#I take the medication bc I have excruciating pain on my periods

[l-sincline]

Random tmi rant in the hash of tags bc I’m sad ab it

[1eos]

exactly what you said miss kendra! as a puerto rican woman who had really bad side effects on it i of all people very much dislike and criticize birth control for very valid reasons (for those who dont know look up law 116 and the la operación documentary trigger warning for like everything honestly) but saying "hey these pills are under researched and over prescribed and were made bc of eugenics so we should be cautious when dealing with them and advocate for more thorough and ethical research" IS NOT THE SAME THING as right wing mra christofacist talking points like "birth control destroys my divine feminine tradwife 5D vibrational waves by taking away my period with spooky chemicals and we should ban all forms of contraception bc the bible" and i hate that this is what the conversation has devolved into because nobody knows how to act right its so frustrating

YEAH! like birth control isnt for everyone ik plenty of ppl who tried birth control and had awfullll side effects and in general reproductive health is still very very sus bc the mindset for a lot of doctors is 'if u have a uterus you just have to accept excruciating pain + as your doctor i will prioritize your ability to have kids even if you as an adult say that's not YOUR priority' + all the systemic racism. but its like most ppl don't even bring that up its always some divine right we should all be having as many kids as possible (and thats not even taking into account the stis being spread around) and anyone on birth control must be a brainwashed slut that wants to deny the divine right of kings to have your body or whatever. its just annoying bc literally instead of advocating for medical equality these dumb broads are bringing weird ethnofascist christian thinking into it 🙄

[chasteblowjay]

Medical uterus stuff below

I am not a person who enjoys going to the Dr bc I don’t like needles and I am bad at making appointments and showing up on time. And every time I asked about my periods the gynecologist just said it’s normal but I would rattle off things that I knew were not “normal”. I know large clots every single day of your 8 day period are not normal. I know the pain I experience is actually debilitating. The fact that I can sometimes power through it doesn’t mean I should. If it’s so excruciating that I have to take naps on the bathroom floor because I can’t run fast enough from my bed to vomit because the pain is radiating through my back and legs. I can’t concentrate. I can’t hold a conversation. And I grew up being told this is normal from my mother and my doctors.

And I finally am looking for doctors because maybe now that I’m 30, now that I’m a fully adult woman, they will take me seriously when I say I cannot continue living like this. I’m traveling for almost half the month lately for work, I cannot be taken out of commission like this. But I’m also a lot fatter now than I used to be and that’s one more thing standing in my way of treatment. Because “these symptoms will resolve if you lose weight” but I’ve had these symptoms since I was an athletic little 12 year old. Weight never changed anything.

I’m also really worried the answer is just “go on birth control” and the last time I did that I had years of yeast infections and a 50+lb permanent weight gain and I just lost the will to live. Or I get told my only answer is a hysterectomy. I don’t want either of those things. I just want to not live in pain.

[songofsaraneth]

Ok now that I have time/space to breathe again, I wanted to do a writeup on the unusual reaction I had to the second Covid vaccine dose. I debated posting this, because I don't want to go against the "I was vaccinated and it's fine!" encouragement train. And I 1000% encourage EVERYONE to get vaccinated if possible. But I have not seen much documentation of the averse symptom I got, except in some case studies I specifically looked up so details below. Big TMI/gross warning however. 

Mostly I'm posting this because I had to do SO much self-advocating/arguing with the Dr at my urgent care clinic, and if you're not as read up on weird medical issues as I am, you might not be comfortable doing that. But IANAD, just describing my experience and what I read, which ended up being very long because it was awful and I have a lot to complain about I guess, sorry.

Basically: for me the vaccine triggered an inflammation response, which in itself is normal. The usual muscle aches/joint pain/slight fever. It also triggered an outbreak of ulcers in my soft tissues. Basically, a bunch of canker sores in my mouth/throat. I am already prone to getting these when I get sick or stressed out, so no biggie, annoying and painful but I could handle them. Canker sores are distinct from cold sores in that they form inside the mouth as crater spots, usually around the size of a pencil eraser (though can be bigger or smaller), and will develop a white film across the crater as they develop and start to heal.

An unfortunate fact I have learned: the mouth is not the only exposed “soft tissue” of the body. this group also includes genitals.

