#i think if i told october 2021 me that we were in therapy - had a trustworthy support system - and had our hyperfixations/passions back

[pawphin]

i am so excited to have a normal and good october

[bugaydoeshistory]

"I don't wish you dead, I wish you well"

On Christmas Day, 2016. My brother and I got into an altercation with my father. There was misunderstanding over something small, what we were gonna cook for Christmas, and my dad quickly escalated his anger to the point that I no longer felt safe. He grabbed a knife from the kitchen and I locked myself in my brother's room. I was afraid. Moments before the police arrived, I thought of what I said to my brother moments prior to arriving home:

"Sometimes, I wish Dad was dead."

My brother swiftly responded to my blunt statement with:

"Don't ever wish someone dead. Wish them better."

I carry that with me as I navigate through moments of where I didn't feel safe. Moments where I felt exactly as 21 year old Abby did, bunkered in her brother's room. I carried that unsafe feeling throughout undergrad, I was sleeping on friend's couches in community college because I worried that my dad would attack me in my sleep. I transferred to UC Davis, mainly so I can get out of my house and I can wake up feeling safe. But the unsafe feeling followed me. It followed me in the form of every person I wanted to please, just like my Dad.

I saw it in you, Manang. I wanted you to like me, to be proud of me, to mentor me. I saw the potential of what I could be -- beautiful, confident, a PhD student, a Sailor Moon fan --in you. In a lot of ways I wanted to BE you. Now that I'm older, I realize how strange it must have been to interact with a younger version of myself. I recognize that I was insecure, unsure of myself, neurotic, and the list goes on.

I was also very vulnerable. I had no prior knowledge of how to navigate this world of academia, and you were my sole guide. I relied on your insight, your advice, and I held on to every word to help me through those two years of undergrad. The thesis became this point of contention between us, and I recognize my own display of helplessness as partly to blame for what transpired between us. I didn't have the confidence in myself to believe that I could do it, so I looked to you to get me through it.

Now, I am 28 years old and a lot has happened in my life to make me see the beauty and the power I hold. I had my heart broken many times now to realize what I could have done differently, and how to carry myself. I'm not the 22 year old, mousy, scared, insecure undergraduate student you met up with at Sharetea in October 2018. I'm not "flaky", insecure, non-communicative, or whatever else you framed me as after October 2021. You may not even believe me, but I know I also don't need your validation to know and live in my own truth of who I am.

Let me cut to the chase here -- I was extremely hurt by how you treated me in Seattle. You refused to acknowledge my existence, and when you did, you were unkind. You were yelling at me over the phone, asking me if I "even know how to break down a table", you accused me of stealing in front of Bellarmine Hall, you made me FEEL the tension between us, as if I had horribly wronged you. How this impacted my psyche, you will never understand. You will never know that I stopped eating for 3 days after I touched down at SFO, that I checked into Intensive Outpatient Therapy, that I took leave from my job because I truly didn't want to exist anymore. I think you accomplished what you set out to do when you knew I was coming to Seattle -- to make me feel like shit. To make me feel like I don't belong in History anymore. To give up. To make me realize how worthless I was. To make me feel bad for how our working relationship transpired in October 2021.

It took me YEARS to heal from this interaction, and I would be lying if I told you that I am fully healed now. However, I am at a place where I brought myself back to History as a discipline, against your disdain for my pursuit. It took me years to say this to myself in regards to you as a person: "I wish you well." No, actually, I wish you better. I wish that whatever transpired between you and I never happen to another soul. I am anxious as shit to be a graduate student, to be in your place, because I recognize the power I hold and the responsibility to treat undergrads with respect and care. I'm anxious of fucking it up, of having another person feel what I felt. I'm anxious that I would be perpetuating this intergenerational trauma in academia, especially in women of color. I don't want what happened to you, to happen to me, to happen to the next person and so on and so forth.

Manang, I wish you better. I hope that whatever shit happened to you in graduate school is something you are able to heal from. I wish that whatever happened in your family you are able to work through, that you are able to grow and develop as a healed individual. I pray that you are surrounded by love, because that's what I truly believe will get us all out of this perpetually fucked cycle. I don't hate you. I have no hatred in my heart at all for you. I just wish to coexist in our discipline. I hold you as a scholar, as a historian, as a researcher with respect. All I fucking wish with the deepest hope in my heart, that you would treat me the same.

[blood-loving-leech]

Reasons why @/deadvxmp was a shitty boyfriend

He was my best friend from fall of 2021 until fall of 2022

Last october he tried to kill himself, when i freaked out and started crying my sister heard me and told my moms friend who was watching us that night who then tried to call emts like ANY PERSON WOULD WHEN A KID IS TRYING TO KILL THEMSELVES

And so he said I was “making his attempt about me” yeah my bad for worrying about your fucking LIFE AND SURVIVAL DAMN he just wanted me to not feel any emotions abt his death ig

After that everything kinda went downhill with my then-girlfriend and I wasn’t sure about if I should break up with her since she was my only friend and everyone else was just friends by extension through her but he convinced me to break up with her knowing full well she was my only irl friend

In january, he ghosted me for a week and a half when I visited california, when I got back I tried to kms and he decided without talking to me that it was his fault and that i’d kms if he left which he is now using against me saying I explicitly threatened to kms if he left me and claiming that that was emotional manipulation on my part

At this point I think he was only friends with me because of that and he was supposed afraid of me, then in february he asked to call me his boyfriend?? which why would you ASK THAT if you don’t even like the person fuck you

After my attempt, my mother grew suspicious of the college student we were both friends with (for some reason, Misha seems to think I had something to do with it but I have no clue what her though process was) and effectively ended up getting them (college student) cut out of our lives, said student was regrettably Mishas fp and so when we found out it was my mom back in june he blamed me and spent months guilting me over it and making it very clear that it was “all my fault” for trying to kms in the first place until we broke up

sometime in the spring he literally taught me how to purge and yet he blames me for worsening his eating disorder despite me telling him not to abuse the laxatives when he first got them and trying to convince him to eat more and telling him i’d love him no matter what he looked like but SURE i’m the one who encouraged his ed because he thought i’d only like him if he was skinny even though i never said anything of the sort

he also blamed me for treating him like a child every time he misunderstood something and I tried to explain myself because he said it made him feel stupid and generally just told me to shut up every time i tried explaining myself

he never said he loved me first, undoubtedly because he never actually loved me, and he said he didn’t believe i loved him so i spent our entire relationship trying to prove my love to him until finally i realized he was putting in no effort to love me and i stopped trusting him (he broke up with me like literally one week after i said “i don’t believe you anymore”)

when i realized i had issues that were affecting our relationship i went to therapy for them and my therapist said “yeah you could work on some stuff but he also has to learn to trust you as his boyfriend” and i told him that and he said he could try and then like two days later said “yeah i lied actually im never going to trust you i just wanted you to think id try” like WTF

when he broke up with me he said it was to “take the strain off our friendship” since we’d been arguing almost all the time and i said he’d have to give me some time because DUH he was breaking up with me and that fucken hurt but then i literally had no other friends so i went back to him and said we could be friends and he told me basically to fuck off and take some time to figure stuff out while he talked to his friends about stuff and so two days later when he blocked me everywhere i asked what was going on and he was like “my friends all say you’re a shitty person and i prefer not talking to you so leave me alone and never talk to me again” and then blocked me some more

so in heartbroken confusion i wanted to figure out what he thought i did that was so shitty by waiting for him to post stuff abt it on his tumblr but then he started going off about how i was ableist and encouraged his eating disorder and physically abused him even though he lives in alaska and i live in washington and its literally closer to mexico than it is to him but yeah sure i totally did all that

so i got angry and did dumb things and went off on him and called him names i knew he hated and all sorts of shit to which he responded by telling all our mutual friends that i did all those things that i didn’t unless i have complete fucking amnesia so there goes the few sorta friends i still have and i still wanted to know what i supposedly did wrong and obviously i did more dumb shit that got out of hand and now he’s sending people to tell me to kms and people to threaten to kill me which i actually wish they would do but he chose to be mutuals with cowards who won’t actually hike butt over to gig harbor and stab me

are we both terrible people? maybe yes. i know i’ve made mistakes but he certainly isn’t innocent

i’ve done things wrong but the whole time we were dating i hand made him gifts and jewelry and sent him tea bags and told him i loved him multiple times every day and wrote him poems and drew fanart of his ocs and fawned over how cute/handsome he was and how good his sense of fashion was and encourage his career dreams and assure him i loved him and i planned to move with him to college and then canada and get shots to fix my cat allergies so we could have cats and i broke the rules and almost got kicked out of my favorite summer camp because he asked me to and he never said he loved me and the only compliment he could ever muster was “v snazzy” so i don’t think it’s much of a question of who loved who here

the difference is i only ever wanted to figure out my mistakes while he decided it was appropriate to send people to tell me to kms

[phawareglobal]

Sarah Sizemore - phaware® interview 439

Former pulmonary hypertension patient, Sarah Sizemore discusses life 1 year post-lung transplant surgery.

My name is Sarah Sizemore. I'm 22 now, and I live in South Carolina. My connection with pulmonary hypertension is I was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary hypertension since age four until I was transplanted on October 31st of 2022. I was on IV Remodulin. I was on several oral pills for pulmonary hypertension. My symptoms started to become unmanageable, and I was maxed down on all therapies. My PH specialist said the next option is really lung transplant, as there wasn't really much to do anymore, as I was already on so many aggressive therapies. So it was kind of time. Around early 2021 is when I really started to decline. So we started that process. 

The process for a lung transplant was really fairly easy and quick, as I was declining so rapidly. So the MUSC transplant team tried to make things go very quickly. I think within two months, I was listed, and then I received my double lung transplant, I think, a month and a half on being on the UNOS list for organs. I think the decision for me was pretty quick. I would take it as if there's any slim chance that I could have a life without pulmonary hypertension, no matter how risky a transplant is, to me, that was a risk worth taking. As I've had pulmonary hypertension in my entire life, there was this option that could provide a life without PH, and I really wanted to pursue it. It's not an easy journey. It's difficult. I mean, it's a major surgery. 

When I would talk to post-transplant patients before I got my transplant, they describe it as trading one illness for another. It's kind of like that, just because of all the risks that come with transplant. But every single person that I talked to pre-transplant said that they would do it again in a heartbeat, just because the amount of life that they were able to live post-transplant. That really made the decision for me. So when I was told that it was time for a lung transplant, my immediate decision was that I wanted to pursue it, just due to the fact that I could have a life without pulmonary hypertension.

My recovery was fairly easy and smooth. I was out of the hospital within two weeks. I really didn't have any complications. It was a big surgery, so there was some hard recovery. But I really didn't have any complications. We thought I was going to need ECMO due to how severe my pulmonary hypertension was. I ended up not needing that at all. I was breathing on my own within two days post and then walking like within three days post, and then, I was discharged at two weeks. Lung transplant patients have to go through pulmonary rehab and physical therapy post-transplant due to just how big of a surgery it is. It takes a toll on your body.

I've had PH my whole life, so I had to relearn how to breathe. I was used to taking short, shallow breaths, but with new lungs, you need to expand them and really take deep breaths. So pulmonary rehab really works on breathing and helping you adjust to exercising with these new lungs. With new lungs, you really have to exercise every day to keep them in shape and keep them physically fit and open. So it's pulmonary rehab. You do it for three months post-op, but I haven't stopped doing pulmonary rehab since my transplant due to just some complications. I love it. It's a controlled environment. Everyone knows me, and they really care about me.

Then, around March, I ended up getting COVID. I had that for seven weeks due to not having an immune system. We have to be on immunosuppressants so we don't reject our lungs. So I had COVID for seven weeks. I really didn't get sick at all. My lungs were just that strong to handle it, but unfortunately, the risk with getting an illness is your body wants to fight it. So it gives antibodies, but that can also wake up your lungs and your body, and your body say, "Well, these aren't my lungs." So I unfortunately went into acute rejection in May and respiratory failure, having rejection due to the COVID. That caused some scarring and damage, just to being such a traumatic event. So that damage is unfortunately permanent, and so I will need another transplant soon due to the scarring. But transplant has changed my life in just 10 months, so I would do it again in a heartbeat.

With having COVID, it decreased my lung function, which is 36%, and so that unfortunately isn't going to get any higher, just due to the scarring and damages. I have some new conditions with these new lungs. It's not a problem with the pulmonary arteries anymore, like with pulmonary hypertension. It's now with the vessels and the airways. So that has caused scarring and damage to that. That is what's causing low lung function. It's just only going to get worse over time. My function has to drop a little bit more to be listed for a second lung transplant, just due to UNOS's rules and everything.

