#ive been off painkillers for a few days bc i was on them for like a month and we were worried about eventual ulcers & such things

[phagodyke]

period FINALLY fuckinf started. took its sweet time with it huh

[tsvai]

tfw ur brain is working so well today that ur dad says 'thank you' to you and instead of 'you're welcome' like you meant to say, your mouth says 'hello'

[fairyhaos]

how seventeen take care of their sick s/o

requested by @cinnamoroxie : "agh i think ive been getting sick 😭 could u write svt w a sick reader / or just a reader w a sore throat and cant speak w out it hurting pls? love u hope youre doing well "

notes: i :(((( want :((( a joshua :((((

masterlist

seungcheol:

cancels all your plans for the rest of the day when you wake up in the morning barely able to speak. won't let you protest, saying that you need to prioritise your health okay bc these people you're meeting aren't as important to him as you are. if you've just got a sniffly nose n sore throat, he'll let you sleep on him but if you're coughing n sneezing everywhere then sorry, he loves you but maybe stay away from him for a few days? 

jeonghan:

will do everything for you. even tho he doesn't have the loudest voice, he'll try his hardest to yell over the other members to get them to quieten down so he can listen to your hoarse whispers n get you whatever you need <3 gives you so many cough drops that you constantly have one in your mouth the entire time. you can taste them still on your tongue for like a day after you feel better

joshua:

gives you head massages if you have a headache, makes you honey tea if your throat hurts, always has tissues on hand if your nose is running. The Best™ at looking after you. won't leave your side, even if you're spraying germs everywhere, and he has a cold that lasts for three weeks by the end of it, but you're happy and healthy n that's all that matters to him

junhui:

kind of a fluttery mess when you get sick, doesn't rlly know what to do. pats your head constantly, asking if you're okay, and swaddles you in blankets. also gives you so many painkillers and antibiotics bc he doesn't Know what else to do okay and please you sound so terrible n croaky pls take this medicine bc it's meant to make you better and he hates when you're ill :((

hoshi:

coos and baby talks to you when you're sick and a blocked nose mess. speaks in a whisper back to you if you have a sore throat and can barely speak, makes those canned soups for you and spoon feeds it to you. he's a messy feeder tho, n most of it gets around your mouth but he wipes it away vv gently afterwards. hoshi is probably so, so soft when taking care of someone when they're sick tbh &lt;3

wonwoo:

accompanies you everywhere you go. insists you lie down and sleep but if you don't, then he's hovering around you like a concerned mother to make sure you don't overdo it. tells everyone you meet that you have a sore throat and so you can't speak, and Will drag you away if you start coughing too hard, scolding you lightly and pulling a scarf out of nowhere to wrap around your neck

woozi:

wants to take time off working so bad to help take care of you but he rlly can't </3 sets medicine and a glass of water on the table for you to take in the morning, regularly calls you (or texts, if you can't speak) to see how you're doing. checks up on you at night, smiles and kisses you on the forehead if you wake up and blearily murmur his name. he's busy, but he'll still make time to be soft for you

minghao:

always has tissues. and hand sanitizer. and cough drops. and paracetamol. has literally everything, really. says well done and pats your head when you drain a whole glass of water while swallowing the medicine, bc drinking water and flushing out toxins is the best way to get rid of an illness. another person who baby talks you if you're all sick n pouty

mingyu:

makes soup. makes tea. forces both liquids down your throat even if you complain bc it's good for you and he spent so much of his precious time making it for you how dare you try and refuse???? it definitely helps with your sore throat the next day, though, and he looks so smug as he ladles you another bowl of soup to have in the morning. 

dokyeom:

almost starts crying when you tell him u have a sore throat through barely-there whispers bc the pain :((( of not being able to speak :((( that breaks his heart to think about. knows the struggles of runny noses So Well, whips out a tissue and presents it in front of your face if you so much as sniffle quietly. hugs you the entire time, wakes up the next morning with a sore throat and then Actually starts crying

seungkwan:

your personal megaphone whenever you're sick and can't speak. yells at the other members to shut up and listen when you have something to say, and then repeats what you whisper in his rlly loud voice. won't let you have meds (they are!! the demon's pills!!!!) but learns from mingyu how to make rlly good chicken broth for you

vernon:

gets so sad for u when you croak out to him that you can't speak bc your throat hurts so bad. makes you gargle with salt water after brushing your teeth bc it helps disinfect your throat (this is true actually n it really helps). randomly holds his hand to your forehead to check your temperature, but he can never tell if you're running hot or if it's just him

chan:

is all "oh no you're sick :(((( that's terrible also pls don't come too close to me" but pulls you in for a hug immediately if you even vaguely hint at wanting one. googles if throat massages are a thing when you tell him you can't speak bc it hurts, gives you lemon honey tea bc he finds out that helps. kinda ends up massaging your throat? his hands are always warm and they feel nice when placed on your neck

request guidelines

[mandelene]

Arthur is the one who gets sick and the rest of the FACE family freak out? Whether he’s seriously ill or not is up to you. Bonus if he adamantly denies that he’s sick bc I need a character to project onto 🤣. Have a good week! 💕

Here it is! And I hope you have a wonderful week as well! 💖

Why One Shouldn’t Marry a Stubborn Englishman: A Case Study Word Count: 1424

Although Arthur barely touches his dinner on a Friday evening in mid-October, Francis doesn’t immediately see a reason to worry. His husband’s appetite is finicky at best, and there are days when he is simply too caught up in his own mind to remember to eat. It’s relatively normal behavior, and sometimes, if he pushes around his dinner, he compensates by having a large breakfast the following day. 

But then Saturday morning comes and he doesn’t finish his eggs and toast either. Arthur flips through his weekly edition of The Economist, and pretends not to see the look of disapproval on Francis’s face. And that’s when the worry in Francis’s heart begins to set in. 

He doesn’t even take a sip of tea. It’s tea! Arthur can’t live without his tea. Tea runs through the man’s veins! 

“Is something wrong? You haven’t been eating or drinking anything,” Francis points out, and Alfred and Matthew, who are also seated at the kitchen table, stop talking about their English project and shift their attention to a now flustered Arthur. 

“I’m fine. Not hungry,” Arthur replies shortly, looking down at his magazine and away from them. 

Alfred gives his father a little nudge on the shoulder and adds, “You’ve been acting kinda weird. Are you sick?” 

“You do look a little pale, mon amour.”

“I didn’t know it was a crime to not be hungry,” Arthur snaps, rising from the table. He snatches his magazine and swivels around to leave the kitchen, but that’s when a quiet gasp suddenly escapes him, and he grabs his upper abdomen with one hand. His face betrays a pained grimace, and the hand holding The Economist tightens into a fist. 

The scene triggers alarm bells in Francis’s mind. He sweeps over to Arthur and tries to feel his forehead, but Arthur waves him off and pulls away, insisting that he’s fine and “it’s just indigestion.” 

No one is convinced he’s all right, but Arthur’s stubbornness knows no bounds, and confronting him whenever anything is wrong with him, no matter how big or small, always proves to be a challenge. Matthew offers to get him an antacid from the medicine cabinet, but Arthur rejects that offer and chooses to hide away in his and Francis’s bedroom instead to brood. 

“That definitely didn’t look like indigestion,” Matthew whispers once he’s out of earshot. 

“I know. I’m going to have to fight him for a real answer, as usual,” Francis sighs as he’s picking up Arthur’s plate and bringing it over to the bin. He doesn’t like being wasteful, but if Arthur truly is sick, then it’s best to toss his breakfast away. There’s no chance he’s going to eat it later, and he could be contagious. “Don’t worry, boys, I’ll talk to him. He needs a little coaxing sometimes. He can be childish and moody when he’s unwell.” 

“Doctors make the worst patients,” Alfred notes.

“You could say that again, mon lapin.”

----------------------- 

The denial continues for the rest of the day. When Francis tries to pester Arthur into having something for lunch and suggests some soup or saltines, he is met with hostility yet again. “I’ve already said I’m not bloody hungry.” 

And then, the vomiting begins. While they’re all watching a movie in the living room later that afternoon, Arthur abruptly hurries to the bathroom, holding his stomach once more. Francis trails after him, and Alfred and Matthew come along to watch the drama unfold as well, equally as concerned. 

“Oh, mon cher,” Francis murmurs while Arthur retches, rubbing his husband’s back. With his other hand, he finally feels his forehead and is not at all shocked at the warmth he feels under his fingers. “You’ve caught some sort of stomach bug, haven’t you?”

When Arthur is done and has flushed the toilet, he turns to the sink and rinses his mouth. Clearly, he’s too exhausted and miserable now to be in a position to argue because when Francis takes him by the arm and guides him to bed, he follows him without complaint.

“I’ll bring some sparkling water. It always helps me when I feel nauseous,” Matthew offers, and Francis gives him an appreciative nod. 

“You always tell us ‘rest and fluids’ are the most important things when you’re sick,” Alfred reminds his father, but Arthur merely lets out a small groan as he lies down. 

If this is a stomach bug, then it must be severe because Francis can tell by the expression on Arthur’s face that he’s in a great deal of pain—more pain than one would be in from a simple stomach flu or food poisoning. His right hand is wrapped around his upper abdomen yet again, and his eyes are screwed shut. There are beads of sweat on his brow, and when Francis gently pulls Arthur’s hand away to touch his stomach, Arthur lets out a sharp cry that makes him jump. 

Francis doesn’t think he’s ever seen him in this much agony. Even while ill, Arthur hardly ever lets on how poorly he’s feeling. For him to be in such a state…It’s frightening. 

