I'm not dead. I did however just get out of two months in hospital and rehab re-learning how to walk.
I'm not sure why I feel like I should "apologize" for dropping off the face of the earth. But there you have it. It does say something about a marginally healthy ego to assume anyone even noticed.
I genuinely hadnât been feeling alright since the end of summer; my friends and family were making jokes about me âgetting oldâ (being that I turned 42 on September 21st). My balance had been even worse than usual â but my pain had been practically halved so I decided to just roll with it.
Then I woke up on September 28th and I couldnât feel anything at all below my knees. From my knees to hips it was all just pins and needles; but not really painful. Which, of course, made me panic even more. I guess in my brain I assumed that as long as it hurt, it was fixable. Cause for all the problems Iâve had since my accident in college â it has never not hurt at least a little.
Cue full blown panic attack; followed very quickly by my Mother discovering me in bed crying and trying not to hyperventilate (and unable to reach my phone). Some unknown to me still amount of time later the paramedics for some reason thought the way to reassure me was to state, âgood news. Since you havenât wet yourself it means you probably arenât fully paralyzed.â
Well, gee. Fingers crossed.
(Keep in mind that this was all within the half hour of waking up on a Sunday morning; so, on top of everything else? Yes, I had to pee.)
ER in my local hospital (which is a weird statement to make about anything on Long Island) had me for less than 24 hours before transferring me as quickly as they possibly could to L.I.J. on the north shore of the Island because around hour fifteen (according to my Mother â as I was sedated to the gills at this point to keep me from having a full blown freak out or, honestly, moving too much in general) of waking up I started to lose sensation and temperature in my hands too. Â
Ironically, me being âyoung, otherwise reasonably healthy and (I quote) not âreallyâ paralyzedâ kept them from immediately operating on me even after the various scans showed that I had 2 herniated discs in the thoracic region of the spine (T11 & T12) that had slipped enough to compress my spinal cord. My Momâs neurosurgeon actually is out of that hospital (Iâve got a neurologist â not a neurosurgeon. Iâve tried to avoid surgery as treatment for around 20 years since âfixingâ nerve damage is never really permanent) and took over my care thankfully. He decided he wanted to try a course of anti-inflammation drugs (steroids, injections, etc) and see if it returned feeling so I could possibly start some mild physical therapy. Â
Now, by this point itâs been about three days â and the complete lower extremity numbness has advanced all the way from toes to my hips. My hands were intermittently retaining feeling so most of the time I had to concentrate and stare at my hands and arms to make sure I didnât drop anything I was holding.
Itâs important to note that also at this point I could still technically use my legs and arms as normal I just couldnât actually feel anything while doing so. It was like trying to walk on a foot that had fallen asleep - but about 100x worse and more potentially dangerous. The hospital was willing to allow me to drop things like the remote control or a fork â they werenât so willing to let me concuss myself (or damage my spine further) by actually attempting to walk anywhere.
So, I spent a week getting pumped full of various drugs and trying to work with a physical therapist â and I saw some mild improvement. Got full use of my arms back at least.
Things didnât get scary for anyone other than me until the 8th of October. Thatâs about a week and a half since I first woke up with the numbness. Because, that Wednesday I stopped being able to wiggle my toes for the first time. It wasnât that I couldnât feel them; now I couldnât move them.Â
Apparently, physical therapy when one can not feel pain and the patient is desperate to get out of a wheelchair leads to inadvertently overworking and I slipped the discs worse.
Three days later I was recovering from a thoracic spinal disc fusion to decompress my spinal cord before full paralysis set in.
I spent two weeks in the hospital after that, followed by three weeks in an in-patient rehab as due to my Momâs own illness she wasnât exactly in any condition to be able to help me with everything that Iâd need as I, quite literally, got back on my feet. I got home on this past Sunday and this is the first time Iâve even looked twice at a computer that wasnât revolving around my work.