One year post, the journey has been incredible. It's been a year full of getting to experience things that I've never been able to, like swimming, because I was always on IV. I was running five miles a day, just so many things. I mean, and breathing, I felt what it feels like to be able to breathe normally, which was huge. Just so many things that you never think you would get excited to experience. I've fallen in love with exercise and actually being able to do that. So, I mean, each month has been something new that I've discovered I can do. This transplant has just been life-changing. 

October 31st will be a year. Then the year ahead is probably a second transplant, which I'm completely fine with, as I would do it again in a heartbeat. It's just another chance to get to experience those things all over again, which I'm looking forward to.

So I have a golden retriever, Hudson. He's two. I got him around the time when things started to decline. He has completely changed my life. I mean, dogs can save people's lives, and he definitely saved mine. Those years were rough, and then going into transplant, he was such a comfort and everything. He's a golden retriever, so he has so much energy. He loves playing ball and swimming. He made sure to take me out and make sure I got exercise to keep strong for transplant. Now, post-transplant, I've gotten to take him on big adventures that we've never been able to do, which is such a blessing. I call him my furry soulmate. I mean, he's my soul dog. He's my whole life. I mean, I couldn't imagine doing this journey without him. He loves life and loves adventures. 

The advice I would give is to trust your instincts. I know it's terrifying, and it's scary. I mean, I felt all of those things. It's such a big journey, but each second and minute that you get to experience a life without whatever disease you have, is so worth all of the hard milestones.

The biggest thing for me was getting to carry on my donor's legacy in life. Now, I am living for myself and my donor. They have given me this chance, and that's the biggest thing. Then, just talk to other transplant patients that have gone through it, because that was the biggest support for me, was just speaking to other transplant patients. They gave me tips for surgery, how to make it comfortable post-transplant. They gave me so many tips that now, being out, I was like, "Wow. That really helped."

Really take care of yourself, too, because it is a big journey. You want to be strong mentally, really mentally and physically, but mostly mentally, because it is a big journey. Just take care of yourself. Prioritize yourself. Take time for yourself to process and everything. Trust your medical team. It's scary, but they do what they do best. I was really at peace when I had my transplant, because I trusted my team. I was just so ready to have a second chance at life. I think that's the biggest thing I would say. 

My name is Sarah Sizemore, and I am aware that I'm rare.

Learn more about pulmonary hypertension trials at www.phaware.global/clinicaltrials. Follow us on social @phaware Engage for a cure: www.phaware.global/donate #phaware Share your story: info@phaware.com 

Listen and View more on the official phaware™ podcast site

[letsdiscoverkitty]

Treatment/Recovery Update - May 2021

Okay, I will try to ramble less in this one (so sorry!) ^ well that didn't happen!

In terms of when I did leave hospital, as I mentioned a tiny bit in the last post, my EDP was completely AWOL. A month before I was due to be discharged she came to a meeting with myself and my consultant, during which we set up 4 appointments that would be over zoom before I was discharged to help with relapse prevention and the transition home, as well as setting out, in principle, the therapeutic support that I would be getting once home...it all sounded great, so great. But as usual when it comes to my team, it was too good to be true (should have called it). I attempted to contact her when our appointments never happened but I kept being met by a brick wall; no one knew what was happening, all I got told was that she was "off"... Time passed and I was discharged with only a phone call booked in from someone from the general team to check I was safe a few days later (it was literally 5 minutes, long if that) and an appointment to do physical monitoring the next wee....a far cry from the original discharge plan *sigh* Coming home was a bit of a whirlwind. We were approaching Christmas but we were still under a lot of restrictions with COVID, so it was a very strange/messy/weird few weeks.

Time continued to pass and there was still no confirmation around therapy or support, even the ED team didn't know what was happening with L, I just continued to go to two weekly physical monitoring. In the end, with nowhere else to turn, I contacted my consultant from hospital. To say that she was mad that nothing had been in place/I had no support would be an understatement and I thank my lucky stars that she was able to get involved. It took a couple of weeks but I finally had my first session with a therapist in February. In total it took about 8-9weeks from discharge to see someone, which, well, was hard.

Upon reflection, I think one of the biggest things I struggled with with coming home was that I had literally no leave to practice beforehand. This meant that I unfortunately slipped back into old habits very quickly as, well I know it is no excuse but coming back to the same environment your brain easily slips into automatic mode and you find yourself doing what you "used" to do without realising it.

I was in, I would say, quite a vulnerable state when I left hospital (the last few months there were pretty rocky to say the least) and the day before I was discharged (as I mentioned in a previous post somewhere) I was handed 3 different, very conflicting, meal plans and the nutritionist who had previously been very horrible to me and who had been away for a number of weeks, told me that she did not think I could continue to recover at home and that the best possible case would be if I only lost a bit of weight over the next 6 months....I think you can probably guess how badly this was taken and how messy my mind was. So with 3 meal plans in hand, none of which I had practiced, with little to no support from the ED team, I was, essentially, crisis managing, simply trying to get through each day.

I know, I know. Classic kitty - stuck record. failure. mess. making a million and one excuses. trying to make out like she is fine to the rest of the world when in fact inside she was falling apart. sigh.

In terms of my weight recovery I was not discharged at a healthy BMI/weight, which my consultant was sad about, however I was in a much better place than when I was admitted (I think I had gained about half the weight I would have needed to from when I was admitted to get to a healthy weight). I will admit that part of me does wonders whether staying would have been beneficial, because on a very basic level yes it could have helped in some ways. However if I stretch my mind back to when I was still on the ward ,it actually still floods me with anxiety and fear because of how UNHELPFUL the environment had sadly become. It is hard to explain to someone who has not experienced an EDU, but the patient groups can and do make a massive of differences. I was vvv lucky that when I was initially admitted, and for the first good couple of months, it was a v supportive and recovery focused environment. However, by about late Sept/early October ,things turned completely upside down (which was not helped by the fresh COVID lockdowns either) and even staff were saying how terrible it had gotten and how they could not believe the things that they were being asked to manage on the progression ward. There were times when I felt incredible unsafe on the ward and feared for others patients, which is not "okay". I genuinely believe that staying any longer would have likely made my mental health decline further; I had already found the massive shift was negatively affecting me and I think staying would have been unwise. I had also gained quite a lot of weight and was, I hate to admit, struggling with both coming to terms with that along with dealing with everything that you are continually facing when going through treatment/recovery alongside working on trauma stuff. I know none of that is any worthy excuse, but that was how it was...At this time I was struggling a lot with my meal plan and had quite a few lapses whilst on the transition phase of the unit however despite screaming out for help/support from staff, because of the acute situation on the ward, I was just left. They knew I was struggling, I was told time and time again that they had not forgotten me, but did I get help? no. It was actually made worse by the then nutritionist who sat me down like a naughty school girl and basically told me that I was a failure and that I would never achieve anything in life blah blah blah (please see a past post if you want to know more) which made me even more scared to reach out for 'help'/'support'. So no, I don't think staying would have helped much, which is a real shame.

Therapy wise I had a bit of a rough ride in there (god I'm really selling this aren't I?!). When admitted I was not in a place for 'traditional' therapy what so ever; looking back I honestly have no idea how I was even 'functioning' (was I functioning? probably not) and even the group therapies were a struggle but my consultant stuck with me and with time I was able to process a little more. One thing that helped me beyond words was 1:1 Art Therapy. This was not something I had accessed before, only ever doing group sessions in the past which was mostly about getting away from the ward and doing a bit of art. I cannot reiterate enough how different and HELPFUL the 1:1 sessions were. The art therapy, who I knew from the last year and is an absolutely GEM, helped me to begin to process and work through the trauma that I had experienced with dad. It took a lot of time and persistence but I was able to use those sessions in so many ways and I will forever be grateful to P for supporting me (I was so lucky to be able to have 1:1 sessions for the majority of my 8 admission).

The more traditional therapy initially took the form of 30min sessions with my consultant once to twice a week (as much as I hated them, she was bloody good). I also had a review and a few sessions with the lead therapist via zoom (she was heavily pregnant so was working from home) not long after being admitted, but she soon went on maternity leave. This left me to be picked up by her student, who was actually incredible. We did a long extended piece of work on my perfectionism which, again, was SO helpful but she sadly left (for bigger and better things) and I was left hanging for a while as there were no other openings. A new lead therapist started and after a while he did a few sessions with me before leaving suddenly (I think even staff only had a weeks notice, which was ridiculous), so I was back to twiddling thumbs for a few weeks. I then met with a therapist who worked 2 mornings a week that I saw a bit during my last admission but we didn't do many sessions and it just fell away. This was mostly my fault as by this point I was questioning my admission and whether I would self discharge as there were some not good things going on on the ward, so I wasn't really in the headspace to explore things deeply and had been picked up and put down so many times that I just couldn't do anymore. Throughout that time though I continued to see my consultant weekly, mainly focusing on mindfulness and other therapy styles thrown in there too at times.

I will forever be thankful/grateful for the admission I had, especially to be under a different consultant (for COVID reasons they had to split things differently as they would usually do it by area but that wasn't possible at the time I was admitted) as her approach made a huge difference. I still remember one of the first things she said to me was that she couldn't believe/was that I had been placed on the SEED pathway and that she believed that I could be more than that, which honestly, gave me a little bit of hope (something that had been ripped apart and shredded by my usual consultant multiple times).

But back to now.... I have now been seeing a new therapist weekly (when possible) since February and, in a backwards way, I am so glad that L disappeared off the grid because the "support" I was going to be getting under the original plan was just sessions with her to do some self guided self help stuff, whereas with this therapist we have actually been doing some HELPFUL work. In terms of L, I think the last I was told she never returned to work and has now left the team (we have a sneaky feeling that she either had a complete break down or that it was due to too may complaints (mum called this a long time ago as she was not qualified for the role at all and was utterly useless), which, yeah, was strange to not get an ending as I had worked with her for a few years. Anyway, I've been doing SCHEMA therapy with this new lady (I'd not heard of it before) and at first I was a bit reluctant but it's been incredibly insightful. I continue to learn more about myself and the reasons why I may have gone down certain roads each session. HOWEVER. and this is a big however. There has been a bit of a snag in the rope.

In short, yes I have been engaging really well with the therapy side, my weight and physical health has only continued to deteriorate since i was discharged. We are talking classic kitty of slowly slipped backwards, nothing dramatic, nothing to make alarm bells go off or warrant a review, but it's not been good. Anorexia is screaming at me for saying all of this, it shouts "but you weigh so much more than when you were admitted, you are a complete fraud blah blah blah" which is all the same old boring drivel it always spews out. But basically Im in dangerous waters now in terms of losing therapy/not being able to engage with therapy properly if things dont improve. Ive been in classic stuck mode, getting so absorbed by the numbers and the bubble that AN offers, that I have been numb to it all. The HCA I was seeing was really trying to help me to make changes but she left a while ago (she was going back to train as a nurse) and since then I have had the odd appointment here and there (I think it fell to every 3 weeks for a while as there were no available appointments) with people trying to cover the clinic until someone else is hired for the role, which is far from ideal as they literally just do the necessary obs and send you on your way.

Okay that sounds like yet another excuse, which is probably is, but it's not been an easy ride since I left hospital to say the least.

BUT this past week things have begun to shift a little. I was honest with my therapist about the whole food/meal plan side of things and we actually spoke about how we can't focus on therapy things until I am in a more stable place, which is both really hard to hear but also exactly what I need to hear. I am actually being more open to change, which is a shift from where I was just a week ago. It is bloody painful, even just thinking about it all hurts/is exhausting and I am still very much in the darkness /struggling with it but there is now a little part of me that is screaming out and trying to be heard. There is a little part of me that WANTS to get out of this endless messy limbo that this relapse has been and wants to start stepping back into "recovery". There is part of me that wants a chance. And I've got to start listening to that side a little more.

I promise, the next update will be a little more positive Stay tuned.

[finnishhymn]

2021 has not been kind to me. It’s been a rough year and my battle really isn’t over. I debated over and over again if I wanted to post this. The older I get, the less I care to put my personal business out there.

My problems started in September 2020. I woke up with a sharp pain in my back. It never went away. Several doctors visits later, I was getting nowhere and no answers. I was denied a CT scan by my insurance and told to live with it because I’m fine. At this point I can’t stand up straight, walking is difficult, it keeps me up at night. I’m definitely not ok.

January rolls around and I decide enough is enough. I set out to get a new doctor and that it was time to lose weight. I was 210 pounds at this point. I find a new doctor and have my first appointment in April. I also have a consultation with a chiropractor at this time. My doctor thinks I have a pinched nerve, the chiropractor agrees and also that my hips are tilted.