“He doesn’t look good, Papa,” Alfred says, biting his lip. 

“No, he doesn’t…I think I should take him to the emergency room.” 

At that, Arthur opens his glassy green eyes and grumbles through gritted teeth, “No.” 

“I can’t look at you when you’re like this. You need a doctor, mon amour.” 

“…Don’t need a damned doctor…”  

“Arthur. Be reasonable.” 

Matthew returns with the promised glass of sparkling water, and hands it to Arthur. 

It appears the idea of consuming any liquid makes Arthur turn green with nausea, and he places the glass on the bedside table with another groan.  

“Boys, can you grab one of your father’s coats and a pair of his shoes? I need to get him dressed—I’m taking him to the hospital.”

Arthur shoots him a fierce scowl. “Absolutely not.”  

“I’ve been your husband long enough to know when something warrants a hospital visit. Can you stand?” 

“Of course I can stand, I’m not—”

But when he gets up, the pain flares, and he nearly doubles over. All of the color drains from his face, and Francis has him sit down on the edge of the bed. 

“Okay, okay. That’s enough. The boys and I will help you to the car. Do you want some ibuprofen or something before we go?” 

“No…” 

He should have seen that response coming. 

--------------------------------------------

It was the right call to bring him in—that’s what Arthur’s nurse in the ER tells Francis and the boys. 

Apparently, the silly oaf is severely dehydrated, so he is quickly started on IV fluids and strong painkillers. It’s assumed he could have appendicitis and that the pain just hasn’t localized to the lower right side of his abdomen yet. But then, a CT scan reveals that his appendix is fine. His pancreas, however, is not. 

Acute pancreatitis. That’s the verdict. The doctor says it was likely caused by the medication he’s been taking for his arthritis—azathioprine. The diagnosis is enough to have him admitted because it’s decided he will have to be on a course of IV antibiotics to clear up the infection. 

“Honestly, only you could have an infected pancreas and claim it was indigestion,” Francis chides him, but he can’t be too angry when he knows Arthur must be feeling awful enough as is. “Fortunately, you should feel all better in a few days, you big idiot.” 

Alfred doesn’t hesitate to scold him as well. “You can’t make us worry like that, Dad. You should have said something sooner.”

“Yeah, no one should have to suffer in silence until they get so sick that they can’t move,” Matthew says, holding Arthur’s left hand, which is where his IV is. “It sounds like it could have gotten a lot worse if left untreated.”

“I thought I had it under control,” is Arthur’s lame defense. 

“Well, hopefully, you’ll think twice next time and ask someone for help. Now get well soon, all right? You know how much I dislike hospitals.” 

“Thank you for putting up with me.” 

Francis smiles and kisses his nose, causing Arthur to wrinkle his face. “Anytime, mon amour. Anytime…I love you. Now, rest. You need it. We’ll be here when you wake up.” 

Given that he’s already been sapped of most of his energy, falling asleep proves to be an easy task for him, and he’s out in no time.

What a troublesome man. 

[brycelahelas]

take care

rating: mature

book: open heart

summary: God. God. It was a bad idea going here. You want nothing more than to head to the bathroom and crawl out the window and just fucking run wherever the hell your legs take you. You want to run until the ache in your legs makes you forget all of your memories tainted with Rafael, until your lungs constrict to the point that you forget what it felt like to have Rafael’s lips on yours.

Maybe Landry had it right. Maybe emotions do hold us back. And maybe that’s your fatal flaw: you feel and care and love too much to the point that it bites you in the ass. It always did, in the end.

word count: 8000+

notes: THIS TOOK SO LONG FOR NO REASON....literally took me four weeks to complete bc i cannot finish anything in a timely manner. but i hope you all enjoy this 8k+ piece. i love to see interaction so pls reblog and like if you enjoyed! and let me know what you think of it! you can also read this on ao3 here.

dedicated to my lover my wife my shawty my life miss jade... happy birthday!!!

tagging: @zadiechoi @zigtheeortega @senatorraines @bigtoughswordboy​ (if you would like to be added to the list let me know!)

Of all the emotions you could be feeling right now, you find that, at the core of it all, you feel nothing.

This feeling isn’t indifference. Because if it were, you wouldn’t have this ache reverberating all over your body. And although you have a heightened sense of the blood coursing through your veins, of your heart pulsating against your chest, you bite your tongue, shake Sora’s hand, and say nothing when she kisses Rafael goodbye.

When she leaves, you look him in the eyes, sharply inhaling as you struggle to say, “You two are cute together.”

“You think so?” he answers, careful with his words as he eyes Bryce warily. When Bryce gets the message and leaves to greet Ethan, Rafael looks at you once again, eyes almost apologetic. You’re suddenly aware of the distance between you two and the tension that has settled in the air. As he moves closer towards you, you instinctively step forward, but upon realizing what you’re doing, you move back, away from the arms that you know so well, away from the man who once loved you.

He notices this and frowns, only slightly. “Listen,” he starts, voice so low you could mistake it for silence. “About us...I want you to know I still—”

You raise your hand, cutting him off. With your eyes squeezed shut, you take slow breaths and hope that the tears would go away if you didn’t look at him anymore. “Don’t worry, Raf,” you say softly, defeat resound in your voice. “You don’t owe me an explanation. I get it. She’s your childhood sweetheart.”

Just as you turn away from him to go into the hospital, you hear him say, tone just above a whisper, “...Okay.”

The defeat in his voice sounds exactly as it did in yours.

“Are you okay?”

You’ve never heard Esme sound so panicked. As you snap out of your daze, you find that you’ve been standing next to a patient, hands shaking as you hold a needle next to a protruding vein. Thankfully, the patient’s eyes are squeezed shut, looking away in hopes that you would insert their IV quickly.

You insert it in one fluid movement, leaving the plastic tube in and pulling the needle out. Once you let the nurses take over, you grab your clipboard and walk out of the room with Esme trailing close behind you.

“How long was I just standing there?” you finally say once you both enter the elevator and you press the button for the ICU. The silence is palpable, as it usually is with Esme, but her eyes betray a sense of concern.

“Too long,” she answers. “Look, really, are you okay? You’ve been out of it all day.”

“I’m fine,” you say, although visibly the opposite. Esme, being Esme, doesn’t push further.

Silent devastation.

Nothing comes close to accurately describing how you feel about this Rafael situation, but that’s what you settle on. There are no painkillers strong enough to dull the ache in your heart, no way of relieving you from the reality that Rafael isn’t yours anymore. But you live with it, day by day, and it’s apparently starting to show.

After shift change, Bryce bumps into you in the atrium and announces that it’s a Donahue’s night. “My treat,” he tells you, smiling wide as he wraps an arm around your shoulders. “You need it. And you can’t say no because it’s doctor’s orders.”

That elicits a small chuckle from you. “And if I do end up saying no?”

“Then you’ll have to sign an AMA form. But, as you know, it’s not recommended to go against medical advice.”

“Well, I guess I have no choice,” you tell him, grinning softly. “To Donahue’s it is.”

He flashes you that thousand kilowatt smile again and steers you out of Edenbrook and into Donahue’s.

On Fridays, Reggie always makes sure to decorate Donahue’s in a specific theme. Tonight is Samba Night, according to the flyer by the door. Mainly Edenbrook employees crowd Donahue’s, but the vibe is jovial as always, with more five dollar margaritas scattered around the place than usual. You spot your friends in their usual booth, joined by a few of the interns, and they wave you over excitedly.

“Over here!” Sienna calls out as she spots you and Bryce at the entrance. She’s sidled up next to Danny but makes space for you to sit next to her.

As you settle into your seat, all your friends suddenly blast you with questions about your day. How was your shift? Did you have any codes? Did you hear about the rapid response in ICU? Did you hear about the code grey in ED? It’s a dizzying array of questions, and something feels off about it, as if they’re saying so many things at once to startle you. You don’t realize what it is they’re doing until you follow Sienna’s line of sight.

When Rafael walks in with his arm around Sora’s waist, you fall incredibly still. Beside you, Jackie scoffs.

“What is he thinking bringing her here? God, I’m gonna need another shot.”

“I’m right there with you,” you say, suddenly feeling a heaviness in your chest. You turn sharply towards Bryce. “Bryce? Your treat, right?”

Bryce looks at you worriedly but stands right away. “On it,” he says and heads towards the bar.

God. God. It was a bad idea going here. You want nothing more than to head to the bathroom and crawl out the window and just fucking run wherever the hell your legs take you. You want to run until the ache in your legs makes you forget all of your memories tainted with Rafael, until your lungs constrict to the point that you forget what it felt like to have Rafael’s lips on yours.

Maybe Landry had it right. Maybe emotions do hold us back. And maybe that’s your fatal flaw: you feel and care and love too much to the point that it bites you in the ass. It always did, in the end.

Either way, you couldn’t bring yourself to care anymore. Rafael made his choice, and it wasn't you. Fucking deal with it. Huffing, you grab Elijah’s margarita (much to his dismay) and down it all in a few sips. You needed all the alcohol you can get in your system in order to survive the inevitable interaction between you and Sora and Rafael. Dr. Yoeun, Elijah’s intern, watches with wide eyes as you slam the completely empty glass on the table.

It’s Sora who spots you first. Eyes bright and lips pulled into a smile, she basically drags Rafael to your table in order to greet you. You feel yourself tense up as the both of them get to your table, but you feel a hand slip into yours and squeeze. It’s a presence that feels reassuring and familiar. As you look down and realize it’s Sienna’s hand, you can’t help but smile at the interaction and squeeze her hand back.

