Five days post op. I have control over my right arm again ♡
When I had a surprise surgery back in October to remove my gallbladder, the nursing staff were incredible and took such wonderful care of me. This time, however, was like something out of a nightmare.
When I came out of surgery, I was in pain but the attendant in charge of my time in the recovery room did a great job of medicating me into a state of mostly painless-ness with IV medications that worked fast. I felt okay, but quite nauseous and threw up after they had wheeled me up to my hospital room. This would not be the last time, however. In fact, everything I tried to consume ended up being thrown up--including my pain medications. Over and over again. As the day went on, the anesthesia and pain medications that had been given to me via my IV were wearing off more and more but because the staff refused to give me any more medication through the IV and only would give me them in pill form, I was becoming more and more aware of the trauma experienced by my body that day. Surgery had ended at about 11am that morning and it was not until the 2nd shift head nurse came in at 8pm that someone finally requested from the floor doctor that I be prescribed IV medications for pain and nausea. In that time I had to have my bedding and hospital gown changed four times due to vomit related messes, was becoming quite dehydrated, and yet every time we asked the nurses to please stop trying to give me oral medications they just said it was all I could have since I would be going home the next day.
My mother took care of me where the nurses just did not. As many times as I had to have my gown changed, you'd think they would remember I had a drainage tube pinned to it--a tube that was extremely sensitive but that they kept dropping the vessel for so it just hung from my neck by its stitches until I grabbed it up. One time a gown had to be changed it was because they felt it would be easier to just use an external catheter with me than take me to the toilet which is just a banana shaped vacuum to suck up pee. Might have worked if I hadn't been on saline earlier that day and had an impossibly full bladder that overwhelmed the thing to the point I was soon soaked in pee. My IVs weren't hooked up to anything so taking me to the toilet wouldn't have been all that complicated but maybe it was out of kindness they didn't want the patient who'd had spine surgery to get up--had to anyway since the bed and myself were a mess that my mother had to take the charge on cleaning when they just never showed up.
So I spent the day relying almost entirely on my mother but knowing she couldn't spend the night with me since she had to return to my home to take care of my son. The night team were much better but still not great. I was very glad to be discharged from the hospital as the care I was receiving was insufficient at best and negligence at worst. I can understand why the nurses would be annoyed at my mother approaching the nurse station rather than using the call button for some things, but "she's going to vomit again" was not a message she wanted there to be any delay on acting against.
Happy with my surgeon at least. I have my right arm back--no numbness or pain in my arm that shouldn't exist. My pain, at last, is located only where it should be as I heal from ACDF.
ACDF surgery for c6-7 of my spine scheduled for Wednesday the 29th. Looking forward to being cured of the ceaseless pain. Hoping the nerve damage can be healed with time.
Said the doctor who told me it would be pointless to get an MRI of my neck because when it came back fine, insurance would ding his practice for ordering unnecessary scans.
"On review of all your symptoms, it really was the only thing that it could have been."
Said the doctor who asked "What shoulder pain?" the last time I visited him because he couldn't be bothered to remember details not related to his "I'm sure it's just tendinitis" diagnosis. The doctor who said "Your fingers are numb because you're keeping your arm bent" despite me consistently telling him I have not altered my use of my arm since the pain is not responsive to movement or immobility.
Part of me wishes I gave a shit about this joke of a human being who cannot accept he is wrong and has to rewrite our past interactions to make himself the hero. I just wanted to be officially discharged as his patient so I could get medical help from competent human beings.
"Do you need a referral for a pain and spine specialist?"
I asked for a pain specialist weeks ago through their message portal when the pain he ignored got very bad because he would not consider it possible for it to be anything more than tendinitis. His practice already referred me to one. Lucky for me, the emergency room CT scan and subsequent cervical spine MRI concluded days before my scheduled appointment so what was originally just a pain appointment became a spine one as a wonderful doctor explained my newly uncovered condition.
"There's nothing for me anymore, so we'll put you down as coming in as needed!"
I will never, ever need your services again you gas-lighting moron.
I am slowly losing the use of my right arm. And, as a right-handed writer and artist, that is kind of terrifying. I have also been in constant pain since the beginning of the year. Sometimes the pain is a mild ache and at times sharp and raging.
Want details about a slowly debilitating injury you might be able to use in your writing? Let's go~
At the beginning of the year, I started to have some aching in my right shoulder. I didn't think anything of it--probably overdid it taking down holiday decorations. It didn't get better with time, though. I continued to ignore it, but after a few weeks my elbow began to ache as well. Where the shoulder was a persistent soreness, the elbow was sharper and more random. Both never ceased hurting, sometimes mellow and other times brightly intense, but pain was ever present. There was no movement that made either hurt more or less, they just did and at random. I continued to think it would pass but started to grow more concerned.