I continue seeing the chiropractor for 8 weeks. Some days I’m feeling better and thinking it’s helping but other days it comes right back. By this time it’s June and I’m having a follow up with my doctor. She wants me to try physical therapy instead. She hands me a referral and tells me to try that instead for 6 weeks.

June 28th I walk into work, slip on some oil in the shop, and slam my head into the concrete floor. I black out and am taken to the hospital by ambulance.

The next 5 weeks are filled with head pain, dizziness, and uncaring worker’s comp “doctors”. I couldn’t look at screens for long without it hurting. I slept a lot. I developed a head tremor where my head shook side to side uncontrollably. I suffered memory loss among other things.

My wonderful neurologist insisted that all these things were not related to my head injury. At my last appointment on September 11th he told me he didn’t know why my head was hurting, “maybe it’s the weather,” he said, before throwing my work release papers back at me. I didn’t get a chance to say or ask anything before he shut the door in my face.

He also had put me on medication that gave me the most amazing mood swings. Fits of rage, uncontrollable crying, etc. But hey it made me drop another 10 pounds so that’s all that matters right?

September 30th I see my doctor, a real doctor that gives a shit, again. I told her all about what’s been happening. She says I have a kidney stone. When I went by ambulance to the hospital, they did a CT scan of basically my entire upper body. Anyway she said it wasn’t large enough to really worry about, but told me what to watch for. She told me she wants me to go back to physical therapy and see if we can finally get this back pain gone for good.

October 5th I have my first physical therapy appointment. The therapist is cool. She thinks the back pain is because of my hip. Ok that makes sense. So we start doing exercises to strengthen my hips and legs. She also green lights all exercise. I’m thinking, “Sweet! I’m gonna do so much activities!”

October 21st I go to the ER with severe abdominal pain and a fever of 103 that won’t break. I’m in a ton of pain and hallucinating. I’m thinking it’s my kidney stone. They do a CT Scan, check for pneumonia, and Covid of course.

It’s not the stone. Turns out I had a massive infection in my abdomen that made its way into my bloodstream. I’m admitted to the hospital. I’m told if I had waited another day I would’ve died. I’m seen by a GI doctor and she tells me something is going on but I’m so full of infection she can’t see. She tells me I need to have a colonoscopy in 8 weeks. After 5 days in the hospital I’m released and I see both my regular doctor and the GI doctor for a follow up.

December 14th I have an endoscopy and a colonoscopy done at the hospital. When I woke up from the procedure the doctor tells me everything looks healthy and normal in my digestive tract. She says she took biopsies and will call me when those results come in. A week later I’m told all that came back normal too.

So here we are going in 2022 and I have less answers and more questions. Every time I try to chase a problem, something else pops up. I’m still having head pain. I can’t remember how to spell certain words. My once fantastic memory has huge holes. I have anxiety all the time and find myself panicking at random times. Usually when I get the next hospital bill. Oh and I still have back pain. But hey I’ve lost over 60 pounds, so….yay?

[sickcyclist]

This is the story of my day. It actually starts yesterday, when a heaven-sent rain swept in and cleared the smoke and cooled the air and tamped down the dust on the trails. I went on a bike ride because days like that are a gift. I have exercise-induced hypoxemia, which basically means that my oxygen drops when I exercise for reasons that we still don’t understand. Exercising with oxygen helps, but I still drop into the mid-80s. I knew I was too sick to ride and that doing so would make me much more sick, but I needed it for my mind so I was willing to sacrifice my body.

So that’s the first lesson of being sick. Everyone tells you that you have to be active and it will make things better and all you have to do is just push yourself hard enough. We’ve internalized this message to the point that many people believe sick people could get better if they just PUSHED. But that’s not always true. Sometimes pushing makes you worse. Sometimes it makes you much, much worse. And that can be true even if being active and pushing hard is something you love so much that it feels like it’s core to who you are.

I knew I would have to sleep for 12+ hours to make up for the ride, and I knew that I would have bad oxygen saturation stats because of it. And since I don’t have a real job, it should be easy to just take a lazy day (or week, or month) and get better, right? But actually I do have a real job and that job is to keep myself alive. It’s the job of a lot of us who are chronically ill, and it’s not a profession I would recommend. It’s not fun and it’s not rewarding and no one admires you for it and you’re not asked to speak to 5th graders on career day and you rarely get to move on to a newer, more interesting project.

Here’s what this particular day at work looked like for me. I woke up to a voicemail saying that my pulmonology appointment for Friday had been cancelled. I’ve been waiting to see a pulmonologist since March and was supposed to have an appointment weeks ago, but that was cancelled because the doctor quit two days beforehand. The other doctor in town couldn’t see me until the end of October, so I looked for a doctor in a bigger town hundreds of miles away. She comes highly recommended and in a way I’m happy because I strongly prefer female doctors, but for whatever reason she had to “clear her morning.” My new appointment is five weeks from now. I got off the phone and sobbed, which is not a good thing to do when your lungs don’t work. I probably could have toughed it up and avoided crying if I hadn’t worn myself down so much biking yesterday, but such is life.

I emailed my primary care provider asking for a note saying I could travel with my portable oxygen concentrator. I was supposed to get this letter from my pulmonologist, but now I won’t have a pulmonologist before I travel. The letter has to say that I use oxygen for sleep and activity, but it also has to specify that I won’t use oxygen on the plane. Which is a little funny because airplanes have extremely powerful oxygen-producing systems for emergencies, but they don’t like people who need oxygen because they don’t like the risk that comes with having sick people on board (think emergency landings). So people who need oxygen all the time need their own oxygen concentrator and battery power for the equivalent of 1.5x the time they will be in the air. I’m going on an 8-hour flight and it would cost about $400 to get strong enough batteries for that length. So I need them to let me carry my machine, which has lithium ion batteries that are otherwise prohibited. But in order to carry my machine I need to prove that I won’t be needing it.

I have a great primary care provider. I knew she would write the note. Easy peasy.

My next voicemail was from the specialty pharmacy that my insurance provider uses for certain drugs. I am allergic to a hormone all women produce as part of the menstrual cycle. This allergy is so severe that it has been responsible for 5 miscarriages, and it also means that I’m more miserable than usual for half the month. The good news is that all you have to do to stop it is take out your ovaries, but when you do that you go into full menopause. Which is not desirable because it increases your risk of cancer and osteoporosis and just overall mortality. Like not even from one thing. Just people who go into menopause early die early from all causes and we don’t know why.

That gives you some perspective on what the benefits have to look like in order for the cost-benefit analysis to still auger in favor of ovary removal. But since it is such a serious choice, you have to be sure. And the way you make sure is to stop your ovaries from working with a drug. The drug has hideous short and long term side effects, so if you feel better while taking it, that’s a pretty strong sign that an oophorectomy is the choice for you.

Approval for me to receive this particular drug was in limbo because the provider accidentally entered the wrong diagnosis. I have, as you can imagine, a lot of diagnoses. Entering the wrong diagnosis in this case was particularly funny because I’ve spent the last 6 months fighting with Blue Cross to get an expensive medicine that helps with my allergies. This medicine (Xolair) is approved for chronic urticaria (hives). It is not approved for progesterone hypersensitivity. I have both, which means I itch a lot for two weeks of the month and itch so much that I want to peel my skin off for two weeks of the month. Blue Cross argued that I wanted the drug for progesterone hypersensitivity. No medical provider said that, but it was the diagnosis they could use to deny the drug. Xolair costs $4000 a month. At that price it’s worth it to them to grind people down and hope they give up. It took four appeals and my lawyer (husband) to get the drug approved because I do indeed have chronic urticaria. It’s worked wonders for me, especially being allergic to the sun. You have no idea how easy it is to descend into madness when you are itchy all the time.

I went over all this with my new OB. I explained that, while the allergy shot solved the itching, it didn’t fix any of my systemic problems, which is why I was still interested in removing my ovaries. And because the conversation focused on how this ovary-suppressing drug (Lupron) specifically wasn’t for urticaria, it’s perhaps not surprising that she accidentally listed urticaria as the reason for the prescription. It’s like when you’re afraid you’ll mispronounce someone’s name. You tell yourself, “Say Kee-a, not Ky-a,” so many times that you’re basically guaranteed to call the person Ky-a.

So my ovary medicine was denied, of course, but I contacted my doctor’s office last week explaining the problem and they were very quick to apologize and resubmit. I returned the call from the specialty pharmacy but apparently they had just wanted to let me know that they were sorry for the delay. It was very polite of them but maybe didn’t require a phone call.

Then I got an email from Blue Cross Blue Shield. I logged in to read that coverage had again been denied (no reason stated) and that if I wanted to appeal the decision I would have to appeal through their specialty pharmacy. They gave me the name and number. Of a different specialty pharmacy than the one I had been dealing with for the past month. The one that I had already wrangled account numbers and diagnosis codes and special customer service phone lines out of. I typed up a polite response inquiring why I need to change pharmacies. And then I cried, but only just a little this time.

Then I called Walgreen’s because my medication for muscle spasms had been delayed and I received a note saying the pharmacist needed to speak to me. I am hypermobile so my connective tissue is just a little too bendy. My joints slip in and out all the time and my muscles have to overwork to hold my body together. Frequently they overwork so much that they lock up. This happens much more frequently in the progesterone-dominant phase of my cycle. Physical therapy is the best treatment, but sometimes I need muscles relaxants before I can even start physical therapy.

The man I spoke to at Walgreen’s told me I didn’t have a prescription for that drug. Then he told me I had a prescription but it had expired in March of 2020. I knew that wasn’t true because I hadn’t used it for years but had to start again when I got COVID. So I had no prescription in March of 2020 but I definitely did in March of 2021. No big deal. Just a simple computer error. Totally understandable in a pandemic, and I knew my doctor would refill it anyway. But he apparently felt that it was a big deal and wouldn’t submit the refill to my provider. I have no idea why. Maybe he thought I was engaged in drug-seeking behavior. Or maybe he was having a bad day. But he wouldn’t submit the refill. I hung up the phone and screamed. Loudly. Which really is not a good thing to do when your lungs don’t work.

Murry came up and rubbed the spasm out of my shoulder and listened to me vent and offered to be my medical power of attorney so he could deal with these people for me. But he’s the one with the real job that earns real money and when I’m sick he also cooks and cleans and does the shopping and walks the dogs. I may not be any good at the shitty job I had, but there’s no way I’m going to make him do it.

I switched tactics and chatted with someone through the Walgreen’s app. He was lovely and had no problem submitting my prescription for a refill. Easy peasy.

My final task for the day was calling to find out about the status of my CPAP prescription. I don’t have sleep apnea but while I’m asleep my breathing does slow down significantly enough that my oxygen drops (hypopnea). I need a special CPAP that adjust the pressure to my breathing, but it will get me off of oxygen at night. I’m very excited for it.

My insurance does not require prior authorization for CPAP prescriptions. However, St. Pete’s has its own prior authorization department that I guess makes sure you are not lying about not needing prior authorization? This department is, apparently, understaffed. I called my oxygen “rep” to find out how it was going. She very kindly bypassed the prior authorization department and called Blue Cross directly. Blue Cross informed her, as had I, that a prior authorization was not necessary. She could officially get me a CPAP.

Except that there is a national CPAP shortage. So she will try her best to get me one as soon as they get more. Hopefully this month. Even the rare, wonderful people who try to help you are sometimes as helpless as you.

I didn’t cry this time. Crying doesn’t fix anything and I can’t risk losing more oxygen. So I turned to writing therapy instead.

This was a bad day at work, but there are rarely good ones. It sucks to be sick, but I’m smart, articulate, overly educated, wealthy, and white. It could suck so, so much more. Someday I’ll turn all of this knowledge that I never wanted into something that helps people other than myself. Until then maybe someone will read this and know they are not alone. If being sick is your job, I see you. I would give you a hug—or a bonus!—if I could.

[pandakinskin]

C-PTSD - My story

I have been quiet for many years on this account. There is a particular reason for that, and unfortunately it will take me some time to come to terms with it.

In 2018, my best friend decided to make a callout post about me and many other people. I was facing some terrible clinical depression, so I couldn’t reach out to my friends. I had just came home from an outing with my family, and I had just checked my phone before I was heading to bed. My now ex-friend tagged me in the post, calling me out for neglecting her needs as a friend and told me to off myself for not caring about her. When I arrived at school the next day, one of the girls at school who was also on the post confronted by ex-best friend about it to ask her what happened. Instead she was greeted with a massive slap on her face, and was in tears the whole class session (~2 hours) and long after our lunch break. I didn’t want to confront my ex-friend again, and spent most of the rest of my high school in fear of running in with her.