“Hey! Long time no see!” Sora says, diving into your arms and wrapping you in a tight hug. With your free hand, you give her a soft pat on the back, and she pulls away, grinning. “This is such a nice bar! I’ve never been here before.”

Rafael pipes up from next to her, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck. “I just got off a shift and wanted to show her Donahue’s. Hope that’s okay.”

“Come on, Raf, you know we don’t own Donahue’s!” Elijah jokes. His tone offsets the tension at the table, which helps Rafael ease up a bit. “You’re welcome here anytime. You don’t need our permission.”

Rafael nods, looking away from the table. “Well,” he finally says, exhaling a bated breath, “I hope you guys have a good one.” Sora quickly waves goodbye, and the two head off to another part of the bar, most likely in an effort to avoid you.

When Bryce returns to the table with the drinks, you immediately down your whole shot. And another. Then another. It’s probably a good thing that you’re off tomorrow because tonight you’re just going to drink to your heart’s content and cease to think.

The thing is, you can’t bring yourself to hate Sora. She always leaves nice comments on your Instagram posts, and she always makes it a point to greet you whenever you run into each other at Donahue’s. There isn’t anything to hate besides the fact that she’s your ex’s new girlfriend. (Or is it old girlfriend? New-old girlfriend? Rekindled flame?)

Well, whatever she is to Rafael, she’s nice to you. And she’s wonderful to him, which is all you can ask for, really. No matter how desperately you want to hate her, you can’t. She’s given you no reason to.

There you go again. Feeling and caring and loving too much. It really will be the death of you.

You don’t see Rafael for a few months after that. At this point, it isn’t him avoiding you; it’s just that your jobs don’t make you cross paths, as is expected. Whatever Rafael-sized ache you had in your heart is gone. It’s just the thought of what could have been that bothers you occasionally.

And you do think of him, occasionally. It’s hard not to. You’re always wondering how he’s doing—if he’s eating enough, if he’s sleeping well, if he’s staying safe. Rafael’s always been such a selfless person, someone who lives by the philosophy that tomorrow isn’t guaranteed. That worries you. For someone who is always taking care of other people, he doesn’t take quite good care of himself, and one day that’s going to bite him in the ass.

Well, in any case, it’s out of your hands now. At least, that’s what you tell yourself. You have your own patients to deal with and a grizzled senior resident to report to.

A low, menacing voice snaps you out of your thoughts. “You.”

Speak of the devil and he shall appear. When you turn around, you see Zaid beckoning you towards him. “Emergency Department. Now.”

As you fall into step with Zaid, rushing towards the Emergency Department, you ask, “What’s the situation down there? Do we have to run triage?”

“Not necessarily,” he answers. “It’s just high census there right now. Lots of virus scares, among other things. The ED physicians are getting overwhelmed so they enlisted our help.”

You nod silently. You were never too fond of the Emergency Department as an intern. Too much panic and frenzy down there with not enough space to think. You worked better on floors like the ICU or Medical Surgical, where you can take time to actually speak to the patients and work on a diagnosis. At the very least, the ED presented a challenge to you that could potentially be useful in building your diagnostician skills.

When you step through the doors of the ED, you see what Zaid means about high census. All the rooms, including the overflow beds, are filled with people, and every room presents a different case. While you definitely wanted to start in the rooms whose patients likely had an infectious disease, your eyes are drawn to an overflow patient who is wearing a very familiar paramedic uniform. As you draw closer to the patient, your walk quickly turns into a sprint when your suspicions about who it is are confirmed.

“Rafael, what happened?” you ask him, panicked. He’s clutching his side, face grimacing in pain. When you inspect him closer, you see that blood has seeped into his blue uniform.

A nurse approaches the two of you with the suture cart and stops right beside you. “The patient got stabbed during a call, but it’s only a surface wound. No pulmonary or great vessel trauma. A suture is needed though.”

The second she finishes, a call light goes off in ED Room 1, and you notice that she eyes it with a sigh. “ED Room 1 is your patient?” you ask her.

“Yes,” she answers. “Sweet old lady. She’s needed water for the past five minutes, but I haven’t been able to get her because of the craziness going on.”

“Go,” you tell her, waving her off. “I’ll take care of this suture for you.”

The nurse thanks you and walks off, leaving you and Rafael alone. After gathering your supplies for the suture, you sit next to him, aseptically clean the area, and get to work. Neither of you say anything until you rub numbing cream around the stab wound. It’s then that he lets out a hiss.

“You need to stop getting yourself into these situations, Raf,” you murmur softly as you finish the preparations for the suture. When you move to change your gloves, you hear a soft, restrained laugh coming from him.

“You, of all people, should know that I can’t do that,” he mumbles, shutting his eyes as you proceed to prepare the needle. “It’s my job to protect people—to rescue people. I’ll keep getting into these situations if it means I save someone’s life.”

“And if it costs your own?”

He answers without hesitation. “Then so be it.”

“We’re stitching in three...two...one...” You enter the needle into his skin, but he doesn’t react due to the numbing cream effectively desensitizing the area. As you stitch his wound together, you say, “Well, for now, let’s make sure you keep yourself safe, okay? You can’t exactly help people if your body is banged up like this.”

He laughs, this time a bit louder, that sound of familiarity returning to his voice. “It sounds like someone’s worried about me.”

Without missing a beat, you answer softly, “You know I am. I always am.”

It’s the first time you’re really seeing him in months, and he is beautiful. His hair has grown a little longer now, with curly brown wisps covering the nape of his neck. But besides that, he looks the exact same. When your eyes meet, it’s difficult for you to look away, but you find that it’s the same for him

“How...how have you been?” he asks you, snapping out of a daze. He gets up with significant effort but manages to sit upright to look at you properly. “It’s been a few months.”

“Yeah,” you tell him. “You know I’m always busy. No new stories to tell.”

He smiles that goddamn smile that made you fall for him all those months ago. It’s just as soft as you remember. But as you admire him, that small voice in your head just repeats over and over that he didn’t choose you, he chose Sora, and suddenly you’re the first look away.

As you put away the items you used to stitch Rafael up, your mouth seems to run faster than your brain, and you blurt out, “How’s Sora?”

Rafael looks confused. And rightfully so. You don’t even know why you asked that question when you weren’t prepared to hear the answer.

“She’s fine,” he answers, mindlessly. “At least, last time I saw her she was.”

“...last time you saw her?”

“Yeah. We’ve been broken up for a while now.”

“Broken up,” you echo. The words sound so bittersweet in your mouth. “What happened?”

He looks you straight in the eyes, thoughtfully regarding you for a second. “A certain doctor was always on my mind,” he answers nonchalantly. “And it wasn’t fair for Sora to stay in a relationship with me if I obviously liked someone else.”

Wait. “Wait. Hold on. What?” you sputter, watching him as he attempts to stand up.

“Huh, good job on these stitches,” he says, admiring your handiwork. “They’ll heal up nicely.”

“Rafael,” you say exasperatedly, but he holds his hand up to silence you.

“Considering the amount of patients you have, it might not be the best time to have this conversation,” he answers you, a mischievous grin on his face. “Let’s expand on this during dinner tonight.”

Dinner? With him? Tonight? Holy fuck, everything is moving so fast that you’re overwhelmed. Before he leaves, he pauses next to your shell shocked body and leans in, placing a soft kiss on your cheek. “It’s great to see you again.”

And he leaves. Just like that. As you watch him walk out of the Emergency Department and link up with his other paramedic buddies, you stand still in the spot he left you, trying to figure out what the hell just happened. In your periphery, Zaid’s shrill whistle alerts you to his presence, and he marches his way towards you in his usual Zaid way—overzealously angry.

“What the hell are you doing just standing there? Get that suture cart out of the way and get in ED 5!”

It isn’t until Zaid basically bulldozes you into a patient’s room that you remember you still have a job to do. As he grits his teeth at you, he grunts, “Why are you so smiley all of a sudden?”

You don’t answer, instead logging into the computer to pull up the patient’s chart. As Zaid sighs heavily and gets on with his initial assessment of the patient, you see your reflection in the screen and find that you can’t bite back your smile, no matter how hard you try.

Whenever you’re tangled in Rafael’s arms, you wrap your hand around his curls and just memorize. You memorize the way he feels so that there’s never a chance you’ll forget. The way his hair feels under your fingertips, the musky notes of his scent, the corded muscles on his back—everything, anything, you touch and feel and memorize.

After all, you lost him once, and once was enough for you to learn your lesson. Now, every time Rafael finds himself in your arms, you take in his warmth, his curls, his lips, his eyes, his touch. Clinging onto him as if he’ll go away one day, as if he’ll disappear despite his promises of forever.

Forever isn’t guaranteed. You’re a doctor. You know this. In all your years working in the hospital, from the very first time you set foot in one as a high school volunteer, you’ve seen enough death and destruction and despair to know that life is finite. But you’ll believe Rafael anyway, foolishly. A more rational person would question this way of thinking because it’s stupid, perhaps even irresponsible, for you to hold Rafael’s promises to such high standards.

But your mother once told you that if two people were meant to be, the universe will let it happen. And the universe, for all your faults and flaws, gave you a second chance with Rafael. While you’d like to believe that he is your forever, you definitely aren’t going to take your chances. For now, you memorize and memorize.

Rinse and repeat.

Since the moment you two got back together, officially, Rafael has made it a habit to bring you to the street market near his neighborhood at least once a week.

He says it’s a tradition at this point. The amount of times you beg him to bring you back to your favorite taco place, just so you can buy yourself your favorite carne asada taco as a treat, almost warrants the street market becoming a tradition for you two. Not that you’re complaining about it at all. Any excuse to get your hands on a soft, doughy flour tortilla filled to the brim with carne asada and cebolla y cilantro makes you a happy camper.

