#And you know when you have nothing to do but curl up and google ovarian cancer

[youkaiyume]

Hello, it's been a while since I did a rant. But WARNING for gross medical things:

SO it turns out my old nemesis the ovarian cysts have plagued me again. I found out about three weeks ago when a weird pain wouldn't leave my pelvis and went to urgent care and they suggested a CT scan. ONLY! for my insurance to deny me cuz they think I needed more probable cause for one so my doctor just recommended I go to the ER (which ironically is way more expensive for insurance to pay for than a simple CT scan but they did it to themselves lol).

Turns out I have cysts on BOTH of my ovaries FUN. But the left one is very concerningly big and probably needs to be removed but I can only do so by getting an approval of an OBGYN. So after finding one and waiting for my blood tests to come back so she can determine if she can surgically remove it--

YESTERDAY I had a SUDDEN AND SEVERE pain that hit me. I was at a solid 10 on that pain scale and vomiting and sweating so I drove myself to the ER again for the second time in two weeks. Frustratingly, the MALE doctor came back and was just like "well it looks like while we were doing your ultrasound you weren't consistently experiencing pain" which I was ready to bite his head off because let me tell you. While I was laying stretched out letting them do the ultrasound I was in the worst pain the ENTIRE time. And it was not a short ultrasound. It lasted over 20 mins and even after they asked me if I could survive sitting through the vaginal ultrasound after which would be another 25 mins. And those are painful just for the stick poking around in your yoohoo alone. I begged for pain relievers and when I described it they were like "oh that's labor level pains"

SO Mr. I don't have a Uterus doctor, DON'T TELL ME that your machine says I wasn't in pain. He even hit me with a "well I don't know what your pain tolerance is" as if to minimize or make me feel like I was overblowing what I was feeling. Like, fuck that guy. But because technically the imaging showed that the cysts haven't ruptured or caused my ovaries to twist it was considered "non emergent" and so the just gave me painkillers and then sent me home and reiterated that the only way I could get it removed at this point was to beg my OBGYN and convince her it was an emergency. In the meantime it was "oh you'll have to live with LABOR LIKE PAINS 24/7 until they let you have surgery." In the meantime they said I should only return to the ER after I've took all my pain meds and my pain doesn't improve OR if something worse happens. like a rupture.

WHICH btw are the exact same symptoms I have today so I was like how will I know cuz I can't imagine a worse pain than this one to which they were like "shrug"

I was in tears. Oh but it gets EVEN BETTER. Called my OBGYN this morning and she said my blood tests came back and that unfortunately they detected higher than usual levels of cancer markers in the cyst so that means she can't surgically remove them for me, she has to foist me to an Oncologist so THEY can remove it. She tries to say it doesn't necessarily MEAN cancer but hnnnnnggg that does not help with my anxiety at the moment.

Now calling the Oncologist to make an appointment today was a whole ordeal itself cuz their system kept going to voicemail so I had to call all the departments until they finally let me through but I had to run back to the hospital to try to get my Ultrasound discs for them. But even then they were like "your appointment isn't until next Wednesday" because THATS when the doctor meanders into work. So I'm like OH so like, in the meantime what if something happens??? And they're like well you gotta call back your OBGYN to see if you have other options. Which turns out she is also out. Until Tuesday. So I'm like. Guess I'll die then!

I don't even want kids!!! These ovaries have caused me nothing but trouble!!! Please rip them from my body!!

#And you know when you have nothing to do but curl up and google ovarian cancer #AND it tells you that the longest living patients on average live up to five years #it does make you spiral a bit #I feel like these entire two weeks the entire medical system won't believe me when I say it's an emergency #you sit here with this pain then #you do it #text post #rant #gross medical things

[danielcooperrp]

They Fuck You Up

A drabble for @msppctts

When Daniel’s parents ask him to come into the living room, he thinks that they are finally, finally letting him get a puppy. He’s been begging since he was six, but he’s ten now, practically an adult. He’s clearly responsible enough for a dog, so when he enters the room, he can barely contain his grin.

The grin turns slack when he learns the truth. We love you more than anything in the world, his mother tells him, gripping one of his hands in both of hers with tears in her eyes. We chose you because we love you. You complete our family.