I later came out to my friends in 2018, and my boyfriend, that I was trans. Thankfully that didn’t change much of that dynamic.

In 2019, I was diagnosed with clinical social anxiety and depression. I had taken therapy for about 6 months before my mom took me out of it saying “you seem to be doing just fine.” My mom had sat with me and my therapist the whole session, every session. So I often stayed quiet in fear of venting about my mom.

I came out to my family in October of 2019 as a trans man, though now my family looks back on it as me trying to change myself for my friends rather than a way of true self expression. My brother threatened to burn my pride flag during that month, and both he and my mother still get livid when the topic is brought up. My dad still confidently misgenders me and deadnames me.

January 2020, on MLK day I was put into a mental hospital due to suicidal ideation. I was forced to stay a full week, and spent two weeks after off from school to heal. During one of those weeks, my parents met with my boyfriend and his parents for lunch. They dragged me along as well. The reason for meeting up was for all the adults to yell at my boyfriend for not trying hard enough in the relationship. The whole time they misgendered me, which caused me to meltdown and run out of the resteraunt. My parents convinced themselves it was because I got a slap of reality about how terrible my boyfriend was. We were no longer allowed to meet up without supervision from then on out.

I graduated high school in 2020. I was attending group therapy 6 days a week, and spent a lot of time sitting at home as covid was on the rise. As time passed, my boyfriend became extremely distant. Though it had been a problem before that he rarely put time aside for me, he let his video game addiction overcome him. I had not been contacted by my friends in three months when September rolled around, and I had not reached out to them. In fear of them rejecting me, I blocked them first so I wouldn’t have to go through the same trouble as I did my sophmore year of highschool.

I was now left with my oldest friend, and my boyfriend. It had been stable for a little while, until a message popped on my phone I didn’t realize would appear. I won’t write it out here, though my oldest friend (by about 4 years) had messaged me that he would be comfortable doing something very intimate with me. It made me realize he was grooming me, and I quickly blocked him on every account I had at the time. My boyfriend was angry with himself for noticing that behavior before, and didn’t do anything before I noticed it.

October 2020 came. I broke up with my boyfriend because he wouldn’t get out of his addiction. We promised we’d still be friends, and that we would try to talk regularly. We didn’t talk at all, so I briefly blocked him in December. I reached out to a friend that I had blocked in August, and said I’ve been feeling suicidal since the breakup. He told me that I should have been more considerate of my boyfriend, and that I should stop thinking so selfishly about our relationship. He told me it was selfish for blocking everyone, that I hurt all of those people from my actions, and that I needed to stop blaming other people for my problems. I tried taking it to heart, and said I still was thinking of harming myself. He told me to man up and just go ahead and do it if I was so confident I was (knowing how I’m a coward of death). It triggered a meltdown and I blocked him again.

In January 2021, I was sent a letter by his older sister wanting something of hers back that my boyfriend had given to me. I messaged my ex asking why he didn’t reach out first, and he explained that she wanted it back more than he did, so he didn’t reach out. Also he came out to me saying that he is now a she, that my ex boyfriend was now my ex girlfriend. She said she was very happy I showed her the world of being trans, and coming out had been so easy for her. Now she’s getting constant friend requests on video games, and her friends and family are very accepting. She was wondering if my family dynamic had gotten better since she was out of the picture, and when I told her no she just shrugged it off.

Things still ring in my head from that conversation. She said “I hope you learn from our relationship and bring it on to your next one,” and “I feel socially fulfilled, so much so I don’t feel like I need a relationship anymore.” It made me feel sick. After some time, I now realize that she was trying to live through me rather than view me as a separate person. As trans people tend to do with crushes, we wish we were those “crushes” rather than be in a relationship with them. With her feeling exactly that with me, she trying forcing herself to live through me.

I returned her sisters belongings in their mailbox, and I went home. It was the end of all the relationships and family I had grown and developed. I now have one last friend, though they just so happen to be someone from group therapy and the hospital. Though we try our best to help eachother, my story has not gotten better. My grandfather passed away, and my dad is now taking on the personality of my grandfather. He holds me by the shoulders to kiss me so that I stop moving away, tells me how I should go outside more often so he could see me happy again, and has been hanging out with a lot of straight white men who happen to be Trump supporters. My mother is a hoarder, and is so clinically depressed I have to take care of her whenever I see her. My brother refuses to get help for his ADHD, and still is very agressive when he talks to me.

I want to end and say things get better. Though they haven’t just yet... I hope this really is the end of this uncontrollable string.

[lifesbecomings]

The email

Hi Drew— I just wanted to  clarify something and share some perspective. First off, I want to say that I understand and respect Denison’s admissions process. I reached out a few days ago to everyone just curious about the process and wanted to talk about options to continue my education, IF even possible, through Denison! With the positive feedback from everyone and your first email, and then mention, even as a slight possibility, of spring enrollment...one certainly can understand my excitement and push for more discussion and my initiative to get applied/enrolled. With that said I am still curious about steps in general. And maybe I applied as the wrong type of student.  I know there are openings still this spring, and especially in the EDUC classes (like EDUC 390), and thought "wow, maybe this is all aligning because it's meant to be."  If it is or isn't meant to be, I'm at peace with whatever the decision is or remains. But Denison will always be my first choice. I did leave in 2017 as a medical leave student, and technically I wasn't pursuing a degree through CCS, just taking classes, many students take summer classes or semesters (like if on academic suspension), and then come back and return to campus. I know usually students typically return 1-2 years, and I understand there are deadlines and I know their importance. In no way shape or form am I trying to surpass these. When I first reached out, I said I'd be happy to discuss ANY options in a return.  Others, throughout the thread, were mentioning a spring return and spring availability and how fantastic this could be. Both Karen Graves and Baker were on board in the Educ. department, where I am majoring, presumably for a spring enrollment.  Maybe it is the fact I only have art credits as transfers. Was it that they were hoping for more core class transfers? Either way, to be perfectly transparent, whatever the outcome is, I will be taking spring classes. As well as summer classes. I want to get my degree. My first choice is Denison. If there is anyway to make this a possibility still. You already know, It would be my pleasure to stay in touch, and I will happily move to Ohio and take classes back on campus in the fall. Denison holds a special place in my heart. I hope my time on campus impacted those I came into contact with, as much as they impacted me. The Briefing: Within the last 2 weeks. Literally, two weeks, a series of events occurred that made me see the potential I could have. It started with a ski lesson, we had philosophy lessons up the chairlift, and the technical skiing lessons going down the hill. It was eye opening. I realized I need to work on my patience, but It also made me realize that I don't have to do something I do not enjoy. Moreover, it made me recognize I need to stop running from what satisfies me the most, people, education, learning, and teaching. I shut myself off in 2017 to the idea of "traditional schooling". I thought, "It's not for me". " I'm not good at it".  It stuck.  That is, until January 6th 2021, when I had this ski lesson. The ski lesson in combination with my parents friend, a teacher from Brother Rice High School,  got me thinking. I was thinking and analyzing myself. My change in perspective was shocking. I needed to accept my talents and embrace them, instead of shutting them out and rejecting them. It is so funny how we sabotage ourselves.  This is the start of my story. About how I found my drive and fulfillment. Below are three personal stories I would like to share. 1.  Monkey Bars. 

There is a story my mother always would tell me growing up about my perseverance and determination. When I was very young, 4 years old, there was a set of monkey bars on the school playground. After school one day I told my mom I wanted to go across the monkey bars. The only problem...I did not know how to do them. But, I had watched other kids that day at recess. So I was determined to figure it out. We were there for 2-3 hours. I was bound and determined to do those monkey bars. I knew that was what I wanted. I had numerous failed attempts, failure after failure, my mother began to beg me to leave with her because my hands were all beaten up, blistered, and bloodied, I still kept going. I made it all the way across those monkey bars that day, and every day after. There is another story, too, a similar story about me riding a two wheeler. Same determination, different goal. Both accomplished. 

2. My Miracle.

A senior in college, to the modern western world, is still considered "young". If you're in school, attending high school or even attending university, to have a child anywhere, at any time in that mix, It is looked down upon, plain and simple.  I chose to not tell any of my peers, while I was at Denison, my fall semester, that senior year, in 2017. I kept this knowing to myself. I told my parents, and told the father/ fathers parents. Guess what was encouraged? An abortion. Whether verbally spoken (which it was) or unspoken, I knew this is what was wanted from me, wanted for me. I mean, it was, after all, the easiest thing to do. I could still finish my degree and the family could always come later in my life. So, I did just that. I went in for that appointment, at 5 weeks. 

Statistically speaking it is 99% effective. Did you know, 1:4 women will have had an abortion in their lifetime. It's neither here nor there, just an incredible statistic. I actually came back to Denison to finish out my degree after. Putting the past behind me. I enjoyed a fantastic fall break that year in Philadelphia with friends, because through Denison my Junior year, I did a "study abroad," in Philadelphia (the best experience ever. Cannot speak enough about that program! So grateful Denison is a part of the Study in Philly!) 

Anyway, after coming back from break I wasn't myself that week at school. I came home, went to a doctor's appointment. Pregnant. I was 11 weeks pregnant. 1-2 weeks away from being in my second trimester. I knew. In that instant, I was keeping him. No one else understood, at the time, my decision. I was blamed on one side, entirely, for this outcome, the father still lives in denial. This is important information in my story, as it describes where I have been, who I am and who I've become. The father isn't, and has never been involved. This is fine. It's been uncomplicated. I'm actually very lucky. Besides, I know that my son and I deserve someone 100% interested in me AND my son, not an either or situation. So once making my decision, to continue with the pregnancy, I took one day. One day to be broken hearted, to feel like it was me against the world. Later, to my surprise, I found I had a support network bigger than I could ever have imagined.

I am blessed. I am loved. "We" are so loved. But it took me that one day to realize, the easiest thing is not always the right thing. I knew honestly from the day I first found out, I wanted this baby. And my god, has it not only blessed me, but this child of mine blesses and brings joy to anyone and everyone he meets. As a biased mother would say, he truly is something special. My choosing to bring this new life into the world, is an amazing and miraculous testimony to my dedication and character. Being a mother (parent) is one of the toughest jobs in the world. 

3. My Bakery.

First, back story: I tried to take some classes at College for Creative studies in 2018. Knowing I was more than "just a mom". I've done a lot of "soul" searching and self love in my time away. I didn't reach back to Denison at this time because I was convinced traditionally schooling just must not be for me. The root of it, I later would find, was that I was somehow undeserving of it. (super messed up mental ideal). Disclaimer: I, like many, struggled with self worth. Therapy is necessary and beautiful.  Anyway, continuing---I had a hobby of sketching.  Homes and houses always intrigued me, so I picked up some classes at CCS, interior design classes. This is where I realized a hobby does not make for a career. More importantly, I remembered the promise I had made to myself, that I didn't want anyone else raising my baby boy.  I was spending 60hrs + a week on projects and classroom time, leaving him home with my parents and babysitters, a little bit at first, then, more and more. So, I pulled the plug. 

When I give of myself I want to give 100%. If I was giving my school work 100% there was none left for my son. I had to pick between the two, and clearly, without a doubt, my baby boy was the sure pick. Schooling this time round failed because It was in person, he was not in school yet, and it was not practical or logistical. I stopped in OCT of 2019. Between October and December of 2019 I went stir crazy. I was 24/7 with my son, living at my parents home still, and my mental health was on the decline. I felt trapped. I needed a way out. And thus "A Degree Above Bakery" was born. I have made over 5,000 dollars in profits from this business. I have a standing order, weekly, with Westborn Market. However, this flow, and work is at my grace.  I can shut it down, permanently, or temporarily. I can drive it forward more, or scale it back, starting tomorrow.  I was determined to find a way out and give myself some "me" time, as well as doing something I enjoyed that gave me flexible hours to work with my son present. I originally started in my own home. Operating under the cottage food law. That is, until I started to rent space in Plymouth MI from Westborn Market in April 2020.  I bake Sundays currently. 

