#and i just tell her ive decided. in the middle of a pandemic

[suituuup]

pandemic shenanigans

Chloe discovers TikTok and decides to do a bunch of pranks on her girlfriend

rated: T

word count: 3k

ao3 link

*

It’s the pandemic’s fault. 

Chloe was bored af one day at the start of quarantine, and decided to download TikTok, the app Gen Z has been raving about. Little did she know five minutes on the app could turn into four hours without her being aware and brought procrastination to another level. 

She quickly becomes addicted to cute animal videos (duh) and couple pranks. So addicted that the temptation of trying a few on her girlfriend is too great. 

i. Did you forget what today was

“Morning,” Beca mumbles, rubbing her eye with the heel of her palm as she shuffles towards the coffee pot. While Chloe’s an early bird, Beca rarely makes it out of bed before ten on the weekends, and Chloe is usually already showered and dressed by the time she does. 

She and Beca live in that same studio which they used to share with Amy, until their Australian friend inherited some serious money and moved out. 

It’s been really nice to have an actual bed instead of that crappy pull-out couch. 

“Good morning,” Chloe chirps, craning her neck to accept the kiss Beca brushes to her lips. Beca slides in the chair across hers, pouring some milk in the bowl Chloe’s set out for her, followed by cereals.

(yes, she’s that weirdo who puts the milk first.)

“What?” Beca pauses with her first spoonful halfway to her mouth, finally noticing Chloe staring at her. 

“Did you forget what today was?” She asks with a raised eyebrow, cradling her mug in her hands.

Beca blinks, and Chloe can nearly see the fuck popping up in her brain as panic flashes in her eyes. “Uh, Saturday?” 

Chloe purses her lips, both to appear annoyed and to keep her bubbling laughter in. “Beca.” 

Beca’s nose scrunches up. “I know, I know, gimme a sec. This is not our anniversary, or your birthday, you’re not working today so there’s nothing important regarding your job,” she lists off, her eyes lighting up a beat later. “Oh! Is it this weekend Aubrey’s coming up?” 

“No,” Chloe sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I can’t believe you forgot.”

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Beca rushes out, standing up and crossing the distance between them to sit across Chloe’s lap. She kisses her softly, looping her arms around her neck. “I’m sorry. What’s going on today? I promise I’ll make time for it. And I’ll give you a massage tonight to make up for being a bad girlfriend. And we can eat whatever you like.” Smirking mischievously, she adds in a lower tone, “And, I’ll let you do whatever you wanna do to me later.” 

Chloe grins, unable to hold it any longer. “Nothing’s going on, babe. I was just messing with you.” 

Beca’s jaw falls open as she pulls back, glaring. “Not cool, dude!”

Chloe simply giggles, nuzzling her neck and pressing an apologetic kiss to Beca’s skin. “You’re cute when you’re panicking.”

A huffs puffs free and Beca pouts. “Whatever.”

Chloe tightens her hold around Beca’s waist so she can’t get away. “Can I still do whatever I want to you tonight?” 

The whimper that rises from Beca’s throat shoots a chill down her spine. Beca’s cheeks redden and she squirms a little in Chloe’s lap. “Yeah--yes.” 

Safe to say Chloe won’t be uploading that video on TikTok. She also won’t tell Beca this was a Tiktok prank, because this turned out to be a lot of fun and she’s got more up her sleeve.

ii. climb on their lap while they’re busy doing something else

Friday nights are Chloe’s favorite. As none of them work during the weekends, it means they get two whole days of quality time with each other. Tonight though, her highly professional girlfriend needs to take care of a few work things to make sure she can spend a stress free weekend, but it’s been hours, and Chloe is kind of craving some attention. 

Beca’s working on her laptop while sitting on the couch, and after changing into her PJ’s, Chloe unceremoniously curls up sideways on her lap, looping her arms around her shoulders and resting her forehead against the side of Beca’s neck. 

“Oh,” Beca breathes out, setting her computer aside before her arms loosely wrap around Chloe’s body. “Hello.” 

“Hi,” Chloe murmurs back, brushing a kiss to Beca’s neck and releasing a soft sigh of contentment. 

Beca’s hand runs up and down her thigh as she pushes a kiss to Chloe’s hair. “You alright?” 

Chloe hums, forgetting all about her phone propped against one of the shelves capturing the moment to make a TikTok, instead basking in the instant comfort being in Beca’s arms provides. 

Beca peppers her face with soft, featherlight kisses that make Chloe warm from the inside out. She really is a slut for Beca’s affection. “M’sorry I had to work tonight.” 

Chloe smiles. “It’s okay.” She pecks Beca’s lips and brushes her nose against hers. “I’m heading to bed. Don’t work too late, babe.” 

Beca nods, winking softly. “Right behind you.” 

True to her word, Beca slides under the covers less than five minutes later and tugs Chloe’s body against her own. Chloe releases another happy sigh, which is cut-off by a yelp when Beca runs her freezing toes along Chloe’s bare calf. 

“Becs!” She cries, moving away and slapping her arm. “Your feet are freaking icicles!” 

Beca snickers like a teenager, seemingly very proud of her act. 

“Put some socks on.” 

Beca’s nose scrunches up adorably. “Ew. No way.” 

“Then stay on your side,” Chloe grumbles, tugging the covers higher around her as she rolls away from Beca, settling on her opposite side. 

“Sorry,” Beca whispers into the dark, shuffling closer. “I won’t do it again.” 

She feels her resolve break as Beca’s lips trace a trail from her exposed shoulder blade to the side of her neck. She hates her traitorous body for not having any willpower when it comes to Beca’s ministrations. “You better not, or I’ll kick you,” she half-jokes. 

“Kinky,” Beca breathes along with a soft laugh, pressing one final kiss to Chloe’s cheek as she drapes her arm around her middle. “I love you.” 

Chloe laces their fingers and squeezes. “I love you too, weirdo.” 

iii. walking out naked while they’re in a zoom meeting 

“Well what doesn’t he like about it?” Beca’s voice carries from the living-room as Chloe stands in their bedroom, a towel wrapped around her naked frame. 

That video of her and Beca cuddling on the couch blew up, hitting 3 millions views and about 400k likes. The few homophobic comments that popped up were quickly drowned out by thousands of people gushing over their relationship or crying about wanting the same kind of relationship. 

Beca was of course aware Chloe would post that video on the internet and weirdly wasn’t opposed to it. 

“Again?” She hears her girlfriend sigh and steps out, losing the towel as she rounds the corner. “I mean, yeah, sure. I’ll see what I--” 

Beca’s words die on her tongue the second her eyes flicker up from her computer screen. Her jaw drops and her mouth gapes wordlessly for a few seconds. 

Chloe is briefly concerned she might have broken her girlfriend.

“Beca?”  Her boss’ voice carries through the speakers, snapping Beca back to her meeting. 

“Yes, yeah-- um-- sorry, I…” She stammers as her cheeks burn, and clears her throat. Her eyes quickly glance back to Chloe, who is fighting against a string of giggles. “I’ll-- I’ll work on something else, no problem.” 

“Alright, keep me posted.”

Beca nods. “See ya.” She shuts her computer so fast Chloe’s concerned she might have damaged it. “You’re evil,” she mutters, shaking her head. 

“Are you complaining?” Chloe husks, strutting over in her birthday suit and tossing her phone on the couch.

Beca visibly swallows, bracing on Chloe’s waist as she settles down her lap. “Never. But next time try not to give me a heart attack?” 

“Deal,” Chloe murmurs, bending down to capture Beca’s lips in a searing kiss. 

iv. Ask them what they would do if they were at a party and a hot girl came up to them

“Hey Bec?” 

“Mm?” 

It’s a rainy rainy afternoon, the ones Chloe loves as they don’t have anywhere to be, and she gets to chill on the couch with her favorite person while listening to the rain pelting against the window. 

Chloe’s head is on Beca’s lap as she lies on the couch, reading a book while Beca messes around on her phone. Beca has absentmindedly been scratching her scalp, and Chloe was about to fall asleep when she got a prank idea. She discreetly propped up her phone against her mug on the coffee table a minute ago, pressing record. 

“What would you do if you were at a party and a hot girl came up to you?” 

Beca lowers her phone, peering at Chloe over it. “What do you mean?” 

Bending her knees, Chloe shifts to sit up and faces Beca. “What would you do if a hot girl flirted with you?” 

“You know I don’t know when people flirt with me, right?” 

Yes, Chloe does know. She lost count of how many times she’s flirted with Beca over their four years of friendship pre-getting together without Beca having a freaking clue. 

“Okay, but still,” Chloe clears her throat and straightens a bit from her slouched position, tucking her legs underneath her. “Let’s say you’re at a party, and I’m a random girl, not your girlfriend, alright?” 

Beca rolls her eyes but nods anyway, setting her phone down and angling her body towards Chloe a bit more. 

Chloe props her elbow on the back of the couch and cradles the side of her head in her palm as she smiles softly, getting into character. She reaches out to run the tip of her pointer finger along Beca’s forearm while keeping her gaze locked on hers, her teeth racking over her bottom lip in an over-the-top flirty move. “Hi.” 

“Hey you,” Beca murmurs with a small smirk, leaning closer a little. Chloe swats the back of her head. “Ow! What was that for??” 

“It’s not me,” she reminds Beca as the brunette rubs the spot with a glare. 

“Sorry, it’s just hard to remember that with those eyes of yours,” Beca laughs. “I can’t focus, they’re pulling me in.” 

“Aw,” Chloe beams. She leans in to peck Beca’s lips, raising an eyebrow when Beca pushes her away. 

“Dude, I’ve got a girlfriend.” 

Chloe rolls her eyes, shoving her as Beca laughs. “Touché.” 

v. ask them if they still get butterflies

“Bec?” 

“Mmm.” 

Spring morphed into summer. A hot, sticky and humid summer. The pandemic is still very much a thing, and Chloe can’t even tell you what day of the week it is anymore. To make things worse, their AC is down, which is why they find themselves on the rooftop of their apartment building that evening, laying on a couple blankets as they stare up at the night sky. Chloe misses the hundreds of stars she would gaze at when she was a kid in Oregon, but she sort of finds the steady sound of cars passing by in the street below them soothing. 

Or you know, maybe it’s the joint she smoked twenty minutes ago with her girlfriend that is finally hitting her. 

“Do you still get butterflies?” 

Beca’s head rolls to the side so she can look at her. “Still?” She asks, smirking softly. “They never left.” 

Chloe giggles, shoving her lightly. Beca is known to grow sappy and affectionate when she’s high, and Chloe absolutely loves it. “Dork.” 

“Felt them just this morning when you were singing in the kitchen while making breakfast and almost pinched myself because I still have to wrap my head around the fact that I get to marry you.” 

Chloe does a double-take as she registers Beca’s words. “What?” Her voice is barely there, hidden under the layers of emotions seizing her throat. 

“Well… yeah,” Beca shrugs, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “You’re like, it for me, you know?” 

Moments where Beca splits herself open like that are rare, and they never fail to make Chloe’s heart soar. 

“Are you going to say something Beale or keep staring at me like a weirdo?” Beca eventually quips, chuckling softly. 

Chloe shakes her head a little, then leans forward to push a lingering kiss against Beca’s lips. “I love you, future wife.” 

She feels Beca sigh contentedly as she curls up against her side, her arm wounding around Chloe’s back. “I love you, too.”

vi. sigh loudly in front of them

“What’s wrong?” 

It’s day two hundred something of quarantine. Chloe is bored out of her mind. 

“Nothing,” she whispers, keeping her tone unconvincing on purpose. She’s lying on the couch while Beca sits at the end working on her computer, a Friends rerun playing low on the TV. 

Beca shuts her computer and sets it on the coffee table before crawling up Chloe’s body and settling on top of her. She presses a light kiss to the side of Chloe’s neck. “You sure?” 

“Mhm,” Chloe hums, looping her arms around her girlfriend’s waist. 

“I can stop working,” Beca suggests softly, placing another kiss to her chin, then to the tip of her nose. “Wanna go grab some Chick-fil-A? Then we can watch one of those cheesy rom coms that you like.” 

“M’okay,” Chloe agrees quietly. “Can we just cuddle for a bit?” 

“Yeah,” Beca breathes. “Course we can.” She settles her head on Chloe’s chest, lifting it a second later. “Wait, is this a TikTok thing?” Upon Chloe nodding, she groans. “My reputation is taking a blow with each one of those, you know that right?” 

A giggle bursts past Chloe’s lips. “I’m sorry, your what?” 

That earns her a glare. “Bite me, Beale.” 

vii. wipe their kiss away

“I hate this fucking pandemic,” Beca grumbles as she makes it inside, kicking the door shut with a little more force than necessary. “I hate those Karens who don’t wear masks,” she continues as she hoists her two grocery bags on the kitchen counter. “Scratch that, I just hate people in general.” Beca eventually takes off her mask, heaving out a sigh as she drops it onto the counter. “Finally.” 

Chloe smiles in amusement, walking over to start putting the groceries away. “Thanks for going out, babe.” 

“No problem.” She pecks Chloe’s lips on her way to store the yogurt in the fridge, doing a double-take when Chloe wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “Did you just… wipe my kiss away?” 

“What? No I didn’t,” Chloe replies innocently. 

Beca stares at her, cocking an eyebrow. “Was it not up to your standards or something?” 

“I mean…” Chloe shrugs nonchalantly. “It was just a peck.” 

“Mmm.” She resumes her task, closing the door to the fridge behind her before making her way over to where Chloe is standing, setting her hands on her hips from behind and coaxing her to turn around. 

“What are you--” the rest of her sentence is cut off by a moan as Beca’s lips capture her own. Chloe’s knees wobble from the heat of the kiss, its intensity sending shockwaves throughout her body, all the way down to her toes. She’s left in a daze by the time Beca pulls away, blinking twice in slow succession as she rolls her swollen lips together. “Holy shit.” 

Beca puffs out her chest a little, smirking. “That’s better.” 

Groceries forgotten, Chloe slides her hand into hers and drags her to the bedroom. 

viii. call them your spouse during a phone conversation

“I’m home,” Chloe calls out as she steps inside their studio apartment. She pauses in the doorway, taking in her surroundings. 

Their small kitchen table is beautifully set, two candles lit on each side and a gorgeous bouquet of flowers sitting in the center. Soft acoustic music is playing through Beca’s portable speaker. “Hey, you.” 

“What’s all this?” Chloe asks, smiling brightly as she slings her purse off her shoulder, setting it down. 

Beca approaches, a sheepish smile spreading across her features. “Well… because of this freaking pandemic, we haven’t been out in months, so I thought we could just do a home-date. I ordered from your favorite sushi place, should be here any minute.” 

“Aww.” Shrugging off her jacket, Chloe steps up to place a soft kiss to Beca’s lips. “You’re sweet. And very sexy,” she adds with an eyebrow waggle, taking in Beca’s fancy jumpsuit and hairdo. “I’m gonna go change real quick.” 

Chloe hurries to the bedroom and opens her closet to pick something; she can’t remember the last time she wore a dress, her main outfit having consisted of a hoodie and sweatpants for the better part of the year. Plucking her navy blue, knee length dress out, she changes into it and takes ten minutes to arrange her hair and put on light make-up. 

Beca is on the phone as she steps back out into the kitchen, grinning when Chloe appears. “Yep, got it. Listen, I gotta go, my wife and I are about to eat dinner.” 

Chloe freezes mid-step, her heart stuttering as she registers the term Beca used. 

“Sorry about that,” Beca says once she’s hung up, casting Chloe a smile as she sets her phone down. 

“You just called me your wife,” Chloe murmurs, her eyes shrinking suspiciously a beat later. A gasp follows when it hits her. “Wait, are you TikTok pranking me??” Her gaze quickly sweeps the room. “Where’s the camera, Mitchell?” 

Beca simply grins, shaking her head as she reaches for something in her pocket. “Not a prank, babe.” 

Shocked eyes lifting from the square velvet box nestled in Beca’s palm, Chloe watches as Beca steps closer and lowers herself on one knee. Her heart trips dangerously and she stops breathing altogether. “Bec, you better not be lying.” 

The way she seems nervous all of the sudden tells Chloe this is definitely not a prank. “Chloe--” 

“Yes,” Chloe croaks out, tears pooling in her eyes as her head bobs up and down in a frantic nod. 

Beca’s chuckle comes out strained as she blinks back the moisture in her own eyes. “Dude, let me ask the question at least.” 

“Sorry.” Chloe clamps her lips together and squeezes Beca’s hand to wordlessly let her know she may keep going. 

“Chloe,” Beca repeats, her voice wavering slightly. “This year has been weird as fuck, and the most challenging one yet, but despite everything, I had a near constant smile on my face because of you. You’re my best friend, and the most beautiful person I know, inside and out.” She sucks in a deep breath through her nose, letting go of Chloe’s hand to open the box. Chloe gasps softly at the sight of a simple, yet elegant oval cut diamond set on a rose gold band. “Will you make me the happiest person on earth by accepting to become my wife?” 

“Yes.” She tugs on Beca’s hand, capturing her lips in a searing kiss as soon as she straightens. “I love you so much.” 

Beca grins against her mouth, backing away just enough to seek out Chloe’s eyes. “I love you, too.” 

As she stands there basking in this new, overwhelming wave of feelings, Chloe decides that 2020 wasn’t that bad, after all. 

#bechloe #bechloe fic #chloe beale #beca mitchell

[songofsaraneth]

an incomplete list of the Bullshit ive gone through this year (2021 only), for personal edification:

I am in grad school trying to do research as well as TA a lab class during a global pandemic

My car is broken into in late February outside of my apartment. $1700+ of my backpacking/camping gear and personal items were stolen from it. Ironically they did not find the $20 cash I had. 

Car battery begins mysterious dying if left overnight and have to call for rescue from AAA 4 separate times over the course of March. I suspect it is related to being broken into but can’t prove it without a mechanic’s diagnostics.

First mechanic I bring my car to does nothing for the entire MONTH they have it, except break my air conditioning of all things. I live in a desert. It is now 90º every day. At one point they call me to say they can’t get the back doors to open. I walk 2 miles back to them from campus and demonstrate how the automatic doors work on a 2005 minivan. I begin to have regrets about my mechanic choice but the sunk fallacy cost keeps me there for several weeks.

Mid march I also wake up one day to severe jaw pain/a weird “loose” feeling, like my mouth is slanting sideways. It is midterms and I do not have time for this, so I take a lot of ibuprofen and eat soup for a week. After 3 days I shove pillows and blankets around my face one night to keep my jaw aligned and when I wake up the next morning it is severely tight instead of loose, and I have to carefully stretch it open whenever I leave my mouth closed for more than an hour. I guess I just have TMJ now.

At this point I am walking everywhere until bike supplies arrive to fix my flat tire since the bike store is too far away to walk to; including walking back and forth to campus since I can only bring 2-4 out of 8 students into the lab spaces at a time and so effectively have to run each weekly lab 2-4 times per week; as well as going back and forth for greenhouse experiment monitoring/helping undergrads on our NASA contest project

Early April I go to the dentist for a crown on one of my back molars, which I must pay for out of pocket because my new dental insurance purchased when I moved last September has a 1-year waiting period and so will not cover it ($1200). Stretching my jaw open so far for the procedure reignites my new TMJ back to high pain levels.

While still waiting on car in mid-April I have a severe averse reaction to the second dose of the Covid19 vaccine, resulting in painful ulceration of all the soft tissues in my body (mouth, stomach, genitals). It is a very bad time for 3 days and I book an urgent care appointment for the first time ever.

Urgent Care nurse-practitioner does not believe me when I describe what’s happening, and misdiagnoses me with herpes.

I am still biking everywhere but now I’m extra mad and in pain about it so take car back from mechanic so I can get groceries etc. I make an appointment with the dealership but it will be a week until they can take it. In the meanwhile I have to drive it every 8 hours so it won’t die which means getting up at 2am to drive it for 20 minutes in the middle of the night so it will still turn on in the morning. 

I have a terrible reaction to the numbing cream given to me for the painful open sores over my body, because of a lifelong mint sensitivity, resulting in an even greater amount of pain

The dealership can fix my car over the following week but its $1800 and now insurance isn’t sure they want to cover it after all

Herpes test comes back negative and nurse apologizes profusely and recommends a non-mint OTC numbing cream alternative that works (yay) and a numbing spray that does not work because it turned out to use an alcohol based propellant which should not be combined with open wounds esp on the genitals (ouch ouch ouch). I try to tell the nurse why I was right about my diagnosis and she was wrong but she still believes it was a latent virus of some other variety and and not an immune response alone, despite the published case studies I have brought to back me up. I decide I have bigger hills I need to die on right now and stop arguing. Sores persist into May but eventually do go down and numbing cream keeps me moderately functioning.

Car is fixed and I can drive again but it takes 2 hours of crying on the phone to my insurance company for them to agree to cover the cost of repair

I make a primary care appointment for the first time in years so I can have a doctor in this state if something like this happens to me again, in June I do intake/bloodwork/set up appointments to check out some other issues ive been having

Grad school finals happen which i wont get into but Yeah. Finals stress triggers another outbreak of canker sores, but mostly clustered in my mouth and only 2 on my vulva rather than 8-12. I eat only soup for another week. 