So 2 days after the vaccine I noticed a "burning sensation"/rawness downstairs, which turned into a sharp pain, especially when going to the bathroom. I obviously knew this was abnormal and because of what was happening in my mouth, had a pretty firm idea of what was happening, but was ready to brace myself through the healing process. However by day 5 I had 8 red, crater-like sores on the tissue of my vulva. Essentially they are open wounds, and urine is an acid, so you can imagine the hell that using the bathroom had become. Even just sitting hurt.

As someone healthcare-averse, even I knew this was untenable, and went to Urgent Care for the first time in my adult life. I told the NP what was going on, how they matched the canker sores (NOT cold sores) in my mouth in onset/form--and she immediately, without even looking, diagnosed me with herpes.

Lots of people have herpes or other STIs, and that's fine. I know I do not have any, and wanted to pursue treatment for what I was sure they were--Non-sexually acquired genital ulceration (NSGU). I had even found three case studies of COVID patients who had developed them. I had spent several harrowing hours on google images making sure that the sores I had did not match any STI I may have magically acquired during a year of social distancing. I even brought up multiple case studies, including a woman who had them as a Covid reaction in a neighboring state. Didn’t matter. She looked at them and went “Yikes! Herpes!” and prescribed me: 

1) an antiviral, which I said I did not think would do anything because the trigger for this was a vaccine not an illness. She said it was probably a herpes flare up already in my system. I reiterated that I have had similar sores in my mouth since childhood and that all my past doctors and dentists agreed it was not viral but something related to an immune response. She said the antivirals should clear them up in a few days.

2) a topical 5% lidocaine ointment, aka an oral grade numbing gel, which was essentially what I was after anyway.

I would have preferred a steroid course to the antiviral, but agreed to start taking them until she got the results of the bloodwork I needed to come in the next day for. I asked how many days after taking them I would expect to see a difference/if she would reevaluate treatment if they didn’t have an effect in a certain amount of time, and she said if they hadn’t cleared up by Monday then she’d look into other causes (spoiler, they did nothing in that 4 day span). to her credit, when she saw me pick up my bike helmet (because my car had been at the mechanic for a month by then), she was properly horrified that i was having to bike everywhere with this situation and printed off some coupons/called all the prescriptions into the grocery store pharmacy next door instead of the CVS my insurance likes a mile away.

So eventually I got home and took my pill & went to put on the ointment so I could use the bathroom for the first time in 8 hours. I’ll spare you the details but suffice to say I had an extremely, overwhelmingly painful 10 minutes of application. Like absolutely awful burning feeling. However once that faded, I was indeed actually numb, and so I figured it was worth it. Got my bloodwork done on Friday (biking there & home again). On Saturday, I thought that you know, maybe a prescription anesthetic shouldn’t be doing that or at least have some sort of warning? And read the details on the jar.

Good things about lidocaine: it is a powerful numbing agent and lasts pretty well for an hour or two.

Bad things about lidocaine: you cannot get oral grade lidocaine without added mint flavoring.

I happen to be EXTREMELY sensitive to mint. Like I still can’t handle breath mints or mouthwash, and used bubblegum flavored toothpaste until I was 14 and found a brand with half as much mint flavoring as is typical. Even if you’re not, mint has no business being anywhere near genital tissue. Even on an average person that could cause awful burning. to make a long saga shorter I had a very frustrating back-and-forth with urgent care involving many rerouted phone trees, visit in person, unhelpful receptionists, and attempts to find over-the-counter alternatives. All were fruitless so I just  suffered all weekend until the urgent care Nurse Practitioner called me back on Monday and was suitably apologetic/outraged about the mint thing, and looked up every OTC product that might work as a substitute, since she couldn’t find any prescription level without mint. On Tuesday she called back again having found this:

It’s 4%, so just below prescription strength, while not oral grade, it’s actually fine for soft tissues as long as not fully ingested/internally applied. And most importantly, ABSOLUTELY NO ADDED FLAVORINGS. there is also a spray version that comes in a bottle, which under no circumstances should you try because it uses alcohol as a propellant and I had a very bad 5 minutes after testing that one. But the cream one is fine and brings blessed numbness in around 5 minutes with only minimal contact pain--they are still open wounds after all. 

I use this for the next 7 days. By this point the sores have gotten worse and larger, and then started to heal and shrink again. Mouth canker sores go through a similar ~2 week process, so this is about what I expected.