I created and established then registered my name. I created and bought a web domain.  I have my own labels and packaging I created. Every aspect of my business I have built and created. The brand, the marketing, getting into a grocery store. My point here, being, when I think of something, I do everything in my power to try to reach my goal, whatever the road block. When I get an idea, I see it through. To the best of my ability. __________ My overarching theme is determination. You will have nothing without it. I will be respectful and understanding of any final decisions, acceptance, reinstatement, or lack thereof. If there is still a slimmer of possibility to qualify for spring semester at Denison or be considered again... It would be an honor and mean more to me than any words could begin to describe. I had to take one last shot with you all,  before seeking another institution.  Rules and regulations will be forever. I understand this, but If there is anything I can do to help enhance my application/reinstatement/case/enrollment/scenario please don't hesitate to ask. I would be honored to commit to in person class on the hill in the fall, after taking summer classes, and taking the spring classes online at Denison, I also will be able to pay, in full, for the spring tuition as well as on campus next fall/winter. I also paid in full while being on campus every year from 2013-2016. Please also hear me when I say, yes, obviously I would do whatever and help to see a successful spring enrollment, but I would be happy to transfer credits from this spring (elsewhere), and summer, to complete classes on campus in the fall.  I will stay open minded to all possibilities, as I know Denison does! 

With much respect and appreciation, and excitement,

Sarah McNaughton

[iwanttoluvyou]

I haven’t been on here in over 5 years but I found my way back. Here’s an update about me. I went into a deep dark depression in high school because my mom was dating this guy for about 3 years, she always chose him over her kids… do you want to know what it took for them to officially separate? not him never having a job and him living off my mom, not him being 10 years younger than my mom, not him taking my phone like he was anyone to me, or him talking shit to me all the time, or him beating my mom or him driving erratically with 3 of his kids including myself, my brother and sister and his nephew heavily intoxicated while beating my mom in the back seat and then pulling over to fight me a sixteen year old girl because I was defending her and screaming at him to stop… no, none of that separated my mom from him, it was the day she found out he’d been molesting my baby sister. I hated her for years, a part of me still does, she had the power to stop it before it even happened but she instead chose to put my sister through a trauma that will stay with her forever, and her other kids through trauma for her own selfish needs. He never got in trouble for it by the way, in fact he ended up having a new born girl shortly after (I pray for that child). After that ended it got a little better, my sister went to therapy and I somehow managed to get through high school and graduate. I stared college and shortly after met a boy. We were inseparable after we met we fell in love so quick, well I did at least… he was my first everything, my first boyfriend, best friend, love, he took my virginity. About 7 months later I moved in with him and his mom because my mom moved to San Diego for a better life and so my sister can be at peace without ever having to run into her abuser. Life was good he got a new job and each time it was a better opportunity, I had 2 different jobs in that duration. We eventually moved into our own place and finally had created our own life. On November 23rd 2020, we got married. A typical marriage/relationship. Sometime in November 2021 we closed on that same home we moved into together in 2017. In October 2021 we got pregnant with our first baby but shortly after, a day before Christmas we found out our baby had died. That’s when things slowly started to change between us. We’d grown apart and distant. We still stayed to together because of course we love each other. Then surprise, come February we’re pregnant again, life’s great… on my end… he’s grown distant, started arguing with me all the time I felt he was pushing my away, he always had his phone on him and started tucking it under the foam mattress topper under his pillow and I knew something was up. One night when I finally got the chance to go through his phone I found a note he didn’t delete all the way and it was him saying he was thinking about this girl and that he missed talking to her and that he was “obviously very attracted to her” and that he wanted to pick up where he left off. Turns out it was a girl I had told him not to talk to that he started work with a month prior. Not only was he still texting her and behind my back and deleting everything for weeks… but he had caught feeling for her. It was 2 AM and I woke him up as d asked what it was, he then said it was a woman he met on his route (he’s a mail carrier). I was devastated. Never in my life would I have thought he would have done something like this to me. Not him. He always said he wouldn’t ever be able to live with himself he just wasn’t that kind of person so it was and still is unbelievable… a few hours come to find out he lied about it being a girl on his route and it was in fact the girl I told him not to talk to from the beginning… he was scared to tell me it was her because he knew I had asked him not to talk to her from the beginning. We worked it out, it’s only been a week and a half since then but it eats away at me everyday… every single day I think about him talking to her or I think about what they would text about… I’m always suspicious that he’s hiding something…

[traumablogforme]

Wow, uh, I haven’t been on here in forever, it feels like at least. So, oof, where do I begin? I honestly don’t know but uh, here’s some venting shit, MASSIVE TRIGGER WARNING: There is mention of SA in this and abuse. It also mentions SH behavior. If you cannot deal with that right now, please move on.

.

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So I haven’t been on much due to an abusive relationship, it started about 2 years ago. (Some background, I am polyamorous. I have my fiancé and my and my fiancé now ex) my ex moved in with me and my fiancé and everything was fine, good, dandy, everyone got along and we all loved each other. Few months after my ex moved in he started arguments, would yell, scream, and storm out. All over small things, like asking him to do the dishes. He would pit me and my fiancé against each other, by saying stuff like ‘oh fiancé or me said your not doing anything or your being a POS and forces me to do stuff and yells at me all day’ stuff like that. So we would argue about it and then leave each other alone and he would swoop in and comfort the one that he didn’t get all riled up and be like ‘see this is what I’m talking about’. We moved places and it continued. We got into countless arguments were he would threaten to leave, he would manipulate us by saying stuff like we never loved him and we forced him to move all away across the country away from his family and how we never do anything for him. All of which wasn’t true. He got stuck out here at the beginning of Covid, but I digress. It got to the point where the other people living with us noticed something was wrong, and they wouldn’t stay there with us, they would go to their partners house just to get away from it all. There was fights every day, he called me pathetic, no good, useless, etc. It got to the point to were I was thinking of just hurting myself to be able to have control over myself for once. TRIGGER WARNING: SA Then it happened, he wanted to do the deed and I didn’t. He kept pressuring me, telling me that if I loved him I would do it and that we haven’t done it in a long time and you never want to be close to me, you think I’m ugly, you don’t love me, etc. so I gave in, let him do what he wanted and then went back to normal everyday shit. This happened at least once every other week, for a year and a half. I didn’t know at the time that was assault, I just felt obligated to do it because we were in a relationship. Fast forward a few more months and we are packing to move. Me and my fiancé bought a house, and ex was coming with us. He didn’t help pack, move boxes, or even unpack. He just wanted to sit there and do nothing. He thought it was all boring and pointless, just like he said with household chores. If it doesn’t benefit him, he doesn’t do it. Finally I reached my breaking point and told him he needed to get help or leave. He got help, but I don’t really believe he went to IOP, he never came back with new coping skills, paperwork, nothing. That went on for about 6-8 weeks and he stopped going, stopped seeing his therapist, stopped seeing his psychiatrist. (His GP had been prescribing his meds and he never came home with any new scripts or meds). So at this point it is October of 2021 and I’m done. We just had an argument over going out to do stuff, which I didn’t want to do so I told him he could go by himself and he flipped. ‘You never do anything with me, you are always in your art room, your always avoiding me, you don’t love me, I should just leave’ I had therapy that day after that fight, I told my therapist everything, she was the one that told me what he was doing was abuse and SA. So I called my friend and told her to come get me, I called my fiancé and told him we needed to talk when they got home since they went out shopping. I sit my fiancé down and tell him everything and told him we need to break up with him, I’m the one who has to do it because my fiancé has abandonment issues. I break up with him and tell him everything he’s been doing and it’s all of a sudden ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t leave me, I can change, I can change’ over and over, ‘you can’t leave me, your not allowed to leave me, I need you’ he’s sobbing, throwing himself to the floor, begging me, and I’m standing my ground. I told him he needs serious help and I can’t do it anymore. (Part 1)

[ghostlymorgan]

2021. Man it has been a year. To say this year has been a roller coaster of emotions would be an understatement. From visiting my grandma in the hospital every day for a week in April to finding out things from my childhood in May that really triggered me. I finally started going to therapy in June. Met a guy in July 🙃 that caused me to lose focus for 3 months. But during this time I was able to let go of my negative coping mechanism of emotional and binge eating. I learned to feel my feelings. And that is when I finally acknowledged that I am depressed and I have been for who knows how long. My therapist asked questions that I had never thought about that caused me to ask questions and I found out things I never knew. It really put things into perspective. A big question that arose from my therapy was what will make me happy, how can I be happy? I went on my little trip to Asheville in September thinking that getting away would help me clear my mind and figure out what I wanted in life and how to be happy. Honestly, I came back more broken than when I left 😅October came and I started looking at houses. I absolutely dreaded going home every day. I lost myself in someone else because when we were together he gave me his undivided attention and y’all those forehead kisses me hitting different 😩😰 but at the end of the day, I fell for a man that could never love me the way I needed and I allowed myself to accept less than what I deserve. Moving on has been hard because I have never felt like that about anyone. Ever but 🥴. The end of October I put an offer in on my house and it was accepted. I don’t know if the whole owning my own house thing has set in yet. November was a long month of waiting to close and being treated like garbage 😅 I love my grandparents and I am very thankful for their love and support but I lived with them for 9 years and the past 2 years I have been doing just about everything for them. Only to be told now that they don’t need me and they can survive on their own. Now that I am out of their house and into my own, they treat me exactly how they want to, like I am the red headed stepchild. Silly me for spending over $200k for a house so I could remain close if they needed me meanwhile I’m still living 4 hours away from the rest of my family. Now my calls go unanswered and when I go over to check on them, my grandma sleeps through my visit ignoring me and my grandpa just continues playing his computer games and barely acknowledging my existence. I’m not really sure what I expected but it wasn’t this. I’m tired of spending my life merely existing. I’m ready to live. So here’s to 2022, I hope it’s the year I figure out what will make me happy and that I learn to actually live.

[myrotandpoetry]

I Realized Something - 008

"I'm queer, I like girls, and I like you."

...and then I realized something... I FUCKING DID IT!

Rumours has it that a certain someone reads my tumblr posts. Welcome or Welcome back. If you're new here and you're just trying to stalk me then here's your chance. I post irl shit here so yeah. (This is NOT a youtube intro video. wtf). For the past few months I became inactive. I was planning on writing here but then my responsibilities really said, "Hol' up, Miss Girlie. You can't." I've been busy on some other stuffs.

3 months ago, I did the unthinkable. I said/did something that I can't take back. Crazy. What was I thinking? I was like "That's it, Dani! You just lost your brain privileges!" Here's a NOT so quick summary on how I confessed my feelings to... ;)

October 10, 2021

October. It's Nathaniel's and Rosmarie's birth month and today is Nathan's Birthday. As usual we did our birthday salubong to greet our (bb) badest bitch. I thought it's going to be just a birthday salubong but this bitch end up crying and stuff like that. I can't stand it when my bbs cry so as a single mom I called EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. (complete. perfect attendance by the way) There is a lot more to this but to sum it all up we just had fun making Nathan laugh and listening to Sevi's beautiful version of Happy Birthday while waiting for Ros and Shansai to pick up their phone (fashionably late as usual but I love them <3) /Bitches be like, "I'll sum it all up" but then ends up telling the WHOLE story./

01:00 - October 10, 2021

The T in Therapy stands for TAROT and as the tarot lady of our circle I did my duty again and use my cards to give them their monthly reading. It was fun and the teas has been spilled. Love that for me. I learned a lot of things about them. I felt like I have to be open to them too so I thought about my SMALL secret and decided to tell 'em a good old tale about how Dani fell in love with her FRIEND

The gays are not shocked at all. I mean they already saw me simp for different women. I asked for their advice... You already know what it is.

I asked my sagittarius friend the same exact question a year ago . Should I really confess my feelings to her? She told me that I should and BRUH! I'm a Gemini Sun with a Sgaittarius Moon. My intution believes her but I... I just can't. I can't. It took me a year before I confessed btw

03:10 - October 10, 2021

I checked the time 3:10 AM. Who in the right FUCKING mind would straight up text their crush at 3 fucking am just to tell 'em that they like them? Ha! I did. I composed my message. Checked it a hundred times. Read it out loud to my friends (like I was in a recitation of some sort). Have been approved by them. Have been approved by Grammarly (not sponsored btw). Sevi's just sleeping during this time like what the fuck man! wake the fuck up your best friend is experiencing gay panic. Anyways! Good thing Shansai, Ros, and Nathan are still up. (Love them btw)

03:15 - October 10, 2021

Gay panicking. Currently in tears. My friends are talking about stuffs while I'm gay panicking. Should I send it on messenger? Wtf! The urge to delete it. Fuck. I'm just gonna send it at Discord. Fuck it. If she blocks me the next day. I'll just... idk cry?