I get a referral to the local mental health clinic and call about setting up an appointment for an ADHD evaluation. They tell me to download and send in some paperwork and they will call when they have available appointments

I am supposed to be doing all my labwork over the summer but the committee member I need escapes my clutches and we don’t manage to set up a meeting to plan it out/for him to explain the protocols until late June

Bloodwork shows I am critically low in vitamin b12 and low in D, which may explain some of why I am so tired all the time

Ultrasound shows a 1.8cm mass in the adnexa near my left ovary. There are several options for what it can be (folicular cyst, other kind of cyst, tumor, ectopic pregnancy i nearly laugh at my Dr and reassure her the last one is not possible if nothing else). It may go away on its own or it may not. Follow up scan in 2 months

I remember I was supposed to email forms to the mental health clinic and finally send those in mid July. It seems cruel to make me be the one to remember this considering I am calling about a formal ADHD diagnosis.

I also finally pin everyone relating to my labwork down and have a follow up meeting + make a list of what we need to order, but the staff who place orders are on vacation and when they get back several reagents are backordered

I have my follow-up ultrasound. The tech takes lots of photos which indicates the mass is still present, but I won’t know any details until my next PCP appointment when they send over the analysis to her in mid-August

Beginning of August the reagents I need for the first steps of the process arrive exactly 1 day before I leave town for a wedding and the lab manager is about to leave town for the entire next week

After the wedding, severe thunderstorms and tornados trap me in Chicago for 4 extra days. I spend a lot of time at the airport or on my way between the airport and my parents house. A facebook friend gets video of the funnel clouds which at least gives me something to sadly email my advisor and committee members when I have to join our planning meeting from my gate at O’Hare

I lose my drivers license at the security checkpoint on my last trip through the airport and don’t realize until I am boarding the plane because of course that is happening to me now

On the shuttle from El Paso back to Las Cruces after this ordeal the driver stops and picks up a box labeled HUMAN BLOOD and puts it in the trunk and i am too tired to care anymore

I stay up all night making the world’s most pitiful r graphs for my meeting the next morning and everyone takes pity on me and does not call out how useless they are

I spend the weekend trying to motivate myself to actually go into the lab and start my procedures, and fail to leave my apartment. This reminds me it has now been a month (Aug 15th) since I sent in my paperwork and the mental health clinic has still not called me back about up an appointment

I get overwhelmed with Everything and make this list

So that’s where I’m at at the moment. And this doesn’t even include anything from 2020 thats just been continuous like, y’know, a global pandemic and having a bad breakup of a 4 year relationship and moving to a new city where I know no one for grad school etc. I feel like I’m falling apart/unable to do all the shit I need to right now but you know what? Actually its been a really bad time and maybe falling apart a little is justified ;_; 

#ramblings #wharglbargle #like Damn its been a Time and i need to cry about it i guess #negativity //

[emmy-writes-sometimes]

blurb with chris x daughter!reader where she burning herself out to get through school assignments and ends up with a trip to the hospital? dad!chris cheering on her and telling her it's okay?

“You’re still up?” Your dad asked curiously, raising an eyebrow when he saw you at your desk. You had changed from your school clothes into your pajamas, but you had no intention of going to sleep soon. You still had four more assignments to get through, one of which was a set of notes on an APUSH chapter that would take you at least two hours to finish. So you were pulling another all-nighter, your third of the week. This was the first time you’d gotten caught, though. Usually your dad went to bed early, but since your school had moved online and he wasn’t shooting anymore he’d been staying up a little later. 

“Yeah, I still have some homework,” you said casually. 

“Okay, don’t stay up too late. I don’t want you to get sick because you’re not sleeping,” he said. “I can’t believe you have this much work in the middle of a pandemic.”

“Well, I’m trying not to fail all of these classes,” you said. Your dad sighed. 

“I know. You’re doing good. Just make sure you get some sleep. Don’t be afraid to skip a class or two.” You nodded, even though you definitely weren’t going to do that, and he squeezed your shoulder before shutting the door. You took the opportunity to move downstairs to the couch, since it was more comfortable than your desk, and started doing your work again. 

You only thought to retire when you heard one of the doors open upstairs. It was Scott, getting ready for his morning run with Dodger, you realized when you looked at the clock. It was six AM. Your dad would kill you if he saw you didn’t go to bed, and by the look Scott gave you when you started to pack up your things, he might kill you too. 

“Hey,” you said nervously.

“You didn’t go to bed, did you?” He asked you. “Don’t lie to me.” 

“No,” you replied. “I just have a lot of work to do.” Scott sighed as he looked for his armband before finding it on the coffee table. 

“You’d better get your ass upstairs before your dad figures it out because if he asks, I’ll tell him the truth. You have to take care of yourself, kid. Getting into UCLA isn’t everything.” You sighed at the mention of your dream school. Scott nudged you before walking over to the door to get Dodger’s harness, watching you pack up your things and bring them up the stairs. You got to your room and decided to shower, so you changed into your robe and got in. 

You started feeling faint as soon as the water turned on, like the heat was sucking all of the life out of you. Honestly, it kind of was. You kept showering but progressively felt worse, and by the time you were done your vision was hazy and your entire body was kind of just... numb. You looked down as you walked back to your room, making sure that yep, your feet were moving. They just felt heavy. You pulled another set of pajamas on, noticing that your head felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. You started to cross the room to go to your bed, but everything went dark before you could. You felt yourself hitting the floor, but it didn’t hurt. It didn’t feel like anything. It just felt like you were going to sleep. Because you were just tired, right? 

“Hey, honey, you want some-” You heard your dad’s voice, but you couldn’t react. You felt like you were asleep, even though you knew you weren’t. “Honey?” Your dad walked over to you and shook you, trying to get you to wake up. 

“Scott!” He called loudly a second later as the front door downstairs opened. “Scott, get up here, now!” You heard Scott come up the stairs and walk into your room, too. 

“Holy shit, what happened?” Scott asked. “She was perfectly fine when I left her.”

“She was awake?” “Yeah, I told her I wouldn’t tell you unless something happened and I guess something happened. I’ll go get the car, we should probably get her to the ER.” Your dad shook you, but you didn’t answer. You couldn't. You eventually just let out a whimpering noise when he picked you up. At least you were dressed, you thought, as your dad carried you down the stairs. 

You woke up again when you were in the hospital. They’d taken you to the children’s hospital close to the house because the walls were trimmed with zoo animals. You could see your dad sitting in the corner of the room, but Scott was nowhere to be found. Your dad must have heard you wake up, and he saw that you had an IV in the same time you started feeling it in your arm. 

“Don’t mess with that,” your dad said. 

“What time is it?” You asked. “I have to get to class.” Your dad sighed. 

“You’re not going to class, sweetheart. The nurse told me you were extremely sleep deprived. She said you haven’t eaten, either. And you’re dehydrated. What do you have to say for yourself?” You could tell that he wasn’t coming from a place of anger. He was just concerned. And you shrugged, playing with the end of a blanket they’d taken from the couch. 

“Where’s Scott?” You asked.

“He’s at the registration desk. They want to keep you for at least the rest of the afternoon until they can make you eat and get some fluids in you. You never answered my question.” You refused to look at him, knowing that he was getting irritated. “I’m just trying to do good in school. They’re just giving me a lot of work ad I want to make sure it’s done, so...” 

“We’ve talked about this before. You can’t possibly do everything they give you perfectly and you don’t need to try to do it perfectly. All you’re doing is homework and look where it got you. You need to take care of yourself.”

“Fine. I guess.”

“You’re going great, you really are. But you can take a step back, too. You don’t have to be perfect all the time.”

“But I wanna get into a good...”

“College, I know. And you will. Don’t sweat it.” You started to feel fuzzy again and stopped fighting it when your dad pulled the blanket up. “Alright. You’re tired. Get some sleep and we’ll talk later.” You nodded and turned onto your side. You knew you screwed up. You knew you owed him a big apology for scaring him half to death. But first, you decided, sleep.  

#chris evans x daughter!reader #chris evans blurb #emmy's blurbs and drabbles

[all-hail-the-witcher]

so everyone. let me spin you a yarn of a tale you shan't soon forget. i am now dating my best friend. 

and when i say dating, i mean Fake Dating. 

saph, you might be saying, why the fuck are you doing this? to which i say, my best friend can be a bit of a ding dong sometimes and (despite her being a lesbian) she decided to date this asshole dude for a week during her freshmen year of college (we are now sophomores) which would be bad enough, except that later on she realized he’d also been an Orange President Supporter. said asshole is now trying to get back together with her and has been for some time. i dragged her to the post office last weekend and she complained about it to me. and me, like the absolute genius i am, said “hm. why dont you just tell them that youre dating me?”

now, yes, this is probably a bad idea but we didnt really have too many options. but it could work because:

1. her college friends dont know me and we have certainly never met 2. everyone in high school thought the two of us were dating anyway so it won't be that hard to convince people 3. we are both doing the semester online again cause Pandemic so it'll be easy to pull off 4. she already had a crush on me in middle school so that ship has already sailed 5. i write fan fiction so i can probably make it believable.  6. ive fake dated at least 4 people with varying degrees of success.

these greatly outweigh the negatives which are:

1. I've been repressing a sexuality crisis for years and could potentially fall in love with her  2. people from high school will think we are actually together (because this is going to rely heavily on social media) and start rumors and it'll eventually get back to our parents somehow

but you know that probably won't happen. stay tuned.

#the great fake dating scheme #saph screams #help me please

[rant-2-me]

My mental state has just worsened over the days, though I'm not sure why, and I just feel so unmotivated and lacking any energy to practice any self care other than napping, and also feel anxious because I'm not studying enough.. feel like I'm just 1/4th assing my responsibilities.. And when someone asks me how I'm doing, sometimes I blurt out that I'm not fine, and the guilt I feel afterwards for making them worry, so I find myself withdrawing from initiating conversation with them, even though I really want to, and this makes them worry about me more.. I just don't know anything anymore, everything feels too much, yet I can't rant in a clear conscience without feeling guilty for bothering them, and thinking how I don't deserve to complain because they have had so much worse (yes I know pain is relative, but I feel so horrible, like a whiny child, who doesn't know how to be content with her blessings)......

Sorry I know it's a lot.. feel free to delete it if it's triggering or making you uncomfortable in any way... I just needed to get it out..

My lovely nonnie, im so, so glad you sent this ask. and got it all out of your system. yeah this sounds cheesy but like ive been there, with not knowing how to reach out—im proud you had the courage to send this ask. girlboss vibes.

also this ask took a while to answer and im so so sorry about that, but I didnt want to do anything less than the best for you, so let's just jump right in <[:)

Lacking motivation, god I've been there, but doing self care is super super important so here is a how-to, hon.

How to do selfcare when you’re not motivated to:

1. Be a little “gross.”

Gross is in quotes because it’s so subjective, but you undoubtedly have a few behaviors you consider kind of gross regardless. Now’s the time to do them without judgment. For me, that’s meant showering less, eating weird food combos (sometimes in bed), and letting my brows and mustache grow magnificently unruly. For you, it could mean doing something you normally judge yourself for or cutting back on activities you only do for the benefit of others. Now is not the time to allow “socially acceptable” behaviors to rule you.

2. Eat whatever the hell you want.

This should be a rule always, but I’m not going to pretend there aren’t societal, social, and personal pressures that go into why we eat what we eat. Try to shut down the voice that judges or polices what you’re eating right now. We’re in the middle of a goddamn pandemic. If dinner has to be some slices of cheese and deli meat eaten in front of the open fridge, so be it. If you have a lot of cravings and are snacking more than you normally would, cool. If pre-pandemic you decided you were going to stick to a certain meal plan and it’s just not happening anymore? Don’t beat yourself up.

Yes, what we eat is connected to our mental health, and I don’t want to discount that—but if the stress of eating healthfully is making you feel like crap anyway, whether that’s because you can’t fathom cooking or don’t have the means to shop for certain foods during isolation, just eat the sleeve of Oreos and try again another day. It’s okay.

3. And wear whatever you want.

Or, more realistically, wear whatever you can. Even if it means wearing the same ratty sweatpants for a whole week. Or month. Maybe you started all this out aspiring to get dressed every day to work from home productively, or maybe you have a whole collection of comfortable loungewear you feel guilty for not utilizing. Whatever arbitrary rules and expectations you’ve set for yourself, you can throw them out.

On the other hand, maybe you need to quiet the voice that tells you there’s no point in getting dressed or feeling presentable. If it helps, by all means, play with your look, wear awesome or weird outfits, do your hair and makeup or whatever activity might feel a little silly given your current reality. In the middle of a pandemic, nothing is a waste of time if it makes you feel good.

4. Use shortcuts to avoid creating chores.

In my first week or so of working entirely from home, I was baffled by just how messy my apartment got. How on earth were so many messes piling up when I wasn’t even doing anything but working, sleeping, and eating? I hadn’t realized it, but a lot of my small tidying routines had become casualties to the pandemic. And, it turns out, slacking on the little ways I pick up after myself every day (such as doing the dishes right after I use them) added up quickly.

Instead of forcing myself to stick to the same levels of tidiness that I used to maintain, I’ve found shortcuts. For example, I use paper plates and plastic cutlery when I feel too fatigued to wash dishes so they don’t sit in the sink for days on end. Or I stick to the same two “outfits” to avoid clothes piling up when I’m too depressed to put them away every day. If you can find a small way to go easy on yourself, even if it feels a little wasteful or indulgent or gross, it’s okay to tap into those shortcuts right now.

5. Be kind to yourself if your place is messy or dirty.

I won’t lie: I’m someone whose space impacts my mental health a lot. Typically, keeping my apartment clean helps keep my mental health in check and letting my apartment get gross makes me feel worse. That’s still true in a lot of ways, but to adapt I’ve been trying to be mindful and accepting of where I’m at. And it’s…helped?

It turns out that taking the pressure off does a lot to mitigate the guilt and some of the other negative mental health effects I usually experience. In practice, it involves a lot of talking to myself. Instead of seeing my apartment turning into a depression cave and immediately thinking, “Oh, God, I need to clean up, this is so disgusting, I’m a monster for living like this, of course I feel depressed,” I go for kindness. I think (or even say out loud because, well, desperate times), “Of course my apartment is a mess right now. I’ll get to it when I get to it. I can handle the mess for now.”

6. Accept your new sleep schedule.

idk anyone whose sleep hasn’t been screwed in some way by all of this. Anxiety, depression, fatigue, pent-up energy from sheltering in place, tech use, new work responsibilities, screwy schedules…pretty much every aspect of our new reality can impact our sleep. Some people are sleeping a lot more, some are sleeping a lot less, and some are cycling through both extremes. Oh, and the temptation of naps! It’s all there.

Trying to maintain a healthy sleep schedule during all of this is a worthy endeavor—and more power to you if you’ve figured out how—but there’s a good chance that it feels impossible.

By “accepting” your new sleep schedule, I don’t mean pretending it doesn’t suck; I mean doing what you can to be gentle on yourself about it. For me, acceptance has looked like watching some comfort tv and reading my favourite books at 2 a.m. instead of staying in bed and anxiety-spiraling about how I can’t sleep. Is it ideal? No way. But I’m not going to waste energy stressing about something I currently can’t control.

7. Give yourself plenty of room to do absolutely nothing.

I’ve given myself permission to do a whole lot of nothing. That includes getting rid of the pressure to be productive and practice self-care, yes, but in a broader sense, it also means not forcing myself to actively “adjust” every day.

Some days, I just need to do nothing but feel my feelings. Or avoid feeling my feelings. Or stare at the ceiling. Give yourself space to do (or not do) whatever you need to.

also, nonnie? my love?

Never feel guilty about telling someone who cares about you when you don’t feel okay.

People who genuinely care about you—and I’m sure they are many—will care if you aren’t feeling good, there are always going to be people who care about you, who want you to be okay, that’s why they ask, why people make rant, why “how are you?” is such a common question.

But if you do need to talk, but you feel like you’ll “burden” people who you do talk to, here’s a guide to ranting.

Guide to ranting:

1. Pick the right person. Someone who’s in the right headspace to listen to you, you could also pick someone who cares about you—if you’re anxiety tells you nobody cares about you, pick someone who “should” care about you in your relationship, e.g: a friend you’ve had for a long time, a friend who’s told a few of their problems, or friend you might not feel close with, but seems very kindhearted and a good listener.

2. Pick the right time to talk to them, so you can have their undivided attention. If they are busy—as most people will be with something—they’ll have a hard time giving you good advice and listening to you. Ask them when they are free, and then ask them:

3. “hey, can we talk? I’m not mad or you or anything, it’s just that I have been not feeling great, and I just want to rant to someone about it.” and “No pressure to say yes, you might have your own stuff to do deal with.” to make sure they are the right person to talk to.

4. It’s ok to test the waters. Start slowly, you don’t have to share everything at once if you don’t want to.

5. You never know how your friend will react to what you say.While you can’t know how they’ll react, just remember that sometimes people’s initial reactions may come from a place of shock, surprise or not knowing what to say. Their initial reaction isn’t always their longerterm reaction, it may just take them a little time to process.

6. Look for ways to take action. Don’t get me wrong, ranting can be amazing for you, but on its own may not solve your problem.

But maybe venting to people isn’t for you. No matter! There are other ways to get out emotions:

Ways to rant without talking to anyone

1. Cry it out— simple and rewarding. When the baggage is just too heavy to carry cry it out. It can help you ease the pressure and ease your mind to think straight after days of holding that frustration in.

2. Work out — easy and fun. tire yourself out and release all the frustration in working out! This is going to be so satisfying for you as you try and punch, kick, balance, lift, and breathe those frustrations away.

3. Clean & rearrange — practical and can be fun. we get frustrated by so many things and one thing that can truly help clear our minds is to have a clean place where we can stay and live for the moment to breathe. Clean your room, rearrange your things and you’ll be surprised by the satisfaction this brings — a signal of a new beginning.

4. Scribble — simple and fun. Make scribbles, doodles, drawings, take a pen or a pencil, and let go. It does not have to be “good” art or professional at all. Just draw whatever comes to heart, sunflowers or clouds or rainbows—anything.

5. Write it down — fun and simple. Let those words out of your head and just live in the moment.

How to fight the lack of motivation.

1. Don't fight the lack of motivation.

If you feel down or unable to muster tons of energy, let it be ok. Be easy on yourself and acknowledge that it's ok to have a dip, especially at this time of the year.

2. Once you have accepted your slump, get to the bottom of it.

Ask yourself, "What is the root cause of this sluggish feeling?" Go deeper than the obvious reasons. Is it related to work? Your personal life? Relationships? It might also just be the weather. Get clear on what areas of your life you're feeling the most resistance.

3. Dig into that area. What is not ideal about this aspect of your life? What would make it better?

Make a list of how you'd like your current situation to improve--and be specific. If you truly can't find a reason to be less than enthusiastic, then accept your feelings and let them pass with time.

4. Take your list of what is missing and go through it.

What is holding you back from being able to create the things that are missing in your life?

5. Get support for creating the life you want.

Do some research and find an expert to help you. Even though they love you, friends and family aren't objective enough, and they tend to give advice that is a reflection of their own life and insecurities.

6. Think of current habits that are contributing to a less-than-ideal life.

Maybe it's fear, laziness, or not having enough confidence. Pick one to focus on.

7. Address this habit over the next 2 months.

They say it takes 28 days to create a new habit, but this varies from person to person. If you focus on it for two months, you are sure to build the neural pathways needed to call it a new way of being.

8. Buy a book, read articles or do some research on this particular behavior or feeling.

Read about the common causes of this habit as well as the proven ways to bust through and work around it.

9. Create a plan around shifting your current habit.

Make sure that changing this habit ultimately helps you move forward in the area of your life that is not ideal. The energy from clarity, awareness and then action will immediately get you feeling more motivated, no matter what.

10. When all else fails: make a list of activities that excite you, and do one of them right now.

Talk to a fun friend, dance around at home, workout, watch a funny YouTube video, tackle something on your to-do list. Accomplishing something will give you a hit of dopamine in your brain. If you're too overwhelmed by your day, sit for five minutes and meditate. Put on some soothing music and breathe.

okay, that's all nonnie, I hope you feel the lust for life in your lungs, please have all my love, i hope this helped, this ask took a while, but it was worth if it helps

and if you need to dont worry to send another ask, if you like spam the inbox!! queen!!!

take care, much love my sweet honey, bye <3

—*putting daisies in your hair as they leave* mod peppermint <[:)

#mod peppermint #ask #anon #rant

[gottlem]

summer fl(in)g. gigi/crystal

a/n i made crystal sad about 3/4 through and im SORRY i was projecting. anyways theres a tiny tiny bit of angst but MOST of this is just dumb gays in l*ve. im still getting used to writing fics so be nice pls !!!! also if u want a pt2 be sure to let me know!

summary: lockdown in summer can be lonely, but Crystal and Gigi make sure they never feel alone. thank god they have good service. (3.8k words)

When lockdown was announced, Crystal wasn’t surprised. The pandemic was taking the world by storm and yeah, it fucking terrified her. But she had to look on the bright side. So that's what she did. Just as the announcement came to an end, Crystal’s phone pinged from her pocket and she smiled to see her friends' names light up on the screen.