Today is no different. After rounding the market to see what each vendor has, you two decide on what to get: unsurprisingly, three carne asada tacos for you, and two chicken tamales for him. He likes the way this vendor makes their masa, and you like the way they make their salsa verde. So, not so secretly, you stash four sauce containers of it while he orders, just so you have enough to completely douse your tacos and his tamales.

“Maybe you should get a fifth cup,” Rafael says, voice oozing with faux concern. “I’m sure Delia didn’t notice you taking her entire stash of salsa verde.”

You give him a pointed look. “If Delia didn’t want me to take her entire stash, maybe she shouldn’t have made it so good? Checkmate, Aveiro.”

“Touché,” he says as you two take a seat at one of the empty tables near the tamale stand. Taking the lid off the container, you excitedly drench your tacos in salsa verde, the green sheen of it reflecting against the fluorescent lights above you. Nothing in the world is more mouthwatering than these tacos. Doesn’t matter if you see them every week. You’d eat them every day if you could, and you just know you won’t get sick of them. Rafael’s eyes crinkle as he laughs, and he coats his own food with the salsa. “God, you really love Delia’s salsa, huh?”

“More than anything,” you answer quickly. “Even you. I’m sorry, babe.”

“Guess we’ll have to ask Delia to cater our wedding, huh?”

“Oh my god, can we really?” you ask, taking a bite out of your food. “Man! Have her work with Oscar from the taco stand because these two together are just perfection. Absolute perfection. I don’t care if the people who come to our wedding hate tacos. They’re going to eat tacos. Period.”

Rafael looks at you thoughtfully, with so much affection in his eyes that you can feel butterflies in your stomach. It almost makes you stop eating. Almost. But your food tastes too good, and you’re too hungry to stop, and it doesn’t matter how he looks at you. You’re digging in.

By the time you finish with your first taco, he still hasn’t touched his food. You quirk your eyebrow and ask him, “Why are you just staring at me? Not hungry?”

“What if we got married? For real?”

He asks it so suddenly that you’re caught incredibly off guard. You make a choked sound, almost spilling the salsa verde all over your clothes.

“W...what?” you ask him, embarrassed at the way you reacted, wiping away the sliver of salsa drooling from your mouth. It wasn’t that you didn’t want to get married. In fact, you’ve thought about this very much, to the point where it was almost obsessive. It’s just that you don’t understand how you stuffing a taco in your mouth brought up a genuine conversation about marriage and what that meant for your futures.

“We’re coming up on two years now. We’ve been through a lot of things, tough things, that we’ve survived through together, and we’ve been living together for a while. Marriage is the next logical step, I think.” He licks his lips, looking down as if he’s nervous to continue. “I know how you feel about marriage—how it's an institution that perpetuates gender roles and how couples don’t need to be married to show that they’re committed to each other. But I’d like to marry you, very much. I truly do.”

“Oh, Raf,” you say, but he immediately cuts you off, sounding panicked.

“And I don’t mean to bring this all up to you so fast. My words sound so garbled because I’m so nervous. I don’t even know why. Just know that I don’t expect an answer immediately and that you don’t have to take my last name. Your last name is on the medical degree that you earned, and I don’t want you to think about changing it for me. We can even take your last name. Or hyphenate. I don’t care. As long as I can marry you and be with you for the rest of my life.”

You’re quiet for a while, taking in everything that he’s said. The man really is wordy when he’s nervous, and he looks like he’s sweating bullets. As you take his hand, you notice how clammy he is, and he looks at you expectantly.

“I can’t imagine marrying anyone but you, Rafael,” you answer, genuinely. The words sound so right coming out from your mouth, and that’s how you know it’s true. Rafael’s always been the one for you. You’ve known ever since the day you met him. Doesn’t matter the speed bumps along the way. All that matters is that you’re here now, together, finally deciding what the future holds for the two of you.

You expect him to look relieved. Instead, he looks exasperated. “God, it took you that long to say that? Can’t you feel how nervous I am?”

You grin and squeeze his hand tightly. “I can. And I’m enjoying it.”

He shakes your hand off his and finally stuffs a forkful of tamale into his mouth. “You’re a riot,” he says, low and steady, shaking his head. Although he tries not to smile, it spills out anyway.

A low hum reverberates in your throat. “A riot that you want to spend the rest of your life with.”

“If you keep that up, I’ll uninvite Delia and Oscar to the wedding.”

“Please don’t. If you do that, they might not give me the recipes for their salsa and tacos!”

“Somehow, I doubt they were going to do that anyways,” he answers, finishing the last of his tamale. “Now let’s hurry up so I can buy you the cream puffs you like.”

As you watch Rafael dig into his second tamale, you think back on the things he mentioned about your opinions on marriage. Marriage was something you didn’t believe in, partly due to your gender studies professor in undergrad and partly due to your parents’ failed marriage. People just get married too young, too fast, and divorce is an ugly, expensive thing. As much as you wanted to believe that true love exists, you couldn’t bear to relive through the hell that was your parents’ relationship, which is why you’ve always abstained from the thought of contractually binding yourself to another person. Images of your parents fighting—the passive aggressiveness, the bad mouthing of the other in hopes that you’d take their side—flit in your mind, a constant reminder that keeps you away from readily admitting that marriage was for you. But you are not your parents. And you will not make the same mistakes they did.

You’re glad your parents got divorced. Separately, they’re wonderful people, but they just didn’t fit. And maybe that’s the key to it all. People are like puzzles: their nooks and crannies have to fit just right in order for you to see the whole picture. So maybe that’s why your parents never worked out. Instead of falling in love with the whole person, they fell in love with fragments, only loving the parts they chose to see. To love a person, you must love them whole. And that’s what’s so different about your relationship with Rafael.

As someone who keeps herself guarded due to the trauma of parental divorce, the idea of soulmates didn’t particularly strike you as reality, but perhaps you’re beginning to think that they are real. Because as you sit here across from Rafael, you finally feel as if you’ve found yours.

The birds are chirping today.

It’s pleasant. Especially since you don’t have an alarm blaring into your left ear every thirty minutes. As you roll over, you sling your arm over a sleeping figure, who snuggles closer to you at the first sense of your touch.

“Mmm...five more minutes...” Rafael’s voice is low and scratchy in the morning. It reminds you of how sandpaper feels. You fling your leg over him, and now your whole body is cuddling him. Kind of like a sloth.

“No one’s asking you to get out of bed, silly,” you murmur, giving him a soft kiss at the top of his head.

“Good,” he says, craning his neck upwards to return a kiss to your lips. “Don’t wanna get up. This weighted blanket you bought was a good investment.”

“If it keeps you in bed with me, then I’d say it’s a pretty good investment too.”

He chuckles at that, opening his eyes a peek. His eyes are just so brown that it makes your heart ache. They’re so beautiful, especially in the sunlight, and it’s so surprising that he doesn’t think they’re anything special. As you push the bits of his bangs covering his eyes, you two stare at each other for a moment and share a knowing smile.

You think it’s fair to say that you’ve never truly known love until now.

“You gotta stop buying things that’ll keep me in bed, babe,” he grumbles, closing his eyes for a moment. “I won’t be able to get up for work.”

“Here’s an idea, then,” you begin, closing your eyes too. You listen to his breathing, so soft to the point of silence, and wrap your arms around him more tightly than before. “You and I both call in sick today. We stay in bed. Maybe even kiss a little.”

“Tempting,” he says, a smile dancing on his lips. “But as much as I’d like to kiss you all day, I gotta pay for my half of rent.”

“Alright, alright.” You throw the weighted blanket off you but leave his side intact. “You stay in bed for now, and because I love you so much, I’m going to cook you breakfast.”

Once you slide off the bed and put on your fuzzy slippers, you trudge towards the kitchen in a sleep-deprived haze. But before you can reach the door, you hear Rafael say, “Wait.”

You turn around to find him sitting up on the bed, body leaning languidly as he eyes you. “You know that I love you, right? And that I don’t know what the hell I did to deserve someone like you?”

Bemused, you lean against the doorway with a smirk on your face. “And this is suddenly coming up because?”

He shrugs. “Dunno. I know that I tell you I love you every day, but today feels different. Might be a special day for us.”

“You sound like my Co-Star app,” you tell him. He laughs at that and waves you off, pulling your weighted blanket over his head. As you make your way into the kitchen, you look at your phone.

5:49 am.

Today will be a special day. You just know it.

“What’s going on?” Sienna asks, frantic.

As Zaid and Ines lead a group towards the Emergency Department, you feel a chill going through your spine. There’s no reason to have this many residents working in the ED, unless—

“We’re running triage,” Zaid says, more solemnly than you’ve ever heard him in your life. “Huge fire downtown. It’s chaos in the ED, and we need all hands on deck.”

“Why are they coming here?” asks Jackie. “Mass Kenmore is a Level I Trauma Center. Are there really that many patients that they had to bring some to Edenbrook?”

“I’m afraid so,” Ines answers her, voice trembling a bit too much for comfort. “According to reports, the fire spread so quickly that it was almost impossible to get people out.”

That does not sound good. At all. As Zaid and Ines rattle on about the specifics of the situation, you can’t help but worry about Rafael. Your mind always wanders to him, instinctively. There’s no doubt in your mind that he’s on scene, helping as many people as he can, because he’s always been one to go above and beyond for people in situations like these, even if that meant endangering himself. Rafael won’t let you change that, won’t let you stop him from doing his job, and so you don’t. All you can do right now is hope that he’s safe wherever the hell he is.