I had a scheduled check in with my Rheumatologist that month so I waited to see her to bring it up. She checked me over, listened, and said it wasn't rheumatological and to see my primary care physician. I continued to think it wasn't a big deal and didn't try to get an appointment made immediately. But within a week, I was in the urgent care as the pain became too intense to ignore or suffer further. Tylenol didn't help. Ibuprofen didn't help. Naproxen didn't help. Meloxicam didn't help. I'd tried everything I had in my medicine cabinet with zero change to the expression of pain I was inflicted with. The urgent care doctors took x-rays but, predictably, there were no fractures to explain the pain. They gave me muscle relaxers, prescriptions for stronger pain medicine, a shot of muscle relaxer, and a shot of steroids to go with a prescription of steroids to continue with to try and give me pain relief and get me over whatever this was so it could heal and be done with.
It did nothing. The pain was unchallenged.
I went to my primary care physician and she told me to give the medications more time to work but also referred me to an orthopedic specialist. I made an appointment immediately though there were no openings for days. In that time, I took to marking on my arm with a pen, putting X's over the spots where a surge of pain had hit me to make a map for the doctor that might highlight the cause. X's on my outer elbow and forearm, X's on the front and back of my shoulder, X's on my bicep. They were random marks and with every shower only the ghosts of the previous marks remained but I'd add to them fresh X's to continue the work.
I had long noticed that there was no correlation between movement and pain. I could sit at the table and keep my arm perfectly still but a jolt of pain would erupt as though stabbed by invisible assailants and fade away back to the constant background noise of pain still without having moved at all. It was curious, it was annoying, but I told myself not to Google anything as I was going to specialists and it was their job to help me and understand what was happening. I didn't need to self-diagnose; I didn't need to make myself anxious with possibilities.
The orthopedic doctor was... an asshole. He seemed too busy to really listen to me and diagnosed my issue as simple tendinitis. I had at one time considered the same thing, had tried the braces I'd seen my father use, and come to the conclusion that the braces were useless and it could not be tendinitis. I'd had tendinitis in my early twenties from being a cashier and remembered the way certain movements would cause pain and discomfort and how stopping those movements would make the pain cease. That was not the endless, constant baseline of pain with its random spikes and sparks that I had now known for over a month; that was not how my symptoms behaved. He injected my tendon with steroids anyway and told me to come back in two weeks.
Did you know you can experience two different types of pain in the same part of your body? I'd always heard that if I got a migraine I should try to get a brain freeze because the brain would short itself out trying to handle the two and the migraine would be cured. My unyielding pain remained like the baseline of a song, keeping beat and always there no matter what the melody of pain that now existed in my stressed tendon did. The tendon was tight and ached in the way they do while what I started to simply refer to as "my pain" carried on uninterrupted. I was annoyed that I ever bothered to have hope it might work when I knew--I knew--that I did not have tendinitis. Before the end of the two weeks, though, I had a new symptom. My shoulder still ached, my elbow was a muffled scream, and now my thumb and forefinger had become hives for bees to intermittently inhabit. The numbness and fizzing discomfort seemed to have replaced the spikes of pain I had been experiencing before. It wasn't an improvement.
I Googled my symptoms. I decided it might be my radial nerve--something nerve related anyway since muscle movement did not affect it. I must have somehow trapped or pinched a nerve somewhere. I hoped the doctor would come to the same conclusion.
At the two week follow up, the doctor said the new numbness in my fingers was because I was babying my arm and keeping it bent. I sharply told him no, that is not an appropriate explanation. I reminded him that my pain does not care if I move my arm or not, that I don't "baby" my arm because it would be pointless to do so and just make life harder since I'm right handed. His imagined scenario did not exist in reality and how did that explain the shoulder pain?
"What shoulder pain?" he asked.
He had two assistants in the room with him who both looked at each other as the doctor asked them if I had ever mentioned shoulder pain before. I reminded him of the X's I had drawn on my body when I came in that first appointment. His assistant confirmed that the x-ray of my shoulder was among their files and was indeed part of my initial symptoms and reason for coming to him. He still said he believed I had tendinitis but agreed to request MRIs of my elbow and shoulder, as well as refer me to an neurologist for an EMG to check the nerve conductivity in my right arm. I asked if we could get an MRI of my cervical spine while we were at it, just to check all the boxes, but he refused. Insurance wouldn't like it. When it came back fine, they'd judge him for ordering pointless MRIs and it could financially hurt his practice.
Insurance approved both MRIs that were requested on a Thursday and I was at the imaging facility on Monday. Small talk with the man facilitating my MRIs had him asking why we weren't looking at my cervical spine too and we had a laugh about me being back eventually. The EMG I'd have to wait two weeks for, though. Spring break was the following week and most of the specialists were taking that time off. I needed to have both the MRIs and the EMG done to meet with the asshole doctor again, though, which meant it would be three weeks before anything new would be done to try and make the pain go away.
That Tuesday, sitting at work, knowing how much longer I'd have to wait for help, the pain became too much. I asked to be referred to a pain management specialist, but the soonest I could see them was two weeks as well--spring break and all. I left work and went back to the urgent care in hopes of getting something, anything, that might give me even a moment's peace. I sat on the crinkling paper crying to a doctor as I tried to explain the series of events leading me there that day while the pain screamed through my right arm and my fingers buzzed. He felt at my shoulder, just a few squeezes to the right and one on the left to see if the tightness was mirrored, then asked if it would be okay to change my admittance from urgent care to emergency room in order to get a CT scan of my cervical spine and administer pain medication and muscle relaxers intravenously. I nodded and gladly followed their instructions.