JANtastic: well its official

miss cox: Yeah I’m gonna miss u guys!!!

goodegirl: you say that as if u won’t be spending lockdown with jan. i’ll be ALONE thanks for asking

CRYstal: hey i’ll be alone too !!! I’ll text u everyday to keep u company :-))

goodegirl: i’m gonna hold u up to that

And Gigi did hold her up to that. The country was two days into lockdown when Crystal received her first message.

goodegirl: ugh we are how many days into lockdown? And ive already had A MILLION people hit me up with “hows quarantine treating u ;)” i am SICK.

When Crystal read the text, an odd feeling bubbled in her stomach. She told herself it was because she wasn’t used to out-of-the-blue messages from Gigi yet, they just didn’t talk that much, but looking back she admits there was probably (definitely) more to it than that. Of course the girls had already been friends, but Crystal had never found it in herself to speak to Gigi that much because, well, she was intimidatingly gorgeous. They got on well in groups, where Crystal could try to focus her attention on someone who didn’t make her face red every time she looked at her, but she knew if she invited Gigi out by themselves, she would make a fool of herself. It was stupid really, it wasn’t even like she had feelings for her - she was just too pretty, and Crystal didn’t know how to handle herself around someone who looked like they belonged in a vogue magazine. A ping shook her from her thoughts.

goodegirl: like i get that ppl are thirsty rn. i get it. i am too. but is that really the BEST they can come up with?

Crystal needed to reply. But what could she even say to that?

CRYstal: at least u have people trying to hit you up ://

goodegirl: omg what??? ur telling me not ONE person has tried to slide into those dms? they need to get on that! ur a catch

Crystal felt her face flush at the comment. Did Gigi really think she was a catch? Or maybe she’s just being nice? That was probably it. Just friendly banter. 

CRYstal: nope haha! ANYWAYS. hows quarantine treating u ;-)

goodegirl: very funny. bitch.

From then on, the texts flowed easily between the two and Crystal started to ask herself why she hadn’t done this earlier. So what if Gigi was offensively attractive? They clicked so easily - Gigi was smart, quick witted, and didn’t take anything too seriously. So really, she was Crystal's perfect match. As a friend. Platonically. That night, they texted until Crystal was struggling to even keep her eyes open. It was a conversation that felt natural to them, bringing up anything that came into their heads and letting eachother start stupid tangents without fear of judgement. Gigi found Crystal's ability to ramble on about any random subject impossibly endearing, but she wouldn’t admit that out loud. Not yet, anyways.

--

After three days of almost constant texting, Crystal facetimed Gigi for the first time. She picked up within seconds with wide eyes and a grin on her face. 

“Hey you” If Crystal couldn’t see her smile (which she absolutely could) then she could definitely hear it. Gigi’s voice was soft and she hadn’t realised how much she missed it until she was reminded of it. The best thing was that Gigi sounded genuinely happy to speak to Crystal, it made her ecstatic. Crystal had called in the late afternoon, just before the sun had started to set, so she could see golden light shining gently onto Gigi’s features. It left her speechless for a second. How many times was Gigi going to leave her completely unable to reply by merely talking to her? This girl was going to be the death of her. When Crystal finally came to, she managed out a soft, but casual, reply, hoping that she had covered up the embarrassing amount of time it took for her to speak. If Gigi noticed, she didn’t mention it. 

It took them a while to get into the rhythm of actually talking to each other - texts made it easy to think over before you send, and Gigi had never really been one to think before she spoke aloud anyway. She didn’t want to scare Crystal off with how blunt she could be, but after some awkward laughs and stuttered jokes, the pair slowly fell into a rhythm they felt surprisingly comfortable in; they bounced off each other's jokes and soon enough their cheeks hurt from smiling. A few hours into the call, Crystal was sitting comfortably on her bed, her phone propped up with pillows so she and Gigi could still see each other. She caught herself staring again. It started off as small glances that lingered a bit longer than they should, but it was easy to do that and quickly cover it up, especially on facetime. Soon enough, Crystal would completely daze off for minutes, just staring at the girl on her screen. She figured out she really liked looking at Gigi, and Gigi didn’t seem to mind.

Gigi thinks Crystal’s voice is her favourite sound. After about 5 minutes of hearing run on sentences about god knows what, she had already decided she could listen to her talk forever. About anything. She really didn’t care as long as it was Crystal and she was talking to her. As the call progressed into the late hours of the night, the pair had started to get giggly - the tiredness they were feeling was starting to take effect, but it made them anything but sleepy. At 11:56pm, Gigi decided Crystal’s laugh was her second favourite sound. She would sometimes giggle, sometimes she’d shake with silent laughter, but her favourite was when she gave into a full-belly laugh. The kind of laugh that substitutes for a full core workout. That was Gigi’s favourite. 

Crystal was obsessed with Gigi’s smile. It softened Gigi, showed a side of her that Crystal hadn’t been acquainted to previously, but she was so glad she knew now. Gigi could be harsh sometimes, she had learned this years ago and had just accepted it as who Gigi was, but after seeing that damn smile, it was hard to think that Gigi was even capable of hurting a fly. Crystal was quick to realise the mean girl facade (which had only made her scarier to talk to, and somehow more attractive) was just that - a facade. Walls she had built up. Crystal was eager to break them down, and she felt like she was making a good start everytime Gigi smiled like that.

They hung up when Gigi started yawning more than she was talking, she insisted it was just because she was tired, and Crystal wholeheartedly believed her. When Gigi’s face disappeared from her screen, Crystal was still smiling. Her cheeks hurt and she felt whole. She took a deep breath and took in the silence for a moment - she was alone again. She didn’t feel lonely. Despite her ever-growing fatigue, Crystal just couldn’t fall asleep, her head was buzzing with Gigi’s voice, and her laugh, and her smile, and her eyes, and- Crystal was in deep shit. She was all too familiar with the feeling of butterflies manifesting in her stomach, the thoughts of a particular person on her mind constantly. To be completely honest, she hated it. Falling for anyone had never ended well for her, and falling for someone she was already friends with? Even worse. There was no way this would end without somebody getting hurt, and that somebody would probably be Crystal. And yet, being stuck in isolation, she thought the idea of possibly having a girlfriend didn’t sound too bad, but that might have been the lack of human contact talking. 

Gigi let her thoughts wonder as she drifted off into sleep. She wasn’t one to get crushes, but when she fell, she fell hard. And willingly. There was just something about the drama of having such strong feelings for someone, and playing guessing games on how they felt. And by the way Crystal had been staring at her all night, Gigi felt like she was on the right tracks. She liked the way her cheeks would flush if she thought too hard about the girl, or how butterflies would dance around in her stomach, making her feel lighter than a feather. Maybe she was just a hopeless romantic, but she wouldn’t have it any other way. She allowed herself to dream up scenarios of herself and Crystal being together once this whole situation was over. She quite liked how it looked in her head. 

--

As the days passed, Gigi and Crystal found themselves spending more of their waking hours talking to each other over facetime than they did doing anything else. They were both falling quickly, only mildly aware of each other's adoration. It didn’t take very long for the casual flirting to start. Everytime Gigi gave an off-handed compliment about how Crystal sounded “really pretty today” or how her laugh is “the prettiest thing”, the other girl would turn bright red and freeze up. Gigi would tease her about it, which only made her more and more flustered. She thought she’d eventually get used to it, but she never did. Crystal tried to flirt back,really tried,  she wanted more than anything to make Gigi stumble over her words like she does to her so often, but she would always be completely unfazed by every compliment Crystal could think of. Crystal found her ability to keep her composure so easily both irritating and compelling. 

It took Crystal a few days to find something that would finally, finally break Gigi down. Pet names. When she had casually let ‘babe’ slip in the middle of a sentence, she could practically see the breath that got stuck in Gigi’s throat before she started to choke on nothing but air. When Crystal asked if she was ok, she answered with a question.

“Did you just call me babe?”

“Yeah. Is that a problem?” Crystal genuinely wanted to make sure that it was ok, but the comment came off as less of a question, and more as straight up flirting. 

“No. Nope. Not a problem at all. What were we talking about?”

Crystal doesn’t press further, taking pride in being able to make the girl so speechless, and continues what she was saying as if nothing had stopped her in the first place. She watched as Gigi’s blush died down very, very slowly, only to watch it burn up again every time Crystal repeated the pet name. She absolutely adored it. 

“You’re cute when you blush, babe” Gigi made a noise at this. Crystal made a note of that before deciding that this would never get old.

--

Soon enough, the girls were in a comfortable routine - talking every day until one of them would give in to sleep. It was usually Crystal. Gigi would stay on the call for a bit, just to listen to the girl’s breathing, it provided an unexpected comfort to her. Plus Crystal was adorable when she slept. The routine was broken one day about a month into the lockdown, though nobody was really paying attention to what day it was anyway. Gigi had been awake for no more than an hour when she started to miss Crystal, so she gave her a call. Crystal didn’t pick up. Gigi called again, just in case Crystal had her phone on silent, but she was met with no answer. Instead, she was sent a text, a text which really didn’t explain anything. At all.

CRYstal: hey !!! sorry can’t pick up rn but i promise u i will call in like an hour or two ???? speak to u soon love !!!! <3

It was unusual for Crystal to miss out on a call - she was usually the one to be ringing Gigi. What could she even be doing? Gigi needed a distraction, something to pass the time instead of sitting and waiting. That was when she realised she hadn’t worn any makeup in weeks, so she sat herself down and started on a full face - the process of doing her makeup always calmed her down, so it was a welcome distraction. Just as she finished, her phone began ringing. She didn’t have to check to see who it was. 

“Hi! Sorry I didn’t answer before I was kinda busy” Gigi was speechless. A pixelated Crystal was beaming at her from her phone screen. And she had green hair now. This is why she didn’t pick up? The bitch was dyeing her hair? It did look really pretty though. Like, really, really pretty.

“Quarantines really getting to you that much huh?” Gigi decided against gushing about Crystal’s new hair - that would be giving her what she wanted.

“Do you like it?” She loved it. Adored it. 

“It’s nice” 

“That’s all you’re going to say?”

“Needy are we?” That shut her up. She changed the topic in an instant. 

“So... you look really pretty today!”

That night, the girls fell back into their easy routine. It had been hours since she first saw it, but Gigi couldn’t keep her eyes off of Crystal and her new look. It really suited her. It just felt so utterly Crystal. The green haired girl was in the middle of a long rant about how One DIrection “are definitely planning a reunion really really soon” when Gigi had to stop her.

“I fucking love your hair, Crys” She blushed at the out-of-the-blue compliment.

“Really? I thought it was just nice?” Gigi shook her head.

“I was teasing, of course I love it. It suits you so much, you look beautiful” She was smiling ear to ear. Crystal loved it when Gigi gushed over her like this. It made her feel like there could be something there, like this was more than friends bored in quarantine.

“Thanks,” Crystal paused for just a moment before her face lit up “Oh my God, you should do something to your hair too!” Gigi hated that idea, and shook her head affectionately at the girl's adorable excitement. She felt slightly bad when she told her that she would be caught dead before doing anything to her hair - she loved the deep brown colour it had always been, and was happy with how the length framed her face. Crystal however, was incessant. Gigi was surprised when she found herself telling Crystal that she’d “think about” changing her hair up. 

Saying this was a huge mistake. Crystal reminded her every other hour that she had to dye it or cut it or just do something, and it drove Gigi insane. It took her all but two days to finally cave in - it irked her that Crystal had this much power over her. She wanted to do something shocking, something that would shut Crystal up about her damn hair for good. So she shaved it. 

She did it when Crystal fell asleep after a particularly heated debate about her hair (the second of the night) and Gigi hung up to get to work on it. To call it an impulse decision wasn’t perhaps the most accurate, seeing as though she had been bugged about it for a solid 48 hours, but waking up that morning, Gigi hadn’t expected that all her hair would be gone by the time she went to sleep. Once she had finally bitten the bullet, it took her an hour to admit that she actually kind of liked the look - plus it was fun to touch. 

When Crystal called her that morning, Gigi took a moment to herself before answering. She hadn’t told her about the change in her appearance and hoped she would like it, or at least be pleased that Gigi finally listened to her. She took a breath and picked up, feigning confidence with a casual “morning!”. She watched Crystal’s eyes go wide and her hands cover her mouth. Gigi acted oblivious.

“What's up? Is there someone behind me or something?” She looked at her screen and patiently waited until Crystal composed herself - she was used to her staring anyway. When Crystal finally spoke, she was practically squealing out a string of compliments. Apparently, she loved it. 

“Are you keeping it like that? Please say you’re keeping it like that, it's so hot” Gigi wasn’t sure if she would grow it out, but after Crystal had said that, it was an easy decision.

“I guess I’ll keep it then. Just for you”

--

Crystal loved being so open with Gigi, and she really appreciated how close they had gotten during lockdown - but she really just needed today off. She had woken up one morning with a feeling of dread that she couldn’t quite place, and a persistent headache. This was going to be a bad day, but she was used to bad days. She ignored Gigi’s calls and sent no follow up text. She could speak to Gigi later. Right now, she was just going to go back to sleep. 

So that's what she did. She woke up in the late afternoon and finally dragged herself out of bed to make some food in the evening. When she got back to the safety of her bed, she was still tired. And she kind of felt like crying. So she cried. Sometimes, especially on bad days, Crystal’s mind could get the best of her, she had learned to just let herself get all her feelings out when she got like this - bottling them up had only ever made them worse. This was when Gigi called for the millionth time that day, her texts had become concerned, then angry, then concerned again. Crystal felt like she owed an explanation, so with bloodshot eyes and a puffy red face, Crystal finally picked up.

“Ugh finally! You haven’t spoken to me all day I- what’s wrong?” Crystal felt a ping of guilt at Gigi’s initial response to her answering. Had she really kept her waiting all day? It felt silly, like an unreasonable excuse, but deep down Crystal knew what was good for her. She also didn’t know how to answer Gigi’s question. She was starting to regret picking up, having Gigi see her like this - god, she must have looked a mess.

“I’m sorry I shouldn’t have picked up. I'm probably bringing the mood down” She saw Gigi’s features become impossibly softer at that.

“Hey, no, it's ok. We don’t have to talk about it, but we can if you want to. But you’re not hanging up. And neither am I. If it means I sit in complete silence with you for the next few hours then so be it” 

This was when Crystal knew Gigi was a keeper. Whether whatever they had going on would continue, or whether they would return to strictly just friends, Gigi was someone she needed to keep in her life. They eventually started talking, first it was about how Gigi’s day went - Crystal didn’t feel like speaking much, but once she warmed up to seeing that all-familiar smile, she felt comfortable enough to start to open up. They talked for hours. Crystal cried. Gigi cried (though not as much). 

“I just wish I could be there to help, or at least give you a hug or something, god this sucks” Crystal saw this as an opportunity to lighten the mood.

“As if you would settle for just a hug” Crystal winked pitifully and Gigi laughed, but didn’t disagree. 

Of course one chat didn’t fix Crystal’s problems, but at least now she had someone in her corner - and that was half the battle.

--

It didn’t take the pair very long to fall back into their rhythm, feeling closer and more comfortable with each other, their feelings getting stronger as each day passed on. Crystal found herself falling back into the habit of sitting silent, and admiring the girl on her screen.

“You’re staring.” Gigi told her. Crystal hummened in agreement.

“You’re pretty”

It was normal for the pair to bounce words like pretty, and beautiful, and gorgeous between them. It was as if they both knew exactly how the other felt - like it was completely unspoken and yet so obvious. And maybe it was.

Two months into lockdown, Gigi was really starting to miss physical contact - she was starting to feel a thrill when she made eye contact with strangers on her way to her weekly shop, she was getting desperate. It was brought up with Crystal.

“I just miss human contact. I want to hold a hand. I want someone to hug me. I want a kiss! Oh my god I miss kissing.” Crystal felt herself blushing at the mention of kissing (kissing Gigi, nonetheless). She would give anything to see Gigi right now, to be close to her.

“When this is over, I’ll kiss you, don’t even worry about it” Crystal was only half joking. GIgi went red, but tried to act as if the thought of Crystal kissing her didn’t phase her at all.

“Oh will you now?”

“I’m not kidding”

“Well. I’d very much like that Miss Methyd” Gigi gave in, she refused to play hard to get with someone who she had fallen so hard for. She just hoped Crystal would stick to her word.

--

Summer was halfway through when lockdown was lifted. The instant the announcement was made, Crystal phone pinged - it wasJan, and she suddenly felt a wave of deja vu from when the lockdown started.

JANtastic: GUYSSSSSS i’ve missed you so much PLEASE say y’all are free to meet? Like right now?!?! 

JANtatsic: Jackie’s already with me so, she’s down too :))

CRYstal: i’ve missed you too !!! i’m free to meet!

goodegirl: me too !!

The group reunited within an hour, Crystal shed some happy tears, and Gigi laughed as she wiped them for her. It was nice to be with her, to be able to stand next to each other. But it also felt odd - like something had shifted now that they were right in front of each other. So for the rest of summer, the girls shared lingering glances and awkward smiles, too scared to make an official move.

#this took so long to write #hope u liked it #there will be a part 2 maybe !!! #pls dont let this flop #just two gays in l*ve #so fluffy #also i cant flirt so i cant write flirting #sorry bout it #can be read as w/w or m/m depending on how much u squint #gigi goode #crystal methyd #jackie cox #jan sport #just jan #gigi x crystal #jan x jackie #lesbian au

[sometimeshipper]

Reading the Signs (A Dair Fanfic)

i. 

It’s only in the middle of the pandemic that Blair realizes she is in love with Dan.

Shortly before the whole world is plunged into chaos, Blair’s world is plunged into it as Dan and Chuck confront her with an ultimatum, giving her weeks to decide on who she really wants.

The irony doesn’t escape her that this is the only time she’s ever seen Dan and Chuck agreeing on something.

The irony doesn’t escape her that she once judged Serena for doing the same things she is doing now - vacillating between two boys, giving them the faint hope that her heart belongs to one of them. 

The irony doesn’t escape her that one of the boys used to be Serena’s.

Irony doesn’t seem to escape her these days.

ii.

The morning after the confrontation doesn’t leave her with a clear head.

Dan texts her, apologizing. He says that it isn’t fair for her to force her to choose, that he is willing to wait for however long it takes. 

Chuck doesn’t text her. She receives a notification from Gossip Girl, saying he has flown to Monte Carlo or Sao Paolo. She’s not sure. She doesn’t really care.

That should have been the first sign.

iii. 

For once, she is content to tuck herself away at home, faced with the enormity of everything. She volunteers her time to relief efforts, even. For the first time, she is faced with the idea of her mortality.

Dan messages her everyday, graciously skirting the elephant in the room.

He sends her poetry - Cummings (Seriously, Humphrey? He’s a sap!), Neruda (I get the message - you love me!), and Emerson (God, Humphrey, I always knew you were an old man.) 

He asks for her opinion on his Contemporary Literature paper, hoping that he did not go too far in his critique of self-reflexivity as escapism. (The irony doesn’t escape her here, either, as she thinks of Inside, his diary-turned-debut-into-the-literary-world.) 

He even sends her memes. 

Chuck texts her too. He sends photos of all the places he’ll take her, if she chooses him. He promises that he’ll even go to museums with her.

He tells her about his plans for Bass Empire and how she would fit into them.

Sometimes, he even calls, his voice cracking, telling her how alone he felt as a child and how he never wants to be alone again.

It would be terribly sweet if she hadn’t already experienced something else.

That should have been the second sign.

iv. 

It’s the eve of her 24th birthday and she spends it alone, for the first time. Both sets of parents are waiting out the crisis in Paris, pleading with her to join them.

She refuses, in the meantime, secretly hoping that when she flies there, she’ll have someone to join her.

Serena and Nate call her from Vietnam, signal crackling, but their happiness shining through. She smiles. She can’t believe she used to be resentful of their easy love. She feels magnanimous. 

Dorota insists on staying over, but Blair shoos her surrogate mother away, telling her to take care of Vanya and their children. 

Uncharacteristic acts of kindness have been coming more naturally to her these days.

She wakes up to a small package on her bedside table, a handful of peonies, and a note. 

“Blair,

This is for you to share the beauty within you, not for anyone else, but for yourself. Your intelligence, tenacity, and confidence have always floored me, and I could think of no better way to show you that.

Happy birthday. I miss you. 

- Dan” 

It is a journal. She smiles and heads her way down for a leisurely breakfast, eager to start jotting things down.

She is greeted with a dining room full of Ecuadorian roses, a necklace from Tiffany’s and also a note, this time from Chuck.

“This is only the beginning of a lifetime of choosing you. 

- Chuck” 

She is strangely unmoved. 

That should have been the third sign.

v.

It’s on an ordinary day in the midst of the pandemic that she realizes she is in love with Dan.

Here too, the irony doesn’t escape her.

She is bogged down by the ordinary these days, realizing how small she is, compared to just.... everything. She is Blair Waldorf, she knows, but she is also.... just Blair Waldorf. 

She writes, just as she has been doing since her birthday. 

She writes and she writes and she writes, and she feels like herself again - beautiful, intelligent, tenacious, and confident. Blair.

She writes and she writes, and she writes, and she realizes she is seen.

She writes, and she writes, and she writes, but this time, it’s a note.

