#cassolotl original

[trektrack]

@cassolotl replied to your photo “I ripped my shirt again: 3/? Cause: self-inflicted attempt to expose...”

JUST ROLL THEM UP, JIM!

I’m not sure which is funnier, the possibility that he chose to rip his sleeves into pieces rather than roll them up, or the possibility that he was actually trying to roll them up, and the tissue-paper shirt just fell apart in the process.

[cassolotl]

@genderliquid replied to your post: genderliquid: cassolotl: penbrydd: ...

@cassolotl you can only do it on mobile/app I think

Ohhh, that was not at all clear from the original post and all its reblogs. :D

Does changing this setting affect the dashboard in browser (desktop or mobile)?

[cassolotl]

PayPal

Oh my word, I changed my PayPal account recently for trivial reasons of convenience, and it asked me to name my business, and now look.

[cassolotl]

Just saw "neutrois" (the gender identity) misspelled "neutrios"

And now I want my gender to be "neutrino".

[cassolotl]

TUMBLR WHY DO YOU KEEP MESSING WITH MY BLOG DESCRIPTION WHY

you bastard

[cassolotl]

Hello foot-fetishists!

Just a quick note to say that I go barefoot all year except winter for non-sexual reasons, and I am not at all interested in engaging with you sexually.

I post photos of my feet for people curious about the practical aspects of barefooting, and I blog about it when I feel like it. Messages that are obviously sexually motivated or that do nothing but tell me to post photos of my feet will be deleted as and when they appear in my inbox; the former is not of interest to me and the latter is just rude.

Thank you, and I hope you find many (consenting and enthusiastic) sexy feet!

[cassolotl]

On the notes of that last reblog

From notunprepared:

Wow I really wish I didn't look at the notes on your last post. There are sooo many people agreeing with the OP I don't understand it. Why do they all assume we're students? Why do they assume we're not "in the real world"? Ive been in the workforce since I was 14. I am 100% aware that my coworkers will never understand or support my gender, and you know what, that sucks. But that's hardly my fault, and I still bloody love my job. They're fucking rude, and ignorant about humanity's variances.

they're fucking rude ignorant fucking little shits they are. Sorry, I just had to rant to someone. Thanks for letting me do so in your ask box, I feel a bit better now. ...fucking shithead douchebags

Oh! And did you see that there are nonbinary people AGREEING with the OP? What the!?! Actually, probs better that you don't look, unless you want to get sad and angry. Also I'm really happy that your workplace is a good nonbinary friendly environment, it makes me hopeful for the future of humanity.

Rants in my inbox are always welcome! And yeah, especially the nonbinary people's agreement is weirdly displaced. It's like, people, you're only hurting yourselves when you say these awful anti-enby things??

The professional environment is a weird one because it's not work - it's social services. But they are all still awesome. :) I mean, yeah, sometimes when I tell people about the genderthings, their response makes me sad. But the majority of the time it makes me happy and hopeful!

I will add a "don't read the comments" warning to that post. Urgh. *shudder*

[cassolotl]

Nonbinary Transition Timeline: January 2015 update (post-op day 56)

Based on, and intended as an update to, this post. Here’s the next post in this series.

Bit of a history:

Worked out I was nonbinary and trans in November 2010.

Came out first to Tumblr in December 2010.

Went to my GP in April 2011, and was referred to the community mental health team (CMHT) and an endocrinologist. The CMHT no longer need to refer you - the GP can refer you directly to your GIC.

First appointment with CMHT re: nonbinary transness in May 2011. Second in August 2011, with someone higher up.

Referred to Charing Cross Gender Identity Clinic by CMHT in Sept/Oct 2011.

Went to see the local endocrinologist Dec 2011, and discussed hormones, and came to the conclusion that there was no hormone that met my needs yet.

My first appointment was 2nd April 2012, about 6 months after I was referred by the Community Mental Health Team.

I’ve been pretty consistently asking for chest reconstruction surgery and no hormones.

At my fourth GIC appointment in October 2013, the CHX clinician says they’ll have a surgery decision about me made in a few days.

In January 2014, after 3 months of my doctors discussing it, I got a letter saying I was being recommended for chest reconstruction under certain conditions.

In April 2014 I had a half-hour appointment at CHX for discussing those conditions, which was very informative on the NHS and how they feel about nonbinary people.

I was referred to my surgeon (Victoria Rose) at the beginning of May.

At the end of May 2014 I had a letter from my surgeon asking me to call and make an appointment for an initial consultation.

Two months later, in July 2014, I went to that consultation. I had a pre-op the same day, and was then put on the waiting list. I was on the waiting list for 4 months.

In November 2014 I was contacted and given a date for surgery - with less than two weeks’ notice.