03:22 - October 10, 2021

I was planning on sending it at 3:33 but my impatient ass really said, "No! You press that send buttn already or else." and so I did it. I confessed. Brb. Smashing my head (not literally)

.....Was planning on continuing this but it took her a whole DAY to reply so I didn't get the chance to write shit on me diary. Not blaiming her tho. If i were in her postion I would probably do the same thing. I wasn't expecting a reply to be honest. She sent me a pickachu meme. A PICKACHU MEME. I- I'm in love with this woman. I have to accept her for what she is but seriously a pickachu meme? I laughed (cried) in an ugly way.

3 months have passed. Not crying in an ugly way anymore. I'm glad we're doing fine not until she asked something 2 days ago. I knew that I am ready to answer her question but at that exact moment. I.. I gay panicked. I was like how am I supposed to answer that? My mom saved my gay ass and told me to cook. Thanks for saving you closeted gay child, Ma'am. You just saved another soul. I sat on the floor. At the kitchen floor. I did. My dog was deadass staring at me while eating his dog food. He's probably saying, "Oh look a pathetic gay." How dare him. He's gay like me wtf where's the support dude?! At last, my resposnibilities are finished. Hot seat let's go. To be honest when she was asking me questions I was actually nervous. I was laughing the whole time and trying to act chill and shit but I was deadass shaking the whole time. She asked me 3 questions and I explained it for like 2 hours. I'm a gemini sun with a pisces rising and a sagittarius moon. I can't help it. It went nice. I'm actually glad you asked. I told my friends about what happened and they told me I should have asked you if I have a chance but I'm not planning on asking that yet. I don't know when? Soon? Only time can tell. As of now I'm still processing what I did 3 months ago. I fucking did it. I can't believe.

Now, If you reached this part while reading this whole ass post. I'm grateful and for my fucking conclusion. Oh god, If you like someone just confess your feelings to them. Just do it, bruh. It took me years and to be honest if I could turn back time I wish I told her sooner. Although I'm not a 100% sure that confessing your feelings can help you date that person. Anyways we're not talking about dating stuff here. We're talking about your personal feelings. Anxiety sucks, I know. I always wanted to be one of those people in the crowd who can just say something out loud and do other stuff. But hey! It's not too late for us to do that too. It's late now. I don't really know what I'm saying anymore but I hope it does ring a bell. All the love! x D. (This is a rough draft. I hate polishing up what I said. Just like Britney Spears said, "I said what I said." idk if she really said that but whatever)

[hillbillyhippiemusicreview]

ALAN "CORDUROY" BROWN "LET ME KNOW" ALL ABOUT HIS MIRACULOUS 2021 AND THE ALBUM IT INSPIRED

The COVID-19 pandemic put undue stress on the music industry that we are just now starting to recover from. It's been a long, dark, and uncertain road for many--but unfortunately for some like musician Alan "Corduroy" Brown, lead singer and guitar player for the Huntington, West Virginia-based band Corduroy Brown, it was a true matter of life or death. In fact, Alan did succumb to the nightmare of COVID-19, just to be reborn with a new spark and outlook on life. Below is a transcribed interview between Hillbilly Hippie Music Review and Alan concerning his band’s upcoming album releasing on August 14th, "Let Me Know," and the personal experiences that influenced its conception.

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L: Hi, Alan! We’re so glad to have you join us at HHMR today for a chat to get to know ya a little better. How are you doing?

C: Honestly....pretty great! Live music is BACK and it’s so cool to see all my friends creating and showing off their talents again.

L: That’s great to hear—and I think we can all agree with you on that notion! So, a little birdie told me that there is new music on the horizon—but, before we discuss that, I want to touch on the life-altering experience you underwent in 2021 and how that altered your overall outlook on life after your literal rebirth.

C: Someone asked if I was now afraid of dying, but I’m afraid of not living. There are a lot of things you learn in a hospital bed. In February, I thought that I’d be in and out of an urgent care, but ended up on a ventilator, in a helicopter, then put on ECMO life support. Apparently I died some time in that period, so when I got to Morganton, I was actually dead. You know the whole “white light” thing people talk about? It’s completely real. I could write a novel on all of that, but really, I learned that we’ve got a lot to figure out still. Regret hits you heavily. I thought about all the time that I wasted being upset about something/someone , or anytime I’ve been mad about anything. Like, there is a time and a place to be upset, but we have ONE time on this earth to violently pursue our passions and to love each other, while experiencing everything we can.

L: Wow. I can't even fathom what you felt as you rode on that proverbial rollercoaster, but I am SO very happy that you are still with us and sharing your gifts with the world. Speaking of those passions, with your band’s eclectic brand of folk-pop infused indie rock tunes, you’re one of our favorites here at HHMR. We’ve dug the little teaser of your upcoming single with your longtime friend Arlo McKinley and it’s got us stoked for the record release in August! Can you tell us how “Secret War” came about and what that experience was like?

C: This album has a beginning, middle, and end. It fits right in the middle of the whole book. Secret War started as a song of just appreciating everything I have. The first verse says: “I’ve been chillin’ with my head held high, nothing wrong but these untied shoes.” Later on, it turns a bit saying “ lost the battle, war still going.” Arlo comes in on the second verse and layers in the ideas of the battle we are fighting with ourselves all the time. I think we both ended up singing about people who we’ve met in our life that couldn’t handle us at our worst times. It’s a dream to work with Arlo. He’s a genuine human and a loyal friend who was super stoked to be part of this whole thing.

L: Awesome!! As far as the record as a whole, the debut album for Corduroy Brown, is it a concept piece like a story from start to finish, or is it just a collection of some of your favorite songs written from your journey in life? Describe it for us.

C: It’s a story front to back. I included a lot of interludes in between the songs that contain voicemails that people have left me. There’s an interlude where you hear me walking while going to therapy, and the familiar sound of the elevator at the St. James building in Huntington. This album is my life captured from 2017 to now. I finally feel like I got it all off my chest. I honestly feel like I haven’t written my best stuff yet, but this album was necessary to let out everything I’ve let build up for a long time.

L: I love how you've incorporated those moments to create the interludes. Writing is quite cathartic and I imagine releasing your story out into the world like this can be a form of music therapy itself, not only for yourself but for others! In addition to the single with Arlo, are there any other collaborations on the record we can expect to hear?

C: Oh gosh. So many people made this happen. It’s as much mine as it is everyone else's. The album is called Let Me Know because so many people have always said “let me know” if you need anything, or “let me know” what I can do for it. -- Massing, The Dead Frets, from Huntington. A lot of my closest friends like my life mentor and his son are on the album. Jacob from Jewel City Barbershop. The list goes on for awhile, haha.

L: As I always say, "teamwork makes the dreamwork!" That is such a cool concept that you've seamlessly woven into the title and throughout the record, since at times "Let Me Know" seems to just be a cliché that people say. But you and the band have demonstrated how actions *can* match the words! Now, tell me. I've got to know—how did you come up with the name, “Corduroy Brown?” What does it mean to you?

C: Gosh, I can never answer this question. I need someone to figure out a cool story for this. I have no idea.

L: Haha—that's fair! It's a rad name, cool story or not! So for something you can describe, tell me about the music. Since your music is so eclectic and defies the bounds of any one genre, how would YOU describe it?

C: I think technically it’s Rock/Pop/Indie? I don’t know. I grew up listening to Michael Jackson, I love Paramore, and I listen to Miranda Lambert everyday. The sound is all over the place because some of these songs are as old as 2017. You grow up and you change. I think the music captured different parts of my life when these songs were born.

L: "You grow up and you change" is such a true statement. In terms of growing up, I want to backtrack for a moment for readers unfamiliar with you, Alan. Can you tell us a bit about your history and background in music, from childhood to the evolution of your band? Has your heart always been set on being a musician?

C: No one in my family is musical, haha. But in 2008, my mom bought me a Fender CD60 guitar. I wanted to be like the kids who played at school. I stepped into the music scene with a band called The Dividends. Kind of like a RnB/Rock group. We had a really good run, but hung it up in 2019. I think I’ve always wanted this, but now I KNOW that this is what I’m supposed to be doing. Corduroy is composed of some of the A Team of Huntington musicians. We’re good friends first, musicians second. That’s a great combination to make good tunes.

L: I certainly think you are where you're meant to be! Throughout your life, who were your biggest musical influences? Favorite band? Best show you’ve ever seen? Most influential music experience that stands out in your mind? How did all of these sounds and experiences shape you as an artist?

C: I’ve been a complete Paramore fan from their first album. Their “After Laughter” album in 2017 is on constant repeat in my car. I actually listen to a LOT of female artists. Paramore, Lights, Chrvches, Kasey Musgraves. The best show I’ve ever seen was Cage the Elephant. Some of the rowdier songs lean in that direction. The album is kind of all over the place sonically.....it’s not uncommon for a road trip playlist to go from Migos, [to] Chelsea Nolan, to Slipknot.

L: You know, an album always stands out in my mind if it is sonically diverse, giving listeners a true lyrical and musical portraiture of who the artist is. Being a songwriter myself and songwriting nerd, I’m always intrigued by the writer’s process. How did your songs for this project evolve—from conception of the idea to the finished product?

C: I think when I brought these songs to Jeffrey McClelland, I only had a couple finished ideas. They morphed a lot from the start to finish. It’s crazy listening to the original compositions now. Some songs just happen before you even know they’re happening. Some of them take a lot of love. It takes me forever to write songs because I want to make sure I mean every single word and every single note. I’m envious of people like Taylor Swift who can write so many songs from so many different perspectives. It just seems effortless for her.

L: Oh my goodness—same here! Taylor Swift is actually the reason I started writing over a decade ago, because at the time in country music it was so refreshing to have a young female coming into a male-dominated industry breaking down barriers, all the while writing her own stuff and controlling her musicality. Speaking of breaking down barriers, in your community, you’re a well-known activist for topics still clouded with societal stigmas today, such as mental health and LBGTQUIA rights. Why is it so important to you to incorporate these topics into your music and performances?

C: Therapy and medicine saved my life. Everyone should go to therapy whether they think so or not. Logic is so hard to come by when your headspace is burying you. Chemicals affect our thoughts, thoughts affect our actions, actions become habits. We have to get control of that chain of command [and] it’s 2021. It’s hard to imagine that there are still people opposed to LBGTQUIA anything. Life is so short. Love who you love. I can’t imagine being so upset with the way that someone else is happy [and] I will forever be an ally to everyone I can. Huntington’s Pride Fest is in October of this year and you best believe I will be there. Loud and proud.

L: You are such a good human, Alan, and the world is beyond blessed to exist at a time that you do! Love is power, no matter how you look at it. When you think about Let Me Know and the impact it can have on listeners and the music community as a whole, especially in reference to your journey earlier this year, what is the biggest takeaway you hope fans have after digesting the album? What legacy do you want to leave on the world?

C: We get in our own way so many times. Take every chance on yourself. The first person I could call when I got off of life support was my friend Chris (who plays bass in Corduroy) [and] I literally said “WE GET TO RELEASE THIS ALBUM.” I remember when I was doubting even playing music again after the Dividends.

Seriously, do everything. Hold back nothing. Pursue life with a violent passion. Don’t let your final days be filled with regret. Do it all. There’s a lot of fun in this album. Kind of like dancing, but maybe crying at the same time.

L: YES! I've got chills--that is so true, and what I try to make people realize. Our days are limited, so don't be afraid to live your truth out loud. Now for some more lighthearted questions—if you weren’t writing and playing music, what would you be doing with your life?

C: Shewwww. I have no idea! I would love to be a public speaker or a high school teacher maybe? I’ve really considered being a PTA. I love the chance to directly help people, face to face. Extroverted jobs suit me perfectly.

L: You definitely have a genuine smile and charismatic personality that draw folks to you like a moth to a flame, but HHMR is so glad you decided to pursue your passions in music. Are there hidden talents you have? If so what are the most useful, useless, or weird?

C: I’m literally not cool at all really. lol.

L: LIES! You're cooler than the flip side of our pillow, yo. Unfortunately, it's time to draw this lovely chat to a close with the final question. Last but not least, what is your spirit animal?

C: I took an online test real quick before answering this. I got a wolf. I can kind of see some of that with the leadership qualities I have, but I feel like a bear or elephant? Laid back, but also powerful.

L: Hmm....I can vibe with the the bear idea. Easy to love, gives great bear hugs, but will fight for what he cares about....perfect for you, Alan! Thank you so much for joining us today and letting us know all about you.

“Secret War,” the first single with Arlo McKinley will be available July 15th. The full debut album from Corduroy Brown is set to release August 14th. Pre-save the single at the link below:

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*This is an independent article. The Hillbilly Hippie Music Review was not compensated for this interview.

*The opinions expressed are solely that of the author(s).

*These images are not ours, nor do we claim them in any way. They are copyrighted by the artist and photographers.