The CT scan showed "possible right posterolateral disc protrusion at c6-7 encroaching on the right foraminal inlet". I left with orders to get a cervical spine MRI, prescriptions to help me manage the pain, but even intravenously they could not give me anything strong enough to touch my ever-present pain.
I wasted no time and got my asshole doctor to order that pointless cervical MRI now that he had a CT scan as backup for its necessity. I was in on Friday to get it done and had a small chat with the same facilitator I'd seen that Monday who laughed to see we'd been right. It was spring break now, though. There would be a week of nothing but existing and not knowing, waiting to see the next doctor who maybe, hopefully could do something for me.
The steroids and pain medications the ER had prescribed me helped bring the pain from a 7 out of 10 to a 2 or 3 but they only gave me a week's worth and mid spring break I was without. As the pain grew, so did my awareness of new symptoms. There was a jitteriness to my hands that hadn't existed before. My handwriting was even more chaotic than it had been in the past, almost illegible to even myself, as if I did not have complete control over the actions of my fingers. I blamed the pain making me sloppy. It had been two and a half months since the pain had first been conceived in me and I was being broken down by its continued existence.
Finally I was able to see the pain management doctor. He showed me my MRI and explained what was wrong. He listened to my questions and showed attentiveness and care. My spine is not okay. A disc has protruded to the extent that the nerve root that serves my right arm is nearly completely obstructed. It is causing nerve damage. If I do nothing, the nerve damage will be permanent and increase. If we follow conservative treatment, it might improve but given how complete the obstruction is, surgery is likely. He prescribed physical therapy which confused me. He prescribes a pill that treats nerve pain and an ESI-- Epidural Steroid Injection--to hopefully finally give me a release from my agony. The next available appointment for an ESI is a week out, though. The prescription for Pregabalin can take two weeks to start working. I left knowing the pain would be with me still for at least another week--mine and constant and unyielding.
That was Monday. Tuesday I went to the physical therapist, still unsure what the purpose was as it wasn't as if we were going to be able to push the disc back into place through stretches. One of the first things they had me do, after I had explained my symptoms and how I had come to be there, was test my grip strength. We started with my left hand, the non-dominant hand and the supposed weaker of the two. I squeezed the device and she told me it said I had a grip strength of 80lbs. I've always been pretty proud of my strength so that made me very happy to hear as a 42 year old woman. Then we put the device in my right hand.
All I had to do was squeeze it--squeeze it as hard as I could. My hand struggled to obey. My whole arm shook in uncontrolled jerks and vibrations as the device in my hand bounced incredibly in my unsteady grip. I watched in horror and embarrassment as the simple act of squeezing this device came out as a struggle for dominance between my brain and my arm. 40lbs of pressure was the best reading we got. That's not terrible for a woman my age, but in comparison to my other arm, it's abysmal. More than that, I finally understood why I was there.
I never stopped using my arm exactly the same as I always had, but I had noticed I would drop things sometimes. I blamed it on the numbness--not feeling things so well and so losing track of them in my hand. It never occurred to me that maybe I wasn't in control anymore. My normal routine included movements and motions that weren't in any way challenging and rarely included just one arm in a manner that forced me to compare the two. In physical therapy I can see how my left arm is steady when I go through movements, transitioning from one angle to the other smoothly to complete an exercise. Then I watch my right arm and it struggling, trembling, uncontrollable jerks and vibrations as flexing a wrist and extending an arm becomes a Herculean task. I didn't realize that in over the nearly three months thinking only of the pain I had gone from strong and capable to fighting disability. The physical therapy is to overcome the nerve damage that has already occurred--to try and stop its progression and reverse it.
It's Thursday now. I had physical therapy again this morning and despite the pleasantness of the brief massage, neck traction, and heating pads, my pain levels have been pretty bad today. I had my EMG at last and my arms both checked out as normal, making it very clear that the fault is entirely in my neck. The Pregabolin--or Pregnant Goblin as I tend to call it--still has not kicked in with any pain relief though I have gotten the side effects of vomiting and dizziness. Four days until my ESI which might take a few days to kick in, I'm warned. The pain is never gone; it is always there. It has been there almost three full months now.
It started as a shoulder ache. Then an achy shoulder and a painful elbow. Then an achy shoulder, a painful elbow, and numb fingers. Now it's an achy shoulder, a painful elbow, number fingers, and random spasms of the elbow and/or fingers. I don't know what comes next. Sometimes the pain keeps me from doing the things I love. Sometimes the only way to manage the pain is to lay in bed all day to keep it as a hum and not a chatter that might evolve into screams. The only cure may be a surgery that requires them to remove that vertebra from my spine and fuse the ones around it, forever limiting my range of motion. I hurt so much and am so tired of hurting that I almost don't care. Anything would be better than this pain and watching my right arm and hand slowly die.