The second you fly through the doors of the Emergency Department, a breath gets caught in your throat. Zaid wasn’t kidding when he was saying ED was in a state of chaos. You’ve never seen so many burn patients in your life. As you start giving out tags, you worry that the endless flurry of patients will never end but worry more that the flurry will end with people you know.

Walking into ED 13, you find that your patient is conscious but barely. His oxygen saturation is dangerously low, and the nurses have already put him on oxygen to stabilize his vitals. You take note of his wheezing and the red tinge on his skin. Must have been a terrible, terrible fire for all of this to happen to so many people. You can’t count how many patients you’ve seen today that look like the one right in front of you.

To your relief, he starts perking up the second he sees you. As you approach him, you see a few second-degree burns you didn’t notice before and make a mental note to chart that the second you get a chance to. “Mr. Huston, I’m your doctor for this afternoon. How are you feeling right now?”

“Honestly, I’ve been better.” The man can still joke, but a violent wave of coughs soon takes over him. “Have...have you seen my wife? I been...askin’ around, but...none of the nurses...”

“Take it easy, Jamal,” you caution him. “Breathe in and out of that mask for me, will you?”

He listens. Now, with more oxygen in his system, he takes the mask off and continues. “My wife was in the building when the fire started. Went there to visit her...then one thing led to another...and...”

“Fire broke out?”

Mr. Huston wheezes as he nods.

“Did you breathe in a ton of smoke while you were in the building?”

“Not as much as other people thanks to this nice young paramedic that pulled me out.”

You try to bite back a smile as Mr. Huston tells the story of the nice young paramedic’s heroics. Of course, Rafael’s out there doing his thing, rescuing people from burning buildings, performing CPR on victims without pulses, and being an all-around good fucking human being. From what Mr. Huston tells you, Rafael is doing things that are way above his pay grade, but you didn’t expect any less. He’s always been so selfless.

“Mr. Huston, where did this paramedic go after he pulled you out from the building?”

“I thought he came with me...did he not?”

Huh. You swore you haven’t seen Rafael around. As giant as Edenbrook’s Emergency Department was, you would have seen him at least once, considering that you’ve been rounding the entire unit like crazy. He must have been in and out of the ED to go back to the building site, or he was in the bathroom taking a break.

Either way, you don’t think anything of it. If anything, Mr. Huston’s story is a confirmation that Rafael is safe and alive, and in a day as crazy as today, that’s all you need. As you finish your assessment of Mr. Huston, you move over to the nurse’s station, logging into a computer to chart Mr. Huston’s signs and symptoms.

A bell chimes to notify all ED staff that the next wave of ambulances are arriving in T minus one minute. The paramedics arrive earlier than that, quickly surging through the ambulance bay doors, transporting patients to the very little overflow beds the ED has. One of the paramedics in particular catches your eye, and a look of recognition flashes over his face. It then quickly turns into a look of sympathy.

When you look closer, you realize that it’s Rafael’s partner, Max. He’s got several second-degree burns all over his arms, and his typically freshly-pressed uniform looks disheveled and charred.

That chills that runs down your spine? It returns. Stronger, this time. But you don’t understand why.

It isn’t until you look down onto the gurney he’s pushing that you realize what it is he’s so sympathetic about.

“Raf?”

You hear yourself scream but don’t remember commanding your body to do so. Somehow, your body drags itself from your spot at the nurse’s station, and you try to get to him before several nurses stop you. “Doctor, doctor,” one of the nurses says, eyes flashing in panic, “you need to calm down. We can’t help him if you can’t calm down.”

Despite her pleas, you rip past everyone trying to hold you back, lashing out at them to stay away.

You rush towards him, fat tears beginning to roll down your cheeks in waves. “Raf? Raf, can you hear me?” As you get to his side, you immediately begin to assess, your heart beating so heavily that you feel as if it’s going to explode.

You listen to his breathing, and it’s labored, as if he’s struggling to fill his lungs. His eyes, the very same ones you were just admiring this morning, are dull and lifeless. His skin is crackled, like a burning log, dark flakes peeling off with the slightest puff of air.

All you can do is freeze.

Time slows down when the world feels like it’s ending. This you know because right here, right now, as you stand beside the unconscious body of the love of your life, the world truly seems like it’s about to end.

You can’t even touch his fucking face. You can’t touch his hands, his arms, or even his waist because everything seems so fragile. His mouth is agape, and in it, you can see how dry his tongue is and how soot from the fire has dried on his lips. You can’t bear to look at him, not like this, in this condition. So, as you grip the railing of the gurney, your knuckles paling at the sheer force of it, your eyes flash towards his partner.

You can’t even see Max clearly because your tears blind your sight. This is just so pathetic.

“What happened?” you ask quietly. When he doesn’t answer, you ask louder. “What happened?”

“He...he went inside the building,” Max says, on the verge of tears. “After he pulled out the man in ED 13, we heard a woman yelling for help deep inside. She barely got out before the ceiling collapsed on him.” A beat passes before the tears start flowing down his cheeks, and his voice starts to crack. “I...I promise, I told him not to go, I told him—”

“Doesn’t matter what you told him, he was never going to listen,” you cut him off, bitterly wallowing in the fact that Rafael was too selfless for his own good.

Your own tears have streaked your face a dozen times over, and you can taste nothing but salt. It’s difficult to look down at the body lying on the gurney in front of you. All the parts of Rafael that made him Rafael were dimmed, if not gone completely. There were no more silly grins that you always saw even when you weren’t doing anything inherently funny, no more warm, strong arms to fall into when you found yourself crying over the littlest things, and no more big brown eyes to admire in the morning. As you look down at those brown eyes, hoping to see them once more, you find that, rather than seeing them glazed over, they’re transfixed directly on you.

“Raf, oh my god,” you wail, getting as close to him as you possibly can. His mouth, as dry as it is, twitches into a smile, and he reaches out to cup your chin in his palm.

“My love,” he answers, voice so weak that you can mistake it for silence.

“Raf, what did you do?” you sob.

“What I had to do,” is all he rasps out.

“You’re hurt,” you say, voice quivering. “You’re hurt, and you have so many burns...we...we need to order skin grafts...your lungs are damaged due to smoke inhalation...I just...I can’t do this, Raf, I can’t do this without you.”

More tears stream down your face, all the way to his hands. Although you want to believe otherwise, the damage to his body is severe, and you know he’s not going to make it. Somewhere in his eyes, you can sense that he knows too.

“Let me hold your hand,” he says, after a moment of silence between you both. He grasps your hand tightly, as tightly as he can, and shuts his eyes. Between labored breaths, he manages to say, “You are my forever.”

This is his goodbye. There are no grand exits for Rafael Aveiro. Just simple ones. And of all the things he could have said, he chose to remind you that he will be with you for as long as you live.

At the end of the day, that was the best thing about Raf. He died as he lived—feeling and caring and loving too much. And you’ll take that with you, into forever.

“You’re mine too, Raf,” you answer back, bringing his hand to your cheek.

He smiles one last time. As minutes pass, his grip lessens and his chest stops rising. When a nurse silently walks up next to you, you continue to hold his hand tightly, silent tears rolling down your face.

In all your years working in the hospital, you’ve seen enough death and destruction and despair to know that life is finite, but the finality of life has never felt so painful as it does right now. As you exhale a shaky breath, you open your eyes and say the words you wish you never had to say about someone you loved so much.

“Time of death: 2:34 pm.”

Rafael’s grandmother asked you to speak at the funeral. It was a difficult speech to prepare, considering the circumstances. While you wish nothing more than to send Rafael a proper goodbye, you were in no state to prepare any arrangements of any kind. Just typing “good afternoon” on the Word document brought you to tears.

But you did it anyways. If not for Rafael’s grandmother, for Rafael himself. He, of all people, deserved it.

When you stand up on the podium, you scan the crowd to see familiar faces. Everyone you know is there, including Chief Banerji and Dr. Ramsey. You’re even surprised to see that Sora is in attendance, sitting all the way in the back row with misty eyes and a sympathetic smile on her face.

Clearing your throat, you start to speak. “Good afternoon, family and friends. I want to start off this speech by saying Rafael would not have wanted us to mourn him. That is why I wrote this speech as a celebration of life because we should celebrate the life of someone as beautiful as Rafael Aveiro.

“The first time I met Raf was when we were both on call. He had just saved someone, which is always the way we met up during the first year of our relationship. When I asked him if he really went into a burning inferno to save someone, he answered, matter-of-factly: ‘Well yeah...wouldn’t you?’ And that interaction tells you everything you really need to know about Raf. He cared so much about others, even if it put him in danger. He loved his job, he loved his patients, and he loved pushing himself beyond the boundaries of his job description.

“I think that’s what drew us so closely together, what bound us together for life. Healthcare is a field where you’re fully devoted to strangers, where you’re constantly pushing yourself to be better so you can treat your patients to the best of your ability. And Rafael was so damn good at it, so damn good at his job. He loved people. He loved others. At the expense of himself. But I’ll never fault him for that. Raf’s sacrifice meant that someone else’s family member got to live, and at the end of the day, that’s what he lived for.

“The woman he saved that day was the wife of one of my patients. The two got separated in the fire, and Raf made sure that she would be able to get out and see to live another day. He was so selfless, so worthy of a long, fulfilling life. And while it’ll never get easier to refer to him as the past, I hope he knows that he will always be a big part of my future, wherever it’ll take me. Take care, Rafael, and may you rest in peace.”