His father is more stoic about it, not that Daniel is surprised; his dad favors logic over emotion. Still, his voice quakes when he tells Daniel, You may not havve come from us, but you are ours. We want you to know because you deserve the truth, but don’t think for a second that you are not our son.

It’s a shock, at first. He may be the first ten-year-old high school freshman in his school’s history, but he’s still only ten. He doesn’t cry about it—what’s there to cry about? Lots of kids are adopted—but it still follows him around, a tiny, constant reminder that he is never going to run out of ways to be different than everyone else. 

And then, of course, being adopted is the least of Daniel’s concerns. Just a year later, he stands beside his father, ironed into a too-stiff black suit, watching a shiny mahogany box be lowered into a hole in the ground. He doesn’t cry about it—crying can come later, when he’s safely locked in his room, when his dad doesn’t need him to be strong—but he does make a silent promise to the mom who will never playfully tug on his curls again: You and Dad are the only family I will ever need.

So he works harder, longer, reads every piece of scientific literature his dad leaves lying around the house, and he graduates high school at just fourteen, with straight As and a mouthful of braces, his father and grandmother, who pats his cheek proudly and calls him Bumblebee, are the only family at the ceremony. Brilliant, he’s been called, a prodigy, and yes, he’s about to be shipped off to England, because Oxford is the only university that seems to know what to do with him, but even as the plane is rolling down the tarmac, all he can think about is the offer his father made after graduation. It was a closed adoption, he had said over dinner at Daniel’s favorite hole-in-the-wall Italian place, but if you want, we can start looking.

He spends a few weeks thinking about it as he settles into the room in his boardinghouse. He doesn’t know what legal hurdles they’ll have to jump through to find out the names of the person or people who gave him up, and he doesn’t know if the jumping will be worth it. What can learn that he doesn’t already know? Someone was pregnant, and he was an unwelcome presence in their life. His parents, the people who raised him, the people who knew exactly what combination of soup and ice cream he wanted when he was sick, the mother whose gravestone now sits an ocean away from him, the father who tried his best to pick up the pieces after her death, they wanted him, chose him, carved out a space in their life specifically for him. 

He tells his father no. He doesn’t cry about it. 

University is a whirlwind, too many classes, too many hours in a lab, too many eyes watching the American whizkid breeze his way through undergrad, through the Master’s program, through his doctorate. By twenty, he has his Ph.D., biochemistry, and he’s back on a plane, flying home to the father who now feels like something of a stranger to him. Now more than ever, Daniel is determined to show his dad exactly the kind of man he’s become, one who is just as dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge as he is, one who wants to make his mother proud. 

Almost as soon as he touches American soil, he’s shaking hands with everyone at his father’s lab. Lernaean Laboratories, the logo at the top of his offer letter reads. How many hours did he spend here as a child, not even tall enough to see atop the lab benches, so close in his father’s shadow that if he stopped too fast Daniel would bounce off of the back of his knees? His father’s career in this lab, for Hydra, has been the blueprint for Daniel to follow, the legacy for him to inherit. He falls into the work as easily as stepping off the T in the morning, quickly assimilating into his research team and getting to work. His efforts don’t go unnoticed; soon, he’s leading a team of his own, doing the kinds of experimental research he’d only dreamed of back in England. 

And then, as it is wont to do, everything falls apart. Hydra is no longer the vague parent company of the lab to which he and his father have dedicated their careers; it is a fascist shadow organization, a parasite lurking in legitimate government organizations with the almost cartoonish goal of reshaping the world into their authoritarian vision. Daniel’s entire worldview is flipped upside-down on a dime, and as the truth of his research, of his father’s research, of his life spills out for the entire world to see like some messy tabloid drama, all he can think is, Did Dad know?

Of course he did. He was naive to think otherwise. For as brilliant as Daniel is, he has never had the cognizance his father has had, has never been able to navigate the world as deftly. Of course his father knew exactly what he was doing, what he was contributing to, and of course he has an answer to every question Daniel hurls at him as they fight in the same living room where all those years ago his life was upended for the very first time. 

You’re a monster, Daniel croaks, the ache in his chest so profound it’s a wonder his ribs don’t crack. And you’ve turned me into a monster, too. 