My surgery date was 18th November 2014 - three years and two months after first being referred to my GIC. Everything was fine and good. Here's my preparation and some before and after pics.

It's been just under 4 years since I first went to my GP. Yesterday, 12th January 2015 (8 weeks post-surgery), I saw my surgeon for a follow-up.

~

The appointment was short and sweet. She had a look at my chest, poked it about a bit, asked questions about what I was doing about aftercare. She noted the lumpiness on the right side and my remaining areolae skin, and said that these could be fixed with a revision - even the areolae bits provided my skin is soft and stretchy enough.

Re: lumpiness, she said I should massage my whole chest often (at least once a day). Re: leftover areola skin, she advised me to keep applying moisturiser to the scars and to massage them too. We're aiming for optimal skin stretchy softness so that we can remove them, and that could be done under local anaesthetic.

[cassolotl]

@tansyblue replied to your photo: I’ve bought some shoes with toes! They slip on,...

Friend who wears these says that they’re fine in the wet if you wear them without socks - apparently once you get rid of the wet sock feeling everything is better.

This is very useful to know! I think today it's too cold (there was snow on the hills when I was on the train home), but I'll remember this when it's warmer. There is a type of weather where barefooting would be fine if it was dry, but when it's wet it's toooo cold - and these are the solution!

textileowl replied to your photo: I’ve bought some shoes with toes! They slip on,...

I loved my two pairs of five fingers so much I wore holes in the soles. So comfortable and you will be surprised how warm your feet are even in the winter. I had the Bikram and KSo sport which they don’t make anymore. It was one of their first models

Sadness that they don't make your favourites any more. :( My feet felt a bit breezed with the ventilation when I got off the train, and that was with socks, but they soon warmed up.

[cassolotl]

Estimated "social cost" of climate change much higher than expected

A recent U.S. government study concluded, based on the results of three widely used economic impact models, that an additional ton of carbon dioxide emitted in 2015 would cause $37 worth of economic damages. These damages are expected to take various forms, including decreased agricultural yields, harm to human health and lower worker productivity, all related to climate change.

But according to a new study, published online this week in the journal Nature Climate Change, the actual cost could be much higher. "We estimate that the social cost of carbon is not $37 per ton, as previously estimated, but $220 per ton," said study coauthor Frances Moore, a PhD candidate in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources in Stanford's School of Earth Sciences.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/january/emissions-social-costs-011215.html

[cassolotl]

My chest works again!

Do I have any friends here on Fitocracy? :)

Edit: Referral link.

[cassolotl]

198. Behavioural Orientation from Poly in Pictures.

Many thanks to my first two Patreon supporters for helping get me re-motivated!

[cassolotl]

Post-op day 52 - scars and sensation

Scars

I've been using two different scar treatments on my horizontal incisions. I've not started using them on my nipples until today because my nipples have been getting little cysts (a bit like spots/pimples) where the dissolving stitches were working their way out - and I figured this was a wound and that I shouldn't put scar stuff on that?

So yeah, at least once a day, sometimes twice, I put some scar stuff on my finger and massage it into the entire length of the horizontal scars. I tend to massage for longer than it takes to apply the gloop, because it's the massaging that breaks up the scar tissue beneath the surface, apparently. As a result, the scars are feeling much flatter and softer.

The scars are still pretty dark and obvious, but it's not even been two months yet so I'm not too worried.

Sensation

This is an interesting one. I found out pretty quickly that I am getting different sensations back at different rates and in different places.

The first thing I noticed was that a lot of my surgery-site wasn't registering my fingers being cold. I'd touch, say, my stomach and go "brrr, cold" and then touch my chest and - nothing.

But as well as that, I'd feel the pressure of my fingers in some places and not others.

Then there's the pointy/scratchy sensation. I'd gently poke or scratch my stomach with, say, a knitting needle (not tooo pointy like a sewing needle, and not hard enough to leave a mark), and then do the same on my chest. A lot of my chest can sense that, even if it can't sense pressure. Some places I can sense pressure but not pointy/scratchy.

Sometimes I'd do something that would normally result in sharp pain, like accidentally knock a scab while washing or pull off micropore tape, and feel the sharp *ouch* on an entirely different bit of my chest! Cool, huh? This is happening less now. I'm assuming my brain will rearrange and correct where it thinks sensation is coming from over time. Brains are awesome.

[cassolotl]

Day 51 post-op - lumpy wonkiness

... which I am actually completely okay with, but I am documenting it because I think people who might want top surgery would probably want to know.

Uneven chest

The left side of my chest (which has always healed better and been more comfortable, less painful, etc.) is a much more "normal" shape. It curves like a chest should curve, I think.

The right side is sort of lumpy and the area around the nipple is... concave? Indented? I'm not sure how to describe it. And the weird bit is, when I lift my arm, it gets kinda lumpier.

