Still Wandering, Debatably Lost

I’m not great about listening to my body - chronic pain and working manual labor jobs for thirty years mostly make me want it to shut up, because pain is very loud sometimes.

But last June when I was at the doctor for something else (which we still haven’t figured out) that hurt a lot more, he asked if I was having other problems, because he doesn’t often see me.

‘Eh, my left breast has been kind of uncomfortable for a little while?’

Fortunately, he not only listens, but takes things seriously. Diagnostic mammogram, several years before I should have needed them for routine testing.

‘Hmm,’ said the mammogram techs. ‘Let’s biopsy that.’ (‘That’ was an abnormality in my left breast that appeared to be shaped like a piece of macaroni. Amused concern about boob noodles abounded.)

As much as I try to ignore my body is roughly how successful my body actually is at ignoring lidocaine. The biopsy - which was mammogram guided and from a medical technology standpoint, really cool! - hurt like blue blazing fuck.

‘Hmm,’ said the folks who examined the biopsy. ‘That’s weird but doesn’t appear to be cancerous, at least?’

(It still hurt. It continued to hurt worse as time went on.)

It turns out - because there was a history of ovarian cancer from my father’s side of the family and gene testing was done to check for other factors - that I’m also positive for a BRCA 2 mutation that increases my lifetime risk of breast and ovarian cancers to roughly stratospheric levels.

Thanks, dad.

So. Boobs off? Boobs off.

As it turned out, boobs off was going to take a length of time that was becoming increasingly unbearable since the pain in my breast was continuing to get worse.

‘Can we just get the noodle out?’ I asked, rather despairingly, and apparently we could!

Having a section of my boob the size of half a deck of cards excised did not hurt at all, despite my worries following the biopsy.

It did, however, show that I had cancer.

So, boobs are coming off - in a week and a half, actually, which is engendering very complicated emotions (none of them about gender, funnily) followed by chemo, possibly radiation, then reconstruction, since I’m getting it done with my own tissue rather than implants.

It’s going to be a really long year.

So, yeah, listen to your boobs, regardless of sex and gender. Breast cancer hits plenty of men, too.

And if anyone wants to help make my recovery a little easier I have a wishlist?

I’m literally donating my boobs to science.

Again.

Cue the ‘two nickels but it’s funny that it happened twice’ meme.

There was no evidence of spread to the lymph nodes, so gods willing it never got a chance to spread and never will. I’m on ‘chemo light,’ a course of Taxol and herceptin - twelve weeks of weekly Taxol, herceptin every three weeks for a year.

They put me on beta blockers to protect my heart from the meds and my blood pressure went up twenty points, which seems both illogical and somewhat unfair.

It’s exhausting but not horrible - I’m on week three, officially one-quarter of the way through my Taxol. (I’m told I may be allowed to ring the bell twice - once at the end of the twelve weeks and then again next March at the end of treatment.) The ‘short’ infusion appointments are three hours and the long ones are five, and I have to wear ice mittens and booties during infusion to prevent neuropathy.

I haven’t started losing my hair yet, although that will probably happen this week. I got it cut at the beginning of March to the shortest and boldest I’ve had it in my life, a pixie cut dyed vibrantly pink. (My least favorite color - figured hating it would make it easier to see it go.) My roots are already showing - honestly I didn’t think I’d have my hair long enough for that to happen.

I'm coming to love my graft.

It looks freaky. That's okay, I'm a freak.

It looks scary. That's okay, I'm scary (so I’m told).

It looks like it hurt. It did, and it was great.

It represents a long hard road out of hell. It's a sign of my dedication to authenticity. I'm proud of it.

Transphobes do their best to scare trans men away from life-saving medical care like phalloplasty with gruesome photos of fresh surgical sites. They want you to believe that it'll always look like that. But your flesh will heal, and so will your soul.

Here's the truth about transphobes: if gender affirmation surgeries were pristine, blood-free, scar-free, magical transformations, they would STILL try to scare you out of getting them.

Getting pins in a broken leg is gruesome, too. But isn't it worth it once the leg heals?

I love my scars. They're stories told in skin. Here's where I broke up a dog fight. This one's from a gun. Here's one from an Offspring concert. Here are the ones I got in exchange for a life without dysphoria. My scars celebrate my life and remind me of lessons I've learned.

So, too, with my graft. Every day I can look at it and remember that I made it. That I am made whole. That I am free.

Some have even claimed her as a non-binary icon, though that's very much up for debate. While Hatshepsut happily raided the masculine side of the royal wardrobe and blurred gender expectations, most historians see it as a calculated political strategy rather than evidence of a non-binary identity. But who knows.

Katara: BOY???? HOT BOY?????? HOT TEENAGE BOY?????????

Zuko: *speaks*

And then it hit me.

Iroh: *sitting in a teahouse at a paisho table* Iroh, deadpan: I must capture the last airbender.  Iroh: It is the only way to make sure the powe rof the Avatar won’t be turned on the Fire Nation. Iroh: Only then will I be redeemed in the eyes of the Fire Lord for my failure at Ba Sing Se. Iroh: … Iroh: Anyway, it’s your turn.

he was the eldest son of fire lord sozin, who knew the avatar was the greatest threat to the fire nation, but also knew the new one would be a firebender and he couldn’t exactly merc his own people, now could he? but he always planned to order a convenient little assassination on whoever the new avatar turned out to be and in the meantime took out the air temples so that avatar couldn’t learn the next element in the cycle. of course, when it turns out to be his son, sozin, stellar dad that he is, thinks “if you want something done right” and shoots a fire blast at his firstborn.

zuko enters the avatar state, blows up half the palace, etc etc as one does, gets a nasty scar for his trouble, and escapes, hence why he was hanging out far enough south to necessitate katara and sokka cracking open a cold boy a century later.

all this is to say 1. i think it’s a good way to maintain zuko’s background and characterization in an au like this and 2. it leads to a secret second roleswap

nk.t idt

Nk refers to intercourse, and it has the suffix pronoun .t which refers to the second person feminine. I believe this is in the imperative as it’s a command? But I really don’t have a strong grasp of ancient Egyptian grammar.

idt refers to the vulva or womb, but idt here I think is written backwards? Judging off the reading order from hieroglyphs V31 and D52 in the previous word.

So in all I think this translates to “You fuck your pussy”?? But I’m 90% sure I’m incorrect here.