Finally the results of my bloodwork came back, and I was negative for all STIs. The NP was dumbfounded and apologized, and agreed to look up more information/treatment options for cases like this in the future. I’m not surprised her reaction was to assume herpes as it IS very common, but I’m sure other women experience NSGU’s and receive improper treatment. If you look them up, they’re even mentioned as being predominantly a problem for “young or prepubescent women” which, reading between the lines--it’s not that these become less likely if you’re older or sexually active. Doctors just make assumptions and don’t always look past the easy answers.

So if you or someone you know ends up with these--from the Covid vaccine or as a complication of upper respiratory infections in general (as they ARE an immune response and can just Happen to you)--here is what works as treatment. If you can see a doctor you trust, still do that. But if they don’t listen or if for some reason you can’t seek treatment, here is the course of action I recommend: 

Pick up that over-the-counter Pain Relief+Lidocaine NON MINTY numbing cream ASAP. Sores go from “annoying” to “excruciating” in only 3 days, so it’s best to get in person or with rush shipping. Sit in front of a mirror and gently apply with a q-tip, and wait 5 minutes for the medicine to take effect.

Pat gently dry with toilet paper, don’t make wiping motions. If you don’t feel clean enough, pat more with a wet washcloth and rinse it out, or hope in the shoer for 5 min just to rinse.

There may be pus or reside from the ointment that doesn’t go away with just rinsing. Every 2 days I made a half-strength bath of epsom salts, NUMBED FULLY, and then took a 10 minute bath to fully cleanse the area. the salt will sting terribly if you wait any longer, so I recommend standing and rinsing after this time.

The vulva is more exposed to air than the mouth. this may cause the sores to crack/bleed as they dry out. to avoid this, after using the restroom and cleaning yourself, you can apply a thick coating of Aquaphor on top of the sores. It will need to be rinsed off before you apply more numbing cream however, so if that is too many steps I recommend just using the Aquaphor overnight.

You may think its ok to get up in the middle of the night to pee without the numbing cream bc you have to go really bad and just once will be fine but it is NOT you will REGRET IT.

Unfortunately if you have sores on both sides you may develop what is known as “kissing sores”, aka sores directly opposite each other that touch when the area is not spread open. this means that after an extended period of time (overnight), the sores will try to heal into each other and opening the area back up painfully rips the tissue apart. INStEAD of ripping them apart, take a washclosh, run it under warm water, and do a hot/warm compress on the area. this will loosen the sores back up and separate them painlessly.

This is not exclusive to people with a vulva, they can also happen on scrotal/anal tissue. However it does seem to much more frequently affect people with typical XX sex organs. 

If you develop these, PLEASE fill out an averse reaction form or your country’s equivalent. Also, I’m so sorry and if you need emotional support or have questions please feel free to get in touch.

Most likely, these will not happen to you--the vast majority of vaccinated people have not had this as a side effect. But it IS popping up more and more, and it is good to know about it in advance so you can be prepared to deal with and treat it without as much anxiety and all the hoops I had to jump through to get good care. Overall I’m still glad to be vaccinated, but if I had known this was a side effect, as someone already prone to canker sores I would have waited to vaccinate until my car was fixed a week later a the very least :|

[inkbloodwool]

cw: period / menstruation discussion

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Things I did not know: apparently, it's relatively common or at least not unhealthy to bleed a bit mid-period around your time of ovulation, at least spotting anyways

I nearly had a fucking heart attack yesterday, bc I've had a regular, 7-day long period once a month for two months now and am about halfway until the next expected one but started bleeding the tiniest bit yesterday and have been super freaked out. I did a bit of reading though and I feel more assured now, but I'm still keeping an eye out just in case.

I stopped getting the depo provera shot last fall, and since Christmas day have been tapering off of the last dosage (idk how long it takes officially), but since getting a Nexplanon implant in May 2017 I immediately jumped from "normal" length periods to bleeding anywhere from 4-12 weeks at a time with 1-3 weeks of no bleeding in between, with excruciating ovary pain and a ridiculous variation in intensity (so like cycles of light to heavy to light again sometimes 4 or 5 times within a "period")