This is the most I have written in weeks. It's nice. I miss it. I'm too scared to draw or paint right now. I don't want to watch my hand fail me further. I don't want to witness that ever.
I see the asshole doctor next week and hopefully it will be for the last time. Other than eventually ordering the scan I needed, he has not been of much help and his inattentiveness and dismissive behavior has not been in service of getting me well. I'm going mostly to see if he can be humble and admit he was wrong and hadn't been listening to me. I'm doubtful, but having met my deductible, I'm not having to pay for the chance to see it. He can formally dismiss me from his care in office.
Anyway, inflict this horror on your blorbo as you like. Let them watch their gunhand slowly fail them, or be mystified by a pain that knows no end. It fucking sucks and idk I'll let you know how it goes or something as I continue to live through this nightmare of misery that at least at this point has something of a promise for future alleviation.
Just finished Stranger Things. Marvelous conclusion--love that they stuck the landing as so many finales fail to do.
So color me super confused to come online and see people absolutely disgusted with it. And calling it queer baiting? I'm sorry, did we watch the same show? Queer baiting isn't the depiction of a one-sided crush not ending in reciprocation, that's just an honest depiction of common life experiences.
And I get that people are used to a hetero-normative coming out scene where the focus is on how the straights react to the news, but in all honesty I was very touched at the way Will's story maintained focus on his journey of self-acceptance and was more about him demonstrating pride--rejecting shame--in a very public reveal to everyone at once regardless of whether they personally had earned that trust because it was not about them.
I was annoyed at Jane dying at the end, really tired of powerful women having to die to fully save the day for everyone else, but the true ending/beginning of Jane's story made me very happy. For the first time ever, she has a chance to live and be happy. Would she have been happy with everyone else in Hawkins? Maybe. But she gets to be her own person now, not her past and not defined by the events that shaped her childhood. She gets to choose who she is and control her own story in a way she was never afforded before. She has agency and she will use it and she will live happily ever after in a life she carves out for herself. Bravo.
Will was not partnered up off screen--he's experiencing a gay bar. I really don't see the issue there. This isn't Shiro marrying some dude who we never met in the narrative, this is a teenager exploring his options and learning about his culture. Will's story was not about him falling in love with anyone which is why it does not conclude with that--it was about loving and accepting the self and it culminates in an expression of that by Will openly socializing in queer society. Steve ends his narrative with a faceless partner so it is disingenuous to act like this was a homophobic writing choice.
I may be Ace but I'm also a romance writer. Some stories are meant to end in two people confirming their love for each other and some stories were never about romance. Steve's through-line has been about finding purpose in life and while that could have ended with him settling down with a family, it didn't--he found purpose in mentoring children. Romance was a side-quest that remains but was not the answer to his main objective. Jane's through-line was escape from oppression which existed in Papa, an overbearing Hopper, the military, Henry--she was constantly under someone's control and her agency was often not respected. She ends her story giving her past the middle finger and carving out her own future. Dustin's was about being true to himself and learning that there is an inherent selfishness in that that can be harmful and destructive to himself and others. A sloppy narrative might give them a partner who becomes a bandaid for all their needs, loving them enough to make it all okay. This wasn't sloppy, though, and was a fantastic representation of how external love does not conquer all issues.
So maybe Tumblr will disagree with me, but I love the hell out of that. Sherlock, Voltron, or Game of Thrones this was not. Each character was left in a place that was full of hope and healing and I cried like a baby.
Had to have emergency surgery this week. I learned a lot, including that certain members of my family are far more caring and loving towards me than I had expected to be treated. Also learned I have given my mother far too much credit and she has not grown anywhere near as much as I felt she had and is in fact still more preoccupied by how she's perceived than in being a genuinely thoughtful and caring person.
I will try to keep as my take-away from this experience the moments where my brother returned to the ER after taking my son home to his wife in order to stay by my side and help advocate for my care. Or my aunt driving across town to take me back to the ER a day later and also staying, stroking my hair as I cried in pain.
I will do my best to forget how my mother took over and let everyone else leave only to decide it would be too uncomfortable for her to stay with me at the hospital at night and left me there alone as my care team managed my pain and nausea through the night with surgery planned first thing in the morning. How once I was finally released from the hospital after an extended stay, she spent her entire time deep cleaning my guest bathroom while I took care of myself and my son. (My cousin is getting married this month and my mom plans to stay at my home most weekends until the wedding for related events and wanted the bathroom to be nicer for her stays). How she felt arguing with me over my sexuality and other topics was appropriate in any situation but especially one involving a medical emergency. How she forgot my birthday and invited me to a luncheon planned on the day, responding only with 'oh, right, I thought that date sounded familiar' when I reminded her what I would be celebrating instead.
I am grateful that members of my family blew my expectations away and made me feel loved in ways that have been alien to me for decades when I was most in need. But it makes it all the harder to accept the level of indifference or outright neglect I do expect and am accustomed to when it follows in its wake.