[katvontea]

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Most labs devoted to women’s diseases are accompanied by obvious symbols of womanhood: a rose, a tulip, an hourglass silhouette. Not Linda Griffith’s. Tucked away in the building for biological engineering, the M.I.T. Center for Gynepathology Research is marked only by the letters CGR in red and black, the G formed from a curved arrow representing the hand of the engineer.

“We needed something that wasn’t all pink and flowers,” said Dr. Griffith, the lab’s director. “We really thought it should be, like, ‘This is science.’”

Dr. Griffith founded the lab in 2009 with the goal of helping researchers solve endometriosis, a chronic disorder in which tissue similar to that which normally lines the uterus instead grows outside it. The disease strikes one in 10 women, as well as trans men and nonbinary people who menstruate. Its hallmarks are extreme pain and, in some cases, infertility.

Yet it suffers from a branding problem: It falls into the abyss of “women’s diseases” (overlooked), diseases that don’t kill you (unimportant) and menstrual problems (taboo). Researchers often call endometriosis “benign,” as in noncancerous — but doing so, Dr. Griffith believes, lessens the seriousness of a common, painful disease.

Her mission is to change the conversation, from one of women’s pain to one of biomarkers, genetics and molecular networks. “I don’t want to make endometriosis a women’s issue,” she told the M.I.T. Tech Review in 2014. “I want to make it an M.I.T. issue.”

Dr. Griffith, 60, with a fringe of blonde hair and a slight Georgia drawl, is uniquely poised to help effect that transition. She started her career in bioengineering, sculpting organs like liver and bone from scratch by seeding polymer scaffolds with living cells. In 1997, she helped create an iconic creature called the “earmouse” by injecting a human ear-shaped scaffold with cartilage from a cow’s knee, and growing it on the back of a lab mouse.

Now she brings those skills to the task of better understanding the uterus. In her lab, she has begun growing uterine organoids — tiny domed droplets, with glands that look like swirling craters — from the uterine cells of endometriosis patients. These “patient avatars” are ideal tools for testing potential new treatments for the disease: Biologically, they are closer to human uterine cells than those of mice (which don’t naturally menstruate). And they enable researchers to sidestep the ethical issues that would arise with human trials.

“That’s really the power of this,” Dr. Griffith said. “You can take patients who we know how they respond or do not respond to therapies, and compare and start to understand and tease apart why that is.”

Her research highlights what a remarkable organ the uterus truly is — and not just during its signature function, pregnancy. Humans, unlike almost every other mammal, grow their entire endometrium — the womb’s inner lining — once a month, whether or not a fertilized egg takes hold. If no egg appears, they shed it.

Dynamic, resilient and prone to reinvention, the uterus offers a window into some of biology’s greatest secrets: tissue regeneration, scarless wound healing and immune function. “The endometrium is inherently regenerative,” Dr. Griffith said. “So studying it, you’re studying a regenerative process — and how it goes wrong, in cases.”

Now, her work “is drawing the interest of those who have never worked on or never thought about endometriosis,” said Dr. Stacey Missmer, a reproductive biologist at Michigan State University and co-director of the Boston Center for Endometriosis. Essentially, Dr. Missmer said, Dr. Griffith is saying: “All you cool kids in the other disciplines, this is a really interesting area to ask questions.”

A name for the pain

Before Dr. Griffith turned her scientific lens on the womb, she spent years trying to avoid thinking about the pain it caused her. For nearly three decades doctors dismissed her symptoms — stomach-turning nausea, stabbing pelvic pain and alarming levels of blood loss during her period — as just part of being a woman.

“I felt like I was being gaslighted,” she said.

She grew up fearless, a tree-climbing Girl Scout in Valdosta, Ga. In high school, she sewed her own clothes, earned a black belt in karate and fixed her family’s car radiator. “There was nothing we couldn’t do, whether we were male, female, whatever,” said her younger sister, Susan Berthelot. “We had a lot of confidence, and a lot of love, and a lot of freedom.”

But when Dr. Griffith hit puberty, her body began imposing limitations. Her period was so agonizing it would leave her curled in the fetal position for days. When she was 13, a gynecologist prescribed birth control pills, a scandalous proposition. “In the South especially, it was not done,” she said. Her mother, at a loss, gave her gin.

Unable to control what was going on inside her body, she focused on what she could control: math, and building things. She went to Georgia Tech on a scholarship to study chemical engineering. But she found herself failing tests when she was on her period, and going to the infirmary to get monthly shots of the opioid Demerol.

By the time she began graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, she had developed an elaborate period regimen: She wore all-black outfits, inserted three Super Plus tampons and swallowed upward of 30 Advil tablets a day. But her pain kept increasing. When she consulted a male doctor, he took one look at her black leather jacket, pixie cut and Kawasaki motorcycle and diagnosed her as “rejecting her femininity.”

Her real diagnosis came by accident. In November 1988, soon after she went to M.I.T. as a postdoc, she checked into the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston to drain a small cyst on her left ovary. She woke up the next day to find a row of staples along her midriff, holding together a six-inch incision.

Her gynecologist told her she had a disease called endometriosis, which had fused her pelvic organs together with a sticky, speckled tissue that resembled the lining of her uterus. This rogue tissue responded to her monthly hormone cycle, swelling, shedding and attempting to bleed; that was the origin of the pain.

Surgeons had burned or scraped off as much of the tissue as possible; there was little else they could do. In 1940, the gynecologist who gave endometriosis its name, Dr. John Sampson, deemed the disease “tantalizingly alluring and elusive.” A half-century later, not much had changed. There was no cure, and researchers still didn’t know exactly how endometriosis took root.

Still, Dr. Griffith treated the diagnosis as good news. “To have someone tell me something was wrong with me, it was a huge relief,” she said.

Her gynecologist presented two options: She could go on Danazol, a hormone-blocking drug that would halt the growth of the disease but would also send her body into a menopause-like state; or she could get pregnant, a common recommendation in the 1980s, and not uncommon today.

The medical reasoning — which has since been questioned — was that by temporarily stopping menstruation, pregnancy could reduce symptoms and slow or reverse the growth of lesions. “It was almost viewed as a two-for-one benefit,” said Dr. Elizabeth Stewart, who performed Dr. Griffith’s first surgery. “It’s clear there was some sexism in the approach to endometriosis then. I think there’s still some now.”

Dr. Griffith recalls her then-husband answering for her: “We’ll have a baby.”

She opted for the Danazol. Eight years later, she divorced the husband.

Soon she was jump-starting the field of biological engineering, developing technologies to 3D-print organ scaffolds and growing artificial human ears on the backs of mice. She was an architect; her medium was the building blocks of life. But it never occurred to her to try to solve her own disease.

“Psychologically, it wasn’t something I wanted to think about,” she said. “I just wanted to pretend like it wasn’t happening.”

A ‘women’s thing’ worth doing

The turning point came in 2007, when a member of M.I.T.’s board of trustees, Susan Whitehead, asked her to speak at a Women in Science and Engineering luncheon about how her work on tissue engineering could benefit women.

Dr. Griffith was annoyed. “I was working on all the things that guys were working on,” she later recalled at a 2018 scientific meeting. “It didn’t ever occur to me to work on a women’s thing.” But Whitehead was a friend, so she agreed.

Near the end of the event, the moderator asked her where she saw herself in 10 years. Something welled up inside her. She had just had her eighth surgery for endometriosis, and had helped her 16-year-old niece, Caitlin, receive a diagnosis for endometriosis after years of having doctors attribute her symptoms to stress. Watching Caitlin go through the same ordeal “made lava shoot out of my head,” Dr. Griffith recalled recently.

“I have a chronic disease called endometriosis,” she blurted out to the luncheon audience, and mentioned her niece. “There’s no better treatment for her, 30 years younger than me, than there was for me when I was 16.” If a major breakthrough in treatment didn’t come soon, “that’s where I’m going to be in 10 years,” she said. “Maybe it’ll be solved, but I don’t think so.”

The audience broke into applause.

Dr. Griffith reset her goals. When it came to making liver and bone, “so many other people could do them,” she recalled. “But there was this one thing only I could do.” She had recently been awarded a MacArthur “genius” grant, which came with $500,000 for any research project.

In 2009, she used it toward opening the Center for Gynepathology Research, the only engineering lab in the nation to focus on endometriosis. (In October 2020, federal funding for endometriosis research doubled from $13 million to $26 million after Representative Abby Finkenauer of Iowa, 32, shared her own endometriosis journey on the House floor.)

At the launch event for the center, Padma Lakshmi, host of Top Chef and co-founder of the Endometriosis Foundation of America, lamented the lack of research on such a devastating disease.

“I have to say, I’m really shocked that it’s the first research center of its kind in America,” she said. “That is stunningly bad news on the one hand, that she’s the first one doing it. On the other hand, better late than never. Thank God for Dr. Linda Griffith.”

A window into the womb

Imagine the uterus as an orange, with the lining as the rind: fluffy, living tissue that serves as a plush bedding for a potential embryo. Each month, triggered by a drop in the hormone progesterone, the lining sloughs off and grows anew, complete with delicate, spiraling blood vessels.

This process repeats itself swiftly, scarlessly, without a trace of injury, again and again, as many as 500 times in a woman’s life. “How the body can coordinate that is extraordinary,” said Dr. Hilary Critchley, a reproductive biologist at the University of Edinburgh — and still poorly understood.

But this remarkable dynamism, some researchers argue, is a double-edged sword. “A little thing gets out of balance, and there you go,” said Dr. Griffith.

Dr. Griffith’s models offer a glimpse into what happens when the process goes wrong — for instance, when this growing tissue takes root in places it shouldn’t. Her bits of bioengineered tissue allow researchers to visualize the growth of lesions and systematically parse the role of immune cells, inflammation and hormones in the disease.

“You’re actually seeing in three dimensions what’s going on inside the uterus and this gland formation and nerve formation,” said endometriosis specialist Dr. Keith Isaacson, who co-directs her lab. “That is incredibly exciting.” (Dr. Isaacson, who has been Dr. Griffith’s endometriosis surgeon since 2000, provides the patients’ cells for her models.)

With her background in systems engineering, Dr. Griffith sees the uterus not as an island but as an organ that interacts intimately with everything around it. To capture these systemic interactions, her team connects her models to other organs like bone marrow, gut and liver, and hopes one day to seed them with blood vessels, nerve cells and immune cells.

The insights from this research transcend the womb. For instance, one enduring mystery about the disease is how lesions can appear in places as far-flung as the lungs, eyes, spine and even the brain. Dr. Hugh Taylor, chair of the department of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at Yale School of Medicine, is investigating whether stem cells, which are plentiful in the uterine lining, could contribute to this process by circulating throughout the body.

Because uterine stem cells are relatively accessible, they could also be a boon to regenerative medicine. Dr. Taylor has shown that, like other stem cells, they can be grown in vitro into new neurons and insulin-making cells to treat diseases like Parkinson’s and diabetes.

Another area ripe for improvement is diagnosis. One of the most frustrating aspects of endometriosis is that women typically wait seven to 10 years or more to learn that they have the disease, a process that requires invasive surgery. Now, researchers are developing a simple test to screen for genetic markers of endometriosis in menstrual blood and return a near-instant diagnosis.

Just a few milliliters of this blood, collected on a sponge, provides a wealth of markers of health and disease, said Christine Metz, an immunologist at Northwell Health’s Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research who is developing the test with Peter Gregersen, a geneticist there. Besides endometriosis, it could also help doctors screen for pelvic inflammation, infertility, fibroids, environmental toxins and early cancer.

“We were kind of surprised that it had been neglected as a natural resource,” Dr. Metz said.

They soon discovered why. In 2018, Dr. Metz began approaching male gynecologists to ask their patients for menstrual samples, and “some people said we were completely insane,” she recalled. Others, she added, “had never heard of a menstrual cup. Which was also, I’m going to say, disappointing.” They began asking patients directly for samples, and have since enrolled 1,000 patients in their study.

One might well ask why more researchers have not focused on the uterus until recently. Bioengineers in particular have always taken an interest in tissues that regenerate and self-heal. “And yet it took them how many decades to recognize that one of the most regenerative tissues is found inside the uterus?” asked Kathryn Clancy, a biological anthropologist who studies reproduction at the University of Illinois.

The reason, she believes, is simple: “Because none of the researchers had uteruses.”

Lessons from cancer

Three stone cherubs form an arc above the doorway to Dr. Griffith’s kitchen in Cambridge, Mass. They were a gift from her mother, to commemorate the embryos that she and her current husband, Doug Lauffenburger, a systems biologist with whom she shares a lab at M.I.T., made in 1997 through in vitro fertilization. Endometriosis prevented the embryos from implanting.