As you finish your speech with a shaky breath, an applause erupts from the audience. Rafael’s grandmother is the most visibly shaken by your speech, and when you take your seat, she grabs your hand and squeezes it tightly, not letting go until the end of the service.

The service itself was a long and arduous process. You looked away at certain parts, hoping that Rafael’s grandmother didn’t see just how much you were sobbing. After all, it’s never easy to see the cremated remains of the love of your life. Looking away doesn’t make you forget that he’s gone, but it saved you from seeing another reminder of your reality.

Afterwards, once everyone gives their condolences, his grandmother comes up to you again. She looks at you, sad and mournful, and that’s all it takes for you to burst into tears. Bringing her hand up to wipe your tears away, she hushes you gently and takes you into her arms.

“You know he loved you, right?” she asks you, softly. All you do is nod because you can’t seem to croak any words out. “He loved you so much. I’ve never seen that boy so head over heels for a girl. Even asked me for our family ring so he can ask you to marry him.”

You pull back, surprised. “He did?”

“He did,” grandmother says, nodding to confirm. “He even went to the jeweler to resize it for you, just so it’ll fit on your finger when he proposed.” She steps back to appraise you with a sorrowful smile on her lips. “I wouldn’t have given it to him just for any girl, you know. The universe wanted you two together. I just knew.”

You nod, smiling through the tears. You know it did. Just not in this timeline.

Sure enough, when you finally have the strength to look through his drawers, you find that there’s an engagement ring nestled inside a small box deep within his underwear drawer. It’s beautiful—all jade-colored with gold details. And just as his grandmother said to you, it was a perfect fit.

More often than not, you think back on that day. You think of things you could have done better. Maybe if you got him on fluids, maybe if you ordered a skin graft as soon as you saw him, maybe if you just convinced him to stay home that day, he would still be alive.

But some things are just out of your control. Even if you got him to stay home, he would have hopped in the car the second he heard about the emergency. Even if you ordered a skin graft on time, there was too much surface area on his body to cover. Even if you had gotten him on fluids, he was already at the point of no return by the time you got to his body.

Too many things going wrong, too little time.

Medicine is all quantifiable data and qualitative research. As powerful as that is, it couldn’t go against death, and it couldn’t go against fate. There is nothing that is humanly designed that can go against the universe.

While that may seem terrible, it is what it is. Life is cruel. It is selfish and impatient. It takes as it gives, and it is unremorseful.

But life is also beautiful. It still gave you Rafael. It gave you his warmth in the morning and in the night, his soft kisses, and his comforting hugs. It gave you his empathy for others, his love for Caribbean food, and his dedication to his patients. It gave you a chance at knowing what true love feels like, despite believing your entire life that you’ll never find it.

Life may be fleeting, but that’s why you’ll decide to live it day by day. Because that's what Rafael would have wanted.

And you wouldn’t want to live life any other way.

[painfog]

Hey so I saw you mention top surgery and was curious. I was supposed to be having top surgery this summer but that’s postponed. I was curious how that went with chronic pain? I’m scared about the surgical binder with my fibro and back pain. Any advice or info would be greatly appreciated!! (You can answer privately if you prefer)

ive actually been meaning to write up a big post on this pretty much since i had top surgery but still haven't got around to it yet so I'm happy to talk about it lol. ill go over stuff now n still aim to do a more in depth post later when im on my laptop (but writing this now bc i tend to forget everything haha). ill stick to the more fibro / chronic illness specific stuff & stuff i wasnt expecting rather than rehashing everything. apologies im on mobile so i cant put this under a cut

firstly, im sorry ur surgery got postponed! i know that must be gutting, so i hope it gets rescheduled asap & the time until then passes easily for u ❤️

I had double incision with free nipple grafts on the 4th of september 2019 with Mr Miles Berry at the london wellbeck hospital. i think he did an amazing job and can't recommend him enough for his work! i think the last pics i took of my chest were for tdov, and ill rb them after i post this for reference. i didnt have drains at any point of the surgery

for ppl with fibro, i was told that the pain after surgery either tends to trigger a flareup, or be really easily manageable, and it's hard to predict which it will be beforehand. its best to prepare for a flareup and be pleasently surprised if u dont get one. for me, i had a flareup that sucked but wasnt too bad as far as flareups go

you'll probably get given painkillers. take them regularly. it's easier to treat pain preemptively. if u don't get given them (no idea how it works outside of the uk) id say def get codine and paracetamol. u can't take ibuprofen for a while

i woke up from aneasthetic freezing cold + in a lot of pain. apparently most ppl dont need the full dose of morphine, but i did. after that it was a bit better. i was just So Goddamn Hungry literally it's all i was talking about

that night in hospital was probably one of the most uncomfortable in my life. you have to sleep sitting up for like blood reasons, so my back pain was quite bad bc of it. moving around a bit and adjusting pillows helped. if u have anything that normally helps ur back pain bring it with u to the hospital, & dont be afraid to ask the nurses for help with it (even if they can just adjust ur pillows for u). i couldnt rly sleep much but distraction helps. bring ur phone + headphones. i did a few ask memes when i couldnt sleep

the first week from surgery was rly tough, the first few days especially. this was bc i still had to sleep elevated for a few days and i couldnt get comfortable. i was too exhausted to do anything but couldn't sleep and it rly started to get me down. then i got some sleeping tablets (just nytol) and that helped so much. i literally cannot recommend it enough bc the not sleeping properly made everything hard (and like esp because with fibro the whole pain/fatigue/depression cycle is so real). once i started sleeping better recovery became a lot easier, and the tablets made the awkward sleeping positions more manageable. if i had to give only one bit of advice this would be it

on that note, ik everyone says this but do get a V pillow. it helps u adjust to sleeping on ur back and if u sleep on ur side normally it means u can like lean slightly sideways on it which makes it sm easier. also this isn't even top related but they make good back pillows when ur watching stuff in bed even now

get urself some video games (if ur into them) and easy entertainment shows lined up for when u wanna have them. recovering from major surgery makes ur fatigue even more pronounced so ur not going to be able to do all that much, but having light entertainment ready to go stops u getting as bored. its also a good excuse to finally play/watch the things you've been meaning to for a while

go outside when u can. if u have a garden just walk around it. it helps with a lot of stuff, and idk about u but i always forget how much it does. even just helping u sleep better if u get trapped in a fibro fatigued-but-can't-sleep cycle. and it goes so far helping u feel human in the first week

the first week is rly hard for a lot of ppl - its frustrating to have all that pain and exhaustion and not being able to wash or change the binder, and with the swelling and bandages under the binder it doesn't really feel like there's much change, which all sort of adds together. i keep going on about this week bc it helps to mentally prepare for it - there's no need to dread it, you just need to remind urself how worth it itll all be and that the rest of recovery is a lot better than the first part, and in time it won't have seemed that bad. big picture stuff

when u get the chest reveal, everything's better. i didnt stop smiling. and when u put the post op binder on afterwards, without all the bandaging, u like feel for the first time how much flatter u are??? and its amazing. even with the swelling. and then u get to shower and u feel human again and its great. (ik some ppl have their post ops/chest reveals much earlier than a week, but 5 days to a week is pretty standard in the uk. mine was 6 days i think)

more post op binder stuff: i got given 2. the first one i woke up in after the surgery and wasn't allowed to take off until my post op, and the second one i got given at my post op to change into after i showered. After that i alternated every few days. whatever u get given, if u get less than 2 i recommend getting another one so u can alternate them (if u want help sourcing them hmu. ive also still got mine i need to give away)

the post op binders were actually a lot easier to wear full time than normal binders. they were like more stretchy, and stretchy the full way round (bc they dont have the compression bit at the front). i used to sleep in my normal binder every time i slept with my ex, and that hurt like a motherfuck sometimes. the post op binder was much kinder to my ribs

i had to wear the post op binder full time, taking it off like once a day to shower n let my chest breathe (and massage my scars once i started that). some surgeons arent that strict abt wearing it that long, but it really helps swelling, & bc i didnt have drains it was rly important to stop fluid buildup. ik quite a few guys in my trans groups who stopped wearing their binder fairly early and then got quite a lot of swelling so i didn't want to risk it & i wore it for the full 6 weeks. at some point (icr when but maybe at 6 weeks? bc my post op was at 8 weeks bc he was on holiday) i didnt wear it during the day and only wore it at night

all in all the binder didnt bother me that much. it was more comfortable than my regular binders and i just kinda got on with it. it was annoying tho and i was glad when i could stop wearing it. for me the most annoying part was that it was a full length binder (i always wore half length before) and the riding up at the hips was rly irritating. i actually quite liked sleeping with it tho it was a pretty nice pressure stim ahah

some post op binders r more comfortable than others. if u have to buy ur own, i rly suggest going with a proper surgical one (they arent too hard to find second hand for free or cheap, again im happy to help here) bc they're kinder to chronic pain. i know that having a comfortable post op binder made it all a lot easier for me. there are also lots of alternatives w lots of price ranges tho, so that's not ur only option

ok i think thats everything right now! sorry its so long, but let me know if u have any questions!!

finally: before i got top ppl told me that its honestly life changing, and i didnt realise how true that would be. literally every single aspect of my life is at least partially better because of it, and most of them drastically so. I'm really excited for you to get that for yourself, and im wishing u all the best for it 💕

[coridallasmultipass]