For a very long time, the US Democratic party has been the party of progress while the Republican party has been focused mostly on preserving the old status quo. When Trump came on board, Republicans became a party of regression and, faced with challenges to the progress that had been made, Democrats had to focus on preserving the new status quo. When your opponent is dead set on pulling you two steps back, it's hard enough to maintain ground let alone gain it.
But many left-leaning folks are pissed when they see not enough progress being promised by Democrats, ignoring the fact that the democratic process requires cooperation and compromise. You don't get to progress further if you don't support the progress already made against attacks. Democracy is messy and slow and things take longer than they deserve to take with literal lives on the line, but rule by the people requires the majority of those represented to be won over to the same goals and aspirations.
The left will continue to press for progress once the rights of the traditionally oppressed are not under attack. The attack is not hypothetical or imagined with women's rights having taken a horrific blow due to Republican machinations. You can dream of progress all you want, but without a strong foundation, you're just moving jenga pieces to the top of a shaky tower hoping some miracle keeps it standing as it rises despite the Conservative party's insistence it be demolished.
We're all in this together. Sometimes you have to stand still before you can keep climbing.
But nah, fuck it, here's to another four years of nerve-wracking uncertainty and schemes towards some theocratic autocracy. Didn't have the patience for delayed gratification, but at least injustice is swift.
Being chosen as a member of the Scion Society was supposed to change David's life forever. It was said to be a golden ticket for a future of prosperity, a rare and miraculous opportunity to secure his prospects evermore. Such an elite society, whose members were hand picked by the president of Woodbridge University himself, guaranteed life long success. David would have been crazy to have turned it down, would have regretted it for the rest of this life. At least up until he found out what it really was--but that was not the path David took.
Now caught up in service to a god who has decided David's life for him, is there any point in free will or will he find a way to protect the world, humanity, his friends, his love, and himself from beings too awful to comprehend?
Read it on A03
Here are the first three chapters of my original story. If you like modern stories with hidden worlds of fantasy, queer characters navigating the pressures of strange circumstances, Eldritch Beings threatening the world, arranged marriages, pining, drama, sex, world ending consequences, and the underdog's tale, then give it read. If nothing else, it's an entertaining setting and concept for RP ideas.
I wanted to make sure I started with the first three available as there is a lot of information to get across and by the end of chapter three, you should have a better sense of what the characters will be dealing with and what you might expect going forward.
I've been working on this for about a year, so I do hope you enjoy reading someone original from me. I'll continue to post updates on AO3. I'd like to have a set schedule going forward but we'll see how that goes. The single mom life can be hard to structure around.
So, I've been working on an original story idea for quite some time. And while part of me thinks that I should write it, shop it around to literary agents, and do the whole publishing thing the way my University degree established as the right and correct way, I keep coming back to the same thing: a thing that costs money is a thing that not everyone can enjoy.
I put the fanfiction I had taken down back on AO3 several years back for just that reason; I would rather people be able to read, enjoy, and remember my writing than have to pay for it. Times are tough, and a book deal would be great, but I'm at a point in my life I guess where it means more to me to provide entertainment than to profit off of it.
So I guess I hope at least a few people are willing to check it out once I start posting chapters of it. It's got:
An all-boys university with some secret ties to an ancient religion
A strange parallel plane of existence
Students forced to become living seals against the invasion of Eldritch horrors
The most annoying thing about being raised on late night 90s PBS shows like Are You Being Served, Black Adder, Vicar of Dibley, Red Dwarf, and Doctor Who is that as an adult I can sometimes forget the US word for something very common and asking people for the US equivalent earns me an eye roll for being pretentious or something x_x Good grief, my formative years just gave me a different vocabulary, and the US word isn't necessarily the default in my lexicon. But my explanation includes the word lexicon so it's back to being pretentious apparently.
I finally did it. I watched A Study in Pink; I watched an episode of Sherlock again. And I enjoyed it. I laughed, gave it my full attention on my favorite moments, and wasn't bombarded by feelings of disgust and disappointment for where it all eventually was destined to go. It felt very nice indeed to actually enjoy the show again for the first time in ages. I plan to watch the first two seasons again eventually, though not likely any further.
Still, it's nice to reconnect with something I once loved, and be open to finally forgive it.
It was some bullshit but I finally got my MRIs approved. Took a peer-to-peer from my neurologist and even then they only approved it for a limited time. No problem--called to schedule on Friday, and was told to be there at 2:15 on Monday. Out-of-pocket cost? $2,348. I have the best insurance plan my very large, international company has to offer. Every provider and service I'm using is in-network. Bright side, I suppose (other than getting the tests I need done) is that I've more than met my deductible for the year and it's only February.
