Random raves

Here is a pic of them today, with the surgical tape off. The lighting isn't that great, so you can't tell that the left areola in particular is quite discoloured, but that was the side that had the top layer of skin come off the nipple. The areolas themselves are at least half of their previous size as well.

The ridge marks in the lower part of my breasts are just the imprint of the compression garment. You can see a little bit of the swelling to the side of my breast on the left of the pic that hasn't gone down yet after the lipo.

Obviously, NSFW and not great if you're squicked by naked breasts and/or healing incisions (no blood, gore or stitches at all though): http://flickr.com/gp/-trixtah/4r59hU

OK, breast reduction is done, and I am now ensconced happily at home. Thanks so much to the awesome Mr slavayboy for coming to collect me, ensure I'm all set up properly and for bringing me lovely flowers and bikkie treats.

Pain is hovering at around a 2-3 out of 10. Right after I woke up from surgery, it was an 8, but that abated very quickly after a few good zaps of Fentanyl. That stuff gives you interesting dreams - mine seem to consist of reading copious amounts of strange and dense text.

They removed 900g of tissue from each side, which has taken me down to about a C-cup. The breasts look a bit smaller than that right now, because they are being squished in a compression garment. Here is a link to a pic showing them in the garment (no ickiness): http://flickr.com/gp/-trixtah/100HkR

They also removed the mole that's been under my right breast forever, lol. I have spectacular bruising down my sides where they did liposuction. Oh, and my nipples appear to have retained sensation, which, since they were moved at least 10cm up my body, is pretty awesome.

Dressings and stitches come out in 2 weeks, and I have to wear the compression garment day and night for that interval. After that, all going well, I wear it at least 12 hours a day for another 4 weeks, and then it may come off after that. I couldn't be happier with the care I've received and the work that was done.

It looks a bit gross right now with all the stitches and leaks and so on, but I'll do another pic after the 2-week dressing removal.

So, does anyone else get nipple cramp? I do from time to time (usually from the cold) and it's fucking excruciating. It's even more so when you happen to whack one against a doorframe in its cramped state, and it takes 3 days for it to stop being bloody painful.

Also, if you start thinking, man, my tits are like footballs and it feels like my body is PMTish, it might be worth considering the possibility that you are PMTish, especially since your period is due in 3 days.

Duh.

I've been reading too much stuff about women, young and old, not having the faintest idea of how women's vulvas and labia can vary, and thinking that there is something wrong with them because one of their labia is 5mm longer than the other or suchlike.

So I'm thinking seriously of starting a website where there are galleries of pictures of as many vulvas as I can get. I would like them to be self-submitted, with some demographic information from the submitters (e.g. age, ethnicity, children, surgery, etc). I know that vaginapagina has lots of pics, but their stuff doesn't really show up in Google searches. There is at least one other site with pictures of vulvas, but it seems to be there to drive traffic to porno sites (and has fucking flowers and people spreading their labia apart in a porno-like fashion. If you like it, fine, but I think there is a time and a place).

So, questions:

Feel free to comment further below. Of course, the ironic part is I probably wouldn't want to submit pictures of my own vulva at all - how to ask people to do something I'm personally not comfortable with? While I would not want to do anything with the pictures other than display them for the stated purpose, how to reassure people of that?

I just squicked myself by reading about the yolk sac a developing embryo has until about 7 weeks gestation (well, the sac remains until after birth, but the duct into what turns into the digestive area is occluded around 7 weeks and it becomes redundant).

Ok, of course I knew that mammals (and fish and birds and insects...) develop from eggs, but I had no idea that mammals produced yolk sacs during development as well. And I really have no idea why it squicks me, but it totally does. Gross.

You know, I wanted to become a doctor right from when I was about 7 till about 15 or so - I'm so glad I didn't. I put myself off in my teens by thinking about dealing with people vomiting and pus, neither of which are my favourite things - just imagine more of the fun I could have had in anatomy class, when reading about embryo yolk sacs and the like.

On another note, it must be said that London has a fantastic range of medically-themed museums and locations, ranging from the Chelsea Physic Garden through to the old St Thomas' operating theatre in the roof of a church. I meant to visit the Hunterian Museum last time I was over, but didn't get round to it. (I did manage to do 6 museums, 4 art galleries and Kew Gardens in England and Wales last year in a bit less than 2 weeks, so it wasn't too bad.) Maybe next year!

Breakfast
Two Vegemite toasts and tea

Lunch
Smoked salmon scrambled eggs again, on toast (using up the last of the salmon, but only two eggs this time)

Dinner
Curry with potato, kumara, pumpkin, eggplant, cauliflower, beans, broccoli and fresh home-made paneer, with rice

Sundries
2 cups of tea - soy milk and sugar as usual
1 soy latte with 2 sugars (I keep trying the coffee at The Front in Lyneham, and because it's Piazza D'oro and has been on a container boat for half a year, and is burnt every time they make it - 5 different "baristas", and they all burn it - it's shite every bloody time. Never again, I'll just go home for a coffee fix if I'm doing laundry.)
The fudge brownie I bought from the healthy food shop yesterday - too sweet and not chocolately enough.