Long story short, the medical professional community continues to let me down, despite having seen multiple different obgyns & physicians over the years, no one had bothered any investigation beyond a one-time uterine ultrasound and a lot of "wow.... That SUCKS" comments from actual fucking doctors 😅 also, bear in mind I have familial history of endometriosis (which I was flat out told after the ultrasound I almost certainly have, but shouldn't bother trying to get diagnosed with because it's nearly impossible-???) leading up to my maternal grandmother dying of uterine cancer two years ago (she was only 61, and died within four months of cancer discovery) so I live in perpetual fear of my reproductive organs, basically.

so yeah! I'm like..... Thanks for absolutely no help at all, awesome, I really really hope this weird shit never comes back lmao. I've quit birth control indefinitely because I'm so scared of that whole mess starting again ☹️

[elliethesuperfruitlover]

Cormac Mcnamara Fluff HC’s and SFW Concepts (x black reader for my inclusion) (heehee)

A/N: I spent some of my time off from the hellscape that is school on starting Foreign Exchange. Yeah, I don’t care much for Hannah, she only calls poor Cormac when she needs smth, and the poor thing gets led on so. Time for me to get my fluff fix in. He deserves all of the love and hugs. So, virtually, I’m gonna do that for my little cinnamon roll. I’d be friends with him if I went to school in Ireland for some reason.

@misskittysmagicportal you’re welcome lmao

Warnings: Menstruation, most likely a mention of racism bc i like to tackle issues head on, very very mild gore

Cormac is the softest little boy in town, let me TELL YOU.

I feel like he’d be so down for cuddles, or you just watching him fiddle with his technology.

Even if you understood jack shit about it, you’d put the effort in to learn about what polarizers are.

You’re an exchange student that knows NOTHING about the portal, you’re just from America.

On the day you arrive at Okeefee’s College, you were convinced you weren’t going to fit in.

You didn’t.

Half of the people there stared at you, and gawked at your accent, and how you enunciated your t’s and didn’t whistle your s’s.

Cormac was of course, out of the way, he’s not one to socialize, new student or not.

Of course, you were in the corner, even though you should’ve sat in the front of the class. Luckily enough, you didn’t have to do much, as new students always get a pass.

You stayed below the radar for the first couple days, and never seemed to notice Cormac looking at you in class, whenever you’d shy away from answering questions about yourself. He wasn’t too familiar with anyone too much different than the masses of the school, color, interest, speech.

You were thinking of taking the LONGEST of naps after your classes finished, but those plans were quickly changed. The both of you weren’t paying attention where you were walking.

He crashed into you to say the least, and the copy of “Astrophysics for People in a Hurry” fell out of your hands, your bookmark getting lost.

“Ah, I’m sorry about that. Wasn’t watching where I was-WAIT, you’re that new girl from America, aren’t ye?” Cormac said, readjusting his glasses. You nodded, and were perplexed at his new creation, it looked like a gramophone, but with a motherboard and an antenna.

He tried to hide it from you, but he saw your gaze constantly go back to the machine, even as he snapped in front of your face.

‘You alright there? Oh, you’re looking at this. You want to hang out with me over the weekend. Maybe you can catch up from your bookmark, while I work on this.”

You confirmed, and that’s how you two became polarizing pals.

Cormac may be smarter than the library, not the porridge one, and as quick as a whip, but do NOT be shocked. He is very socially inept, and a little behind on cues, and different things.

He almost touched your hair once, without your permission, but you stopped him right in his tracks.

“Cormac, do you want your hand maimed and chopped off, then hung from the top of the flagpole.” you said, giving him a death stare.

“N-no, I don’t. Did I do something wrong?” he asked, taking his hand away, putting it back on the screwdriver.

“Well, for starters, don’t touch my hair without my permission. It’s a no-no for all people, but for black people especially. We had to have our hair cut off completely. That was our culture, and it was ripped away because we were seen as less than, nothing but an animal. So, you, taking your hand, as clean as it may be, and putting it in the fruits of my ancestors’ labor. That’s disrespectful love.” you replied, turning a page.

He has no idea, (damn education system), but he continues to learn about different cultures, especially black culture, African-American culture. The War on Drugs. He comes to you close to every day with different factoids, a good amount of them you already know, but you’re still happy that he puts effort in.

He’s a very tall lad, so expect very warm hugs from him. After a long day of school, he walks over to you, wherever you may be, and hugs you, asking how your day was. You melt into the hug, and smile against him, marveling at how consistent he is.