“For once, I don’t have witty repartee. Just these words: I love you.”

She slips it in between the pages of her journal and sends them over to Brooklyn.

And she waits.

#dair #dan humphrey #blair waldorf #dare to dair #gossip girl #pandemic fiction #fanfiction #fanfic #gossip girl fanfic #gossip girl fanfiction #dair fanfiction #dair fanfic #dair fic

[penzyroamin]

Food and sharing food continues to be a recurring motif in “tied together”. What was your thought process around that? How do you see that connecting to some of the central themes and concepts in the story as a whole? (And, if you would like to go into this, how do you see food and sharing food playing out in the messy au where David will also be cooking but in a completely different context/power dynamic?)

HAHAHAHA! I CAN FINALLY TALK ABT THIS WITHOUT SEEMING LIKE F SCOTT FITZGERALD BEGGING PEOPLE TO KNOW WHAT THE GREAT GATSBY WAS!!!!!

okay. im calm now.

so for a couple years now i have deeply and secretly loved the concept of food as a symbol for community. i didnt use it in fic for a long time for a variety of reasons. one, it just never really felt right. two, my love of this symbol is very much connected to my southern-ness, and while im sure many people have just as strong, if not stronger connections between food and community, i didnt really know if people reading my stuff would Get It or connect w it.

i finally decided to use it for tied together for two reasons. first, this is my most definitively southern fic. ive written other fics with Humid Small Town Energy but this is my first that i really let myself go “fuck it. crawfish boils. hurricanes. middle aged women with crushes on jim cantore.” as such, it felt like if i was going to go for this symbol at any point, it needed to be with this fic. the second is that due to Pandemic and also living across the country from the majority of the family i grew up with, i have been kind of starved of community experiences as of late. i wrote tied together entirely during a period when i havent spent time with anyone besides my immediate family, so i was really thinking about community and the nature of it and how fucking badly i wanna have a massive meal with people and hence... this symbol

with the background of my decision to include it covered, let’s get into how it appears in tied together!!

in chapter one, the majority of food’s appearances are... impersonal, if that makes sense? its all premade, whether its drive-through stuff, tv dinners, etc etc, and he doesnt know the person who made it. its also worth pointing out that around the time jack and his mom stop sharing meals is the point they become disconnected from each other. essentially, that’s the disconnect from community throughout jack’s early life

davey comes around and it. is pretty obvious from the start that, through this symbol, he is the Literal Embodiment Of Connection To The People Around Him. food was a really key way for me to show just how connected he is to his community-- he’s constantly cooking for other people, working for battalion, helping people get good food, contributing recipes to little cookbooks. the end chapter also nods to this in the scene w his family where esther mentions he made her teach him to cook for a group, and the conversation afterwards where he mentions that he wouldn’t be comfortable with people paying him to make them food or making food for strangers. cooking for other people is essentially davey’s way of nurturing the community around him and becoming closer with people, so to make food in an impersonal way goes against everything he knows about food and sharing it. the interactions he has through food represent the larger relationships and interactions he has within his community. juxtaposed to jack, he’s built this little world around him filled with people that he loves and cares for, even if that does lay a heavy burden on him at points. if i ever write something delving deeper into davey in this au, i’ll elaborate further-- but, essentially, davey’s role as The Provider of food for the people around him was a real stand-in for the way that he feels both within his family and his larger community.

think of it this way-- in all the scenes we see with davey cooking at a large event-- i.e., the crawfish boil-- he’s always pushed off to the side by that. there’s usually someone talking to him or checking in on the food, but he’s not able to be engaged in the larger hubbub and discussion of the party because he’s busy. it’s in providing food for people and sharing that with him that he gets fulfillment out of the experience. in his family, we see that davey is a little bit isolated. he was growing up at the exact time when mayer’s alcoholism was getting worse and hitting its peak, and he left before mayer ever really managed to get very far into recovery. his time in their house, essentially, was a lot of heavy lifting and few moments of solidarity and joy. he loves his family, of course, it’s just a very labor-intensive process. and then, of course, he has a similar experience to what a lot of southern marginalized people feel-- this intense need to care for and better your community when your community very frequently doesn’t care for you. davey has absolutely zero capacity for apathy in this au, and it definitely shines through with this whole dynamic. he works SO HARD to care for people, even if he isnt always able to fully enjoy being around them and being loved by them

and then, of course, you have the way davey and jack interact through this motif-- davey teaches jack how to cook, gives him a cookbook, invites him over for meals, etc etc. sharing that with him essentially represents welcoming jack into his community as a whole, and giving him a place there. jack mentions davey “clearing a spot at the table” for him, and that’s both literal and figurative.

additionally, while davey uses food as a way to bring jack into his community, jack also makes davey a little less isolated. in a lot of the scenes in chapter 5, theyre cooking together, in a very domestic, symbiotic sort of way. i wanted this to demonstrate how jack relieves some of the burden davey puts on himself and exists sort of Within davey’s bubble rather than just reaping the benefits

i also wanted to illustrate with this how jack repairing his relationship w food keys into this. obviously we have the disconnect that he has early on where his unfamiliarity w what he eats and who makes it represents a larger disconnect between him and the people around him, but jack does also absolutely use food as a coping mechanism and a crutch. not to get, again, TOTALLY gatsby here, but he’s chasing that sense of community and belonging and understanding in the wrong places. it’s once he begins to actually make food for himself and understand the process of it and be able to carry something through to completion that he’s able to actually Enjoy food, yknow? i wanted that to mirror the way throughout the earlier parts of his life that he tried to kind of slap up temporary relationships and make do with that. 

side note about jack and food: jack has undiagnosed adhd (and some vague comorbidities rip) in this au, and his experiences with it i preeeetttty heavily lifted from my life and my special brand of fucked in the head. (for those of you who don’t know, carb and sugar cravings are a symptom of adhd, hence why food is often a coping mechanism for us fhskdhs). cooking and baking are processes that have REALLY helped me get a handle on myself-- it gives me an outlet for movement and stimulation, and its something that i can carry through till the end and get an actual end product that i can recognize and benefit from. plus, real time consequences if i let something do whatever for ten more minutes! so thats another element i added to the way that jack builds healthier coping mechanisms over time-- he moves away from food as a crutch and instead develops a new form of CREATING that gives him an outlet and a feeling of productivity

those are some Vague thoughts. i will probably elaborate in the future!

now, for the messy au, rather than food symbolizing community, i chose to have it represent vulnerability.

a quick review: jack married rich, and davey is jack’s new wife’s cook. on his wife, dorothy’s part, i wanted this to shine through in this squeaky clean, pristine image that a lot of rich people try to craft. she never cooks for herself, never pays much attention to davey, never draws attention to him. in essence, she is creating as few weak spots as possible-- she refuses to be vulnerable to the people and the society around her.

with davey, however, his and his family’s livelihood depends on him cooking for this woman, and later for her and her husband. he’s forced into this position of extreme vulnerability and weakness by his financial situation, and cant really regain his sense of privacy or self because of that. its also a point in this story that he has very little time or wherewithal to cook for his FAMILY. so, his job forces him into a vulnerable situation with complete strangers who hold an upper hand over him but denies him the opportunity to be vulnerable with his own family, only reinforcing this idea that he is the protector and the provider and as such cannot have weak spots and cannot, under any circumstances, break

it also really highlights the difference between jack’s relationship with his wife vs with davey and smalls-- all the scenes of he and dorothy eating together are in grand, fancy rooms, with a certain amount of pomp and circumstance and dignity attached. with davey and smalls, though, he’s usually in the kitchen, having conversation, enjoying their company, helping them with menial things. that’s an environment that he’s used to and comfortable with, the kind of relationships and interactions he grew up with, while the stuffiness of his life and interactions with dorothy are entirely less vulnerable and close

that’s just a brief overview, but its something to look for when i finally finish the fic! it definitely started as a very soapy sort of thing, but my damn instincts pushed me to delve deeper into the characters and their relationships and the fucked-up-ness of it all. so, here we are

i really hope this helped!!!! this is not organized AT ALL so please tell me if there’s anything else you wanted to know or any details you noticed

#holy FUCK is this long.. #about writing #tied together #asks #thank u so much for giving me an excuse to positively SCREAM abt this

[kelseyshljourney]

My HL (Hodgkin’s Lymphoma) Journey

“You have cancer”. I heard these words on a sunny July afternoon in 2020. July 23rd to be exact. I had a chest biopsy that was done that Tuesday, the 21st and anxiously waited for the results. I was not prepared to hear those words ever in my entire life nor is there anything that can prepare you for it. I was 6 months pregnant with my daughter, Madison, at the time so you can imagine the emotions I was feeling were heightened because of the pregnancy. Let me start at the beginning. Welcome to my cancer story.

My cancer journey started during my pregnancy with my aforementioned daughter. I found out I was pregnant with our first child in February 2020. I’ll make it clear that I had a wonderful pregnancy (cancer stuff put aside) and my daughter is happy, healthy, and living her best life. We were wonderfully blessed to be on this journey of pregnancy and enjoying every part of it. Although, I would not recommend being pregnant during a pandemic. Now being in 2021, there’s more that we know about COVID-19 but the beginning was rough. During the first trimester of pregnancy, my midwife brought up information about genetic testing that is available to pregnant moms for their babies that can be done through a simple blood test. It’s a carrier screening test that’s optional but does check to see if I am a carrier for 3 genetic abnormalities (Down Syndrome, Trisomy 18, and Trisomy 13). I almost didn’t do this blood test because whether or not I was a carrier for the 3 different abnormalities, it wouldn’t change the outcome of the pregnancy. If I ended up being a carrier, my husband, Rob, would also have to be carrier in order for it to be most likely passed down to our baby. I decided to do it because it was covered by my insurance and it was a quick visit to my clinic to get my blood drawn. No big deal.

I got the test done in April and then didn’t hear anything right away. I didn’t think much of it but I realized that I never got my results back on the test so I called my clinic to get my future appointments set up and then spoke directly with my midwife. She asked me if I heard anything from the lab about my results and I told her that I hadn’t. She ended up calling them and then called me right back. She said that my results came back as “inconclusive” as the lab could not determine if I was a carrier for any genetic abnormality because a lot of my DNA strands are incomplete with parts missing. My midwife said that out of her 30+ years of doing this job, she has never heard of this result before. Great. I was concerned about what this meant for the baby and concerned since my midwife didn’t know how to handle this. My care was transferred over to a Maternal & Fetal Medicine (M&FM) doctor who I saw for the rest of my pregnancy as I was now considered to be high risk. During this same week (the week of May 18th), I had a visit over the phone with a genetic counselor who told me that the result of the genetic test could be the cause of something as simple as being anemic (not getting enough iron) or something more serious like a tumor (whether benign or malignant). I was told that the least likely of it to be would be a tumor (I can laugh about this now but the irony). I also had a breast ultrasound at the hospital to make sure there were no lumps that could be causing this (there weren’t – I was clear).

At this point, I was feeling stressed but overall still feeling good and excited about my pregnancy despite this hiccup (or what I thought was just a hiccup). I had a few visits with the M&FM doctor and had more ultrasounds than a “normal” pregnancy so that they can check to make sure that Baby E was growing as she should and didn’t show any outward signs of a genetic disability. I had a lot of blood work done but it all came back clear and showing no signs of anything going wrong in my body. For a while, I felt like a test subject and with every test that was ordered and prick in my arm I was getting annoyed that I wasn’t getting to enjoy a “normal” pregnancy with all the visits that I had. I say “normal” because every pregnancy is different for every woman. When my doctor told me that the last thing she wanted to order for me was chest CT and an MRI to confirm there was not a tumor in my body, she promised she would let me enjoy my pregnancy and not order any more tests. I almost almost declined the MRI and CT because I felt like I didn’t want to go through that and be exposed to possible radiation and on top of that, I felt fine. God was really watching out for me and leading me in the direction to get the diagnostic tests done.

On July 8th, I had the MRI and CT done. I was with Rob when I got the call from my doctor that afternoon to go over the results. The MRI was unclear because of the baby moving but from what they could see, there was nothing that came up. However, the CT scan showed a mass in my chest that was the size of a distorted hockey puck; measuring at 7 ½ cm by 7cm by 2 cm and was located between my heart and my lung. I was watching Rob tear up and all I could say to him as soon as I hung up with my doctor was. “I’m going to be okay” over and over again. I think I was in complete shock over hearing that there is a tumor in my chest that could be cancer. We had my family over that night and I broke down several times throughout the night. I remember saying that I want to watch my child grow up (since we didn’t know the sex of the baby at the time) and I was scared that I wouldn’t have that chance. I went to bed that night thinking that I was going to die during the night because of the tumor. To be very clear, I wasn’t having suicidal thoughts or anything but when I was told that I have a tumor in my chest, the first thought that went through my mind was that I wouldn’t live to see the next day. This sounds dramatic as I’m writing this but it's the truth. In reality, I probably have had this tumor for a year, two years, or even longer. No one truly knows.

               Between finding out about the tumor and getting the chest biopsy done was about 2 weeks. I can tell you that it was the slowest 2 weeks of my life. During this time, Rob and I were busy packing and getting ready to move into our house. So on top of being in the middle of a pandemic, being pregnant, having a tumor in my chest (without knowing if it was cancer), we were moving too. These two weeks were filled with prayers and spending time with friends and family. I had many breakdowns but Rob helped by feeding me all my favorite foods (I was pregnant after all). We moved into our house on July 16th. It was a wonderful day and we are thankful for the friends and family that helped us move into our new space. It was an exhausting time but so worth it. As mentioned at the beginning of this, I had my chest biopsy on Tuesday, July 21st. They couldn’t put me under because I was pregnant but my midwife prescribed me something that would be safe to take while pregnant but will help calm me during the procedure. It was a surreal feeling laying on the procedure table seeing a needle sticking out my chest and moving with every breath I took. Without that medication, I would have probably freaked out since I knew that the needle was close to my heart and lung.

Me in post-op.

2 days later is when I got the call from my doctor telling me the life changing news: I have cancer. God works as wonderfully as he does because that day my mom and grandma happened to come over for lunch, a rare occurrence during the work week so they were there when I got the call. I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (HL), which happens to be a very treatable cancer. My doctor told me that she has already been in contact with the oncology team at the hospital to have someone get a hold of me to get an appointment set-up right away. I called all of our family who came over to process the news with me. There were many tears shed between all of us and I couldn’t eat or drink anything because I was so stressed and worried about what this means for my future and Madison’s future. That night, I got a call from Dr. Anderson who became my oncologist during this journey. We met with him the following day at the hospital to go over my CT and MRI scan images and to go over treatment options. He discussed that the general treatment plan for HL was chemotherapy and possible radiation. He also discussed the staging (HL is staged from stage I to stage IV) but because I was pregnant, they were limited in what tests they could order to determine a true stage until after I give birth. For example, they would normally perform a PET scan to confirm where the cancer is in my body but weren’t able to because it’s not safe for the baby. I was originally stage I but borderline stage II because of the size of my cancer and they knew that because of the chest CT. One thing he suggested was to get a bone marrow biopsy done to confirm that the cancer hasn’t spread to my bone marrow (which is a common place for HL to be).

I can tell you now that doing the bone marrow biopsy rivals the pain of childbirth. I was 6 months pregnant when I had the bone marrow biopsy done and it is a very painful procedure. I had the biopsy done on August 5th and what they do is take two samples from my pelvic bone, a liquid sample and a solid sample. The thing is, they could only numb the area where the needle was inserted into my body but there was no way to numb my actual pelvic bone so that is where I felt the pain and it was one of the worst things I’ve ever experienced. I’ll be honest, I cried during it but I luckily had a wonderful nurse who held my hand and talked me through the pain the entire time. Fortunately, the results came back confirming that there was no cancer to be found in my bone marrow. I was still considered to be stage I at this point in my cancer journey but that changed once I gave birth. I’ll get into that a little later.

This was the day after. I was very sore. Peep at the zubaz.

Now that the bone marrow biopsy was done, we met again with Dr. Anderson to go over options. I had the choice of starting chemotherapy while still pregnant (it’s generally safe since I was in my third trimester) or wait until I give birth to start. It was a very heavy decision to make. On one hand if I were to start chemotherapy while still pregnant, there are possible negative side effects for the baby: low birth weight, preterm labor (which ended up happening anyway), mental issues, and fertility issues. On the other hand, if I wait to receive chemotherapy until after the birth, am I putting my health at risk and possibly getting worse with the cancer? Rob and I went back and forth, talked to our families about it, and prayed – a lot.

After a lot of thinking, I decided to wait until after the birth to start chemotherapy. I was feeling good overall and not feeling the “normal” symptoms of HL. I was considered asymptomatic (not showing any symptoms) but here are the common symptoms for HL:

·         Persistent fatigue

·         Night sweats

·         Fever

·         Unexplained weight loss

·         Severe itching

·         Painless swelling of lymph nodes in neck, armpits, or groin

I came to the conclusion that whatever decision I made was the right decision. I knew that I wanted to ride out the rest of my pregnancy without causing any possible disruption to my daughter and her growth. In lieu of receiving treatment during pregnancy, I had to go in for weekly blood work to make sure that everything was still coming back normal (for a pregnancy). My oncologist did order a blood test that checked inflammation in my body. This is called an erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) and the number was already elevated because of pregnancy but also if it was higher than what my oncologist wanted, it would help determine that there might be something bad happening in my body. The number slowly increased as the weeks went on and as I got more and more pregnant. Fortunately, the number was still low enough to satisfy my oncology team. I also had an echocardiogram on July 27th and lung function test on August 3rd to get a baseline on where my heart and lungs were. Of course being pregnant means that my lung function test came back with skewed results than what would be normal. They get these baselines since the drugs that I will be receiving during chemotherapy can affect the heart and lungs negatively so they want to keep a close eye on it. They both came back fine, my heart is strong and my lungs were functioning as well as they could with the rest of my organs pressed into them (yay pregnancy).

               I had my last ultrasound for my daughter when I was 33 weeks pregnant and the last time that I would see the M&FM doctor as I would be seen every week until I gave birth with my midwife. Little did I know, I would be walking into the hospital on Sunday evening, September 13th because my water broke (I’ll never forget Rob’s face when they confirmed that my water broke – it was priceless!) A little worried but ready for anything, I was ready to give birth despite her being 6 weeks early. Since I was only 1cm dilated, the plan was to induce me the next morning and start the process of giving birth. Apparently my daughter Madison had a different plan because I spent the night dealing with veeerrry painful contractions before I got the epidural. Seriously, a game changer. When the doctors came in to check how I was doing with the epidural, they were surprised to find that I was 9cm dilated and told me that I was about to start pushing. Since I was without sleep and very tired and given the epidural, I was ready to do the damn thing. After an hour of pushing, Madison was born on September 14th at 6:51am! She spent 13 days in the NICU but was never needing any respiratory support at only being at 34 weeks but was healthy and happy.

               Once Madison was home from the hospital, it was time for me to get started with my official cancer journey. On September 29th, I had a PET scan done and this helped to confirm everything we knew but also showed something unexpected; there was another lymph node that lit up in my chest too. This put me officially in stage II HL. The treatment plan remained the same though; I were to receive a chemotherapy combination of drugs abbreviated ABVD (every letter represents a different chemo drug). This part is hard to write because even discussing these drugs makes me nauseous and queasy (something that I don’t think will go away anytime soon). The “A” in the “chemo cocktail” side effect is hair loss. Something that I have prepared myself for, or as much as I could, but nothing can prepare you for when it actually starts happening. I knew that the hair loss was temporary and I would rather be bald for a short time than have cancer for the rest of my life. We got together with some friends at the end of September interspersed so they can meet Madison and also to spend some time together before Rob and I made the decision to lock down our house from visitors. We also made the decision to limit our circle of people that we will see in the coming months. We did this because we knew that my health was going to decline because of chemo and also with the threat of COVID, my immune system couldn’t take the risk of getting sick. It was a very difficult decision since we thrive on social situations and we love hanging out with our friends and family but it was vital that we don’t see many people. This really affected my mental health as I rely on our friends to get me through hard times and this was hands down one of the hardest times that I will probably go through.

               Over the course of the next 6 months, I will experience the ups and downs (a lot more downs than ups) of receiving chemotherapy and the effect that this has on my body. I would never wish chemotherapy and the pain associated with it on anybody. I know that this was extremely tough on my family and friends to see me in such a state. Chemotherapy and the days after it are a nightmare that you can’t wake up from. It was my reality waking up every day and knowing that I still have cancer and have the possibility of getting really sick from it or something worse (don’t worry, I never got into a dark head space but I also needed to make sure I was realistic in all the possibilities). My only other experience with cancer is not a positive one. My sister in law, Beth, passed away from stage IV malignant melanoma on March 26th, 2017. From the time she was diagnosed to the time she passed away, it was about 6 months so you can imagine what was going through my mind when I was diagnosed with this horrible disease.  

               On Monday October 5th, I underwent outpatient surgery to get an implantable port that was put in my chest. This port is used for chemotherapy and is an alternative to having the nurses inserting a needle in my vein each chemo session because over time, the chemotherapy drugs can negatively affect strong veins. The port uses a special needle during chemotherapy to inject the drugs and connected to the port is a tube (I’m sure there’s a medical term but I’m not medically trained) that ran up to a main vein near my neck that was connected directly to my heart so that the drugs were dispersed quickly through my body. It was never painful during the time that I had it and I looked forward to the day when I would be able to get my port out because that means that I was cancer free and no longer receiving chemotherapy.

