i love me some medicoliterary geek humor.

i suppose, since i have the post editor open and all, that i should take this moment to apologize for the dearth of posts in recent months. i know i’m letting my loyal reading audience of 3 down, and i’m sorry. it’s just a bit difficult to tread water and type at the same time.

1535: henry viii declares himself head of the english church.
1780: continental congress establishes court of appeals.
1879: harper’s weekly runs first cartoon portraying donkey as the symbol of the democratic party.
1934: babe ruth signs contract for $35k.

and most important of all:

1944: my dad was born.

happy birthday, dad!

when the monstrosity next door went up two years ago, i thought the construction had driven out the bunnies.

today’s snowfall suggests i was wrong. yay wabbits!

i need to eat dinner. and some dessert. and maybe then a bit more food. but before midnight – because tomorrow morning’s my surgery.

bah.

g accompanied me to the pre-op appointments on tuesday, wherein i had my vitals taken, my pregnancy status ascertained, the informed consent forms presented and signed (it’s surgery; it’s on an extremity; YOU COULD STILL DIE. yes, thank you.), the anaesthesia type determined (sedation with a block; general if that doesn’t take – i have a history of waking up during procedures), and the post-surgery boot and crutches acquired and fitted.

a few words on those last two. i get most of my health care at walter reed, so i’m used to seeing the casualties of the war on terror. amputees walking (or rolling) the halls, burned soldiers awaiting new skin grafts, and so on. but the rigid boot is provided by the prosthetics department, and the crutches by physical therapy. so at the end of my multitude of appointments yesterday, i felt like i was invading their territory: there i was, a (mostly) healthy woman, standing in a line of wheelchairs in prosthetics. then, a physical therapist ran me through the basics of walking with crutches, and getting myself up and down stairs. around me, soldiers were trying to learn how to walk again, or stretch, or just balance themselves.

i know i should have this surgery – with each passing day, my foot hurts more, the bones continue to erode. but it seems almost frivolous to have the procedure done when i’m surrounded by men and women with real injury.

i had signed up for NaBloPoMo with the best of intentions. a post a day for a month? i could handle that. even with some light holiday travel, i could post from my phone. i’m not working right now, so what better way to exercise my photography and writing muscles?

who was i kidding. this is 2009. if there’s been a consistent theme this year, it’s been this: make a plan, have it fucked with. it’s amazing we even got to mexico (the asshattery of acapulco notwithstanding), all things considered.

so what happened to my plans this month? well, i learned two new medical terms, of course. (i hate learning new medical terms. “fetal bradycardia” was the first one of the year, and it’s been a constant suck since then.) these are the new two:

giant cell tumor of the tendon sheath; and
pigmented villonodular synovitis

there’s a school of thought that they’re really the same thing, just in different sites. from a treatment point of view, it doesn’t matter which one it is. neither is malignant; they’re both benign aggressive soft tissue tumors.

and i have one or the other in my right foot. it’s about the size of a golf ball. it wasn’t always so big, and only recently has it begun to cause any pain. by now, though, it has enveloped the two peroneus tendons and eaten up part of the cuboid bone (the x-ray and MRI look amazingly like a mouse has been at it). because of this, it needs to be removed before it causes major permanent structural damage. it needs to be removed NOW, because i’m still trying to get knocked up, and i’m not about to undergo general anaesthesia while newly preggers – again (we saw how well that worked out back in april). or, for that matter, hugely preggers (i know i’m getting ahead of myself, but i’m still hopeful). and since it’s an aggressive tumor, if it’s not removed, it’s going to keep growing, getting more painful, and doing more damage to my dainty (okay, size 9 – but it’s long and elegant at the moment) foot. even with the tumor removed, there’s a 45% chance it will grow back. grmpf. the upshot is that the week after thanksgiving (and two days before my birthday, no less – those plans certainly got screwed too), i’m going back under the knife.

that’s right. i’m headed for four surgeries in oh-nine. one for each quarter. yay me.

so i’ve been too grumpy to blog daily, and for the last week i’ve been gimpy due to pain and swelling following an exuberant core biopsy that angrified the tumor and the foot, which cut in on photography, and my plans to start working out again, and my plans to look for a job.

and there you go. the universe is mocking me. doing a damn good job of it, too.

and textures, and states of decay.

oh, and snuffy.

photos from the dawn monument stroll. fake polaroid dry transfer technique on scanned paper bag. mixed results. ww2 monument is my least-disliked one.

so let’s firedance through the night.

no, really. it is. a new moon on monday. check your calendar.

(before launching into my outraged diatribe, i’m going to stipulate that safe abortion access is an integral part of not only women’s reproductive health, but our ability to exercise self-determination. many other individuals have written more coherently and persuasively on the subject than i could, so i’ll leave any interested readers to the googles for the specifics.)

with that out of the way, on to the diatribe.

in a press release celebrating the 240-194 approval of his odious abortion restriction amendment, bart stupak exulted,

Now that those voices have been heard we must move forward and pass a bill that provides quality, affordable health care for all Americans.

he’s also said, “All Americans deserve the right to quality, affordable health care coverage.”

all americans? really? apparently stupak doesn’t think that abortion access has any place in women’s “quality” or “affordable” reproductive health care. his amendment (couched in “this just [just! - ed] continues the hyde amendment’s prohibitions on the use of federal funds for abortion” logic) will have the practical effect of denying abortions to any women participating in the health insurance exchange.

how? right off the bat, it prohibits exchange-participating plans that offer abortion coverage from accepting any federally-subsidized customers (estimated at 80% of exchange participants)¹.

oh, but wait. apparently women will be allowed to purchase separate “abortion riders.” that’s great, provided a) women will think to insure against unintended pregnancies (or better yet, pregnancies with complications necessitating an abortion either due to risks to the woman’s health, or abnormalities with the fetus); and b) that there are insurance companies willing to offer those riders in the first place.

and it’s b) that’s really the kicker. via NARAL,

According to the respected National Women’s Law Center, the five states that require a separate rider for abortion coverage, there is no evidence that plans offer these riders.²

so. we’ve got a health reform plan from the house that is intended to create universal coverage by requiring individuals to acquire health care coverage through a national exchange³. and that exchange will effectively reduce women’s access to abortion services. fantastic.

i really, really hate washington right now. a meteor could demolish the entire hill, and i’d only mourn the architecture. okay, i’d feel sad for the families of the members of congress, but the representatives? not so much.

particularly not bart stupak or nancy pelosi, who facilitated the introduction of stupak’s amendment. because of those two (insert foul adjective of choice here… oh, hey… choice!)s, women are going to remain second-class citizens when it comes to health care.

(and finally, because i’m pissed off at the pro-choice democrats who folded and voted for the bill with stupak’s amendment: there’s a niggling voice in the back of my head trying to convince me that perfect should not be the enemy of the good, and that this reform bill is better than none. to that voice i say – there are far fewer anti-choice democrats than pro-choice ones in the house. if the pro-choice dems couldn’t get the antis in line and force a vote without restricting abortion access, they’re a useless political machine. if they’re going to allow abortion to be a political football, they should play the damn game to win.)

_________________________
¹ how ironic that the democrats have brought us our own version of the mexico city policy.
² i’d link directly to the national women’s law center on this, but i can’t find anything on point on their website.
³ it will also expand medicaid access, but that doesn’t help low-income women access abortion. see the hyde amendment.

yes. j and i made a cthulhu pumpkin.