with ample time for people to mash the mute button if they're sick of it

okay HI FRIENDS especially if you're new friends

SHORTEST POSSIBLE VERSION is that I've been living with breast cancer since 2019, sitting at stage 4, and sometimes I feel bad and can't really predict WHEN I'm going to feel bad

but it gets weird to be like "sorry I abandoned this toplevel / this mod thing / this conversation I was in the middle of 30 seconds ago"

so every now and again I'll just throw out an all-purpose apology / disclaimer because plurk buries things

I insist that it sounds more dramatic than it is! like I'm not dying tomorrow or anything, but I'm on a whole mess of immunosuppressants to make sure that I don't die tomorrow

LONG VERSION RECAP (check your boobs, friends)

it okay, fren

So in...march? of 2019 I was just doing a regular "man I'm glad to be home and taking off my bra" routine and noticed a lump in my right boob. WEIRD but w/e breast stuff happens to old ladies

I made an appointment with a gyno and got a prescription for a mammogram. That part's not weird. I have dense breast tissue and a family history of Every Cancer so I'd had a few of them already

but BECAUSE I'd had a few already, I had a hard time getting an appointment

the general consensus was "lol come back when you're 40"

I was doing a lot of travelling at the time and had trouble getting schedules to line up, and eventually we set a date for the end of June when I'd be home and jetlagged

I show up, they give me the usual "oh it's probably just a calcium deposit" speech, then do the mammo like three times

and then suddenly all the people who were laughing at me in the morning were speaking very kindly and softly to me and I was like "lol yeah ok this tracks"

so THAT happens, and then my summer is full of doctors and scans and chemicals

did my surgery, got my cancer cut out and my boob stapled back into something vaguely titty-shaped

did four months of chemo

then six weeks of radiation (which is also when the pandemic happened so HAHAHAHA that was fun)

and then they were like "here take some pills you're probably going to need them forever but it's not too bad. have fun growing your hair back!"

and sidebar but MAN it bothers me that all those weepy boohoo cancer stories are like "this willowy girl will wear a scarf on her head and be a little pale" and it's never like "my eyes have no eyelashes and make a SCHLURPY noise in the morning"

or like "I was not prepared to have my vagina go bald and now there's an embarrassing cleanup in a public restroom"

more visibility for the weird illness shit

but also because I'm me I also worked a 12-hour day during one of my chemo semesters so like half of my grousing is about shit I did to myself

BUT ANYWAY so it should have ended there but LOL NOPE so they did a followup scan and found some weird lumpy shit happening on an ovary and a leison in the bone closest to the weird lumpy shit

so they did a bone biopsy, which involved shoving a needle into my hip and scraping the bone in the most bizarre parody of a dental cleaning that I have ever experienced

and a full hysterectomy because the chemo fucked up the baby machine anyway so w/e out it went

WHICH LIKE. man I'm really bad at being a sick person because I definitely remember going grocery shopping like a week after surgery and reaching up to get something off the top shelf and then being a surprised pikachu when I busted a stitch (

(don't worry, my plurk friends yelled at me)

BUT so the verdict was that the ovary stuff turned up clean (also they found some crazy undiagnosed endometriosis? oops didn't even know there was tentacle horror living in my body) but the bone stuff was cancering all over the place

it was specifically breast cancer hanging out in the bone so they were like "uhhh well we HAD you at stage 2 but GUESS YOU'RE SKIPPING TO STAGE 4 oops"

because you can't just go yeeting out a hip bone because you found a little cancer

so now I'm on some ridiculous level of immunosuppressant so that doesn't spread

and artificial hormones so that my bone density doesn't go to shit

and that's all a cycle so sometimes I'm fine and sometimes I'm a zombie and it's really hard to tell which version I'm going to be before it happens

I had to pull out of a conference that I don't have time to do and I was talking to the panel lead like "I had a couple of minutes after I released my class before I went to the hospital so I sent you an email" and she was just like "you realize that sentence involves you going to the hospital right? that's still a big deal to the rest of us":

but tldr I'm okay, I haven't had any major surgical interventions in over a year, and I'm trying to get better about communicating when I need a break

Oh wow, Jessie. I had no idea.....about ALL of this. I MEAN I'm glad your okay, but also.....are you? :[

^ that

I MEAN I'm not dying at the moment and I've had a couple of years to have all my existential crises

but I'm also still not old enough to be recommended for annual mammogram screenings so like. Check your boobs, friends

yeah i had... no idea. D:

I'm glad you're okay, but I'm sorry it's something you're probably going to have to deal with for your whole life, at least until they figure out how to eradicate cancer entirely.

has it been that long since I talked about it? omg I'm sorry I should get better at recaps but also I usually do it at like 5am when I'm overtired and maudlin so only Timmy sees my shame before I delete it >>

I'm actually around 5am your time, so not just Timmy.