Also in post-op. Notice the 2 different spots where they cut open. The bottom cut is where the port rested.

On Thursday, October 8th, I had my first chemotherapy session. Luckily the hospital allowed one visitor to come with patients so Rob was fortunately able to come with me. My mom was staying with us for a few weeks to help with the transition of chemotherapy and making sure that someone was able to take care of Madison in case that I was not able to (thinking of this breaks my heart because I never wanted to be a position where I couldn’t take care of my own child). Rob and I showed up to the hospital early in the morning at about 8am and didn’t leave until a little after 3pm. It’s safe to say that it was a very long, draining, exhausting day. Not all chemotherapy sessions were this long but because it was my first one, there’s more that happens than normal. Walking into the oncology suite for the first time to get chemotherapy was nerve-wracking because I didn’t know what to expect. I also felt a lot of eyes on me from the other people also waiting to get chemotherapy and I knew they were looking at me because of my age. Most of them were a lot older. I did come across someone one time who was just a few years older than me (they usually ask date of birth when checking in so that’s how I knew) and I could tell it was his first time because he looked as nervous as I did during my first visit.

               At the hospital, they have both private rooms and a public space too. We were lucky enough to get a private room and it made things a little easier and helped to ease my anxiety knowing that if anything negative were to happen, I wouldn’t be in a public area where other people could witness it. The first nurse that I had was Jen and she was incredible. I’ll say that every nurse that I had were awesome. Anyways, they stared out each visit by taking blood work through my port. They want to make sure that I met the threshold with my blood work to be able to receive chemo because if I am below that threshold for what they are comfortable with, I would be deemed too sick to receive chemo and it would have to be delayed. Luckily I never got to that point but I came close a couple of times. They mainly check my hemoglobin and my white blood cell count but there’s a few other numbers they check as well. I then had a visit with my oncologist who walked me through what each drug’s side effects are. It also was an opportunity to ask questions. The main side effects entailed nausea, lack of appetite, headaches, fatigue, numbness in hands and feet, and night sweats. To help curb the nausea, there were “pre-meds” that were given to me before I received the chemo drugs that mainly were anti-nausea drugs.

Once my oncologist left, it was just me, Rob, and Jen. Jen started to give me one of the pre-med drugs called Emend. It’s an anti-nausea drug that was given to me through my port. Jen just started the drip from the IV bag when I started to feel my chest tighten and my face got flushed. I asked Jen if it was normal to feel this way and she stopped what she was doing immediately and told me that it’s not normal. She stopped the drip right away, pressed a button in the room, and then all of a sudden, it went from the 3 of us to about 7-8 people in the tiny room. There were nurses, helpers, and a pharmacist that came in the room. Someone was taking my vitals (heart rate, oxygen level, and temperature), while the nurses there checking my legs for swelling. As soon as she stopped the drip, the tightening in my chest went away and I was able to breathe normally. My vitals came back fine but my heart rate was through the roof because having that many people in the room spiked my anxiety and then there were people that were sticking their heads out of their rooms to see what was going on. It was slightly embarrassing because I felt fine and I don’t like being fussed over. The pharmacist explained that they will discontinue giving me the Emend but he also explained that this is not a common thing that occurs for most people so I most likely had an allergic reaction to the drug. Once everyone left my room, Jen gave me a huge dose of Benadryl to counteract the Emend so I ended up falling asleep for most of the session and I was in and out of consciousness so I don’t really remember much from my first session. I woke up periodically when Jen came in the room with the chemo drugs. I think Rob left the room for a little bit to get some food from the café and to stretch his legs.

The drug that always came first was the Adriamycin (A) which had to be administered by the nurse sitting next to me and slowly injecting it in a timely manner. The rest of the drugs, Bleomycin (B), Vinblastine (V), and Doxorubicin (D), were given via IV bags that were slowly administered over a period of time. When 3pm came around, I finished up my last drug and was able to leave. I went home and slept for a long time.

I received chemo every other week. I was considered to be toxic for the first 72 hours after, which means my bodily fluids should not be handled by anyone but me. Rob and I deemed our downstairs bathroom as the “chemo bathroom” so that’s what I used every time. After going to the bathroom, I have to put the toilet seat down and flush twice. If I vomited, I would need to be the one to clean it up but if someone were to help, they would need to wear a mask and gloves. Fortunately I never vomited during my cancer journey (mind over matter). For the rest of my chemo sessions, they were mostly uneventful. There was a point where the hospital changed their visitor policy and I was not able to bring Rob to the appointments so I had to go alone. This really took an effect on my mental health and negatively affected my health knowing that I would have to endure the sessions alone. I felt like my health declined during that time period so for a few months, I was going alone and sitting in the public area. I usually would bring our Nintendo Switch, read, or I would sit and watch Tik Toks. I would have a song in my head on how I was feeling that day so I would usually send the song to my family to let them know where my head space was at that day.

For those that are wondering, a chemo cycle is about a month long (28 days). In each cycle, there are 2 sessions. The plan was to do 2 cycles and then have a repeat PET scan done (which was the end of November) and then most likely 4 more cycles of chemo after that and then another PET scan (which was in March). As I mentioned earlier, one of the side effects from one of the chemo drugs is hair loss. My oncologist prepared me that I most likely will lose my hair. Easier said than done. I didn’t see any hair loss during my first cycle but I knew that it was only a matter of time. When I started my second cycle of chemo, that’s when it happened. It was the week of Halloween and I believe it was a Tuesday when I took a shower during the day. As mentioned before, my mom was living with us to take care of Madison and I am thankful that she was there. This is a vulnerable topic to discuss for me because even though I know the hair loss is temporary, our hair makes us part of who we are as people and you can’t convince me otherwise. When I started washing my hair, I pulled out a huge portion. I kept pulling out more and more hair and I broke down crying in the shower. I eventually made it out and showed my mom what happened. This was one of the toughest days of my journey. I ended up sleeping for about 6 hours after that because I was emotionally and mentally drained. That night, Rob bought me my favorite food from a hibachi place close by our house and that helped my spirits a little bit.

The rest of the week I avoided washing my hair when I took my showers because I wasn’t ready to go through that trauma again because despite pulling out a few handfuls, I still had plenty of hair on my head. I said at the beginning of the journey that I wasn’t planning on shaving my head and that I would just keep what hair I could but I changed my decision on that. On Halloween was when I became bald. I was prepared this time when I went to take a shower as I brought in a few shower beers and had loud music playing. I walked out of the bathroom and showed Rob, who was watching Madison, the hair that I pulled out and with tears in my eyes, I asked him if he could shave my head. I can tell you that afterwards, I didn’t feel sad, I felt liberated more than anything because this was my decision and not something that the cancer could take away from me. I was in pretty good spirits and spent the night playing board games with my brother and sister in law. We dressed Madison up as a Chipotle burrito even though she didn’t like that (she wasn’t in it long). I now am in possession of a few wigs and some hair wraps and hats. My family has never seen me without a hat or a wig on because being bald is the only physical trait that links me to cancer. I want them to always remember me with hair because this is already tough on them that I don’t want them to have that memory of me.

One thing that I didn’t mention earlier but with the Bleomycin (B), this was a drug that caused my loss of appetite, fatigue, and overall nausea after each chemo session. This drug is known to cause negative effects on the lungs so I was carefully monitored by getting lung function tests done. The last one that I did was at the end of my first cycle where they saw a slight drop in my lung function so they stopped giving me this drug so I was only getting AVD for the rest of my cycles. My oncologist explained that it’s better to have some of this drug in my regimen than not getting it at all and it’s about 50% of the time that it’s dropped at some point during the chemo journey. I overall felt better and got my appetite and some of my energy back. I started working out again and felt like I could get through the day without feeling like I needed a nap. I probably would have napped more if I didn’t have Madison at home but I wanted to give as much attention to her as possible. I’ve said this many times to my family, friends, and coworkers, but Madison will always be my dose of serotonin when I’m having a bad day.

After going through 2 successful chemo sessions, it was time to get another PET scan done. This happened on November 30th. I got the results of the scan 2 days later with Dr. Anderson. He explained that the chemo drugs are doing their job and he saw a huge improvement in the cancer that was found in my body. The mass in my chest also decreased in size. He showed me the scans and I was blown away with the difference. Seeing the cancer light up in my body gave me goosebumps and brought tears to my eyes but also seeing the improvement gave me so much hope. The game plan after this visit was to go through 4 more cycles (about 4 months) of chemo and then do another PET scan.

On December 30th, I was starting my 4th cycle and I wasn’t scheduled for a visit with my oncology team that day. I had my routine bloodwork done and then I was sitting in a private room waiting for my pre-meds when my nurse for the day came in. She told me that it was taking longer to get the blood work back because my white blood cell count was so low that they had to individually count my white blood cells. Individually. Count. Meaning, I was almost at the threshold of being too sick to get chemo and inevitably delaying treatment. The nurse warned to be extra careful and to avoid leaving the house since I could not risk getting sick now. I only left the house to go to chemo at this point so I wasn’t seeing many people anyways. I remember calling my mom and telling her the news and breaking down crying because I was scared. It’s hard for me to admit that and I felt scared during this process more than I let on to my family and friends because I hate feeling vulnerable. I was able to still get treatment that day but I also didn’t feel very good during that visit. This happened one other time, which happened to be my last chemo session that I had.

One scary event that happened was when I suddenly couldn’t breathe. I was in the middle of my workday, Madison was being watched by my sister in law at my house, and I was in the kitchen walking back to my computer when I started having a hard time breathing. I sat down and tried to take a few calming breaths. I calmly told Briana that I wasn’t able to take a proper breath and I then told her that I’m going to call my oncology team to see what they would recommend. I spoke with a nurse who told me to come in right away. She said she spoke with my oncology team who recommended getting some tests done to see what is going on. I went to the hospital and had an EKG done and also a chest CT. My oncologist said the EKG came back fine and so did the CT. They thought possibly that I could have a blood clot but that wasn’t the case. They recommended taking it easy and to take some ibuprofen when I got home, which I did and I started to feel better and was able to take a deep breath again. This happened on February 2nd. I didn’t have that feeling ever again.

On March 10th, 2021 is when I completed my 6th and final chemo cycle. Despite having a low white blood cell count, I was in pretty high spirits hoping that this was going to be my last chemo session ever. I had the last PET scan on March 22nd and went over the results with Dr. Anderson on March 24th. I was a bundle of nerves and holding Rob’s hand when my oncologist walked into the room and what he started saying was ominous. He started out by saying that the scans look good but aren’t perfect (okay?) but they didn’t want to leave anything to chance (alright, what does that mean?) He proceeded to show us the recent scans and then did a side by side comparison and was showing us the improvement. He then started going over the follow-up protocol for when I would get future scans, visits, etc. I had to stop him and ask outright, “is there cancer left in my body??” and he laughed and said that he probably should have started out the visit by saying that I am cancer free. CANCER. FREE. Even typing this, I’m tearing up. I started crying tears of joy, relief, etc. He said that I am officially in remission and in 5 years I will be considered completely cured of cancer. I’ll be getting CT scans done once every year and visits and blood work done every 6 months.

Dr. Anderson explained that the mass in my chest decreased in size to the point that he’s comfortable with not recommending radiation. He said that I have the option of speaking with the radiation oncologists but that he doesn’t feel the need for me to get radiation done. He knew that I was very against getting radiation if I could avoid it but of course I would listen to medical advice if it was strongly recommended. This was a huge sigh of relief since radiation would take a toll on my body.  We left the hospital, I cried some more, and we went immediately to our families the life changing news. We spent the rest of the day at my parents house where Madison was and celebrated by popping a bottle of champagne and ordering sushi. I took the rest of the week off from work to relax and enjoy being cancer free. I got my port out on April 1st. It was such a wonderful and freeing feeling. I was looking forward to this day since I got it put in.

Again, post-op. I think my face says it all.

I can’t describe the feeling that when I check my next visit, it’s not until June. From May 2020 to March 2021, I’ve had a total of 47 visits that were cancer related (not even counting OBGYN visits). To provide a comparison before 2020, I would maybe have 4 visits during the year. We slowly have been spending more time with friends that we haven’t seen since before starting chemo and it’s been an amazing feeling. I’m looking forward to my hair growing back (and my eyebrows which slowly disappeared). If anyone asks me what my future plans are, I tell them that I plan to travel this year and focus on being a cancer free 27 year old. I’m also hoping that by sharing my story, it helps to spread awareness to the fact that it’s vital to get yearly check-ups by your doctor because you never know what might be happening without your knowledge. Also, if something doesn’t feel right, speak up.

I want to send a huge thank you to our friends, family, coworkers, our church, friends of friends, and any others that have prayed for us, brought meals and gifts over, or thought of us. I also want to thank Dr. Anderson and his team at Regions and for all the nurses that took care of me during my chemo sessions. I’m overwhelmed with the amount of love and support that I have felt during this entire journey and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I’m emotional writing this. Thank you.

Follow me on instagram! kel_sey5

[maren-as-an-adult]

The 2020 Experience, Part 2

When I flew back to New York a few days later (yes, I braved the airports and a plane) I could not stop crying. What should have been a loving and heartfelt reunion between myself and Graham turned into an awkward situation for him, with me bent double in the front seat of his car sobbing inconsolably.

And suddenly I had to adjust back to life more or less on my own. I couldn’t have friends come over, my family who lived in NYC were too far for me to get to them without public transit, and Graham’s mother was immunocompromised so we couldn’t spend much time together. I was back to sitting at my computer, taking online surveys for the promise of money and sending out application after application. Jena and Julia, my other two roommates, were still not back, so it was just me and Polina.

Things started to get a little better though. I had applied for Medicaid so I had some health coverage again. I scheduled an appointment with my new doctor, I started talking to a therapist again in August, and I stopped budgeting for birth control and got it for free. The after school program was up and running again, this time remotely (only one of my schools was able to host their program though, so my work hours were still cut). I looked forward to every other weekend, where Graham would drive out and pick me up to spend a few nights at his place. Jena came back and announced she was moving out, and our new roommate Michelle moved in. Michelle and I had a lot in common, and I found it easy to talk to and connect with her.

I even got out to see my family. I braved the subway to see my family up in Astoria, and Polina told me about the ferries I could take that brought me to my family on the Upper East Side.

One day in late September, however, I woke up with abdominal pain. It was pretty mild at first, but it kept getting worse. As someone who has periods, I assumed it was just week-early cramps brought on by stress combined with a poor diet that didn’t include much fiber. I tried to assuage the feeling by eating an apple, but after a quick trip to the bathroom it made a reappearance coming back up the way it went down. I decided to do what most people do (and what doctors hate) and look up my symptoms online to try and self-diagnose. The two big contenders for what I was suffering from were IBS or an ulcer. I texted Graham and told him what was up, and he asked what I was going to do. My current plan was to try and wait it out, and if things still felt bad in the morning, I would go to the ER.

If it wasn’t for Graham’s suggestion that I go to an urgent care center (which I had completely forgot existed at this point in time) I may have died.

At 7:12pm I grabbed my bag and walked three blocks to the urgent care center closest to my apartment. Unfortunately, they were no longer taking walk-ins for the day, but told me that another urgent care center was open until 8 and would take walk-ins.

It was 17 blocks away.

I walked 17 blocks with severe abdominal pain to this urgent care center just to be seen and tell a health professional I wasn’t feeling well. I knew there wouldn’t be much they could do, but maybe they could give me a better idea of what was wrong with me. I called Graham and gave him the address of the urgent care center, asking that he come out to be with me. Whatever was happening to me, I did not want to go through it alone.

I made it to the urgent care center fifteen minutes before they closed. I was taken to an observation room where a brusque young Russian woman took down my vitals and information as we waited for the RN to come see me. When he finally did come in and I started telling him what was wrong, I barely finished explaining what happened after I ate and failed to keep down the apple that he interrupted me saying, “You need to go to the ER immediately, because what you described sounds like you have a GI bleed. You’ll need an endoscopy, where they take a camera on a long, thin tube and feed it down in through your stomach and into your intestines to see if you’re bleeding internally.”

It was getting late, I was alone, and I was TERRIFIED.

I was told where the nearest ERs were, was given a printed referral, and then dismissed for the evening. All I could do was wait for Graham and tell him what was going on... and then call my mother and tell her.

I love my mom. I’ll likely never not love my mom for the rest of my life. But sometimes she takes a bad situation and makes me feel even worse. When I told her I had called Graham to come get me, she pointedly asked why I didn’t call any of my family who lived closer than Graham. Well, of my family who live in the greater metropolitan area of New York City, we have:

- My Aunt Barbara and Uncle Danny, currently NOT in NYC and instead staying out in Milford, PA

- My Uncle Brian, Aunt Corinne, and cousin Nikki up in Astoria. My aunt cannot drive and gets panicked easily, my cousin only has her learner’s permit, and my uncle (though I love him) would not be the most comforting presence to me at the moment, being VERY pro-Trump Republican and a FIRM anti-masker

- My Uncle Mike, Aunt Gloria, and cousins Maura (and her husband Andrew), Brendan, and Kevin. Maura, at this point in time, was nine months pregnant and due to give birth any minute, and I was not going to be responsible for pulling my aunt or uncle away from the birth of their first grandchild

With this information presented to my mother, she did concede that calling Graham had not been a terrible idea. Continuing to fret, however, she said I should at least have called them to let them know what was happening. She took it upon herself to do that, and additionally call my father and tell him (dad was on the road at that point and so missed my initial call of “Hey, jsyk, I’m going to the ER, wish me luck!”). Graham pulled up, I ended my mom’s call telling her I’d keep her posted, and headed off to the unknown.

As we were driving to the closest ER, my dad called. Thankfully, he gave advice that calmed me down. He listened to my symptoms, told me it was likely an ulcer, and told me what would happen when I went in: I’d be admitted to the ER, they’d take my vitals, I’d explain my symptoms over and over and over to multiple people, they’d probably admit me overnight, knock me out and do an endoscopy, and in the morning I’d be sent home with a prescription to help with the ulcer. I felt better.

Graham and I made it to the ER at about 8:45pm. I was admitted immediately, my vitals were taken, I was given a cup to pee in, an IV was placed in my arm, my blood was taken, and I told my story to two different doctors and a few different nurses. I went in for an ultrasound to rule out pregnancy, endometriosis, and ovarian cysts. I waited, with Graham by my side.

The doctor came back at about 11:30pm and told me my urinalysis and ultrasound came back unremarkable, but my bloodwork showed a high white blood cell count, which meant my body was fighting off an infection somewhere. This is absolutely something I did and did not want to hear in the middle of a global pandemic. On the one hand, go immune system! Keep me safe, you beautiful, hard-working bitch! On the other hand, what was it my body was fighting off?

The doctor said if I wanted to leave at that point, I could, because nothing obvious was found. “But,” she said, “I would strongly recommend we do a CT scan just to be safe.”

It was late, both Graham and I were tired, and my abdominal pain wasn’t awful to the point where I was bent double anymore. I could stand and walk around with only a slight discomfort. The thought of getting out of the ER, a frankly dangerous place to be in these COVID times, was deliciously appealing.

“What the hell, lets do the CT scan.”

I was given almost two liters of fluid to drink to prep for the scan. It didn’t taste bad, actually, kind of like a flat lemon La Croix that had been left in its aluminum can too long. At 12:30am I went in for the scan. Two hours later, Graham and I were still waiting for the results. At around 2:30am Graham turned to me and said, “Honestly, I’m ready to go. I won’t leave you here alone, but I’m exhausted and ready to get out of here.” I responded, “Honestly, I am too.”

At that moment, a doctor walked around the corner into our area and said, in a too cheery voice, “Hi there! You have appendicitis.”

I swear in that moment I could feel the cosmic force of the universe tremble with suppressed laughter at this finely crafted moment of ironic timing. My only response to the doctor and Graham was, “Well... I guess I’m staying here for the night?” Remember when I thought it was IBS? Couldn’t we go back to that?

I’ve mentioned before the idea of surgery scares me. I’d hoped I’d only have to experience anesthesia from getting my wisdom teeth removed. I fully expected to break down in hysterics then, but I guess I was just too tired and overwhelmed to react in such a big way. I called my mom and told her what was happening, and the first suggestion she made was for me to come home and heal in Chicago.

...mom, I love you, but getting on a plane immediately after major surgery in the MIDDLE OF A GLOBAL PANDEMIC FROM AN AIRBORNE VIRUS is frankly the DUMBEST IDEA EVER.

After realizing that would be a bad move, she suggested she come out to be with me while I heal. While an appealing process, it ultimately wouldn’t be of much use, because she’d have to quarantine for two weeks before seeing anyone at that point. Eventually, she offered to book a hotel room for me and Graham for a long, extended weekend to help me recover. It was extremely generous of her, and I’ll forever be grateful she did it.