(Thank you United States capitalist based economy and society (sarcasm)â I was recovering from spinal surgery in a rehab and I was actually grateful that we were technologically set up where I could work from my hospital room. Holy. Jesus. Fuck. Because, without that set up Iâd probably have had to jump through a million hoops to not lose my insurance and salary)
Not even going to get into how anxiety-inducing it was to have to rely on other relatives to make sure my Mom got to her oncologist appointments and got her medications when necessary for the last damn near two months.
And while I did have hands back fully following the decompression and I could have theoretically been reading and writing and snarking and chatting â I just also couldnât? The depression was/is very real at the moment.
Positive spin â Iâm out of a wheelchair!
Not so positive â Iâm still using a walker at the moment. Iâm 42 and using a walker. My physical therapist said that by February I should be on a cane. Iâm hoping to skip that and be on my feet for real by Christmas.
Wish me luck. Sorry for ignoring everyone and everything while wallowing. (Can you tell Iâve been lectured about my ânot positive mental spaceâ on the regular?)
Not sure how "back" I am - but I'm getting there. Need to re-engage in fandom activity to take my mind off everything else. Which might be the worst idea for my mental health but hey, at least now I can once again get up and shuffle away from my laptop when something aggravates me.
I finally caved (after being poked and prodded by various people since 2020) and watched seasons 1 - 3 of "The Boys".
Ummm? I am...needing a break before I watch Season 4?
I'm trying to figure out the justification for the fuckery of that S3 finale.
Ya know, some justification other then, "well fuck...shit...umm...can't do that *major death of insert any main character* yet. Cause ratings! We've got 5 seasons!"
And since Season 5 apparently won't be out until 2026 I have plenty of time to digest what I just watched and see if I change my mind before (as of this moment in time) reluctantly watching Season 4.
sidebar: thank you to The Pitt for producing a timely tv show with an as close to old school full episode load as it gets these days.
Also, pretty sure the characters I'm "supposed to like" are the ones I wanted to punch in the face the most. So, there's that to unpack.
Give me a fucking god awful psychotic villian any day of the week over a self-righteous preachy hypocritical good guy.
Countdown: Episode 10. Umm...spoilers? Random thoughts? Meh?
I expected an extreme level of anti-climactic in the long run of the case because "nuclear bomb in Los Angeles" was never going to be an actual credible threat on a tv show. They were always going to save the day.
So my immense disappointment comes from "Character" stuff.
Now, I like all the characters. A lot actually. That being said...
What blows my mind is that first episode one of the first things Oliveras does is give Meachum (justified) shit over him apparently cheating on his fiance (whom she either is friends with or is friendly enough with to know the story) with said fiance's sister shortly before their wedding.
And then in episode 10 she's (noticably) pissed that he won't fuck her the night before he finally starts cancer treatment.
These two are such a bad idea romantically I can not even begin to explain. They are both far too convinced of their own inability to not be "right" and unwilling to compromise on it. (Her more so then he is even)
Listen, there is a world of difference between being a good partner (in law enforcement) and being a good partner (romantically). Being able to ignore a philandering asshole to have your back in the field is one thing. Being able to ignore that this dude fucked his fiance's sister? That's a whole other thing. And yes, the implication of "Well he only cheated because he had a inoperable brain tumor and he wanted her to hate him" is implied - but never outright stated. And, anyway, her SISTER?! What? Some random girl from a bar wasn't good enough?
(And, if, as I've seen theorized online, he didn't actually cheat on his fiance but in fact concocted some kind of elaborate story with the fiance's sister...umm...I have a bridge in brooklyn for you)
Her cons to this relationship? If I rolled up to my first cancer treatment and after spending months and months keeping that shit quiet saw a bunch of people that I don't actually know that well and that I didn't personally tell about it waiting to see me off I'd be livid like you would not believe. HIPPA might not exist between friends but like, a certain level of discretion his both expected and appreciated.