In classes, if there’s an odd number of people left, it’s always you, he, and Hannah. Y’all get the work done quickly, and he even lets you join them when Orienteering.

Now, you’re one smart cookie. No matter race, everyone has the power to be as smart as they can be. As well as that, they can work damn hard to get there, through all the trouble and hatred. Every now and then, a teacher might shut you down. Ask Cormac if he knows, in which he responds, but always sends you a look of pity.

A teacher could go through all of the students in a class, and not get the right answer once, and your hand stayed up through every excruciating second of it. And, begrudgingly, the teacher asks you, in which you give the correct answer, and if even a *word* is out of place, you’re ridiculed.

That always tends to upset, you, ruffle your feathers, but you don’t give in, not until you’re alone, in your dorm. Crying at the unfairness, wishing it were different.

Or in Cormac’s arms, wetting his sweater, his brain moving a mile a minute to try to say the right thing. He always held you so gently, he’s used to it. His experiments could go wrong with a moment’s change. He’s used to being patient, and tender.

He’s always trying to ask you about life in America, trying to find out what you hated, what you loved. His curiosity was never ending, it seemed. Sometimes, though, he could get a little caught up with his words, and you’d giggle at him, and help him along. This typically happened when he was trying to ask you out to go to the courtyards, or to library dates. He’d sneak food to you, and you two would have picnics near the sheep.

Whenever there weren’t too many teachers around, and when Hannah was in Perth, you two would cuddle on the grass, and sneak cheek and hand kisses in every now and then.

He’s an EXCELLENT cuddler by the way, lots of space to appreciate.

He knew mostly where you would be, and you him, but every now and then, one of ye’ wouldn’t respond to emails, but it’s usually due to an upset stomach, or too much studying. This wasn’t going to be the case ever time.

You were usually very attentive during class, doing classwork, writing down notes. However, one of these days, Cormac could tell something was wrong. Your head was down, and your binder was pressed tightly against your abdomen. Every now and then, he saw you scrunch your face in what seemed like pain, but he couldn’t put his finger on what the problem was.

It was a Friday, so you were free, and you and Cormac had plans to sleep in, and have another sheep picnic. At the moment, however, all you wanted to do was take a big fat nap, and sleep through the weekend.

As soon as class ended, you bolted out of the door, and Cormac tried to catch up, but Tara teased him, saying that you’d finally grown up, and wanted someone better than him. Your body was still, however, in too much pain to do focus.

He tried to get to you, but you were moving too fast, already halfway up the steps. He saw a portion of your khaki skirt, was red, and he began getting concerned, thinking you had began dying.

When you finished your shower, and began soaking your skirt, gone but never forgotten, you saw a cluster of emails from Cormac, asking if you were okay, dead, angry at him. Or needed medical attention. You were brought to tears, and instructed him to meet you at 7:00p.m., in front of the boy’s shower room, typically where Cormac would take you to his room, where you’d fall asleep on his bed, book on top of your face. He’d want to take a picture, and did, leaving it above his bed.

He met with you, and when he asked you if you were okay, a particularly tough cramp hit you like a truck, causing you to crumble. You groaned at the pain, and Cormac followed you down, asking if you were okay.

“Cormac, I’m cramping, just some pain.” you whispered, holding back tears

“What’re the cramps from? You eat something weird?” he asked, looking at you with concern.

“No, I’m on my period.” you said, sitting on the cold floor.

“Oh, you mean...menstruation. When you shed your uterine lining because your egg wasn’t fertilized, so now it’s coming out of your...um...lady....parts.” he stuttered, a blush forming on his face, followed by a look of concern.

You laughed at his explanation, and confirmed his suspicions, until another cramp hit you.

“Oh goodness, you must be suffering. I’ve heard that menstrual cramps are sometimes as bad as heart attacks.” he said, beginning to rub your stomach, helping soothe the pain.

You nodded again, and he led you to his room, grabbing you spare chocolate from when you were craving due to PMS, (unknowingly). He heated up a towel, and tucked you into your sleeping bag, his parallel to yours.

Tears began to escape from your eyes from his gestures, and he reached over to dry them.

“It’s okay to cry. Especially if you’re in a lot of pain. I think that it’s absolute bollocks that you feel like there’s something wrong for you for simply being human. It’s like a punishment for not getting pregnant. You didn’t ask for it.” he replied, letting you lay on top of him for the time being.