When he stumbles back into his own apartment, bone-weary and limp, he collapses onto his bed, and he cries about it. 

The next few weeks pass in a haze. He has no job, no prospects, no relationship with his father. His roommates, best friends made across the pond, two other too-smart Americans too good at finding trouble where they least expect it, do their best to cheer him up, but all of the RuPaul’s Drag Race in the world isn’t going to make him suddenly able to face himself in the mirror.

He doesn’t know what sparks the interest, what first gets the question rolling in his head. One night, he googles the phrase closed adoption, and then immediately closes out of the window. A few nights later, he tries again. How to open a closed adoption. 

So the search begins. Two searches, really. The first for his birth parents, the second for a lab that will hire someone with a stain on their résumé like his. Much to his surprise, the latter is easier to find; within a year of his life falling apart, Daniel is hired on to work at the organization that he once viewed as the enemy: S.H.I.E.L.D. It’s rough there, of course, because no one trusts him, and why should they? These days he feels like he can barely trust himself to keep his shit together. 

When it comes to his birth parents, however, it’s not so simple. The lawyers can only do so much, and there’s only so much he can afford. He briefly considers a private investigator, but feels too icky about it; he doesn’t want his birth parents to think that he is more interested in his own curious self-interest than their privacy, even though he definitely is. He still isn’t on speaking terms with his father, but somehow he finds out what Daniel is up to, and the rift between them only widens. So what, I’m not good enough for you anymore? he snaps over the phone to his son. You have to go find your real parents? 

It would have been less painful if he had just slapped Daniel across the face. 

It’s his roommate Connor’s suggestion that solves the puzzle. So many people are doing those online ancestry kits these days, and even though Daniel is extremely skeptical of them—what exactly are they doing with his DNA once they’re done with it?—he sends of a vial of his spit and waits. A few weeks later, he logs into an online profile to see a list of distant blood relatives who are also curious about where they come from. The closest relative, he is pleased to learn, is a second cousin: the cousin of one of his birth parents. 

A few phone calls later, and he’s driving out to Long Island, where his second cousin lives, along with most of his extended family. Over lunch at a sub place, Daniel learns that his second cousin has a cousin who was in college in New York in 1989, the year Daniel was conceived, and who, according to the family grapevine, may have gotten knocked up by some trust-fund kid from Uptown Manhattan. Everyone is pretty certain that there was a baby, but no one knows what happened to it.  

Just to twist the knife, this guy Daniel has connected with via the Internet then lays on the bad news: his cousin died three years ago. Ovarian cancer. If she really was his mother, he’ll never get to know her. 

Her name was Chaya.

So he gives up. He goes back to Boston, back to his life, and tries to forget about his quest. He redoubles his efforts into his research, convinced that if he works hard enough, maybe, maybe his new coworkers will stop hating him for being Hydra scum.

And then one day, just a month or so after his twenty-eighth birthday, he receives an alert email from the DNA company. A new relative wants to connected with you! Even as he reminds himself not to get too excited, Daniel eagerly opens up the website, where he starts chatting with some guy in New York. Another second cousin, it looks like, but on his father’s side this time. There is less mystery around this one; this new relative only has one cousin, only one person who could be Daniel’s biological father. 

You’re never gonna believe this, kid, he writes. Daniel waits with bated breath for the next message to come in. My cousin? Tony fucking Stark.

There’s a buzzing in Daniel’s ears. He stares at the screen, seeing nothing. More messages come in—You know, Iron man? Hello? Kid, you still there?—but Daniel is long gone, sinking into a feeling unlike any he’s ever had before.

Holy fuck. His father is Tony Stark.

He sits with this. For a long time, he sits on the information, not breathing a word even to his best friends. He wakes up, he goes for runs, he showers, he heads into work, he talks to no one, he comes home, he sleeps. Day after day, he lives his life, but for weeks, there is only one thought preoccupying his every waking moment: My father is Tony Stark.

He doesn’t google him. He doesn’t have to. Everyone knows Tony Stark, billionaire tech genius, war profiteer-turned-superhero, the guy who flew through a wormhole to save all of Manhattan. He’s in the news enough that even the most casually engaged citizen can’t help but keep up-to-date on all of his escapades. To think that he came from that...if this isn’t evidence for nurture over nature, he doesn’t know what is.