I was hooked up to antibiotics to prep for surgery, and the attending surgeon explained the procedure to me. Everyone was so calm and sure of themselves that I felt okay, and the inevitable wave of panic was held off. At 4:30am, I was wheeled up to the operating room. Graham stayed by my side as long as he could and walked all the way to the doors of the OR hallway with me and the attending. I made sure he and my mom had each others’ phone numbers so he could give updates. I was wheeled through the doors, and met with my operating team.

The anesthesiologist and practicing surgeon assured me that they felt fine, well-rested, and at the top of their game, and I was able to relax some as I moved off of my gurney onto the operating table. Once I was on the table, clad only in a thin hospital gown and gripper socks, my body started to shake. Whether it was from the cold or the panic had finally set in I wasn’t sure, but I calmly told the doctors that I thought my fight or flight response was kicking in, and they might need to consider restraining my shaking limbs.

They did, and they also put a heated (and somewhat weighted) blanket over me which relaxed me so my limbs weren’t shaking so violently. An oxygen mask was placed on my face, sealing my nose and mouth into a thick plastic chamber. I tried to breathe deeply and evenly, forcing myself to think of pleasant thoughts and not spiral into a headspace of worst case scenarios. I think what helped most was actually an attending nurse reading out loud my patient chart for posterity and recording’s sake, and he said, “Patient is a twenty-seven year old female named Maureen Ford.”

The annoyance I felt at being misnamed (again as Maureen) cut through the second wave of panic buildup, and my only goal was to correct him. The oxygen mask muffled my voice, but I like to think if you were to listen to the audio recording of my surgery, you would hear, very faintly in the background, me indignantly stating, “It’s pronounced MAREN!”

My last thought before I went under was that I need to make sure that nurse was corrected.

When I woke up, I felt more comfortable than I had in a very long time. The only thing that kept me from being in a total state of comfortable bliss was the slowly incoming knowledge that my mouth was drier than the Sahara desert at noon in July. Despite this, and the residual effects of the anesthesia still in effect, I was pleased to find that not only could I clearly hear and understand the conversations happening around me, I could also coherently speak and communicate with people. I asked for water as soon as I could, and the nurse told me that they’d have to work me up to water. We’d start with a lemon swab in my mouth, followed by ice chips, and then I could get water. The attending surgeon came in to tell me the surgery went smoothly without complications, and I asked her if she could make sure whoever called me Maureen was corrected on my name pronunciation.

I really hope it wasn’t written off as a sleepy patient’s delirious request, because I was absolutely serious about it.

After eating some very powdery eggs and drinking an apple juice, I was discharged and told to get my medications, rest up, avoid lifting anything over 15 pounds, stay away from submerging my sutures in water, and to schedule a one week post-op follow up with my primary care provider and a two week post-op follow up with the attending surgeon.

Graham drove us back to Bay Ridge, and I gave him my keys to go grab some essentials from my apartment. I gave Michelle and Polina a heads up that he was coming up (and I had let them know what was happening before I went into surgery) and that I’d be gone recovering through the weekend and partway into the week. They both wished me a speedy recovery, Graham grabbed a few essentials for me, and we drove up the street to pick up my meds from Rite Aid.

For some reason, they had only filled two of the four prescriptions. One they didn’t fill because it was a controlled substance and the hospital hadn’t submitted the proper authorization for it, and the other prescription (one of two laxatives) I have no idea why it wasn’t filled. Eventually, I got both my pain medications and one of the laxatives, with the other laxative to be filled and picked up at a different Rite Aid, closer to Graham’s work.

Exhausted, sore, hungry, and (in my case) in desperate need of a shower, we made it back to Graham’s to spend one more day there before going off to the hotel my mom had booked us. Graham had been scheduled to work that day, but after calling into the office was told he should only come in if he thought it was absolutely necessary. He ended up catching a few hours of sleep before going in for the late shift at work. I managed to take a shower and fell asleep on his couch as his bed was too soft and sent my abdomen into absolute agony. I blinked in and out of consciousness for the next few hours, waiting for Graham to come home with my last bit of medication. In that time, my dad called to check on me and ask how I felt, what I was prescribed, and what was expected of me. As we were talking Graham called, and I excused myself so I could answer the call. Nothing could have prepared me for what Graham was going to say to me.

“I was just hit by a truck.”

*click*

#part 2

[revol-lover]

i know i have become a shit post queen but this site is a good place to just dump thoughts when i’m too lazy to actually write them down so don’t mind me. also i’m “ok enough”. like i’m not ok-ok but i’m not like badly not ok. 

ok? anyway.

so idk what it is. being raised by emotionally distant parents esp my mom or the depression thats probably also related to that but man i just feel so empty for such long periods of time. empty, or maybe detached is a better word. and just really really restless. and also that when i have good emotions, i dont feel them all that much. idk. sometimes i feel like i’m on the outside looking in on my life. i have a lot of feelings but then at the same time i dont. maybe because i repress a lot then it all builds up and explodes. idk. its awful though. 

i also feel like i have two very distinct sides to me. half of me is like fuck this shit i just want to self destruct but i wont because i’m too responsible to do that and the other half is like wow life is so interesting i am a spirit not a body and i want to be an enlightened being. neither of those sides of me is less me than the other. neither is a farce or anything but its fucking hard for those two sides of me to coexist. the only middle ground, which is probably like 1/3 of the time how i feel, is blah. neutral to absolutely everything.

and i think ive talked about this before but before the whole corona/quarantine thing i was at this extreme level of DONE with feeling isolated in my life, esp as a sahm. done with falling into the trap of believing being a mom was my whole identity (and its definitely a part of it, of course. but i think its unhealthy for moms to think its all we are) like i totally lost myself for a while. my daughters birth being traumatic and her having potential life long complications (and ‘potential’ meaning, her diagnosis is so complicated. theres never going to be a time where we get a real “all clear”. some kids have developed seizures again way down the road, especially at certain ages where kids go through a lot of development.) and then ofc just raising a child with all of that going on, plus normal toddler craziness, plus having a kid who is super hyper and smart and amazing but parenting after having a difficult relationship with your own mother is one of those things that is really hard and not talked about enough. i never feel like im doing enough. i never feel like she likes me.i know thats so stupid but i really am that insecure about my parenting, no matter how hard i try. i just want my child to love me and sometimes toddlers do things that make you feel like crap (ex ‘i dont want u mom i want daddy!’ and i can rationalize it, dad’s the exclusive parent. i’m just here all the time like the furniture. i get it.) and its just a big complicated thing with my emotions. not what i was trying to say tho i got off track.

anyway the isolation thing. so i had a plan. a plan!!! i have this one awesome long time friend, honestly my only friend outside of my husband who knows me like the good bad and ugly, has known me for a very long time, and has been there for me through some really tough shit. he’s like the brother i never had, truly. (i have a biological brother but we dont really talk.) so i talked to him about things i was going through and he’s also been going through a challenging time in his life and he told me he’d help me get out there. we were going to force me to learn to socialize and make friends in “real life” by putting me in those situations. we were going to go to some poetry club. a show downtown. like i was ready. then corona happened. and my already crawling out of my skin isolation got worse because hey we cant do anything now, not even see my one friend. 

so yeah. i was fine in the beginning of all this because i figured, hey by may itll be over! then hey by june! then maybe 4th of july. which has become, my daughter is so excited about her birthday party in august and i dont even know if i can throw her one and i dont know how to deal with this or explain it to her.

i know this is major first world problems and im all over the place and i document this dumb shit because i hope one day i’ll be so far past it and be able to look back and think well wow i made it through 2020  but yeah idk

i think part of it is i’m turning 27 in two weeks and my saturn return thing is just getting so close and i’m starting to see the beginning of shit in my life crumbling underneath me. like i know what i gotta do. i  have to put myself out there. i have to get out of my safety zone. and i have to use my gifts to help others not just sit here drowning in my self pity but obviously its hard to challenge yourself and put yourself out there, literally, during a pandemic. 

and the last point which is just something that boggles my mind about myself that i dont understand. like i’m definitely depressed. i have very bad anxiety too. and even though i can be extremely self pitying and go into like a black hole of sadness, i still dont let myself do bad things. which is good, obviously. but its iike i’ve been recovered from self injury for probably about ten years but some days i am so deep in my shitty feelings or empty feelings that i just want to do it again but i cant. theres something in me that wont let me. and i guess im glad for that, obviously. i guess my life/universe/guardian angel is trying to force me to face shit for real and not just have shitty coping mechanisms but idk. like it was a bad outlet but idk. sometimes, just sometimes, i feel like it did more for me than just writing things out. which is bullshit because it did nothing for me except give me a bunch little permanent reminders of shitty times. but idk. that’s my brain for you. sometimes i want to just let it all go and be a mess in my feelings and not care if i’m ok but then my brain is like nope bitch you cant do that. youre not 17 anymore, get up.

and i know some people would read this (well no - no one would read all this lmao but in a theoretical sense) and think like, oh did you try therapy or oh maybe try meds and the thing is 

therapy - i tried it. i liked the idea of it. bad fit with the therapist tho. didnt like being kicked out after 45 min (which i understand but bitch i need more than that to explain one problem) and it felt weird to be told by her, that she felt like i had a good handle on things. cause i dont really feel that way and i feel like she didnt have much to tell me  in terms of how to idk fix myself besides journaling, which i’ll give her. it helps

meds: i i dont really want to go that route yet because my body is really sensitive to medication. like i dont even take bc or anything like that. however i think ive decided that since its super legal and obtainable i might try pot once we are able to move into our own place. so if anyone did actually read this far and have experience with that (esp w anxiety) please enlighten me. i had some samples of some cbd stuff and it was amazing for my anxiety but it’s way too expensive for me to use consistently.

this has been a very long shit post but i feel better so theres that.

[blogkelleyb]

Cancer treatment in the time of Covid

So I have finished my second Chemo treatment 3 days ago? Why not blog after the first? Well cause I was a potato thats why. That is my new term for the overwhelming exhaustion that comes with my friend Chemotherapy. It is interesting but nothing I have experienced before.  I lie, 10 years ago I was super ill and left Kingston Hospital 88 lbs. I know weak and it is a scary feeling and yeah I called them.  I found out it is completely normal, give in to it. Ok will do don't have a choice because I don’t have the energy to do more than make myself a cup of tea. My daughter is doing the rest and doing it well. I can relax and just be a potato if I feel like one.  So I was for about 3 days. 

Around the same time my mouth started to get sore. First kind of coated then raw feeling and really chapped lips.  My daughter went to pharmacy and got some special spray that is all natural and helped with the dry sore mouth quite well. She also got special mouthwash made for the same issue. It helped and it passed in about 4 days. 

But that wasn’t the first side-effect. I had very mild “hand-foot syndrome” Google it because it is fascinating, and can at its worst be horrendous.  It is extreme skin sensitivity to cold. First discovered when I got home from first Chemo and reached into the fridge for a pepsi.  Zap, every finger touching the can starts to tingle intensely. You know that feeling when a limb or hand goes to sleep and I mean dead asleep no feeling and then it starts to wake and you hit a max on the tingly feeling? Yeah it feels like that. Not painful, disturbing definitely uncomfortable. Then I took a drink of the pepsi...OMFG my mouth and throat are tingling like crazy. The answer? Warmth. A tea, no cold drinks and don’t touch anything with your hands that is colder than body temp. Warm that water up before you wash your hands. Etc.  It lasted a day and gradually improved. 

The third and least noticeable side-effect is actually not due to the Chemotherapy but the high dose steroids that they give you before and during to help combat them.  Steroids give you a false sense of wellness and I get very chatty to say the least. So yes I noticed this and the fact I felt pretty damn good the first 3 days after.  But I know having been on steroids many times for my Colitis the fall going off them is kind of harsh so this probably adds to the chemo exhaustion that hits on day 4 and your done your 3 day steroid regime. 

So lets look at the positives of this treatment shall we? I didn’t barf, not even once. Nor did I even get nauseated.  I was terrified of this side-effect. I mean worse than hair loss by far.  Like I said I know what it feels like to be 88 lbs when my good weight is 135.  I weighed 137 when diagnosed, my weight at my first chemo was 112. I have lost 25 lbs already and the treatment hadn’t even started yet.  What was I going to look like going into surgery, will it affect the outcome, will I be healthy enough to get it at all or will it have to be delayed risking my life?  Yeah it was a great big fat hairy deal. And I didn’t get sick. Can I have a “Hell yeah” 

The second side effect is just as exciting folks, I found my lost appetite and oh boy is it back with a vengeance. I fell like I did 10 years ago like I have an insatiable tape worm.  It started to come back around day 5 post 1st chemo. And each day became stronger and stronger.  I was eating bowls of ice cream at midnight and making bacon and eggs at 5AM.  I even appealed to my friends who brought “Mac and Cheese” and “Oven pot pies” And I ate them all and at my weigh in before starting chemo I saw the beautful number 118.6 lbs.  Omg the joy I felt I can’t tell you. The relief....1000 lbs literally off my shoulder. I am so holding on to the hope that it stays around. I expect during my potato days, it won’t be as good. But I will remain hopeful that the tapeworm stays awake and keeps eating. 

But then I got my second treatment 3 days ago.  It was different. The nausea? Nope its fine none of that at all. Appetite seems normal not bad but not ravenous.  The hand/mouth, wow. It began as I arrived home from my treatment. My hands and feet and lower legs were tingling like crazy and I was touching nothing and fully dressed and had a coat on.  The cold air, It was like minus 2 or something out.  Wow what if it was in the middle of winter how would this feel?  I come inside and its pretty intense. My daughter gets me a cup of hot tea and heats up my hot pack to put my hands in like I did first round. It helps. I put on my legs it helps them too. 

I have a chemo bottle attached to my PICC line that goes into the large vein in my upper body into the upper vessel of the heart. Regular arm veins used for IV’s  can't take chemo drugs, That chemo bottle is to drain over a period of 24 hours. I carry it around for those 24 hrs in a little bottle bag around my neck and navigate the tubing.  Then the next day I get into the car and drive to Para-Med and they remove the chemo bottle, dispose into the toxic waste container and redo my dressing on my PICC line. I go home. Except two hours later I note the bottle of Chemo is not draining.  I call, and they tell me I have to go back to hospital so they can fix. I did, it sucked, I tingled the whole way but did get to ask that nurse about it too. Yes it’s normal but yes we watch it some have a problem.  Am I going to have a problem? I hope not she says. Yeah me too.   

We drive home. I decide in case this gets worse I should take my shower while I am stable on my feet. I do so and it was  glorious hot water. No tingling, until I stepped out. OMFG again. Bare feet on the floor, naked and shivering. Ok now its painful. This bloody sucks.  Get dressed in flannel onesie right away. Get big winter socks on and get that hot pack. Ok I am good.  How bad will this get?  Is this something that could interfere with my ability to get regular prompt continued treatment so I can have surgery and be cancer free.  Is this threatened?  I have two more treatments and will have a long break in-between these treatments my surgery and my recovery and restarting again. It should get out of my system.  But the effects are cumulative, how bad will it get? Can they give more steroids to counter act this effect and keep it controllable. You can bet I will be asking all those questions to my Oncologist when I see him before my next treatment. My daughter is going with me and will make sure I miss nothing with my hearing and that I get all my questions answered.  Thats a very good thing to do together.  And good news, the tingling is improving this morning. Whew!

I don’t know what the exhaustion will be like this time.  I was what I called “baked” yesterday.  Like you took that extra THC gummy at bedtime (oh chill its legal and I only take them for sleep) except they are always worn off by morning with zero hangover effect. Baked with a really clear logical mind and a mouth that just will not stop talking. Like there was no filter, if something ran though my head it came out my mouth.  My daughter from previous experience with me realized it was the steroids!  And then we laughed and laughed and laughed until our bellies hurt.  The poor girl finally was able to retreat to the privacy of her room and I would still come down the hall to tell her more pearls of wisdom from my mind.  I carried on a running commentary with my best friend over messenger from the early morning hours before the sun came up all the way to bedtime and yes she too finally just stopped answering me. I think its hysterical. But I get that it may be a tad annoying to others. So I went into my favourite facebook group for women over 40 that play the video game “Animal Crossing” Oh don’t judge that either, hottest selling game of the year last year, absolute record sales and got many of us through this damned pandemic. Just minding our islands and building homes and fishing etc.  So peaceful, so non political and so damn cute.   So yeah headed to that group and made two new online friends and yep they probably won't message again but they were kind to me. This side effect will pass today as the steroids wear off and the exhaustion kicks in.  I suspect it may be little worse and last a little longer than last time. If you don’t see a new blog post till next treatment, thats why. See ya when I am no longer a potato. 

[she-toadmask]

So the post I literally just reblogged I didn’t feel like rambling in the tags and making a mess for anyone looking for something else

(Fuck I went on forever under the cut this goes everywhere fast)

Before Sword and Shield came out, during their hype season, I had this really silly fic idea where 3 girls that were kind of versions of myself and also kind of not (like one of them was going to be Asian at one point which...I have no idea why it just was what I was planning, if I did it now they would be all as white as my indoor ass) would just suddenly be in Pokemon and it kind of went between being Galar and not being Galar

The youngest was kind of mostly an Ash expy, just really quick to do things and really energetic and excited; the oldest was just this very serious girl who was very strategic and stern and did not agree with the middle; the middle was just kind of...not exactly my depression but just way less into all of this and was kind of just following because she didn’t have anything else to do.

I thought of it again recently and thought about how their battle styles would be different if they were doing the gym circuit, though how the middle got in and what her starter would be (kind of thinking she would end up with a Blipbug somehow and I had another Pokemon in mind but I don’t remember what it was) because the young one would get Grookey because energy and loud, Hop would have Scorbunny because fire type like Leon, and the oldest would have Sobble and I eventually decided the other day when I was thinking about the idea again that it was because she had done copious amounts of research and decided that Inteleon had a battle style close to what she wanted to do. The young one would just go head-on into battles like Ash does because young and dumb, she would just be super enthusiastic and a little performative, and she would get team members just the way most people do, just encountering a Pokemon (or sometimes getting a fun interaction with energy n shit) and now they’re part of the team. The oldest would be super strategic and, instead of just ramming into the problem with the most force she could like the younger, would look at more detailed strategies. Less ‘spam your strongest move and then also do the anime style shit’ and more ‘strategic planning based on the species’ strengths and the opponent’s style and team’. She would look for strong Pokemon and have what she wants in mind before catching. The middle just...I haven’t really gotten her thing down yet? I know she just kind of catches Pokemon who seem to vibe with her on an emotional level (hence Blipbug, starts small and nervous and then ends up pretty dang cool, I think another was a female Kirlia who wanted to evolve into Gallade but couldn’t so she gave the Kirlia a necklace with an Everstone and helped Kirlia train to fight like a Gallade and there’s a bit of a theme with self-acceptance and growth but idk) and she more just kind of goes with the flow in battle and tries to just get the vibes n stuff. She’s the least likely to dynamax of the three, though if I were to watch the recent anime I might get a different idea. The story would be from the middle’s perspective (probably third but still focusing on her) just because she’s not as enthusiastic about all this as the others are and is just going along because it feels like that’s what she’s supposed to do. None of them really nickname their Pokemon probably, but the middle probably has unofficial nicknames like calling her Kirlia ‘kid’ a lot of the time, but that isn’t really a thing so much as I thought it would make sense.

I don’t know most of the stuff other than at the beginning the youngest rushes off to meet Leon and get her starter and the oldest is not too long after, but she doesn’t bother to wake the middle one up so the middle one doesn’t get a trio starter, hence the likely Blipbug partner. The youngest apologizes but is too excited to really talk too much, the oldest is just rude like ‘well you should have gotten up then.’ Also in the mines, the oldest and youngest split off to explore or look for Pokemon, but the middle just wants to get through and rest so she encounters Bede. There has to be an encounter later on when Kirlia should have long evolved if she was going to, and Bede is kind of mocking about it and the middle just wipes his team with Kirlia because that’s just a dick move. Also middle at some point when they hear that Bede beat Hop in a battle and just ruined his self-esteem, the youngest challenges him to a battle, the oldest probably is acting as ref, and it’s the middle one who goes to find Hop and check on him and stuff. If I were to actually write it, there would probably be some really good talk about living up to expectations and stuff and it doesn’t fix everything but it makes Hop feel less like he’s a disgrace to his brother.

There would also probably be more plot ish stuff? Like Rose actually doing bad shit? And I can tell you that the fact that the region is so linear can totally be spun as a control thing and I can pull back in that pre-release (and sometimes still in some content I’m certain) theory of Rose rigging matches so Leon would go undefeated. Otherwise we just get the gang calling him out on his bullshit with the 1000 years away, but both is good.

In the same vein of Pokemon fanfic but totally unrelated, I had some idea about a human from our world dropping into the Pokemon world and the thought about durability. Like in the anime we regularly see Team Rocket getting yeeted with the twinkle and they’re right as rain next we see them, and the number of times Ash has gotten shocked or burnt or whatever is absurd, so Pokemon world humans have to be way more durable than we are. I just had the thought that the human dropping in would realize that everyone is way more durable than they were and just try to avoid battles and stuff as much as they could because their body just can’t take the beatings that some trainers take. And like they would have to try and figure out how to dodge the fact that they’re always so distant from Pokemon when they aren’t calm and stuff. A tackle that might just take the breath out of a Pokemon world human could break one of their ribs. It was just a weird idea I had once.