You smiled against him, but sadly woke up to more bloody underwear, and realizing that you’d leaked on Cormac. You shook him awake, and he didn’t even begin to panic, handing you a pair of spares, and a product through the door.

“Just a bit o’ blood. Nothing bleach or peroxide can’t fix.” he said, hugging you once again.

Cormac is very hesitant to kiss you on the lips. You pecked him once, and that sent him up the wall. His ears turned even more red, and his cheeks lit up.

He responded to your laughter with multiple face kisses, eventually landing one at your lips, lingering for a moment.

You cheered for his confidence, and you two went to a picnic the next day, the sheep happy to have you two there.

You felt completely over the moon to have Cormac as your partner. Even if he was a little shit sometimes, you wouldn’t have him another way.

Masterlist

[urcadelimabean]

hi, i don't want to give unsolicited medical advice so feel free to disregard this, but re period cramps have you had your hormone levels tested ever? bc mine were f'd up and i used to have excruciating cramps and they are super minor now after longterm treatment

hey, no, thank you for sending this anon! that’s actually something that no doctor or gynecologist has ever suggested or brought up with me (????) so I’m really glad you mentioned it. I’m on birth control now and it makes my period a lot more manageable and because its shorter and much less frequent the pain is less of an issue (although tmi it also shows me just how bad my cramps were because even from a light period or spotting I get cramps and I’m like....how did I live through this for over a decade), but I appreciate you suggesting this anyway because it’s not something I’ve had tested. The last specialist I saw was like, testing for endometriosis is really invasive, and birth control can help treat it, so do you want to just take birth control? and I was like yeep. But that didn’t really definitively prove what was going on or why.

Anyway THANK YOU, I appreciate your thoughtfulness and I’m really glad your camps have been treated <3

[callioope]

I’ve been vague about what has been going on in my life intentionally, both because I needed to tell some people offline first and because it’s a lot to process. 

But here is what happened: I am in the process of miscarrying.

I thought it might help to share my story. Miscarriage is more common than people realize and rarely talked about. If someone can benefit from my story, all the better, but mostly this is to help my grieving and coping process.

This is pretty detailed, so trigger warnings and all that.

Exactly one month ago, I read the results I had longed for: pregnant.

Today, I’m sprawled out on the couch in the most excruciating pain I’ve ever experienced. 

They don’t tell you that miscarriage is a process.

We’ve been trying to conceive since the end of last June. It was taking so long, I was convinced I’d be scheduling a fertility consultation this coming June. They tell you if you’re under 35, to give it a year. Before we started trying to conceive, I’d tell anyone about how time speeds up the older you get. It makes sense logically, of course, when a year is 1/5 of your life, it sure seems long, but went its 1/32, well... 

But this has been the longest eleven months of my life. The first month we started trying, I had an unusually long cycle. 39 days. I was so sure I was pregnant. My breasts had been hurting for two weeks. Husband and I were vacationing in Minnesota to see Aston Villa play. I bought a pregnancy test, beaming, excited, and was puzzled by the negative result. A week later, when my period came, I cried to my mother, and she said something about the universe saying I wasn’t ready or something. Whatever it was sounded bleak and ominous to my ears. It sounded like it meant I’d never be ready. 

The fall was busy and stressful, and despite all the tedious ovulation test strips, nothing happened except somehow, my period got lighter month by month. I was pretty sure something was wrong with me. I thought I had a UTI. (I was actually stressed and dehydrated, which I eventually remedied.) While I cried at a Sara Bareilles concert in November, my mother told me that her OBGYN said it can take as much at 9 months for the body to recalibrate after being on the pill.

Speaking of which. I’ve been taking the pill for over a decade. For the most part, I took it correctly. There is some leeway to taking it incorrectly, for the record. You can miss two pills in a row and it still has instructions for what to do (while cautioning to be safe and use extra protection). Maybe only once did I ever have to throw out a pack for missing too many in a row. 

(This is maybe neither here nor there, but rebelcaptain accidental pregnancy fics have become a bit of a pet peeve for me. Jyn and Cassian are far too careful and intentional to let that happen, and it is so easy to be responsible since there are so many birth control alternatives these days that don’t even require reliance on routine or memory.)