Eventually, though, the processing has to stop and the decision-making has to start. He has this information now, and he needs to figure out what to do with it. Going to him seems laughable; how many people must have tried to claim that Tony Stark was the father of their child over the years? Everyone knows what kind of guy he was when he was younger, why couldn’t it be true? Does he try to get a lawyer? That seems hostile right off the bat, but how else would anyone believe him unless he’s willing to put his money where his mouth is?

He doesn’t get to make up his mind. He’s on his lunch break, up on the roof of the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility in Boston—technically speaking he’s not supposed to be up here, but the idea of going into the giant cafeteria full of S.H.I.E.L.D. employees who hate him is far worse than any reprimand for being in a restricted area—looking down at the bustling city below, when suddenly, he doesn’t feel very good. He sets his ham and Swiss sandwich down and clutches at his head. What is happening? Slowly, he lowers a hand in front of his face, and with a mixture of confusion and awe, he watches as the tips of his fingers start to dissolve into dust before his very eyes.

And then the world goes black.

When he wakes up, he is immediately overcome with the certain sense that something is wrong. He sits up, and his lunch is gone—didn’t he just put his sandwich down fifteen seconds ago? He stands, and when he peers out over the edge of the roof, he is stunned to see his beloved city in ruins. Garbage lines the streets, and buildings are falling into disrepair. When he looks down onto the sidewalk below, it’s filled with people who are looking around, just as confused as he is. They touch themselves, and each other, and even though he can’t hear them, he knows they’re asking the question, What just happened?

Life after the Hulk snapped everyone back into existence is messy. Half of the world has lived five years of their lives that people like Daniel just...weren’t there for. Of the people in his life, only his roommate Connor and his grandmother survived, which casts an icy grip around his heart; he lost five years with his grandmother, his mother’s mother, five years that he will never get back. His English bulldog, appropriately named Hulk, because Daniel has had a crush on Bruce Banner long before he was saving the world from apocalyptic destruction, also died in the snap, so at least Daniel didn’t lose any time with him.

His father is shaken by his own death and by his son’s. He wants to reconnect, to put the past behind them, to put right what once went wrong, but Daniel just isn’t ready for it. Yes, the world kept spinning for five years, but for him, the wound between him and his father his still raw, tender. 

But his biological father is a whole other story. Now that he’s died and been brought back to life, Daniel is more ready than ever to reach out to him. He doesn’t care if he’s laughed at, or doubted, or called a liar. He has to shoot his shot. 

Once again, he finds out, he is too late. His father, Tony Stark, sacrificed himself to save the entire universe. A hero, they’re calling him, the truest hero we’ve ever had. Memorials spring up everywhere, with Iron Man instantly immortalized as the most important hero in the universe. 

And Daniel will never get to tell him that he’s his son.

But Tony Stark isn’t the only one dominating much of the cultural conversation. Most of the world is only now learning that in the five years between the Snaps, he and Stark Industries CEO Pepper Potts had a daughter.

Daniel has a sister. 

Which is how he ends up here, driving down this winding gravel road alongside a lake, fingers tapping nervously atop the steering wheel. This is dumb, far dumber than just reaching out to Tony Stark. Pepper Potts is a grieving widow, a single mother with a four-year-old child, a woman with a company to run and a life to live. The last thing she needs is one of Tony Stark’s youthful indiscretions showing up on the front porch of her supposedly classified lake house (though he’s not ready to repair things with his father, Daniel is more than willing to let him try to curry favor by calling on an old friend to do some digging for him). When he gets out of his rental car, he approaches the front door and retreats over and over again, balling and unballing his fists, trying to work up the nerve to knock. All of the starter sentences he practiced on his drive from Boston to upstate New York are entirely gone now, and he thinks if he opens his mouth, he might just vomit. 

He has to do it. He lost his chance to know both of his biological parents. He simply cannot risk losing the chance to know his sister. He steps carefully up to the front door, takes a deep breath, and knocks. 

#msppctts #v4 #drabble #I AM SO SORRY THIS IS SO LONG #THIS WAS NOT THE PLAN #BUT THINGS GOT AWAY FROM ME