Tmi / personal / endometriosis and menstrual issues / surgery / long post / venting ... I finally had a laparoscopic surgery done yesterday and they were able to confirm for me that i have endometriosis and it feels like a huge weight has been lifted! All my fucking life ive dealt with excruciating cramps and heavy bleeding during menstruation and i just wish i could go back in time and give a big 'fuck you' to everyone who ever told me "cramps are like this for everyone!" Or "just exercise, it helps!" Or "orgasms help with cramping!" Like hooooooh boy I knew it and im so glad to have all the cysts out of me now. I had previously tried numerous birth control options to prevent cramping and bleeding and got excruciating cramps with literally All of them and constant bleeding with the depo shot. (I had a very painful internal ultrasound done, to hopefully diagnose endo by that route, but it was inconclusive - variations in the thickness of the endometrium, which could be endo or it could just be normal...) Most recent birth control was an iud and i had to go to the er the same evening because my body couldnt stand to have it in there causing so much pain, i couldnt stop screaming and it sucked. The iud was a few weeks ago ((and the proceedure to insert it was the worst pain ive ever felt in my life, and the same sharp pain continued through the following days until i got it removed) and i havent been able to sit straight since, i have to keep sitting to one side in order to not feel like having an ice pick jammed in me. Its gotten better since the iud was removed, but i still get a sharp pain when i have to sit on something hard. My doctor recommended me to have a diagnostic laparoscopy with cystectomy ASAP because of the iud problems and all my failed birth control attempts. Everyone in my family freaked out and kept pushing me to not go through with it, but I knew i needed to know what was causing me so much pain, like tbh, as a trans man, id prefer just a straight up hysterectomy, but yknow either way this is a step in that direction anyway. I have an aunt who had to have the same proceedure twice because of complications, and kept telling me her horror story about how painful recovery was and i was like 'trust me its not going to be worse than an iud because i thought i was dying' and she blew me off like 'its going to be wAY worse' like uh no bc an iud was 666/10 on the pain scale for me, i genuinely thought i was dying or would have a heart attack with how bad the pain was; plus ive had surgeries before and was completely fine after... Anyway fuck what my family said i went through with it anyway and it wasnt that bad of a proceedure to wake up from! My first thought was 'oh no, did they hospitalize me? I feel like ive been asleep for weeks!!' But it was just the recovery room. Ive usually done pretty well with recovery, and this was no different. The worst part of the recovery room was the sensation of needing to cough from where they had inserted the breathing tube for anesthesia. (Today my throat is still a bit sore, and my voice hoarse, but warm mint tea has been helping a lot for that.) I was also feeling cramps similar to mild-moderate menstrual cramping, (no where near the sharp shooting pain of the iud, and no where near my normal, unmedicated cramping which has had me doubled over screaming in pain until the medicine kicks in in the past), and of course a bit of soreness from the incision sites and the general soreness of having gas trapped in my body. (They have to pump a bit of gas inside you so its easier to look around, and some of it stays trapped in you after.) Its a pain similar to what ive felt before just from my fibromyalgia in general, so i was very relieved for the most part. I also felt myself bleeding a bit while i was still in the recovery room. (Gross and tmi, but im still having a spot of blood only when i wipe today, so thats a relief after having been bleeding a majority of the days over the past few months trying different BC options.) Strangely, when i got home i didnt feel groggy or in need of a nap like i have for surgeries in the past. I was also warned of having nausea from the anesthesia, but i had none at all!! And i was warned by multiple sources that i wouldnt have an appetite, but boy i ate almost Everything in the kitchen yesterday im pretty sure ive gone through a whole box of protein bars since yesterday too. Multiple sources (including my family member who had the same proceedure) warned of a sudden bad mood drop immediately after the proceedure, And i dont wanna jinx it, but I have been in such a good fucking mood since i got home yesterday, but maybe thats just the painkillers talking, but still I was at a total low point, like, cant-get-any-lower low point in terms of mood, but i just... feel so good (besides the aching and incision site pain lmao) On to the pain now... The worst of it was waking up this morning after the surgery day. I had quite a bit of the trapped gas pain when i first lied down at night (and when i tried to lie on my side) but the feeling doubled when i tried to get up. Im very bloated still. While the bloating itself isnt very painful, it feels like the stretching of my stomach is pulling at the medical tape covering my incisions which is making them hurt. Im not getting the trapped-gas-roaming-my-body feeling As Often, but its obviously still trying to dissipate. I feel it most while trying to take a deep breath like a bubble pressing against my ribs, but easing a deep breath slowly in and out moves it around and makes it less uncomfortable. Light exercise, like slow walking, is supposed to help your body absorb/dissolve/release the trapped gas. So i did 5 minutes on, 5 off for 3 times on the slowest treadmill setting earlier and im going to try again tomorrow for the same. (I feel like it made my bloating worse, so i had to go back to resting after, but ive been getting up and down to get food for my insatiable appetite lmao) Now the actual tmi and gross stuff: It is really fucking hard to pee. Straight up i have to concentrate so hard. Normally i lean over on my arm to help push it all out at once, but i cant do that with the incisions over my belly lmao. Shitting is just as hard, but the Shit Gods have blessed me with the Antibiotic Runs this morning so im all set for today lmao. Im really bummed tho they put a bandage over where my belly piercing is supposed to go, so i couldnt put it back in after the surgery. The whole, not being able to bend over thing, is reminding me of what its like to have a fresh belly piercing, and im groaning bc im gonna have to go thru with it again to get it back.... and i feel like i jUSt got it done... (it was summer last year) ughhhhhh.... oh well, like at least this time it should go in straight i hope? Also, obligatory vent that... having a fucking uterus does not make me a woman i wish doctors and nurses would use gender neutral language... TLDR; had a laparoscopic surgery to diagnose endometriosis and remove the uterine cysts caused by it, having a great recovery so far!! Still waiting on follow up from the doctor for my next step, but im feeling a lot better than when i was suffering cramps from every birth control i tried to get Rid of cramps

[transmalewife]

ok first of all this is honestly maybe the first time ive gotten a response like this online that includes a 'my bad ill do better' without 2 days of back and worth before so thank you so much, you have no idea how much i appreciate it as a great proponent of any nuance in online discussions. second, as soon as i started reading your reply i wanted to say that what you're doing is so important, because many transfem voices here on tumblr, (not most, i don't think, just many of the loudest) tend to be in the "terfs only hurt trans women and no one else and transmascs aren't allowed to talk about them at all." as if even the transphobic laws being passed in the uk by terfs don't hurt trans men as much if not more. like, crude example but phalloplasty was recently made illegal there, while vaginoplasty is still available (tho difficult to get). So i think what you're doing is extremely important, you don't need a transmasc focus group to read through your posts or anything, and having them in the form of questions like this one is great, especially since you're actually willing to listen to responses. I was definitely too harsh with my wording yesterday, but as i mentioned i just didn't have the energy to pad the words with fluff.

I also admit i'm a bit on edge about the topic. this is not an excuse to be rude or really even an argument, but we could treat it as a case study. In the past few months i've been kicked out, cut off, blackmailed and lied to by my family, harrased both emotionally and sexually. my entire extended family and my mothers friends have come out of the woodwork, most of whom i havent spoken too since i was a child, to pry into and voice their opinions completely unprompted about my body, it's atractiveness and desirability, and my sexual life. I've worked 56hour weeks for a month and a half straight despite being chronically ill and getting worse with every shift, and I got extremely sick for it, stuck in a humid and cold appartement with no way to even go borrow a heater since i lost my wallet and couldn't pay for bus tickets. I've been forced to push my friends' support to extremes, and still don't know what i'll do in the future. I've had stronger trauma reactions and depression than i've had since highschool, when in a very similar situation i was pushed to a suicide attempt. And then, after all that, i arrived at the clinic after a year since i booked the date and very nearly got refused at the door bc my parents had contacted the clinic and lied that i didn't want to go on testosterone. And just bc i didn't start my transition the traditional way it was very nearly damning evidence. I did end up getting it and now all my friends and my therapist and the clinic are getting harrassed by my mother, im in pain and on painkillers, and replying to your post i was halfway through arguing with my moms friend that no, when i make a post saying i don't like the sexual tone near-strangers 20 years older than me have taken with me recently, i don't appreciate her response being doubling down on it and adding more obsessive complimenting of my tits, especially when the only time she could have seen any part of them was when i was 12. so that definitely affected my tone, and im sorry about that.

And none of these people want me to go on hrt either. They'd be happy if i got shoved back into the closet and never medically transitioned so they could keep pretending i was a girl. however i don't think "transmascs are pressured to not go on hrt" is a good way to describe that, bc none of these people believe i'm transmasc in the first place. and i especially don't think this is a thing unique to transmascs. like isn't a pressure to repress and stay in the closet pretty univeral transphobia? I've even heard things that would suggest it's worse for transfems, and the fact transfems tend to transition at an older age, especially now, would support that.

I think it's really great that you were able to notice that it was 'societal pressures' and attitudes from within the queer community, because once you're recognized as trans the system and general cishet society tends to require hrt, if not passing, to do pretty much anything about it. I def agree that within the trans community there's a bias against men and masculinity, and that often affects the way we talk about hrt. the way it's this huge decision and milestone for transmasc but seen as a baseline requirement for transfems to the point where feminine amab nb people who arent on hrt are a rarity while the oposite is true for afabs, who often are allowed a longer grace period of experimenting with presentation while being gendered correctly by people within the community even if they're nowhere near passing.