So, of course, the concern lately is that clearly 10+  years on birth control has messed me up. I do not know this objectively (what I do know is that I have OCD and anxiety and obsess over Everything That Can Go Wrong), but the point is that birth control really can have consequences that I don’t think are necessarily fully understood or studied. DO NOT GET ME WRONG, USE BIRTH CONTROL. My only regret is what I didn’t know.

I learned too late, but a lot of conception advice articles tell you to quit the BC as soon as possible. Even if my mom’s OBGYN is wrong, the general advice does seem to be that it can take up to 3 months for your body to recalibrate. So, if by any chance someone reading this is thinking about conceiving soon, if you take nothing else away from this rant, take this. I wish I had stopped taking the pill a few months before we actually intended to start trying.

After ten months of all this worrying, I finally got what I’d longed for. The moment I saw that positive result, it felt so surreal. There had been little things leading up to that moment, strange hints and signs, like I knew subconsciously even before a test would have been positive. I wrote that Howl’s Moving Castle pregnancy fic before I knew. I started learning “Here Comes the Sun” on my ukulele before I knew (it’s... silly, but I decided I wanted to learn the ukulele because I wanted to be able to play that song for my kids some day). It involves finger picking, so I’d been putting off learning it, but one day I just decided it was time. And finally, I decided to watch the latest season of Brooklyn 99. I’d avoided it because I knew Amy & Jake were also trying to conceive, and it was too emotional for me to watch that when I was so frustrated for how long I was taking. (Of course I didn’t realize they also had trouble, and watching it actually felt cathartic for me.) I got that positive result literally the next morning. 

I spent Monday, April 20, making checklists and spreadsheets. I set my first prenatal appointment for May 8. Those two and a half weeks were the slowest of my life. They stretched out like a rubber band. I couldn’t really focus on anything except this pregnancy I’d waited so long for. That’s probably why time moved so slowly. I wasn’t filling it with the hobbies I enjoyed, writing and playing my ukulele. All my overwhelmed brain could handle was the hilarious distraction of Community. Yeah, this is also around the time I disappeared from fandom. It was originally for a happy reason, I was just too excited to focus!

I know many women who have miscarried. The data seems to vary from source to source, but anywhere between 10% to 20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage. I couldn’t wait to get to the doctor to confirm everything was okay. I wondered if they would do an ultrasound; I dreamed of seeing a fetus on that screen.

We started talking about how we were going to tell our family. We wrote a pretend promotion letter for my sister, promoting her from “sister” to “aunt” (she’s a badass at her job and we had recently been talking about her promotions so it was thematically relevant). We planned to do a video call with my parents where we played Quiplash and created custom answers related to the pregnancy. 

But we never got that chance. On May 8, I went in for my first appointment. I’d spent the last three days sewing a mask because the ones we ordered still haven’t arrived yet. So all the time I would have spent preparing myself for the worst (as is my way) was spent instead distracted by sewing and finishing up Community. 

They took me to an office first and went over medical history questions. “Any morning sickness?” the nurse asked. “Not at all,” I said. “Should I be worried?” “No,” she answered. “Consider yourself lucky!” 

(For the record, many women who carry to term do not ever get morning sickness.)

(It was just one of those unfortunate exchanges.)

Then the exam with the doctor. All in all, it’d probably been 30 or 40 minutes by this point, all of this excited talk. I was going to tell my parents on Mother’s Day. My due date was Christmas.

I video call my husband just in time for the ultrasound. 

There was no embryo. 

The doctor said a lot of women are ovulating later in their cycles due to the stress of the pandemic. At the time, I thought maybe. Hope is funny like that, in the face of logic. It started to grow like a weed in the cracks of my breaking heart. 

But the thing is, even with that stubborn hopeweed, I knew. I’d been doing this for ten months. I knew when my last period was, I knew when I ovulated. I was 7 weeks and 1 day, and there was no embryo, and that was it.

The beginning of the process of miscarriage. 

Technically, it’d started a few days before that appointment, but I was distracted at that time. I’d noticed one morning that there seemed to be more hair in the shower floor than there should be. 

Dots started to connect. My breasts had stopped aching. Now, they started to shrink back to their original size. 

This happened over several days. I felt certain I would miscarry on Mother’s Day; fortunately, that did not happen. No, enough days had to pass for that hopeweed to prosper. Only then, when it whispered maybe would I start spotting and cramping. 

