some guy getting on with it

Before that I'd seen a picture of women who'd had mastectomy for cancer and one of them hadn't wanted reconstruction and I looked at her flat chest and went, "god, that would be so nice."

I mean, yes, my uterus caused me a lot of pain and my breasts were so, so heavy that they actually reduced my o2 sats toward the end (they removed 22 pounds of tissue) but I'd never been particularly enthused about the process of growing or having them. I used my uterus to grow three children and I used my breasts to feed them and when my last child was born and I knew to my bones that he was my last child I had no use for my uterus at all and got rid of it. And when he was done nursing, the breasts went, too, as soon as I could arrange it. That was five years ago.

The results of the surgery would be on no one's "goals" sheet because of some poor understanding of my physiology/genetics on the part of the doctor, but I am so, so glad that the tits are gone. I still have stitches spitting through my skin but I can breathe, and clothing fits, and I am so much more than the weight of my breasts lighter. They were as heavy as two fat ducks, or a large turkey. Four big chickens. I don't know why I always translate it to poultry but those are things where I have a very solid understanding of their weight. And they were sitting on my chest for years.

"If someone breaks in dude, you beat the ever-loving shit out of them real hard dude, you beat the shit out of them, Chancho, you hear me?"

"You just beat the shit out of anyone who breaks in!"

translation notes:

"What if Stratt didn't force Grace to go?" Then the Earth dies.

"What if Yao and Ilyukhina had survived?" Then they all would have died in space, not enough food to get to Earth or Erid

If the Taomoeba hadn't escaped then Grace would have never seen his best friend again. Returning to a world he loves but no longer recognizes.

If the stars weren't dying then Grace never would have met his best friend at all. Living content but alone.

Project Hail Mary is a hopeful story. It is a story of friendship and what it means to be brave. It's a story about saving the world.