To illustrate the bullshit we in the US have to deal with, the process of getting that approval was as follows: speak to my insurance company to ask them to please reach out to my neurologist again about the denied tests, have my neurologist's office call me over a week later to ask me to talk to my insurance for them since they couldn't get through to an agent and ask for a copy of the denial letter. Find out the denial letter was only sent to me and the imaging place and not the doctor who requested the test. Insurance tells me I can't request copies for the doctor, they need to call them--ignoring that getting through to anyone was why they asked me to make the request for them. Me deciding 'fuck this' and finding a fax machine and faxing my own denial letter from the insurance company to the neurologist in hopes that would be enough (it was!). The neurologist having to call and speak with the insurance company to explain why an MRI is medically necessary--which, considering there is no alternative means of confirming or ruling out the diseases he's pursuing diagnostically, is insane to have to do. And then the limited time allowance for the testing procedures…of which they only informed the imaging company of one. I was supposed to have three. So I had to talk to my insurance again to confirm yes, I'd been authorized for all three of the requested MRIs and then call the imaging place back and tell them… so that then they could call my insurance and confirm for themselves that it's actually all three and not just the one. It's more than worth it but also infuriating and I am exhausted in so many different ways as I finally stand at the end of it.
All that said, please learn something from my experience: do not schedule yourself for more than one MRI at a time. Don't do it. I was told it would take an hour and a half to get all three done with and without contrast. The reality is I was shoved in that tiny tube being bombarded with loud sounds, instructed not to move, and in agonizing pain to the point of tears for three hours. My shoulders, either because the head cage was pushing on them or the walls of the MRI tube were constricting them, hurt so bad I was fucking up my thoracic spine scan with involuntary shuddering from crying and trying to find small movements to alleviate the pain. When they brought me out to remove the contrast IV, the gentleman helped me sit up as I had just… no strength whatsoever. He got a wet cloth and wiped down my face, neck, and shoulders and let move around a little bit before we were going to go again for the last two scans. He was so gentle and so kind and I was so grateful for him.
So that was Monday. Tuesday I got a message from my neurologist that there were no acute abnormalities and we'll go over everything during my appointment in April. So no immediate answers but hopefully that doesn't mean there's nothing that can be done for me. The search for answers continues.
I have been in pain since 2009. I didn't realize that wasn't normal until 2014. In 2022 I finally decided to get help when my BMI hit 44 due to years of inactivity to avoid the potentially crippling pain that came with things as simple as light yoga. It took five months to get in with a primary care physician, only one month to see a referred rheumatologist, and after blood work and a follow-up, only two weeks before getting to see a referred neurologist. Everything was going well, things were being confirmed or ruled out, and then--because I live in the United States--the insurance company decided it knew better than my neurologist and denied authorization for my MRI, halting everything.
My physical assessment is recorded as "Demyelinating disease" with noted impressions being abnormal reflexes (spasticity & brisk), thigh weakness, and a mute toe. I have tremors in my hands and have had random and temporary instances of numbness lasting weeks in one of my big toes. I have migraines, tension headaches, and most recently cluster headaches. These are consistent with Multiple Sclerosis which requires an MRI to diagnose. I have already been to a rheumatologist to rule out Lupus and other diseases that can have a similar appearance and while I do have an inflammatory disease, it is not the culprit. I have gotten referrals at every step to ensure I had a clear trace of medical opinions leading me to the next one. I have done everything right and still I'm denied because the insurance company doesn't feel they've been convinced of its medical necessity.
Friday I was supposed to go in for MRI scans of my brain, C-spine, and T-spine. I was supposed to be that much closer to an answer. Even knowing what something isn't is as helpful as knowing what it is. I don't want to have MS but by god I want answers. I want a treatment plan. I want to not get worse. I want to be able to be active again and get to a healthy weight. After almost fifteen years, I want to fix as much of this as I can so I can live my life with and for my three-year-old son. I will get this MRI but it will take weeks more to get the doctors and insurance companies to communicate the necessity to their satisfaction.
Fuck these insurance companies making the decisions instead of doctors. It shouldn't be like this.
Read a recent comment to N/S/R and I do wonder sometimes if media has warped the general understanding of our obligations to each other as human beings. Like, Mario saves Princess Peach in their first NES game and it's taken for granted that obviously she owes him her affection now in return for being rescued. There's a lot of different stories in different mediums that wrap things up with an understanding that a person is owed romance/sexual service in return for heroic deeds. It's the basis of a lot of the incel logic currently fought against in society--that being a good person is part of a transaction for which you are now owed attention, sex, a relationship, etc. I'm always somewhat disturbed by how many people see that Sherlock loves John and hate John for not loving Sherlock back in the manner of his choosing; John is vilified for not existing to make Sherlock happy at the expense of his own desires.
I tend to worry it's a larger problem than "my ship isn't sailing the way I want them to" and is indicative of a mentality that relationships are inherently transactional. Everyone is aware they have agency and don't owe anyone so much as a smile or excuse, yes? No one exists for the sole purpose of making someone else happy; everyone is entitled to main character status in their own life. This isn't radical, correct? Despite a lot of media depictions, it's understood wanting something doesn't mean you're entitled to it?
Instructor Information:
I am a Structural and Developmental Editor with a degree in Creative Writing from the University of North Texas. I interned with the American Literary Review for two years, have won two independent awards for my writing, and have been writing for over three decades.