I'm assuming the worst, that something has happened that I was warned about (among many other things) when signing the consent form: some tissue has healed attached to some other tissue (vague, I know, but I don't know the details yet). I may be wrong, this is only day 51, and from what I've heard my chest is going to keep healing and settling. This may be normal, and it may fade with time. I have a follow-up appointment with the surgeon on Monday 12th January, so I will ask her about it.

But to be honest, considering there's a lot more healing to do and my chest is only going to get better-looking over the next few months, I'm pretty much okay with it. It's still a million times better than having breasts, and I think every chest (cis/trans, post-op/non-op) has quirks and irregularities in some way. It also helps that I was warned in advance, and that I know it's not really anyone's fault; that's just how it healed, and looking back I think no one could have prevented it.

If my surgeon has a way to correct this, I will take it. It's kinda uncomfortable? I can feel it all the time, though stretching helps. It looks a bit erk when I lift my arm, like something is Wrong. And I worry a bit that it might actually hurt when I have more sensation back. But I won't know for sure whether this is even a problem until I've got full sensation back in that exact area.

If anyone has any information about this particular healing weirdness I would love to know more.

Surprise nipples!

This mostly makes me laugh!

This is going to make more sense if you've seen the photos under the cut, but on both sides but especially my right side there has been this patch of discoloured skin on the "corner" of the horizontal incision scars. I have been assuming it was bruising, but it hasn't faded. It has also been a little bit bumpy, which I assumed was stitches beneath the skin.

Yesterday me and harpereaves worked it out, and it was such a relief to know that it's totally fine and nothing is wrong! Okay so aesthetically it's less than ideal because it isn't going to heal and go away, and I can see how some people might not be pleased, but I mostly think it's interesting and sometimes it strikes me as pretty funny.

It's the tops of my "former" areolae. :D Bumpy, kinda browner than the rest of my skin. Less visible now everything is healed, but still pretty visible. And definitely in a place that an areola shouldn't be.

Again, looking at whether this is anyone's "fault" and whether it could have been prevented, this is just the result of my perky ex-boobs - my nipples were pretty high, the areolae were pretty large, and there was no clear line of "here is where the areola stops and the normal skin begins". If the surgeon had placed the incisions higher it probably would have looked weird because it wouldn't have followed a pec-line. So, this is the inevitable result.

It's funny because I now feel like I have 1.5 nipples on each side, sort of! And in a way it's quite nice to have my old nipples still there? Because I quite liked that fuzzy area that wasn't quite areola, but also wasn't quite ordinary skin. Having said that, I find it difficult to tell how obvious it is, and how obvious it will be as my scars heal and get paler. It can't be that obvious if it's taken me and Adam 50 days to work it out. I don't mind having an imperfect chest - in fact, I quite like it - but it might be that my surgeon will have a way to correct it, and I'm not sure what I will say. I don't even know how common this is; I've never heard of it happening before.

So! Photos, taken by me, pretty terribly. Under the cut. :)

Whole chest. See that lumpiness around the right nipple? (Your left, my right!)

Left nipple:

Right nipple:

Arm relaxed (already pretty lumpy):

I'll say it again: this is only day 51, and from what I've heard my chest is going to keep healing and settling. This may be normal, and it may fade with time.

[cassolotl]

The Patreon perks

Okay, here's what I've got so far for Patreon perks (thanks to everyone who gave ideas!):

$0.50 - This is you being super-awesome. Because of you, I am significantly more likely to make a new comic!

$1.50 - Access to behind-the-scenes photos and scans and stuff.

$4.00 - A postcard of your choice or a zine of your choice sent to you by snail mail, all personal an' that. (Add $1 if you're non-UK Europe, and $2 if you're outside Europe.)

$5.00 - I'll thank you in the blurb below the comic, and your name can be a link to the URL of your choice.

$20.00 - I will design a character to your specifications for you to use however you'd like.

$22.00 - Handwarmers in your choice of colours (or you can choose a pair from here). Allergy warning: contains wool, and I own a cat. (Add $1 if you're in non-UK Europe, and $3 if you're outside Europe.)

$30.00 - I will design a character to your specifications for you to use however you'd like, and post you the original scrappy pen-and-pencil-on-paper. (Add $1 if you're non-UK Europe, and $2 if you're outside Europe.)

I've not got any photos to go with those descriptions yet, but I imagine I'll get there in time.

So, do the prices seem right? Have I missed anything you wish was on there?

[cassolotl]

Oh hey, something funky is going on with my dashboard. When I scroll past a long post, the poster's icon stays on the page - so now I don't have to scroll up to see who posted a thing any more.

That's pretty cool and useful. That's Tumblr doing a thing right, is that.