It's the weekend, which means teh booze, and more crap. Or more ornate tasty meals. :-)

Breakfast (yes, it's boring. Some of us are creatures of habit)
Tea with sugar and soy milk
2 pieces of toast with Vegemite

Lunch
Large sushi box - 4 nigiri, 1 egg nigiri, 4 large salmon hosomaki (or small futomaki), 9 pieces sashimi (tuna, salmon, white fish), espresso-cup-sized portions of wakame salad and octopus salad, and one inari.
Soy latte with 2 sugars

Dinner (I was starving)
Vegie burger (bun, lettuce, tomato, egg, pineapple ring, beetroot, tomato sauce)
1 scoop of chips, of which I ate most of them. In fact, most of them before I walked in my door

Drinkies
2 largish glasses of rosé wine (less than half a bottle)
Tea with sugar and soy milk (well after the wine!)


PS. Dear Telstra, you can stop shaping my internet any time now!!!1!

I've been reading the Shapely Prose back-posts, as I may have mentioned earlier, and one of the things that has struck me is how people who have been fat most of their lives often get brainwashed as to how much people in general actually eat, or how much they exercise. Also, I've been amazed at just how little food people on diets are allowed to consume. 1300-1500 calories a day? Holy shit. And it goes to show that the strictly thermodynamic concept of calories consumed, energy expended, and the left-overs being converted to storage (fat) is really not the story at all. How else to explain how women who eat 1300 calories a day and exercise can be still well over 100 kilos, when people like me, who stuff their faces, are just somewhat "overweight" (according to BMI standards. I just call myself "average")? Or are we all liars or delusional? Or is it the fact that our genetics make us metabolise food in wildly divergent ways - some are "burners", some are "storers", and what's healthy for you is quite possibly not healthy for me (at least in terms of the number of calories consumed)? If it isn't obvious, I go for the latter explanation.

So I'm going to do a food log for a week. I think people who might look at themselves as having unhealthy eating habits because they are fat or overweight might need to think about the fact that fatness is often decoupled from what anyone might conceive of as an average way of eating. Sure, as some fuckwits say, you didn't find fatties in concentration camps. Anyone can starve down to emaciation. But someone's point where they start losing weight might be 1800 calories a day; others might find that point is 1200 calories a day; or, conversely, even 2400. But subsisting on 1200 calories a day in order to maintain some arbitrary "ideal" weight is not sustainable, nor is it particularly sane.

I've been eating quite a bit lately, since it's cold. I also feel that I'm towards the chubbier end of my weight range, but I don't know what I weigh. Since my clothes still fit (if a little snugger), I would say I'm about 80-odd kg. That makes my BMI 28. My waist is about .76 the circumference of my hips (and probably about .5 the circumference of my bust, heh). I've never been on a diet, although at times I make efforts to reduce the amount of crap I consume and eat "more healthily". This consists of me cooking for myself more and eating more veges and protein, rather than restricting calories or portion control. I'm exactly mid-cycle right now, and I am not doing very much exercise (I'm doing a wee bit, but I should actually be doing more). I also hardly drink water, not even the fizzy stuff, at this time of the year. Anyway, leading off, here's what I've eaten today.

Breakfast:
2 pieces of wholemeal sourdough toast with butter and Vegemite
Cup of tea with one sugar and soy milk

Lunch:
(slightly strange because I was running off to an exam, but the pie shop didn't have any chicken pies, which was my first choice)
2 pieces of cheese-on-toast
2 gherkins
Tea as above

Dinner:
Madras curry made from a few tbl of curry concentrate (spices, tomato, coconut cream), root veges, cauli, beans, fried tofu
White rice
All up, at least 2-2½ cups of rice and curry.

Snack:
(still hungry - feeling cold and light lunch)
2 pieces of toast with butter and plum jam
Tea as usual

The nice thing about YouTube and such things is not just music, but being able to find a huge variety of clips on pretty much anything of interest. This is the best Hun Yuan tai chi clip I've found yet. Just lovely. Ignore the n00b comment in the post that questions how accurate the form is - from my limited understanding, it's spot on. And it looks gorgeous too. It's fantastic to see the flow when a top practitioner does an entire form; I love the dynamic leaping movements that then end with his feet seemingly planted to the earth. He's got a whole pile of other videos which include the 38-form "Cannon" version, and a sabre form. The 9-section whip is fascinating (although the video isn't that clear). There's a mini-doco on the whip here; the master who demonstrates in the second half is amazing.

Anyways, one of the benefits of tai chi and many other meditation and martial art practices is supposed to be an enhanced sense of calm and balance. I also go to the osteopath semi-regularly, and that sends me off into another zone as well. However, as I mentioned to saluqi and faxon yesterday, it doesn't seem to necessarily be a positive thing. If I do good tai chi (relatively speaking!) or have a big osteo treatment, I feel very calm and quiet and open. Then something comes along to upset that calm, and it sends me into instant irritation. I got severely irritated with a manager shoulder-tapping me about something relatively trivial after an osteopathic treatment on Friday. While I wasn't outright rude, it was bordering on it, and despite the fact I'm an evil snappy Cancerian most of the time, I can normally express irritation without being rude and in less potentially self-damaging ways.

I suppose when I'm really evolved, feeling open and acutely-aware won't necessarily translate to "vulnerable" and "over-sensitive". Speed the day. Although it's nice to know that I'm apparently not the only one.