On Tuesday, the second ultrasound confirmed what I already knew. Not viable. Missed miscarriage. Technically, the prescription the doctor hands me reads “missed abortion.” “It’s just the technical term,” the doctor explains, acknowledging that many women might find this triggering. 

I don’t cry as much as I did. I only cry when I tell people. It seems important for people to know, just in case. Just one person in the relevant circles of my life. I had to tell my boss to explain the sudden uptick in unexpected doctor appointments. (I’m Rh negative, so I needed to go to the hospital to get bloodwork and a Rhogam shot -- and being in a hospital these days in anxiety-inducing enough without this trauma.)

It still feels surreal. All of this happened in one month. Somehow my life has changed completely and then reverted back. This is just a blip in my life, relatively, and yet it seems the longest month of my life.

In movies, in stories, miscarriage seems to go the same way: a flash of bloody sheets, a shout of shock and pain, and then grief. I never knew how it really goes: that it would stretch out for weeks, from the moment I saw that first ultrasound to now, twelve days later, just starting to bleed. I’ll have to go back for another ultrasound to confirm it’s done, and if it’s not, then I’ll need surgery. 

This speaks nothing of the grief. 

And then it’s back to square one, a whole year later: ovulation tests and endless waiting. 

It’s been a whole month; it’s been only a month, and miscarriage is a process. 

[thetaylorfiles]

These Kanye sympathizers kill me. Kanye is 42 yrs old, his Mom died 11 yrs ago. Taylor at 15 dealt w/ her fathers cancer and her Mom was diagnosed when she was 24. His mom died bc of Lipo gone wrong. I know it may sound cruel but losing a parent over vanity than a disease/ unforeseen car, plane accident is different.

No, it’s not. My brother died of an accidental overdose. It’s 100% unequivocally no less painful than had he died of a car accident or a heart attack. Just because my brother made a mistake and took too much of prescription medication given to him by his doctor, simply because he enjoyed how it felt and he didn’t think it would kill him doesn’t make my mother and fathers pain any less real. Or mine. He took too much of an opioid on top of a benzodiazepine that we’re both prescribed to him because - I don’t know. He was feeling down maybe that night? He was bored? We have no idea. But he fell asleep watching tv and never woke up again.

This was back before the opioid crisi got any traction in the news, by the way. We were uneducated about it. We didn’t know that taking a prescribed painkiller for a legitimate reason in top of a benzodiazepine for legitimate anxiety that he had been on for years would result in reapitory failure. It was his fault for upping the dose. And the doctors for not cautioning him against mixing the two more strongly. But it was way before this opioid crisis.

It was his own stupid fault. Just like Kanye’s moms death was her own stupid fault. My brothers ‘sin’ was boredom or sadness. Kanye’s mom was vanity.

You have no fucking clue what you’re talking about. I’m sorry to be so harsh. I’m not angry. But you need to understand that losing an immediate family member WAY before their time to something preventable and sudden is like a punch in the gut unlike anything you’ve ever encountered in your entire existence. And you do not recover from it for YEARS. I was a walking zombie for probably two years, just existing. Getting through life because I had to. Because I couldn’t let my parents lose their only other child. Because I had a fiancé. And because I theoretically knew it would get better. But it never felt like it would get better.

It was the hardest, most excruciating, most painful, soul-destroying, world ripped apart, everything goes dark for YEARS experience ive ever had to deal with. If I could have snapped my fingers and not have been alive, there were so many times I would’ve chosen that route. I wouldn’t have actually killed myself. But the pain of existing with that kind of grief taking up your entire body and mind was unbearable. Fucking unbearable.

So, no, anon. What Kanye went through does not compare to Taylor’s experience in any way. Because we don’t compare shitty things like that. Taylor going through her mom being stricken with cancer twice now is unfahomable to me because I can’t imagine the agony of living with knowing your moms death is possibly imminent. And Kanye losing his mother, who was the closest person to him, out of the blue, way before her time are simply not comparable. They are their own terrible, awful, horrible things.

Neither are an excuse to be an unkind person. Kanye has to take responsibility for who he is and how he treats people. So does Taylor. Perhaps people can be excused when they’re in the throes of brand new grief but neither Kanye or Taylor are in that currently so that’s a moot point.

Please don’t ever presume to know anyone’s grief. Or put a timeline on it. Or compare it to someone else’s. Grief is crippling. And we should feel empathy and compassion to those going through it. Period. That’s all that matters.