(Though I don't fault her for pushing him to seek a second opinion. I do kind of fault her for pushing him into treatment he didn't really want - since in real life glioblastoma is a horrific way to die and being as comfortable as possible without wasting away is an actual legitimate choice. So maybe I blame the writers for not picking an actually logically long-term survivable cancer)
And for that matter - why was no one pissed off at him for running around with a brain tumor that could have meant any one of them caught a bullet if he was off at the wrong moment once they found out? I spent a whole season thinking "...this is getting very fucked up" every time he got all flinchy at lights and shit.
10 Months Later - OH! we really went miracle "cure". Okay. Well, glad we figured that out. đ«€ He's even got all his pretty hair back! Which, is of course, totally realistic. Since, they don't usually try to shrink the tumor to operable margins and then cross your fingers and pray that shit takes a while to start coming back (which it will). My friend's husband has a non-cancerous brain tumor that has had to be removed 3 times already in 6 years.
If Bell is dating the party-girl sister because Shepard asked him to keep an eye on her I will throttle that idiot. Shepard, not Bell, being the idiot in question. 'Cause who the hell asks the dude they are interested in to keep an eye on their party girl sister?
New case seems actually realistic - unlike the nuclear bomb in LA thing. So maybe there will be some actual potential stakes in all of this? Wanna bet Oliveras drug running case somehow ties into the potential assassination attempts?
Have we been renewed for a Season 2 yet? I didn't check. But I don't want to deal with a cliffhanger in 3 episodes if it hasn't.
somehow all these good vibes have washed back on me and it's great. y'all are manifesting writing mojo for each other and me and I love it. keep going. don't stop.
OH! First, not dead! I've been super sick - so that was fun. Only had the brain capacity to reblog or like some interesting shit a few times over the last few weeks. Got minimal writing done. And dragged my ass to my office a few times when I wasn't resembling a zombie.
Now to the point of this post...
I'm normally the type of person to just let whatever nasty (or obnoxious "update now!" with nothing else) comments I get on fic roll off my back. Cause people are gonna people - and fanfic can attract assholes. I respond to them normally - yes even the nasty ones. I kill them with kindness as it were.
But I'm having a really hard time with it over the last few weeks and I've been deleting some really rude shit (all mostly geared towards the fact that I haven't updated in a while).
Now I'm not sure if it's because I've also seen a lot of "I've never participated in fandom before I got into The Pitt" and therefore a lot of people just don't know how to navigate a fandom space; but, I've also never seen this level of toxicity develop in a fandom this fast and I've been writing fanfic in various capacity since junior high school.
I think the only other time I've ever seen the crazy develop that quick was "Supernatural" and, well, the flagerant "Hey incest! Totally normal!" of that fandom made me run screaming from it by season 3.
And that show actually straight up mocked of those crazy fuckers in canon on screen. (and those crazy fucks still think it was done "with love"...sure jan).
(So ya know, at least the Kindgon shipper/non-shipper war hasn't approached that level of bug fucking nuts. Kudos to both sides there)
So, right, long story short - I usually don't post stories until they are totally finished or I do a format of a series of shorter stories. That way everything has a finished feel of it even if a series isn't finished.
But, I really wanted to participate in this new fandom cause it excited me so much. And it was such an excellent show. And cause a lot of the writers that were popping up felt seasoned and comfy in a fandom space so I (stupidly) assumed that the readers would be as well. But now I'm debating on if I should be petty and delete the one WIP I have until it is finished and re-post it completed...or be REALLY petty as fuck and just leave what I have up and not updated until it is finished - while blatently working on other things that are also posted.