Pokemon isekai again, I was thinking at one point that if I were to go into Pokemon I probably wouldn’t want to be a trainer or a professor, like I had these ideas of what I might do instead that was still really positive and involved Pokemon. The more wishful one was me being basically a crazy cat lady except with Eevee and the kids in the town would get them as starters. Aside from the Eevee themselves I would have a Flareon, an Espeon, an Umbreon, and probably a Leafeon. Flareon and Leafeon being the parents of most of the Eevee, and Espeon and Umbreon being accidental friendship evolutions before I started giving all the Eevee Everstone collars to prevent more accidents. The other was also kinda wishful but more feasible probably and was just like me being a berry farmer. (I just found my notes so I can give the Pokemon I wanted: Eevee because it’s my favorite Pokemon and it’s small and cute, a Tropius because neck fruit and also can reach berries and help harvest, a Flareon to cook berries apparently, and a Squirtle to help water and harvest.) Super wishful stuff and it still resonates, despite the fact that I’m even less active now than I was when I first thought of this stuff. I just want to have a nice peaceful life with nice Pokemon and be able to just be calm and happy. Yeah some evil team might try to destroy the world or something, but more often than not, someone comes along and helps out.

Unrelatedly my friend said the other day when we were talking that if we were to move in together in an apartment because we’re best friends and it’s cheaper to live together (also it wouldn’t be dating because even if she does turn out to be bi her girl type is buff girls and I am a twig) that she would cook and I would bake and just the idea of us living together and having stable jobs and having a cat if they were allowed and just...it sounds so nice and so many things if I think realistically like my current mental health struggles and the US being a dumpster fire and the pandemic and the US being fucking insane it just feels like it couldn’t happen and it’s just

(IT GETS REALLY BAD BELOW HERE JUST A WARNING SERIOUSLY ITS REALLY BAD)

I want to be happy but it feels like I can’t do that and I have so much shit piled up that I have to do and my medicine isn’t doing what it did at first so I guess my body got used to it like how people can get caffeine tolerance but ive had it less than a month so idk am i just fucking up that much it just fucking sucks i just wish i could stop having to worry and just live in a hole with my safe corners of the internet and my video games and a couple people online to talk to so i dont get too too lonely and just im not doing well and college is bad because my depresso is being super bad now and tonight i feel like im wasting my parents’ money because im just not doing what i need to do to exist as a student and it just feels like too much and i dont want to do any of it anymore

#untagged #delete later #vent

[stephenremedios]

My experiments with Covid-19

Day 1 - 23rd September 2020:

Consistent with my morning routine, I returned from a game of tennis to discover that Dylan was feeling tired and fatigued after his morning soccer game with other kids in the community. He washed up and sat through his online classes. It was the third day of his first cumulative assessment. The boys had all begun their first term examination on Monday. It was a new experience for them, but they seemed to enjoy the new format much better! Aidan was of the view that the questions made him think more and write less. By lunch Dylan was spent. He went to sleep and woke up in time for dinner.

We all sleep in the same room, with Dylan at one corner and me on the other side. Aidan, Ethan and then Ray. I ended up giving his aching limbs a short massage as he struggled to go to sleep. He tossed and turned for a bit, but finally fatigue took over. Ray suggested I take his temperature. It was 98.1F

Day 2- 24th September 2020:

Dylan woke up feeling normal the next morning. We historically associate these bouts of fatigue and fever with a growth spurt. Dylan stood next to our Thomas height scale and I measured his height – he had grown 2 cm since the last time we had taken a reading, two months ago.

Known for being the paranoid person in the house, I insisted the boys take a break from soccer as a matter of abundant caution. I had a tennis date at 6:30 that I regretted – I was feeling fine, but I decided to play it safe. 

It was this same paranoia that had me list all the potential sources of infection when the pandemic first emerged. After looking at our lifestyle we decided to do away with a driver and a maid. We retained a gardener with the caveat that no one would work with him in the garden at the same time. We switched to shopping online to minimize exposure to many people in a mall or supermarket. 

These measures had been effective over the last six months so there was no reason to think we had contracted the dreaded Covid-19.

At about 6:00 in the evening I started to feel itchy at the back of my throat. I hadn’t had a cold or cough in over 7 months. Raynah suggested I do a Betadine gargle before I went to sleep that night, which I did. 

Day 3 - 25th September 2020:

I woke up with a high fever, intense body pain and a sense of having no energy whatsoever. It was a new feeling; unlike anything I had experienced before. It was like I had gone from a 100% to 5% in 24 hours. I woke up well past my usual wake time of 6:00 AM. The boys told me that their normal morning visit to Villa #10 to visit my mother and play with the kittens hadn’t fructified because she wasn’t answering the doorbell.

I proceeded to Villa #10 to see why she wasn’t answering the bell. Like the boys had reported, she wasn’t responding to the bell or to my calls to her window right below the garage. Spotty, the mother of the three kittens was pacing up and down the entrance of the house while the hungry kittens were scaling the curtains in desperation on the inside of the house. Clearly something was amiss. 

I used the duplicate key we have to the house to let myself in. Spot edged into the house before I could retrieve the key from the door. The kittens mobbed her desperate for their early morning feed. I made my way up to the bedroom.

Opening the door, I found my mother looking like she had been on an IV drip for the last week. She had a bad night too. We proceeded to exchange notes on our symptoms. We were both in awe of the speed of the onset and the extent of debilitation in such a short while. We agreed it was a bad flu.

We resolved that the best way to fight it would be to sleep as much as possible, to allow the body to recover from this nasty bug. Aidan meanwhile complained of a mild cough but didn’t have any fever or any other symptoms. Dylan rebounded like he always does and asked if he could go and hit against the wall in the tennis court for a while. He settled for a game of indoor squash with Ethan instead. I slept 13.4 hours of the 20 hours I spent in bed that day.

Day 4 - 26th September 2020:

A much better night after two torrid nights. I had begun a course of antibiotics the previous night and my cough was on the mend. I woke up feeling much better. The tennis gang was starting a little later today given the overnight rainfall had rendered the courts unplayable at our usual 6:30 AM start time. 

A notification on my phone asked “Are you good to play @8:00”. While I fancied a few sets of low intensity doubles I decided to play it safe again. The conversation ended with advice to do steam inhalation to overcome the cough. 

Raynah woke up later than usual, with a slight fever and body ache. She didn’t have a cough though. She pushed through the fatigue rustling up a special weekend meal. I could smell the aroma of the meal from the bedroom as she rustled it up in the kitchen. I reassured myself that it wasn’t Covid-19. After all I hadn’t lost my sense of smell.

The boys do athletics and fitness classes on the weekends. Raynah and I decided it made sense to keep them back from classes. We deliberated on whether to send Aidan and Ethan since only Dylan had been ill on Wednesday. We decided it wasn’t worth the taking the risk no matter how insignificant it seemed at the time.

Day 5 - 27th September 2020:

I had a restless night, struggling to find any periods of deep sleep. My body was still fighting the infection and I was convinced that this was a strain of flu that I hadn’t experienced before. Ray continued feeling a little unwell so I let her sleep an hour longer and fixed the boys cereal for breakfast.

Later in the day we all came together to record a short concert for my sister’s son, Neil in the US. We had forgotten to call on the 26th (his birthday). We usually all jump on a call and sing LIVE! This time we would have to settle for a recorded message.

All in all it was an eventless day and it seemed like everyone on was on the path to make a quick recovery from the flu. If Dylan had indeed been the one that brought it in, then surely we should make a speedy recovery just like he did. 

Day 6 - 28th September 2020:

With the antibiotic kicking in, my throat was on the mend. It felt like my energy levels were inching back up. The fever was on a downward trajectory. The worst was behind us. Raynah continued to have mild flu symptoms and my mother hadn’t shown any signs of a fever the previous night. She had recovered sufficiently to make food for the ‘patients in #145’ she joked. Her main movements over the next 48 hours would be to deliver food to us since both Ray and I continued to be under the weather. Ray began to experience breathlessness when she climbed the steps that evening. I was concerned but concluded it was probably just the fatigue of having cleaned the whole house that day. The larger picture suggested that we were all progressing in the right direction.

We would have gone to sleep that night without having considered for a moment that we might be Covid +ve. 

We are early sleepers. Lights go out by 9:00 and everyone is usually asleep by 9:30 after some bedtime banter. A little past 8:45 PM Ray read out an email from the Ozone Kovid Kare team – The live-in help at one of the houses of the boys who play soccer with Aidan and Dylan had tested +ve for Covid (It is a separate matter that he turned out to be a false positive when he was re-tested!). 

In that moment, the odds of us having contracted Covid increased from 0% to 1% in my mind. It was now possible that the boy got it from his house help, Dylan got it from the boy, that my mom and I got it from Dylan and then the rest of the family got it too! (It is a separate matter that Aidan, Dylan, Ethan and all the boys and their families tested negative and we still haven’t figured out where we picked the virus up from).

It was playing out like the closing sequence of the movie Contagion in my mind! Dylan picking up the virus as he rubbed his nose after touching the ball while playing soccer. My mom inhaling the virus as Dylan recited a poem later that evening while he was doing his studies with her. Ray interrupted my rampant imagination. “What should be do now?” she asked.

Given that there was now a 1% chance that we might have Covid, Ray and I decided that we should get tested. We were still sure that it was just a flu since the only person still feeling a little ill at that time was me. I’m intrinsically risk averse, and most of my reading suggested that people were dying when they were taken to hospitals too late in their fight with the virus. To save time it made sense to get tested along with the boy’s family.

After a few late-night calls and assistance from the very resourceful Ozone Kovid Kare Team we were all set to get tested the next day along with the family whose domestic help had tested positive.

Day 7 - 29th September 2020:

Our hall room has furniture on the sides with a wide-open space in the middle. The boys have spent hours during the lockdown hitting shuttles and table tennis balls against this wall. A broken light fitting that we decided not to replace after it was repeatedly broken by the boys tells the story of many hours of fierce combat with the wall. The wall also doubles up as a green screen for Aidan’s live streams and as a film screen when we run home movies.

When the lab technician arrived in full PPE to do the tests, our hall room looked more like a operation theatre than the usual improvised squash court it normally is. Today that expansive wall framed a single chair under the lights in the center of the room. We took turns to sit down on this chair while the technician first sent a swab up our nostrils and then down our throats. The technician did a thorough job, swabbing both nostrils till tears were streaming down my eyes. For the throat probe, he went deep enough to stimulate an involuntary cramp in my neck. If you experience discomfort during the swab collection, chances are that it is being done effectively. The technician told us that it takes 24-48 hours to get the results and that we should expect a call any time after 4:00 PM on the following day.

The boys meanwhile recorded the proceedings on their iPads with great excitement, unable to comprehend the gravity of the situation. They demanded to be tested as well fearing that they were missing out on this once-in-al-lifetime adventure.

My sister in Oregon, US had been anxious. Her husband was up late and received the pictures of the testing event. He assured her that all was well and that we would have the results the next day.

My mother and Ray looked to already be on a recovery path. The boys were fighting with us to allow then to resume their normal morning soccer routine. We asked that they be patient and hold on for one more day. The results would be here tomorrow, and they could return to their normal routine.

As we went to bed that night, I apologized to Ray for not having done anything for her birthday! I joked that a -ve Covid test certificate might be the most original, unique, quirky and memorable birthday present she would every receive.

Day 8 - 30th September 2020

I had an unusually high fever the previous night and felt lethargic and was exhausted when I woke up. Despite multiple doses of paracetamol my temperature had hovered between 102F & 103F without any signs of going down. My resting heart rate had also jumped from a normal 56 bpm to 69 bpm. My body was still fighting this virus. My mom walked over in the morning to deliver a cake for Ray and to drop a card in the mailbox. We were keen that that we cut it in the morning and start the day on a positive note. 

Ray received a call from the laboratory at about 11:00 AM. He was very apologetic as he informed her that all three of us had tested positive, while the entire family of person who had initially tested positive were all negative! 

It took about a minute for the information to sink in. 

We were all Covid +ve. 

My first reaction was to suggest that we all get tested again… this couldn’t possibly be true. After all, the house help had gone from being +ve to -ve in 24 hours. It might well be the same with us.

We hadn’t discussed the plan in the event of testing positive, so the first big decision was to figure out how to get my mom to our house given we now knew she was positive. Would we have to get an ambulance? 

In the hour after the call to confirm our infection a variety of worst-case scenarios flashed through my head. I am wired like that. My mother and wife would be taken in an ambulance to a woman specific Covid Care Center. The boys and I would be whisked off to a gent only center. Our phones would be taken away. 

Given the shortage of beds in general, how would they have 6 beds if all of us took ill? How was it all that four of us were symptomatic and I had moderate to severe symptoms when most people seem to have been asymptomatic? From all the metrics that I was tracking I knew there was something wreaking havoc on my vitals. Was I going to be admitted? Was I going to need oxygen? Was I going to end up on a ventilator? Was I going to die?

My mother meanwhile decided she wanted to quarantine by herself. She is an iron willed woman and I wasn’t in any shape to have a disagreement with her. It was particularly difficult for me to have her spend the next 14 days in isolation because she was at the receiving end of an acrimonious accusation relating to the cake she delivered for Ray’s birthday that morning. I absolved myself of the guilt I was experiencing at not being able to be there for my mom and got on with more pressing matters.

I reined my thoughts in and determined that this crisis called for some affirmative action. With tremendous help from my assistant Freeda, we were signed up for a home care Covid Care package within 4 hours of our positive result being known to us. At 5:30 that evening we received all our medication along with a digital thermometer and Oximeter neatly packed in a box.

The magnitude of the disease stuck me when I opened the box and saw the number of pills within it. I have never ingested so many pills in a single sitting ever. We all began our course of anti-viral medication that evening. I struggled to sleep that night. It was a combination of fear and a difficulty with my breathing that kept me awake and restless. I discovered the next morning that my fever had been well over 101F for most of the night.

Day 9 - 1st October 2020

While Ray and my mom seemed to be making good progress, my downward spiral continued. The chills had returned, and I spent most of the day covered from head to toe in bed. I had read that sleeping in the prone position helps the lungs in the fight and recovery, so I began to experiment with that. From time to time, the pulse Oximeter would show an initial reading of 93 and 94 before deep breathing would bring it to a more acceptable 95 or 96. I would feel breathless after climbing the dozen steps to get to our bedroom.

My temperature remained high through the day hovering between 103 F and 104 F. I decided it might be a good idea to speak with another doctor.

The first thing that the doctor did after a barrage of questions and giving me a patient hearing was to assure me that I was not going to die! He said that he had seen over 2000 cases in his ward, and that there was no need to be alarmed. It seemed like a silly thing, but the conviction in his voice when he said it made me hopeful and positive. 

The second thing he told me was that all the current medication I was taking was 'candy’, and that none of it had cleared clinical trials. The medication was essentially in his reckoning, a placebo. It wouldn’t do any harm. It wouldn’t help either. He told me to continue my course of anti-biotics and use paracetamol to manage the fever.

That conversation left me hopeful and distraught at the same time. How could I be taking so many pills when there was no evidence to conclusively say they worked? We resolved to continue our medication and see how our bodies responded. 

Antivirals are dosed in an interesting way as I discovered. The first two doses are monster doses (1800 mg) and then it drops to smaller doses (400 mg). It does not help that these tablets are manufactured in 200 mg shots. It is quite daunting when you have to put down 9 of them! By 10:00 PM that night I had 4000 mg of the anti-viral in me and I wasn’t feeling any better. I was starting to feel worse.

Earlier in the day, Shanthi, a doctor resident in our Community offered her research and findings as an alternate way to combat and inhibit the progress of the disease. She referenced the work of Dr. Paul Marik and suggested that we add a few common medications that had proven effective in helping fight the virus in some trials. She cautioned of course that these weren’t 100% proven but reduced the odds of fatalities.

From where I was both physically and psychologically, I would have taken any medication that reduced the odds of my death by as little as 1%. We went all in. I was now on three prescriptions desperately hoping that one would work and that I would start to get better.

Within minutes of us confirming that we would go with Dr. Shanti’s line of treatment, her husband Pravin dropped off all the medication for the three of us in neatly labelled Ziploc pouches. We promptly took our first doses before going to bed that night.

That night was the toughest night. My body wasn’t feeling good at all. I had now lost a sense of smell and taste completely. Repeated bouts of coughing incessantly made me feel like throwing up all the time. I had no appetite. I had lost 4 kgs in the week since I first felt an itch at the back of my throat. I struggled to sleep in a prone position since it isn’t how I normally sleep. I considered what I might pack if my Oxidation dropped and I needed to get admitted the next day. I had carried an Oximeter to bed that night. I wanted to stay on top of my oxidation levels should they drop suddenly. 

I had read enough about a condition that afflicts some Covid patients called ‘happy hypoxia’ and it had scared me sufficiently to make me even more paranoid. I took my Oxidation over a dozen times through the night. On a couple of occasions, it began at 93, but with deep breathing in a prone position rose to 97 within the minute. I didn’t sleep much that night.

Day 10 – 2nd October 2020

I woke up feeling fatigued. I hadn’t slept much; my fever had been high, and my cough continued. The cough was particularly severe when I woke up and I would have these bouts where I would cough incessantly for 2-3 minutes. It felt like there was a significant amount of phlegm at the bottom of my throat, but the cough was a dry one. I also began to notice that I would feel breathless when I spoke a couple of sentences at a time. Raynah and my mother had stopped logging a temperature and their oxidation levels had been healthy throughout. It was particularly frustrating that the virus had singled me out for this special treatment.

 I remember counting the pills I took that morning. I had 6 before breakfast and 12 after. I was throwing the proverbial kitchen sink at the problem. After downing all of them, I returned to the bed to try and sleep. I forgot to have my paracetamol that morning. The BBMP came to test the boys that morning.

I woke up at about 2:00 in the afternoon sweating profusely. My head was dripping with perspiration like it might after a lung busting rally on the tennis court on a summer morning. I hadn’t taken medication and my fever had broken. Surely that must be a good sign.

At 4:00 that evening I received a call from the hospital. I expected it was our usual doctor checking on my progress. It was a psychologist. I have never spoken to a psychologist in my life up to this point so I am not quite sure what to expect. From everything I have seen in the movies, I expect to do most of the talking.

Her first question explores my anxiety levels. I tell her that I am extremely anxious given that all six of us contracted the virus and I was the only one who got a knock out punch. 

Her next set of questions explore my history of stress and hypertension. I assure that I don’t have any such conditions despite a family history of these ailments.

She offers me medication to handle my nightly ruminations as an SOS if I am unable to sleep. I am also advised to wear a rubber band around my wrist which I am to pull and release every time I notice I’m having negative thoughts.

I slept for the rest of the day and my fever dropped from its previous highs. I had recovered enough by the evening to enjoy a cup of tomato soup without fearing that I would throw it up.

Day 11 & 12 – October 3rd and 4th

Two very similar days. It felt like things were in the balance and could go either way. 

The boys test results came in, and miraculously all three tested negative. A large number of people in the community including all our primary and secondary contacts tested negative as well. I didn’t know what to make of this. From everything that I had read, it was well past 10 days since the boys first got infected. Given they were asymptomatic with the exception of Dylan’s one day sickness they were probably virus free by the time we tested them. That’s the only plausible explanation for their negative tests.

None of us wake up hoping to spread a virus. 

As a family we heaved a collective sigh of relief that we hadn’t inadvertently infected anyone else in the community. Looking back we are glad that we erred on the side of caution.

My fever continued to hover between 100F & 101F. I was measuring my blood oxidation almost every hour to stay on top of any potential drop. I had begun to take melatonin but that wasn’t helping me sleep any better. My respiratory rate had been closer to 19 per minute, above my normal 17 per minute rate in the run up to the sickness.

The cough continued though I was now regaining my sense of small and taste. My appetite also began to return in a big way and I had a hearty meal after a long time. It wasn’t that the food wasn’t tasty over the previous week, I just couldn’t get myself to eat more than the bare minimum to be able to take all my medication.

Day 13 to 18 – October 5th to October 12th

What a tremendous relief it was to wake up without a fever finally. I concluded that the body had fought the virus successfully. That closed one potentially dangerous chapter and opened another equally threatening one – would a cytokine storm follow? An excessive immune response can also do damage to your body in several ways. While the cytokine storm begins in the lungs it can quickly spread to other parts of the body leading to a variety of complications.

This period was also filled with anxiety waiting to see if there was any googly along the recovery path. While the fever was gone, the residual dry cough was now being treated with a steroid. The doctor’s view was that the lungs would take between 3 to 6 months to repair the damage the virus had done. I would have to do an X Ray a month later to make sure that the repair was headed in the right direction.

As a matter of abundant precaution, I continue to track my blood oxidation every few hours. I know for certain that I’m no longer Covid +ve, but I’m not out of the woods yet. A statin and a blood thinner will hopefully cut the risk of a heart attack and a stroke (both run in the family!). A battery of other supplements like Zinc, Vitamin C & D etc. will reduce the internal inflammation and help the body recover faster. The path back from this disease is a slow one and I’m learning to be patient with myself. In a strange way, I am more aware of every breath that I take.

