think about, and in essence, can only marginally affect even when you do think about them.

Because emotions have such a major physiological component attached to the autonomic nervous system, as well as the endocrine system (your hormones) and neurotransmitters, that means you can have physical triggers for emotions that you also cannot control. The science of psychiatry and psychology deal with those quite a bit. But consider when you have a health problem that affects your body’s chemistry—you’re not able to control your body chemistry, so you simply cannot control the emotions caused by these symptoms.

Many women suffer this dissociation with regular PMS—the butt of far too many jokes. However, consider how society pressures people (particularly women) to “get it together” and “control your emotions,” when she literally, physically CANNOT DO SO. Not only is there this awful feeling of intense anger, sadness, happiness, or what not because estrogen or progestin is doing its thing, but there is this logical awareness that the emotion being felt is not associated with any actions or events currently happening around us. And we’re regularly told that THIS IS WRONG; YOU ARE WRONG.

And it’s not wrong. And it’s not controllable. And no one should be punished for going through this.

It’s bad enough to be standing in the kitchen, filled with rage and a physical illness of dissociation because there is no good reason for there to be rage. Thought processes and thinking about the situation aren’t going to un-flush our system with the chemicals causing rage (or grief, or elation). In fact, the discomfort or panic of that dissociation can enhance and exacerbate the unwanted emotion. Add in feeling like a failure or like you ought to be able to control this emotion, and you’ve added even more chemicals interacting in the body.

What to do?

Change starts within us. Within individuals. I’d love to magically change society and society’s dangerious and poisonous views, but that isn’t something any individual can do. But we can learn to create a better relationship with our own emotions—and to forge more healthy relationships with the emotions of others by our own reactions.

For each individual, admit and surrender to the idea that emotions are not a thing to be controlled.

That’s a lot of work on its own.

Next, each of us should pay attention to your body during emotions. How do I feel? What is my natural inclination for action while experiencing those emotions? Is there a situational cause for the emotion? If so, what? If not, that’s okay too; I  notice and appreciate your body is going through something physical and physiological that creates this emotion.

This is also a lot of work. We need to give ourselves permission to take our time with this.

Then, then, after we’ve acknowledged these things, we can look for the things we can control.

For me, the first thing is to learn how to communicate about emotions. Let the ones I love know when I’m angry, that I need to do something physical—walk, yell, punch or throw inanimate objects. Anyone I’m in a relationship with—my hubby, my friends, my family—are people I could potentially act out upon due to emotions, and none of us have psychic powers, so it’s important to tell them why I’m acting out—what I’m feeling, what I need, and so on. Of course, it’s important that if the emotion was caused by an action that, once the uncontrollable need is met (time alone, being hugged, pillows beaten up), the cause needs to be addressed.  I’ve seen people (and it’s often shown in literature, television, movies, etc) take care of the emotional need, but then never address the issue—so it continues to fester and cause the uncomfortable emotion—and that discomfort will grow, requiring the physical response to be stronger and stronger. Communication is the most important thing in any healthy relationship. Communicating with ourselves and others is key when it comes to our shared relation with emotions.

Once we get communication moving, we can look at other things that are within our control. Especially when emotions come at inconvenient times. Rather than try to control the emotion, however, we can control how we handle the symptoms of emotions. Rather than saying, “I can’t be angry right now,” we can think, “I can’t tell so-and-so to self-copulate painfully right now.” We can take time to pay attention to breathing and work at controlling that to an extent. We can take time with responses, crafting them so as not to damage other relationships. We can remove ourselves from situations when we realize we are at a place where the physiology of the emotions is not appropriate.

I don’t think I can say enough times that this is not easy, and I, for one, am far from perfection in this practice.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. And try again. And try again. (And apologize, communicate, and try again.)