name:
meaning of name:
nicknames/titles:
age:
gender:
location:
birthday:
strengths + example where it's shown:
weaknesses + example where it's shown:
how it affects others:
emotional depth
attachment style + how it manifests in the story:
physical fear:
emotional/abstract fear:
happy memory:
sad memory:
object of significance:
philosophical outlook/belief:
what characters are ignorant about themselves:
how confident are they:
goal:
long-term dreams:
what they're embarrassed/ashamed to tell others about:
regrets:
source of pride:
source of misery:
what they admire above all else:
do they believe in fate:
personality
mbti:
enneagram:
big five:
character archetype:
star sign:
who they pretend to be on the outside:
who they actually are/how they feel towards the mask:
mental health conditions:
how it manifests for them:
iq:
eq:
humour:
reputation:
habits
bad habits:
mannerisms when stressed:
mannerisms when content:
mannerisms when scared:
mannerisms normally:
verbal mannerisms/distinctive speaking style:
how do they move across a room:
what do they say and what remains unsaid:
how they express love:
hobbies:
appearance
defining features:
eye shape + colour:
hair texture + colour:
skin texture + tone:
vibe:
height:
build:
clothing:
any bodily disfigurement (scars, etc.):
overall attractiveness:
their opinion on their appearance:
appeals to:
relationships
who they trust most:
what they wish they could do for them:
what's holding them back:
who they hate most:
what they wish they could do to them:
what's holding them back:
relationship with the protagonist:
relationship with the antagonist:
siblings:
relationship with them:
parents/step-parents:
relationship with them:
previous broken relationships:
why did it break:
what others expect of them:
who believes in them:
their mentor character/who they look up to:
political/religious/other affiliations:
what makes them different from every other character:
non-human relationships + why:
romantic "type" + why:
relationship dynamics:
backstory/background
primary emotion towards their past:
primary feelings while in their past:
where did they grow up:
defining incidents:
earliest childhood memory:
saddest memory:
happiest memory:
major accomplishments:
their opinion on it:
notable people in their backstory:
effect on them today:
trauma:
what have they already lost:
financial circumstance:
progression
why are they important (eg. why're they the only one able to do something?):
what do they learn about themselves throughout the story:
what do they learn about the world:
how do they feel towards their newfound knowledge:
character arc (positive, negative, neutral):
how relationships change because of their actions:
what mistakes do they make:
what scene is their character highlighted:
do they get what they want:
why or why not:
what happens to them after the story ends:
Racism is what connects a needy real estate fraud from Queens to every small town racist who hates the Big City privileged assholes who think they are better than rural rednecks.
All the groomer, all the Deep State, all the Swamp, all 'sending rapists and drug addicts', all the elites gaming the system, all the chain migration and anchor kids, all the nepostism.
All of it is Trump.
Without racism, Trump is a child molester who scams on immigrant model-wannabes.
Thereâs that post thatâs like âeveryone should get into a tiny niche fandom at least onceâ fully agree, that was really fun -- but I would like to add that everyone should get into a fandom where their opinions run counter to major fanon because it really teaches you about sticking to your guns and trusting your interpretation of the text without having to rely on peer validation
Okay. So, the movie was awesome. I don't know what reviwers (and my friends) were talking about. I spent 2 hours giggling over easter eggs and I'm very tempted to go see it again.
But I'm also a nerd who pretty much thinks anything Spielberg touches is gold. And if there are dinosaurs it's even better.
(btw - how did I miss that Jaws will be in theaters next month? Cause that's my actual favorite movie ever and I'm not that old that I've seen that on a big screen).
Been hearing terrible things about the new Jurassic Park movie (...World. whatever.)
Still totally going this afternoon with my Mom. They're kind of like pizza afterall. Even bad, they're pretty good.
We've seen every single one in theaters together (yes, even # 3. So so bad) since the first movie - when I was 9, on crutches from a broken ankle (don't jump off the school stairs and onto a moving skateboard kids...or in my case, attempt to) and hobbling out of the theater every time the raptors showed up to eat something (while she, like an typical 90s parent, laughed at my sheer terror).
Gonna eat junk and stare at Jonathan Bailey and badly mutated dinosaurs. Gonna be awesome.
i love how thereâs the genre of fix-it fic where the author goes into great granular detail of how our heroes manage to avoid or undo whatever character death or other unpopular choice occurred, in a way that abides by the laws of the fictional universe and definitely required a substantial plot outline, and then there are fix-it fics where the author just went âthatâs bullshit and didnât happen,â and we as readers all go âagreed. carry on.â