Overview:
Improve your world building by becoming aware of sensory blindness in prose. Whether introducing readers to an alien world or just setting a scene in a new location, this exercise will help you convey what's in your head to your audience.
Course Materials:
Five highlighter colors - OR - A word processor with highlight capabilities in at least five colors
Assignment:
Pull up the first chapter of your desired written work or the first chapter in which the world is being built up in front of your reader and highlight each of the following in a different color:
Sounds (not dialogue unless the dialogue tag is particularly descriptive such as "enunciating every syllable", "slurred and mumbling", etc.)
Color
How things feel: rough, sticky, cold, heavy, etc.
Taste
General descriptions: tall, brick, Victorian style, wooden, etc.
Review how many paragraphs/pages you have where there is no highlighting. "She walked down the sidewalk, looking at the buildings beside her as she strode towards home." for example contains no clear descriptive terms that inform a specific image the author is trying to convey. What kind of path? What kinds of buildings?
Review the frequency of instances where only general descriptions are used. "She walked down the worn, cracked sidewalk, looking at the tall, clustered buildings beside her as she strode towards home." The author is portraying a clearer image here but it is still lacking in finite details that make this their path and their buildings in their world.
Review the use of color when used--do you stick to uncomplicated wording like red, black or blue, or do you have more elaborate descriptions (often incorporating metaphor/simile) to increase specificity? You are aiming for a mixture of both, neither over-complicating nor over-simplifying the world. Blood can be red, ink can be black, but every once in a while describe a person as having hair the color of overcooked french fries rather than say dark blonde. These descriptors can often flavor the narrative voice as well. You know exactly the kind of story you're reading if something is described as "the same red-brown, rusty color as a panty liner on the last day of a person's period." (If the writer is tonally consistent, anyway)
Review your use of sound, taste, and texture, and identify where can they be added in to flavor the scene and make it come alive.
Compare the following:
"She walked down the sidewalk, looking at the buildings beside her as she strode towards home."
-Vs-
"She walked down the worn, cracked sidewalk, the rubber soles of her black boots thudding to a syncopated beat as she did her best to avoid the broken lines that came across her path. While to her right there was hardly a car to be seen, to her left stood the familiar line of tall buildings set in too-close clusters of impersonal beige siding that marked the midpoint of her walk. It was hard to tell where one shop began and another ended outside the differing wares seen through the large front window displays. Plates of olive green, pumpkin orange, or cream with autumn leaves along the rim adorned one while plastic pine trees wrapped in white lights, rustic burlap ribbons, and assorted white bobbles twinkled in another. The scent of cinnamon carried across the breeze though it was impossible to know from which building it came. It brought an unpleasant sting to her sinuses but tickled her tongue with pumpkin-spiced memories of holiday desserts. Pulling her scarf up across her nose and mouth to filter out the pleasant but intrusive aroma, she picked up her pace a bit more, ignoring the cracks in the pavement as she hastened home."
Both of these tell the same basic information: the character walked past buildings on her way home. Only one of these sets the scene, however, and functions as world-building rather than just establishing movement and trajectory.
Not every passage should be like the second example. In many cases, once the work of establishing the world and general setting has been accomplished, a character can very quickly move around within that world without going into repeat detail. Even in those instances, though, cherry-picked descriptors can be a powerful tool for invoking the previous work done. For instance, the second time this character is making this trek, consider the following:
"She hurried along towards home, the scent of cinnamon only having grown stronger this time as she passed the storefronts in a light jog."
As long as cinnamon hasn't been placed as a prevailing scent in multiple locations, the reader has a concrete idea of the repeat path she took without having to be reminded of each specific detail. Scent in particular works well as visual or auditory cues can be lost in prose that traditionally focuses on what is being shown and hearing dialogue. Scent breaks up any monotony in descriptors and is in that way more unique.
Conclusion:
Be specific, be consistent, and be aware of possible sensory blindness in your descriptions as you build your world.
I was looking at the kyou Kara mao tag on ao3 and I'm confused?!??? There is a fanfic that I think you wrote but it says it was from 2006?? I'm sorry I'm just confused because the website came out in 2008?? Was there a feature where you could change the date?
You were able to set the publication date when I posted it--not sure if that's still a thing but I would imagine it's still a feature since it was just a standard input field that generates the current date by default but isn't locked to changes. I dated it to match the original ff.net publication.
I never moved a lot of my ancient works from Gundam Wing, Digimon, or Invader Zim to AO3, but since I was still writing KKM at the time, I brought the old stuff with me there and just made sure the date matched so anyone who thought they recognized the title would see a date that matched that memory to help them know that it could be that story from their past.
I was reading the Russian translation of Naked, Stripped & Raw and the comments as well (man, did they not like Mary! Some things are universal, I guess!) and came upon one mentioning how I had said at some point that I wrote the story to work out my feelings within a personal situation and I guess it came across as I was the John in that situation since that's the perspective the narrative takes. And NOPE! No... no, that was not the case. So here's the story behind the story. For what it's worth.