Day 19 - Today 13th October 2020

I still haven’t accepted that the risk level we signed up for resulted in the whole family getting infected. Worse still, the failure to identify the source and the limited immunity that you have even after contracting it means that we live in fear of the family getting it again. Looking back, I ask myself what I would have done differently!

1.     We should have gotten tested earlier: It helped that we quarantined as a family as soon as Dylan experienced tiredness for a day, but we all should have gotten tested earlier. The assumption that our limited contact with the external world made it impossible for us to contract Covid was a wrong one. If anyone in the family gets a fever or cough going forward, we will test at once.

2.     We should have prepared better from a knowledge perspective: Raynah did a great job preparing for Covid. We have had the sanitizers, household disinfectants, plastic gloves, disposable masks etc. for over 6 months before we got sick. We weren’t prepared however with the right knowledge. It is very disorienting to get different directions from well-intentioned doctors and choose a course of action when you can’t look after yourself! We were very fortunate to have Shanti share literally the latest research (published on the 28th of September!)  in the US with us. We will have a small Covid medication kit at home updated for the latest clinical trials going forward.

3. We should have had a plan in the event of testing positive: I was in denial even after the test results came in. I still spend a lot of my waking time retracing everyone’s movements in the run up to the first instance of fatigue in the family. Thinking through what you will do should you test positive is easier when you aren’t positive. We have a plan of action should anyone test positive again in the family.

We are grateful that we didn’t infect anyone, and that the limited set of people we had contact with all tested negative as part of the contact tracing protocol. Without knowing for sure who got infected first and where the infection came from, there is no way of knowing anything for certain.

Having been through this ordeal, what advice would I offer you? 

Take this virus very seriously. For many it might pass without them even realizing that had it. For a few however it can literally mean a life and death situation in a matter of a week if you ignore it. Take all the precautions you can. I saw this Swiss Cheese analogy on the internet from Dr. Ian M Mackay that made a lot of sense to me. We took all the precautions but the virus still reached our respiratory tract!

As I lay awake one night struggling to breathe, coming to terms with the new prone sleeping position I asked myself what kind of gambler I might be if I was gambling with my life.

If someone gave me the chance to roll a wheel with a 2% chance of dying, would I take it?

 The answer is a resounding ‘No’!

 If there’s one piece of advice that you take away from reading this piece let it be this – go to great lengths to protect yourself and your family from this virus. The only thing you have any control over is the risk level you expose yourself to. Once you contract the virus you are pretty much at the mercy of the virus and no one can predict what happens next. It is entirely a matter of chance!

It can pass without you even noticing you had it. Ask Aidan and Ethan. 

It can knock you out for a few hours. Ask Dylan. 

It can be no more severe than a common flu. Ask Ray and my mom. 

It can leave you breathless, with damaged lungs and a residual pneumonia. Ask me. 

It can kill you. Ask anyone who has lost a friend or loved one to the disease.

The science is still approximate with new cocktails and regimes of medication being added to clinical trials every day across the world. Do everything you can to minimize the odds of getting the virus, cut every possible surplus contact. Mask up and maintain physical distancing.

#covidquarantine #covid_19 #covid

[haikumomentsandinspiration]

#healthcarevacation, part IV

Today is Sunday, May 10, 2020: Mother’s Day. (I like that in Turkish, the name of the day is Mothers’ Day—plural. I prefer that.) 

This felt like the appropriate time to sit down and catch up with the documentation of this long journey. 

If you need to catch up, you can read Part I here, Part II here, and Part III here. 

So where were we? Ah, yes. December 2019. The pregnancy/birth guarantee program at Fertty International Clinic in Barcelona, Spain. 

In my research looking for a new clinic after the last failed transfer (and the poor communication after staffing changes at our old clinic), one thing became clear: G. needed to have more tests and analyses done to try to figure out why all these transfers, including a donor egg cycle with two transfers, had failed.

After much struggle trying (in vain) to have Kaiser cover the tests and analyses Gene and I needed to have done, we realized it was going to be cheaper and easier for Gene to fly solo to Spain in November to get all that done. He would come back to SF, we would wait about three weeks for the test results, and then, based on the test results, we would finalize the protocol for me and the embryo transfer. 

Thankfully, G’s results came back normal, everything within expected ranges and levels. So our application to the birth guarantee/shared risk program was officially approved. I would go to Barcelona (solo this time) at the start of my winter break, have a first scan to check my lining, adjust my medication as needed, and get ready for transfer day in about a week. 

On December 10, G and I went out for sushi in San Francisco one last time (we hoped) before pregnancy, and a week later, I left for Barcelona. My first check up at Fertty the day after my flight was mostly just blood work and an initial scan to see how my lining was coming along. The lining was fine, but surprise, surprise: I was getting sick with a cold—December flights/weather change were working their magic on me again. My doctor asked to see me in a couple of days, and told me to keep the clinic updated on my health. Two days later, my cold had gotten worse, but my lining was still all right. I spent the rest of the day looking for a reputable and affordable acupuncturist (the second part being the challenge), and thanks to a friend’s rec, I made an appointment, with a focus not on uterine lining support this time, but on kicking this cold’s ass before transfer day. 

I took it easy that week, feeling no pressure to do any sightseeing since my priority was the healthcare part of this #healthcarevacation without a doubt. I feasted (!) on soup, bone broth, and hot tea and not much else for several days, and slowly started getting better. My clinic decided to keep my transfer day as scheduled: December 27. Meanwhile, Rina joined me again in Barcelona for a few days for emotional support leading up to transfer day (she doesn’t need much of an excuse to travel, especially to Barcelona). 

December 27: Transfer Day! I went to the Fertty for my final blood work before the transfer and to sign some papers. Then, off to fertility acupuncture, and back to the clinic for my transfer. Everything went smoothly; we transferred one embryo this time, with four more good quality embryos left for future attempts/a sibling, so I was feeling good and positive. Besides, their recovery/rest room was the most comfortable one I’d been in in all these cycles at three different clinics. After resting a bit, I went out for lunch, then headed back to my acupuncturist for a post-transfer fertility acupuncture session. Stick, baby, stick! 

I took it easy the rest of the time I was in Barcelona. Went out for a walk at least once a day, but had lazy days for the most part. 

On New Year’s Eve, the woman I was staying with, Renata, and I went for a late lunch at her favorite Brazilian Bistro (she’s from Brazil). And for dinner, we decided to go to my favorite Turkish restaurant, which I knew would be open till late with their regular menu and would not be charging an arm and a leg for a modified menu. After lunch, Renata, another Brazilian friend of hers, and I walked to the beach for a Brazilian ritual honoring Iemanja (Brazilian spelling). We made wishes, prayed, meditated, and threw yellow and white carnations to the sea for Iemanja, then sat together and watched the sunset. I felt so grateful to be invited to join this ritual (this will be my new cultural appreciation vs. cultural appropriation example the next time I teach that class!). Ever since I’ve known about her, I’ve always felt drawn to Iemanja—being a Pisces and considering my home to be the sea more than any piece of land and all. I felt at peace, and all felt right in the world in a way that I hadn’t felt for a while during this long fertility journey. 

I took it easy the next day. And the day after that, the morning of January 3, I had some spotting...very faint, but still spotting. I called G. and cried on the phone. But as he said, we were not out yet. I let Fertty know, too; they said they would up my progesterone dosage and monitor me closely. I had a big lunch and a late dinner that day. Big mistake. I woke up around 3:30 am, nauseated, and threw up twice. In the morning, my spotting had gotten slightly darker, but it was still not heavy spotting and definitely not considered bleeding. I went up from 600 to 800 mg of progesterone a day, and followed the BRAT diet—well, just the R part. The following day, I was feeling better, and finally went outside and played tourist. Surrounding myself with the beauty of Barcelona felt healing. Meanwhile, my clinic told me I could come by the morning before my flight back home for a blood test so they could tell me sooner than later both the result and what the next steps would be. If I weren’t pregnant, I didn’t want to keep taking all those pills and patches loaded with hormones. 

January 7, 2020: pregnancy test day! A year ago today was transfer day at Irema clinic, I noticed. I had a glimmer of hope, but no gut feeling either way. I repeated the lesson I had learned from a guided meditation that had been helping me a ton: there is hope in uncertainty! I distracted myself by finally sitting my ass down and doing some lesson planing for my cultural competence/equity literacy unit. In the middle of that, around 2:30 pm came the phone call from the clinic. “Do you want me to tell you on the phone or do you want to come in?” I didn’t want to go in just to hear “I’m sorry...” and I wasn’t sure I wanted a hug. You can just tell me now, I said, bracing myself. 

And that’s how I found out I was pregnant. 

I don’t remember the exact words the patient coordinator said. I just remember it took a second for it to sink in, and then I started crying while still somehow continuing the conversation and smiling from ear to ear. I finished up my work, and headed to the beach for sunset, which was my plan whether it was positive or negative. Whether I had to celebrate or grieve, I wanted to do it facing the sea. 

I went to the beach, watched the sunset, thanked Iemanja, thanked the Universe, and recorded an “IVF Log” video, which I assumed we would eventually share with our baby. 

At this point, you may have noticed I didn’t call G as soon as I heard. The next day, January 8th, was my flight back, and the day of our first date 11 years ago. The plan was to tell him in person—our anniversary gift. 

When I arrived home, I didn’t let him know I already knew. I didn’t know if he knew that I knew. We had decided on no anniversary presents this year since we had plenty of medical expenses. Turns out G got me a couple of gifts. I would have been upset with him when we had said we weren’t doing presents. Instead, I went to the bathroom, took the pregnancy tests I’d been saving for this day, then went back to the living room, saying I did have some presents for him from Spain. I gave him the couple of small gifts I had gotten for him from Barcelona. Then, I said I realized there was one more thing, and went back and got the pregnancy tests. 

The adventure didn’t end there, leaving its place to a blissful period. I had some bleeding week 7 and week 8, and ended up going in for five ultrasounds in those two weeks, freaking out each time since that’s around the same time in my pregnancy and the exact way my miscarriage had begun back in 2016. Each visit, though, instead of the “I’m sorry...there’s no heartbeat” of 2016, we heard “there’s the heartbeat” and exhaled, immensely grateful. After week 8, all was well, but I remained cautious and scared, and didn’t want to share the news with anyone other than family for a while. 

Then, the month after my return from Spain, of course: a global pandemic! We were handling all the challenges of this fertility journey so well, apparently, that the Universe thought, “Here, how about a global pandemic during your pregnancy in case things seem too easy now?” “Awesome,” I thought sarcastically; “what perfect timing.” Then, I realized: wait...this IS perfect timing. I came back from Spain, and not long after, Spain was suddenly one of the epicenters of the pandemic, one of the first countries that took significant precautions. This pregnancy did have perfect timing for real. I feel for women whose cycles had to be canceled or postponed. 

Today, Mother’s Day, is exactly 22 weeks into my pregnancy—we are more than halfway there to our estimated September 13, 2020 due date. So it feels like it’s a good time to share the news at last.

I want to say that I do not take this pregnancy for granted—especially with the context of a global pandemic and how it has impacted assisted fertility cycles in mind. Each day, I thank the Universe “for this healthy pregnancy—for all the healthy days so far, and all the healthy days to come.” Each time I light a Shabbat candle, I pray not just for my own family and friends’ health, but also for all who are pregnant, and for all who are trying to get pregnant.  I had thought that after almost five years of trying to conceive, when we finally succeeded, we would have celebration and community...and hugs! Instead, we found a global pandemic, isolation, distance from our loved ones, and more than the usual dose of a new parent’s fear of the unknown. Last month, I spent a lot of time crying upon slowly realizing all the things I wasn’t going to get in this pregnancy:

- being pregnant out and about in the world and experiencing what that’s like, even with all its irritations (people trying to touch my belly, people not giving their seat up for me on public transportation...); watching people slowly notice it at work...

- looking at baby stuff in person with G.: “OMG...Look at this one! Isn’t this soooo cute?!?” 

- an all gender (in-person) celebration/party with our family/friends in July or August (silver lining, I guess, is that family/friends who aren’t in the Bay Area can attend the Zoom party now...whatever that will look like);

- going to Turkey in June one last time in a while before the baby comes; being pregnant on a beach in Turkey; going baby stuff shopping with my family in Turkey; eating all the amazing food in Turkey and knowing it was nourishing not just my soul, but also our baby. 

- having my parents’ hands on my pregnant belly, feeling the kicks of their first grandchild; 

- coming back from Turkey with my mom, who wanted to come for a visit before the baby to help us get ready at home; 

- the September visit from both my parents; possibly having my mother in the delivery room, and knowing my dad is in the waiting room, being anxious and impatient; wondering if Rina could make it, even, and if she could, knowing she would be taking some amazing newborn photos. 

Gratitude has been my savior this whole time, and it still is. I know we will have time with my parents, my sister, and my in-laws as they each meet our baby in person eventually, and we will all make beautiful, sweet memories. I know there was a time when there was no FaceTime that would allow a partner who’s not allowed to be at the anatomy scan to still be there virtually. I know there was a time there was no anatomy scan via ultrasound. I could go on. 

There is so much to be grateful for still. Thank you, Universe, for this healthy pregnancy—for all the healthy days so far, and all the ones to come. 

[rennyji]

June 17th tweets

June 17th tweets...

you know what's cool? Gas spring wall mounted monitors...you can turn the monitor in any direction, raise it higher, lower, whatever...the gas spring is key...

so i bought Ugg Men's In House shoes...(do men call these slippers?! i dunno)...I went through several pairs from exchanges/returns. Why? The fuzz or fur inside is being pulled out/apart in all directions, right out of the box...Come on Amazon...aren't you guys about quality?!

So I saw "Superman & Louis" on the CW app, the other day. Lara (would like that name for a potentialDaughter, but moving on..), a.k.a. Superman's Kryptonian mom was revealed 2be married to 1 man, had a child, &then married Superman's dad, Jor-El-whom she later fell in love with.-

- this was said in passing on the show, as part of a different theme. But it makes you wonder...Are all women like this? Constantly out to seek "the best deal", regardless of stage of life? After having a son with 1 man, she falls in love with another and has another child...-

- what happens to marriage vows? Are these just empty words among America's pandemic of empty promises, hopes, and help? These words of through sickness and health, whatever, are meant to have power. These kind of things give life meaning and power...-

- Things aren't working out with your partner? Work things out. The option of divorce, I feel, makes people try  less harder. Your partner is literally supposed to be ur other half. You are one being. There are extreme cases of people being abused, but the rest is ego. -

- U marry me, ur stuck with me for eternity and beyond...think about it...u being my half is like my hand which is part of me...not going anywhere without my hand...duhhh...huhhh, womennnn...

moving on... From Run Girls, Run!, YouTube anime song “share the light” - kinda girly, but catchy jingle...

YouTube “Ultra instinct (trap remix)”

On a differentNote, U can learnSomething fromThe IndianConcept of arrangedMarriages, America.. Whereas U have theOpportunity of datingAround, findingPeople who share in ur hobbies/interest, make U feelExtraordinary, Indians,for centuries&beyond have been paired by theirParents.-

- If you talk to Indian couples, who probably have nothing in common, they say, they and their spouses have a "deep bond." They're bound by simply having the constant presence of another...someone to talk to, someone to care for them, and so forth...-

- This American thing about common hobbies/interests, making you feel special - these are biological feelings/impulses. You need to expand ur mind: "who will always be there for you?" Astrology and hobbies aren't what forms a "connection." It is the answer to that question...

Check out "Mud Wtr" on Google, as an alternative to caffeine…nothing to do with actual "mud" - that's just what its called...good stuff, but expensive...

If regular coffee doesn't do it for you, you can search and find coffees like "Kion Coffee", or, on the other extreme, "Death Wish Coffee." But remember, different stuff holds the potential of working for different people. Looking for options? Give one of them a try..good stuff..

I want to get to a point where I’m traveling and have a secretary. I want to get to a point where when I go downstairs, breakfast is ready...when I need something, it’s before me…don't want to worry about the little things...

Try the " CoreStretch " from Amazon...quick way to stretch your back and other muscles...

After shaving, there isn’t a single after shave out there that reduces post shaving sensitivity, preparing u 4 tomorrow’s shave. Ive found a cream in Indian Ayurveda, alleviating that “ahhh it burns/stings!!!” post shave feeling by piling on the cream when no 1 supposedly looks.

So I found out that Miranda Cosgrove, Nickelodeon's "Carly Shay" from iCarly, made $180,000 per episode from a legally/appropriately run show...for this illegal relaying of me, from lawsuits and salary-never-received, I'm going to say $180,000 per relaying is the base line...

so moving on...now...don't get me wrong, but i'm not into, getting into the following subject. but the majestic orchestrators of "the situation" frequently keep talking about a girl "I knew 'of' " and don't in fact know. I don't know why. -

- By "knew of", Im not even sure what she looks like. Sometimes I remember her tall or with meat on her bones or sometimes short or skinny..Im not even sure if all these were the same girl, when I saw her. Whoever she was, I remember liking the girl in the black North face Denali? jacket. Then amidst these versions of this girl, there was another look alike who rode the white Van type taxi called “Best Taxi.” Then there’s the short skinny version with the red stroller suitcase. I know facts about this individual from simple things like her last name.-

  - last names can be an indicator of where ur from, origin wise. But I don’t even know what she exactly looks like. From wishing her HappyBirthday on facebook, without a response back, I no her birthday is on june 24th. I know that&remember that b/c I did it once, & in high school, my memory was so good, Id memorize my notebooks.-

- ladies, something to know about me. i'll never forget a birthday or anniversary. -

- with all the talk about this girl, you get curious what she's up to, and through google, you can find out she went to columbia. a smart cookie. and in the random times i bumped into her, -

-i remember her telling her friends jen and valerie or whoever (i can remember even small details) that she wanted to transfer to columbia in her first or second year, but didn't. i happen to be walking by at that moment when she was talking and her mother or whoever -

- picked her up in a white infiniti. In a part time job on that campus as a telemarketer, on the computer system 4 calling students homes, her mothers name & address popped up on my neighbors call screen, so I even know random things like her mother's name &she's from  New Jersey. -

- this is what I mean, I don't know her. over the years of explaining things over and over, for one reason or another, it seems like i knew this person. Please stop with the talk. Now the orchestrators, with the sounds projected, want me to-

- think this girl, who never so much as responded to a Happy Birthday, is chasing after me, and has gone mad in a massive game to prevent women from talking to me, when its the orchestrators instructions. Never a moment to reset the mind on that subject. It just shows neither -

- the girl, her wackadoodle friends, and the orchestrators know a thing about me, and just want me to talk all day. Its not even fair to the girl, if she has the time to see this. What'll she think?! Find a new subject, orchestrators...

- and about people i bump into, people from the dorms in Binghamton...i remember it all...in binghamton dorms, they have everyone's names stickered onto the doors. i don't know that girls friends either. -

- ladies, something U should know about me...b4 we become girl friend/boy friend, or even friends, what U see in "this situation" may not be what U get, inPerson. Im different w/different people. Just b/c Im soft w/my brother doesn't mean Im going 2be soft w/some1 on the street.-

- those who cross me, in certain cases, I forgive, but I never forget. Guys, girls, I do not play games. I'm in my very early thirties and I don't have patience for a majority of the things that go on in this...

- going back 2 the girl, 1 last thing. i think the desperate orchestrators want 2give their meaningless cr*p of a program some kind of twist, by hooking me up w/some1 I don't even know how they look, for the sake of their program. After allThis, Im sure I have some1 who hates me-

- through no fault of my own...

It just isn't wise for me to put out anything really, because the orchestrators who have nothing to talk about, who don't know me, who think by seeing me everyday we're besties, then get stuff to harp on. -

-When I do hear them, not always, out of pity I'm telling them something verifiable, if you have a lie detector, u know none of what's said carries any relevance or significance. Its just noise, both literal and figurative.

- then the nonsense about my appearance...what are we 10? am i teenage girl? I'm an average guy, and a regular guy in real life. Everything that goes on is hype from constant chatter through an unresolved and ongoing crime...

moving on...

so moms...my mom never listens 2 a thing I say. Partly b/c she's in a rush to speak what's on her mind. As I continue talking, shell go so far as to walk around or decide to literally hammer away at something for some coincidental purpose.-

-My mom is not how I want my spouse 2be. She claims "there's no talking to me." over the simplest of things when its her stubbornness and clouded mind against my clarity. I'll be in the middle of making a point or saying something insightful, shell tell me she's not into it.-

- if i run into a woman like that, goodbye. maybe its her busy day inciting lack of patience. But then my day...i got her randomness, the randomness in my environment, the randomness from the orchestrators, the randomness at work...it's all very tiring...-

-that's how the orchestrators get material. through tiring randomness...

America is a very flawed country lacking heart, conscience, &insight. But they do have the nuclear family going on 4them. Mom, dad, son, daughter are seen equal, & what every1 says has value. Son can correct mom, mom doesn't take it to heart, & may even use it to better herself.

so had an argument w/mom over Listerine mouthWash. She takes like a tablespoon &dilutes the rest w/water in theCap. I gargle a capful of Listerine. Im content w/how Im doing it &ran into noProblems. She wants 2insist on her way of doing it. Stupid things. Is that a culturalClash?

so tweeted a ton today...the orchestrators got their tantalizing desires possibly fulfilled...moving on...