She held on to her dream of having children, but in 2001, just after her 40th birthday, the pain in her abdomen grew unbearable. On Sept. 11, as the Twin Towers fell, she rushed to the hospital in a fog of painkillers and underwent a hysterectomy with Dr. Isaacson. (Endometriosis pain is the leading cause of hysterectomies for American women in their 30s.)

“There was no decision,” Dr. Griffith recalled. “It was hysterectomy or death.”

Even after that, her disease returned, twice. Then in 2009, just after she had pivoted to studying endometriosis, she faced a new obstacle: cancer.

Dr. Griffith likes to say that compared to endometriosis, stage 2 breast cancer was a walk in the park. “Not like a super-beautiful day — like a stormy-day walk in the park,” she added. “But it was, like, people understood.” Colleagues wrote her cards, sent her food, extended condolences. Her dean offered her a sabbatical semester.

Dr. Griffith soon learned that the way breast cancer research was categorized was far ahead of endometriosis. Doctors used molecular tests to classify patients into subtypes, which dictated which targeted treatment they should receive. With endometriosis, “there’s no metrics,” she said. “This was this huge thing for me that was so crystallizing.”

Dr. Griffith knew that her disease, like cancer, was not one disease but many, a medusa of waving tentacles. She began talking to Dr. Lauffenburger, who had been studying breast cancer for over a decade, about how to take a similar approach to classifying endometriosis patients.

Together, they identified networks of inflammatory markers that tended to be associated with more painful manifestations of the disease and fertility, and published their findings in Science Translational Medicines in 2014. The work was cited as the first step toward creating subtypes of the disease. “That was really us together, because it was his vision of systems biology but filtered through my practical connection to the clinic,” Dr. Griffith said.

For the next year, she held lab meetings from her hospital bed in between chemotherapy sessions. “We transformed our lab meetings, literally,” said Dr. Nicole Doyle, a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Griffith’s lab at the time. “We just showed up for her chemo treatments and would sit there with her. That diagnosis had to adapt to her life, not the other way around.”

Throughout chemo, Dr. Griffith never seemed to waver in her positivity. When she shaved off her hair, she threw a lab party. But Dr. Lauffenburger found it excruciating to watch his wife suffer from this new foe, after battling the old one for so long.

When it came to cancer, “I viewed it as a terrible thing,” he said one evening over dinner at their home.

Dr. Griffith saw it differently: She took a curse and turned it into a gift.

“It was a terrible thing,” she allowed. “But it was a good thing, scientifically.”

[southeastasianists]

In November last year, Ros Sokny, an ambitious and friendly 36-year-old businesswoman from Kratie in eastern Cambodia, made the five-hour journey to Phnom Penh’s De Beaute Clinic, a private cosmetic surgery hospital tucked away in the capital’s western fringes. She had been considering breast augmentation surgery for several months, but in October, the mother of four came across an advert from De Beaute promoting the procedure at a discounted price on her Facebook feed. After discussing the idea with her husband, she booked in the operation, handed over a reported $3,000 to De Beaute and drove to Phnom Penh for a consultation.

What should have been a relatively straightforward surgery took a tragic turn once Sokny was anaesthetised. Following an undisclosed complication, she was rushed to the intensive care unit of a nearby private hospital with an organ infection. Three days after going under the knife, she died. The clinic was subsequently closed and is currently under police investigation for possible evidence of malpractice. Sokny’s death made national news headlines but, according to police officials, suspects at De Beaute “escaped” before they could be questioned. Despite being unclear how many suspects were at large, deputy municipal police chief Song Ly assured a reporter from the Cambodia Daily that the police were “looking for them”.

Speaking to Southeast Asia Globe almost a month after his late wife’s death, Phai Veasna expressed his anguish. “My tears have run dry. Right now, I’m scrambling to my feet to pay back the loans that we took for the surgery and to take care of my children’s school fees and expenses. I don’t really know if I can do all this alone without her,” he said, adding that the clinic had not contacted him or offered any compensation.

“My wife was still young and full of life. This was the biggest mistake of our lives. When her condition became serious, the cosmetic surgeon told me to go to another clinic for treatment because he did not have the equipment to treat her.”

The fact that a growing number of middle-class Cambodians such as Sokny are seeking such procedures indicates that cosmetic surgery in the fast-developing country is shifting away from being an industry aimed at the cashed-up, glamorous and famous.

'Brain boosters’ and liver detoxification serums on shelves inside Vita Longa ‘Brain boosters’ and liver detoxification serums on shelves inside Vita Longa This increased demand has partly been fuelled by a flood of new and often unregulated clinics such as De Beaute that offer cheaper services to lure in a wider spectrum of the Cambodian population, according to Thida Khus, a prominent women’s rights campaigner and the executive director of Silaka, a local capacity-building NGO. She has a number of reservations regarding the safety of such clinics: “It is dangerous. There is no effective monitoring or restriction on the people training and operating in the business”.

“The problem is the state, who do not accept their responsibility to monitor this industry. Competition among [the clinics] themselves isn’t enough [to improve safety standards],” she added. “There have been many cases of people who wanted to get a nose adjustment but have had horrible complications because the procedure was badly performed with poor materials.”

Despite the dangerously under-qualified clinicians, doctors and quacks working in Cambodia, the country’s – and more broadly Southeast Asia’s – cosmetic medicine sector is thriving. A report released last November by research firm MarketsAndMarkets found that while North America is the world’s largest medical aesthetics market, the Asia-Pacific market is set to grow at the fastest rate from now until 2021. By that year, the global medical aesthetics market will be worth $13.29 billion, with a compound annual growth rate of 10.8% from 2016-21, the report stated.

A separate report released by Grand View Research in June 2016 contended that by 2014, the Asia-Pacific region was already the biggest aesthetic medicine market in the world. Although South Korea, China and Japan are by far the largest contributors to the market size, Southeast Asian nations such as Cambodia have also anecdotally seen a growth in the industry.

Preedinoot Sripradoo is the director of Vita Longa clinic in Phnom Penh’s affluent Boeung Keng Kang 1 suburb, which specialises in placenta-based and stem cell rejuvenation treatments. She believes that the industry growth is driven by insecurities, and that a smooth, wrinkle-free face and full, collagen-injected lips are markers of perfection in an increasingly appearance-driven Cambodian society. “Imagine you are not beautiful but ugly. You would be uncomfortable and not confident in yourself. You would be afraid of going everywhere and to do things. There would be no use in having life,” she said in a stark commentary.

Clinicians in Phnom Penh interviewed for this story expressed contradictory sentiments about the level of regulation and safety within the beauty industry. Sripradoo claimed that over the past five years, the Ministry of Health has been “working hard” due to the mass proliferation of new clinics. “They are very strict with regulations,” she added.

Yet others expressed concern over a lack of regulatory oversight. Sem Rotana, the owner of Dr Skin clinic, located in a condominium near Boeung Trabek, said: “To open a licensed clinic through the Ministry of Health, you need to be a qualified doctor. Unfortunately, many clinics these days open without any qualifications at all.”

“Patients are not that ready to trust cosmetic doctors at the moment. There have been too many stories of people having bad experiences. Nowadays, they really want to see certificates,” she added.

But certification is not a guarantee of quality, according to activist Khus. “The [private beauty clinics] that provide these services also provide training. If you pay enough money, you can get certified quickly.”

Somany Yen, the clinic manager at MD7 clinic in Phnom Penh’s south, agreed that a significant number of practitioners claim to be qualified after minimal training. “They go to learn a short course for three months or four months and think they know how to do plastic surgery, and then they do it,” she said.

Speaking to Southeast Asia Globe last month, Sok Kanha, deputy director of the Ministry of Health’s planning and health information department, seemed unclear whose jurisdiction the regulation of cosmetic surgery clinics fell under, while the ministry’s hospital department did not respond to requests for comment. “All I can tell you is that we provide licences only to hospitals, polyclinics and private clinics. I’m not sure if within the ministry we have policies about cosmetic clinics,” Kanha said.

Plastic surgeon Reid Sheftall – also an MIT graduate, former physics lecturer at the University of Southern California, author, actor, film director and professional golfer – operates out of his own private clinic in Phnom Penh Central Hospital. He emphasised that his operating room was “very clean, very modern” and that “you couldn’t find a better one even in San Francisco”, yet he confided that there was a lot of “faux-medical stuff that goes on” elsewhere in Cambodia.

“When I first got here, women were going to these beauty clinics and having negative suction cups put on their breasts and then pulled very hard. Women thought this would make their breasts bigger but all it did was tear the ligaments. It was terrible,” he said.

Sheftall also highlighted the dangers of Cambodia’s popular skin-whitening treatments, often acknowledged as the Asian beauty industry’s cash cow. Whitening creams, serums, peels, injectables and pills can be found almost everywhere in Phnom Penh, from tiny local market stalls, roadside pharmacies and supermarkets right through to swish, costly clinics and international aesthetic franchises. “I have had a couple of patients crawling into the clinic vomiting after applying too much [whitening cream] on their skin. You shouldn’t put that poison on your skin,” he said.

In 2011, a study by Phnom Penh’s University of Health Sciences found that 15% of commercially available skin whitening creams and 30% of those found in specialist beauty clinics contained illegally high levels of toxic compounds such as mercury. The treatments also often contain salicylic acid, arsenic and lead, which can not only burn the skin but also cause the liver and brain to swell.

It is difficult to establish the scale of the market in Cambodia, due to the lack of reliable data and an abundance of unregistered clinics. However, every practitioner that spoke to Southeast Asia Globe reported a growing demand for aesthetic medicine procedures in the country. “There has been a big increase in the number of beauty clinics in Phnom Penh,” said Rotana.

Corroborating this, Sheftall said: “Over the years, demand for my services has increased tenfold. It has gone way up.” He attributed this largely to the swift growth of Cambodia’s middle class. “In the past, the prices here were super low, but people still couldn’t afford it. But now, there is a middle class that didn’t exist here before.”

Khus added that the stylistic influence of Korea has also helped to grow the aesthetics market. “Korean cinema has invaded Cambodia and had a big impact on the population,” she said.

Social media is undoubtedly a key driver of the industry and is used extensively by beauty clinics to market their services. Sripradoo claimed that “Facebook is the main media source in Cambodia” and that her clinic utilises the platform extensively. Indeed, the Vita Longa Clinic page is updated with glossy photos of white-skinned, round-eyed patients with great frequency. Special promotions for ‘meso-fat therapy’, intravenous ‘liver detox’, ‘brain booster’ and ‘beauty booster’ treatments, as well as various laser treatments are employed regularly.

The now defunct and shuttered De Beaute Clinic still has a public Facebook page; a series of posts last year advertised procedures such as ‘rhinoplasty and peeling’ for less than $2,000, ‘dimples’ for $250, liposuction for $1,600 and breast augmentation for “about $3,500”.

Dr Skin, meanwhile, uses Cambodian pop stars, actors and models to promote treatments such as ‘mega-botox’ and ‘V-shaped face’ procedures. Dalice Katam Sovandalice, an assistant at the practice, said that famous Cambodians receive “discounts” in exchange for their help with promotion.

Slick marketing is not the be all and end all, however, and in a climate of stiff competition, results are also critical. “The middle class is growing and very informed. They learn, they search and they check before they go,” said Sripradoo. “Right now, the medical treatments and the beauty industry standards are getting higher.”

The clinic director also added that improved education would raise competency among practitioners. “The University of Health Sciences in Cambodia is promoting a dermatology department so they can train dermatologists and plastic surgeons. I think it is going to leave the Cambodian beauty industry with better standards,” she said.

Surgeon Reid Sheftall relies simply on word of mouth. “I get people from Australia, France, Singapore, Hong Kong. Everybody flies here. You do one, they go home, show their friends and then ten more come,” he said.

One Cambodian woman, who asked to be identified as ‘Bopha’, explained to Southeast Asia Globe how she convinced herself to get a recent rhinoplasty procedure. “I highly trust the clinic that I went to. You can’t trust every beauty clinic in Phnom Penh, however. Sometimes, a recommendation is the only way to ensure quality,” she said.

However, for Phai Veasna, still coming to terms with the loss of his wife, the industry can never be endorsed. “Some of those doctors are not even sure about the results themselves,” he said.

As standards improve, pricing remains competitive and treatments become increasingly fashionable, it seems certain that the beauty business will only continue to grow in Cambodia. In the words of Dr Skin’s Rotana: “People love it and come back for more and more. Today they’ll do one injection, tomorrow they’ll do another.”