I also admit I'm coming at this from a uniquely eastern european perspective. I'm always extremely wary of activism that starts and/or ends with online positivity and attitutes within queer communities online, bc especially since covid a huge part of queer online communities are composed of american youth who realised they were queer after getting the right to marry and knowing they can get informed consent hrt, that in some places they can change their gender marker to x, and who've never really had to live as out and queer in the real world and thus have no idea what the real challenges are, and how an x gender marker is something that will actually make your life harder and put you in danger in many situations. So for those people yeah, positivity posts or lack theroff might seem like the most pressing issue on any given day. meanwhile i'm over here in poland living in the middle ages where cishet men live in fear of getting beaten bc they have curly hair, where nationalists throw bricks at us at pride and police protect us on that day bc they're required to, then turn around and refuse to send anyone when someone gets beaten in front of a gay bar in the middle of the night. where there is one clinic that does top surgery with no hrt and they just stopped operating on nb people bc they're afraid they'll get closed down completely. where none of the clinics that do trans surgeries advertise it or even post before and after pics and all the info about the process of transition is word of mouth. and where all of that is getting worse bc transphobia isn't coming from an overfunded hate group lobbying the governement, it is the mainstream opinion of the governement, and scapegoating and villifying queer people is how they got ellected. and the church, which has almost as much power here. more, when it comes to social issues.

I do think this focus on intracommunity issues is a valid perspective, especially since with the ace, pan, nb exclusion trend is now the closest it's ever been to terf ideology with turning on transmascs, and considering it's often done by cis people trying to support trans women and not noticing they're shoving trans men under the bus in the process, it's almost ironic that they're helping a transphobic agenda. I like to think i noticed it pretty early and was making posts criticising that mentality months ago, and getting trans men in my notes going "yeah but we have to center trans women" like yeah... i ever said we didn't, i just pointed out we shouldn't exclude trans men from discussing their own opression to do so. and then getting terfs in the notes praising that trans man (while of course misgendering him) for esentially doing their job for them by dividing the community from the inside. I also think it's important to take notice how often terfs will pose as trans people. either full on fake detransitioner blogs, or one off angry anons pretending to be a trans person sent to any afab who, to them, falls one step out of the party line and could be turned.

but, what im getting at here, is that i've been wondering for a while now if putting so much focus on queer community infighting isn't actually a way to sort of validate it and make it seem worthwhile and important. i agree we should discuss the shitty mindsets that permeate our communities online, of which there are many, to try to combat misinformation and harmful stereotypes, but i think trying to do that while using positivity posts as an end goal kinda misses the point and keeps us in the online cave so to speak. they are important to some people i've noticed, but the solution to a lack of them is literally just to type a few words. I've found that the most effective way to deal with that is to put things into perspective. out in the real world trans people function as the same social class and largely share the same goals when it comes to legal and medical gatekeeping, wider social acceptance and accessible education about trans issues for both us and everyone around us. isn't the reason the word transmisogyny even exists that it's not the same as mainstream misogyny? because we will all always be treated as trans first, and men and women later. trans first, and people later even. And so imo the solution to pointless community infighting is not fighting against it, it's forming aliances, restoring the communities. admiting we have our flaws but at the end of the day if i'm walking around town at night where i live, i'd rather have a truscum at my side than my own mother.

Question, especially for transmascs; is it just me or does it seem like most positivity for gnc transmascs (especially from non-transmascs) is implicitly targeted toward non-hormonally-transitioning transmascs*? I saw a tiktok that had someone on T saying it’s entirely okay to want to transition to be a feminine man, and I couldn’t figure out what struck me about that until I realized this was just. Unusual.

Is this a real thing or am I making it up?

*that’s not to say that transmascs who don’t hormonally transition have it better or anything, mind you.

[coridallasmultipass]

Tmi / talk about menstruation and iud / venting / but i just wanna get this out, and maybe someone else is in the same boat as me because ive never been able to find any accounts of similar experiences ... I wanna preface this by saying im 26 and have rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia/chronic pain, which is probably related but i dont know how. I normally have super heavy periods and debilitating cramps, along with discomfort during penetration (or similar activities) on some occasions. Ive tried a couple different birth control options over the years and each one has given me constant cramping. Its weird because the cramping on the pill (2 or 3 different kinds of BC pills in different times of my life) and depoprovera shot were the same in that i would get terrible cramps whenever i did any kind of activity but especially when i stand up from a sitting position. I remember being in college and standing up and having to immediately sit back down hunched over until it passed. I got the depo shot a few months ago and it was the worst thing ever. I had severe cramping with all kinds of movement (and havent been able to even touch myself without setting off the cramps) and after a month of it i started bleeding for a month straight until a doctor gave me estrogen pills on top of it to stop the bleeding. The pills stopped the bleeding but not the cramps, so the plan was for me to wait it out and try an iud next since the medicine would be administered locally instead of by pill or shot through my whole body.... three months during the depo shot i could not exercise or do any physical activity, which of course is making my fibromyalgia and mood worse. I feel like ive lost a whole year to the depo shot, on top of other health problems that have been acting up before the depo. It sucked and im not trying it again. I had about 2 weeks until the mirena iud insertion where i was taking the estrogen pills and still cramping (along with getting a full heavy and bad cramping period during the vitamin-pill week while i waited for the prescription to come in. The cramping was so bad i almost wanted to go to the emergency room, but it lessened by the next day even if i was still going through so many pads.) Before the iud insertion i took a pill the night before which the doctor said could help loosen up my organ to allow for easier insertion since ive never had a kid. I knew i could expect a lot of pain given how sensitive i know i am, but the few people ive heard get them said it was only really painful during and they were fine after, so i figure i could be strong and deal with it if its going to help stop my monthly cramping and bleeding. Turns out the insertion was the worst pain ive ever felt in my life. Normally having a speculum put in already puts me in considerable pain (a speculum feels like a shard of glass shoved in me) but it pales in comparison to getting the iud. I was crying out and struggling to stay still during the proceedure but once it was over i hoped it would start to feel better. It burned with pain and still does days later. I didnt realise i would get severe cramping immediately after the insertion, but i could barely stand up. The doctors had to let me stay in the room for like a half hour before i could limp back to the car. Im lucky i had my mom to drive me home because i could still barely breathe it hurt so badly. I took tylenol about a half hour before the proceedure but i dont think it did anything. I couldnt take advil because of other medicines im taking. So the only other thing i could do is lay there screaming in pain with the heating pad pressed on me. A few hours later my mom had to call an on-call doctor from the same hospital and he said to go to the er so we went. The rest of the night is kind of blurry i was in so much pain and could barely think. The er gave me a painkiller and later a muscle relaxant before telling me i have to stop my other meds so i can take advil. I was there for like 6 hours i think, feeling waves of terrible cramps that feel like a knife is slicing the inside of me - the same feeling as the iud insertion. I feel bad for everyone who had to hear me screaming every 10 minutes and my mom who had to stay with me. The doctors kicked me out immediately after giving me advil and i went home barely able to even walk or move. It took me another 2 hours to manage to fall asleep even though i was so exhausted and had the worst chest and body pain from being so tense at experiencing the worst pain of my life. Nornally, if unmedicated, ill get periods so bad im screaming in pain, but it will only last 1-2 hours until the advil or tylenol kicks in and dulls it down to a bearable ache, so this iud was supposed to be my fall back on options to eliminate cramps. (I really wish the doctor would just let me get a hysterectomy i dont ever want kids and this whole situation is giving me severe gender dysphoria) Yesterday i spent the whole day sleeping off my traumatic er experience and today im still getting really horrible waves of cramping and nausea. Thankfully im not bleeding (...yet?) But it still feels like having a tampon being yanked out of me that wont come out. The knife feeling isnt there so im not screaming, but the cramps are still so bad and i dont know if i need to take it out. The er doctor said to take it out if the advil doesnt help, and that this is most likely anxiety making the pain get out of control. The er nurse said this is normal. Like??? How the fuck to people deal with this im scared about taking it out because thats probably going to hurt even more. I forgot to ask my prescribing doctor if theres a risk for toxic shock or something but like i dont have a fever its just so painful feeling it there. The placement is "right" according to the ultrasounds but it hurts so much and is still giving me cramps I really dont know how anyone could deal with this the whole thing is so upsetting i want it out but i dont want to deal with the proceedure to get it out and that same severe cramping i dont think theyll allow it to be a surgical removal but i wont be able to sit there and deal with it again!!!! Just thinking about all of it is giving me more anxiety too, i have such dysphoria about my internal organs and such a terrible phobia about even having them!!! This amount of cramping should not fucking be "normal" i hate being invalidated at the er like that God i just dont know what to do the cramping is so bad and im still scared of getting an ulcer from the advil. Thats another thing. A year ago i got an ulcer from taking advil because of period cramps, so ive been suffering taking tylenol! Thats why i want a BC that works to get rid of cramps and bleeding!! Now here i am with the worst cramps and bloating of my life!! How am i expected to function like this!!! I dont remember half of the past few days because ive been in so much pain!!! I can only hope this gets better because it feels worse today than it did yesterday, even if its not as bad as the day before when i had the insertion done. The doctor said if im still having the same kind of cramps ive been getting with the other types of birth control after a month i can look into other options (hopefully hysterectomy!!) But thats so far away and i havent been able to practise driving or apply to any jobs because i cant fucking do more than sit or lie down because of the god damn cramps Ive lost like all my personality and enjoyment of life and lost any one i could call a friend because this is consuming me and i cant fucking do anything i hate it i just want something to go right for once i want to be able to exercise again i love exercising and i havent been able to go for a walk without getting winded and severe cramping I cant even find other people that get cramping on birth control when standing up or doing activities so i dont know why this is happening to me ive looked everywhere i can and all i get is dysphoria because """"mensutruation is a womens health problem"""" and my phobia of pregnancy makes it impossible to browse forums I dont know what my point to all this is i just really need to vent because i feel so alone with this specific problem Life sucks and then you die i guess lmao