We do not speak of my shame

what shame? I know nothing.

Good friend

on that note, you never need to worry with me on tags or tls or whatever. We'll figure it out. You rest when you need. I don't even need to know WHEN. just take care of you first. Always.

and seriously you know my no-sleep ass is normally around then too lmao

never happened

You know you can always put feelings in our plurks.

LOL saro you hear about every thought in my head

i also have not seen anything, but your health always matters more than rp or any thread

you've got to be sick of them all

Noooope

there's loads of room for it to actually get bad so I try not to suck everyone's goodwill dry

but also it's me so I am not a good judge of knowing where "bad" actually is

^actual conversation between Saro and me

Yeah, that's about right

goes both ways js

Well. That is ALSO true

Are you really okay though?

like physically or emotionally?

Both?

though my answer is probably "NOT CURRENTLY DYING" in both cases

Okay. I'm here if you ever need to talk or vent.

thx bud <3

ILU

I admire you so much, I know chemo alone is a serious pain in the pooper but all you have been through and gone through. All of that and you are still a kind soul who doesn't mind giving advice and ideas to a stranger whining about a little chemo on plurk. ( thank you by the way) Stay strong sister, we are all rooting for you!

aww that's nice of you to say!

But tbh that stuff doesn't really bother me? like if I want to go full therapy it's probably something that I picked up from the situation I grew up in, but I've always felt pretty strongly that life stuff needs to get passed on

in the time between my diagnosis and first surgery I was fully that annoying person being like "FEEL IT SO YOU KNOW WHAT IT FEELS LIKE" to like every woman in my life

We can't count on people being there for us, so we have to be there for each other

that's my philosophy when I go into teaching, when I start shouting about racial/gender inequity, and also about this

What's the point of going through a door if you don't hold it open for the next person?

That's very true. I try to do the same, as someone who came from a strong medical background too.

oh, sorry -- I don't come from like medical professionals or anything! Sorry if that's what it sounded like! I wouldn't want to talk myself up like that

I meant that like. I grew up around a lot of poverty and the kinds of habits that are a Thing in poor communities. And so I'd be the kid who gets up early to clean up the space that still stinks of alcohol from the night before, that kind of stuff

and I was also the oldest kid in my mom's friend group, so when I got shoved off to socialize with them I was always also lowkey babysitting them

and so as an adult I'm a little overbearing and on a constant quest to both protect and fix people and that's one of the things I've spent a lot of energy trying to unpack

I get that, everyone is either a nurse, in the military or both in my family. I was the combo breaker and also the elsdest so I get being the mother hen and all.

oh i had no idea... i'm glad you're currently not dying! theres been a lot of cancer in my family ending not well. hang in there.

it's not shameful or maudlin to talk about what you're going through. you are one of the strongest, most grounded and practical people I know but that doesn't mean you're not allowed to have emotions about a traumatic and ongoing health problem

I'm always available for you to have feelings at. <3 and agreed that health > rp madness

lol you say that but about an hour ago I got a message from someone very pressed that I have not replied to a tag yet

i mean there's no helping some idiots

"If you would rather not play,..." was how it started, and I went "NOPE" and decided to do other things with my day

ugh

good for you!!

didn't have an opinion about it before, DEFIBITELY not inclined to do that tag now

"If you would rather not play" WELL NOW I SURE DON'T

lmfao because creativity is SO good under pressure

I mean I want to be respectful of all the people who have anxiety about dropped tags

I guess in the end all I can do is speak for myself lol

like there was an anon plurk (that, honestly, was not very anon) going around yesterday where people were talking about how impacted they are about dropped rp

I get the sense that they feel rejected or placated

Yeah I saw that

or like people who say they want to rp and then don't are being disingenuous

so I get that people have emotions. but also coming in assuming the worst is just breeding negativity where there wasn't any before

is that person communicating with me about a thread? yeah, technically

but I don't appreciate being treated like a faulty fun dispenser

when the candy isn't coming out, you don't fix it by kicking the machine

Yep.

I mean, yes, feelings are feelings but how we deal with them is important. taking a step back and changing one's priorities is the proper way to deal with that situation, and if thr anxieties and worries and fears are worse than that then there's something more going on there and it might warrant some deeper soul searching and maybe even therapy

having anxiety isnt an excuse to treat other ppl badly