Several trigger warnings are applicable but topics are mentioned, not gone into. If you are sensitive to certain things, there's a good chance they're here. As a general rule of thumb, if I've written about it, there's a chance of there being a real-life experience behind it. Writing is my therapy.
Back in 2002 I was a very depressed high schooler with no real friends. In my day-to-day life I was ignored or vilified for being different, but online I had popularity and was praised for my writing. I devoted myself entirely to my writing as it was the only source of validation I had--the thing that pushed back suicide for another day, every day, because a story wasn't done yet and I couldn't leave my readers disappointed. And there was always another story to write. One criticism came up every time though: I couldn't spell for shit and my grammar needed help. So I told myself the first person to offer to beta read for me would be the person I would work with. Enter my John.
We worked together for years. She thought I was great but flawed and I finally had someone to talk to about the things that made me happy. We even started writing together. For years. It was fantastic and no matter how much bullshit I had to deal with in the day-to-day, I knew I'd get to go home, get online, and she'd be there.
Years later, she decided that she didn't want to hear about the bullshit I lived with anymore, though. It was okay to talk to her, but only if it was about positive things. So we spoke about writing and make-believe. And only those things. And I dealt with my personal pain alone again.
Eventually, she told me not to talk to her anymore. No reason was given; just needed a break from me. So I stopped texting, AIMing, calling, all of it. And that was it. I always wanted her to come back and tell me I could be tolerated again, but she didn't.
She wasn't a bad person so I tried to rationalize why it was the right thing to do to dispose of me. I was so broken after years of dealing with an emotionally abusive family, trying to find employment that wouldn't trigger my PTSD, pursuits of higher education, etc. etc. and I understood that it was probably a lot to deal with a person that wasn't in a positive place and hadn't been for years.
And then I got pissed. Because in all honesty, she'd kind of treated me like shit for years. And I had just accepted and ignored it because I was used to it and didn't want to lose the friendship. And yet it was her in the end who said goodbye and not me. I let her kick me around until it wasn't fun anymore then watched her leave. And I hadn't had the self-worth to do it myself because I'd been so scared of being alone again and of hurting her if I left.
Within a few months, I was writing Naked. From John's perspective because I didn't need to explore Sherlock's. I wanted to find a way to forgive mine in validating John's right to pursue his own happiness even if it made him the villain in Sherlock's story. I needed to take myself out of my own narrative of a friendship built on the appreciation of my work that wasn't able to sustain itself in light of the negativity around me. I also needed Sherlock to do what I didn't and stand up for himself. But mostly I needed to come to terms with John and his need to prioritize his own happiness, acknowledging that sometimes there are casualties.
It worked pretty well. Honestly, every person who commented they were upset on Sherlock's behalf felt a little like a hug. Then again, everyone who has ever commented about my spelling and/or grammar has triggered something visceral in me as they have no idea how fundamentally different my life would be if I didn't care and had never decided to work with a beta. But eventually, I was able to move out on my own, remove myself from the toxic environment I'd been stuck in most of my life, and heal in very much-needed ways from years of neglect. It's one of those things where I'm a much better person having gone through certain things, but that doesn't make me thankful for suffering them in the first place. Fuck the men who assaulted me, fuck the 'friends' who abandoned me when people realized I wasn't straight, fuck my mother who has always been able to find inventive ways to torture me psychologically for not being the daughter she wants me to be. There are a lot of life lessons that I would have rather learned through reading fanfiction and assimilating my own perspective through the safe lens of someone else's narrative. But I digress.
So, yeah. Naked. Sort of in the same way real-life inspired the story, the story inspired real-life as well. Eventually, several years later, my John came back. She apologized but that wasn't enough for me. I had my own fireplace moment where I explained in detail what she had done to me before and at the point when she called our friendship off, making sure she knew exactly what it was she had to be sorry for--I wasn't going to accept some blanket apology. I got to do the thing I had beaten myself up over for so long: I stood up for myself and my own worth as a human being. Turned out she had grown up a lot over the years apart too and acknowledged everything, apologizing for the mistreatment without any attempt to make me share the responsibility for her actions. Surreal (and was this moment).
It's been several years since then now, and it's as though it never happened. Except for the fact that we're mature individuals who interact in a healthy manner that is supportive and fulfilling. My Raw is a house in Texas where me and my son tend to the garden every morning and night, and throughout the day mommy's phone buzzes with a discord notification as her best friend checks in. We don't share in my work the way we used to but we're looking at writing together again someday. I've known her for twenty years--more than half my life. We had nothing to do with each other for four of them, and several of the years leading up to those four were painful, but it's cathartic to be where I am now. And it's interesting every time I reread NS&R to see myself peaking out from the spaces between the words, trying my best to keep going one chapter at a time, one story at a time, falling back on the same life preserver I'd had back in high school.
So thanks for reading, commenting, and giving me a reason to continue. I'm healthier because I write, but I'm still around because of readers who wanted more.
And that's the naked, stripped and raw truth of it.
Obsession & Insanity @nikoford - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