The last thing regarding “control” over emotions is how we respect and appreciate others’ physiological-emotional needs. Telling someone to “get control” is, as mentioned above, not only likely impossible but damaging, potentially making the situation worse. Find out what they need in the moment to deal with the emotion, and later discuss the situation. Be forgiving when someone lashes out; it may be a thing they physically can’t control at the moment…

That said, suffering regular abuse from someone who “can’t control their emotions” is a relationship not worth keeping. That is an entirely different—but still very important—conversation that needs to be had. Physical attacks, deep emotional attacks, any abuse is wrong.

Outside of abusive behaviors, however, it’s worth being flexible, honoring the physiological aspects of emotion, and opening a channel of communication. For ourselves, and for the ones we care about.

I hope this isn’t an unpopular topic, and that more of us do start healthy discussions about what emotions are and what makes for good emotional relationships.

Posted
January 7, 2013
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Happy 2013!

12162012 Christmas, Dalek, Show 036New year, new goals, positive accomplishments… new try at blogging.  🙂

Most everyone in the world is talking about (or has already talked about) their New Year’s Resolutions/Goals, etc.  Not to hop on the bandwagon, but it’s a fun and inspiring topic… so I’m playing with it, too.

I’ve already hit a couple of short-term goals this year already:

  • Submitted a novella for publishing
  • Gotten my email inbox to a manageable level (from over 1000 to under 140)
  • Handwritten my publishing deadlines for 2013 for Spencer Hill Press
  • Handwritten a Personal Goals sheet
  • Printed out my detailed deadline for January Spencer Hill Press projects
  • Accomplished editing deadlines thus far

 

And we’re just a week into the new year!

When I was going through my deadlines and goals, I went back through my prior years’ blog posts so I could get an idea of what I’d accomplished and what I could accomplish.  I’d forgotten that I never actually got around to publishing my goals on my blog last year… so I had to go back to my January 2011 posts to get an idea of what I’d been doing.

With the path my life has taken since 2011, most of those benchmarks and steps simply are… no longer useful.

When I sat down to make my plan for this year, I needed a whole new template!

And that’s ok.  I’m very happy with where my life is going.

Let’s have my accomplishments for 2012 explain why:

Became a Senior Editor at Spencer Hill Press.

I’ve been blessed in the past decade or so to have jobs and bosses who I have loved. And every move I’ve made has been an improvement… yet I can’t imagine a more healthy and supportive job than working at SHP.

At Spencer Hill Press, I’ve had the pleasure of working on many awesome books – which I will detail as they start coming out. 🙂

 

Published Short Stories

“Photo of a Mermaid” came out in UnCONventional by Spencer Hill Press

“Fixed” came out in Corrupts Absolutely? from Damnation Books

 

Sold Fiction

THE KELPIE – my first novel! – comes out this December from Spencer Hill Press

“Finding Fire” comes out in May in the Holiday Magick anthology, Spencer Hill Press

“Steadfast in the Face of Zombies” to Once Upon an Apocalypse Volume 1 – more on that when I get the info. 🙂

 

Lost Ten Pounds

After three years of gain or plateau – that’s still an accomplishment.

 

Rode in my First Competitive Horse Show – and GOT RIBBONS!

Mind you, it’s been well over a decade since I practiced any sport competitively.  This was HUGE. 🙂

 

… And there were a lot more life changes.

I traveled to four different countries I’d never been before. And, between those travels, I was without my husband who I’ve not lived without for over a decade.  In fact, I only lived on my own for three months out of college before we got married… so it was definitely… an experience.  I also got really into my job at Annie’s Book Stop of Worcester, helping with event coordination.

I left my last W2 job in May… because things with fiction and freelancing were picking up as well as they were.

And I still held my position as president for Broad Universe – though, honestly, between my Veep, Kimberly Long-Ewing and the rest of the Motherboard, it was a massive team effort for which I’m deeply grateful.

So, that’s 2012 for you.  Massive. Change.

From there, I move forward. With a lot of hope and energy for this year. 🙂

Thank you, Universe!

Oh?  What are my actual goals for this year? 😉 Well… that’s another blog post. 😉

Happy New Year!