It Might Get Messy

Cancer. In my case, having survived, it’s fair to say I lived with the disease itself and its nightmarish aftermath for just past a year and a half. I still struggle with the now more-or-less permanent impacts—lost salivary function, messy voice, dysfunctional (that is, nonexistent) epiglottis, swollen and scarred throat, tongue and sinuses, plugged-to-demolished lymph system, etc. In other words, grateful as I am to be alive and to some degree functional, cancer even when “cured” means ongoing humiliation. Choking on food, swollen face, and worse.

But let’s not go there quite yet. Let’s start with the observation that something on the order of 400 women fought in combat units during the civil war, disguised, more or less successfully, as men. The actual number is difficult to pin down. Evidence shows that even among those discovered, quite a few maintained their secret for a long time [1]. Some were revealed in death, or during treatment for wounds or disease. Others were turned up when taken prisoner. The wackiest cases were pregnancies, some of which went to term before the “problem” was clarified for the doctors. One woman hid her physique for years under a clumsy (and frequently “difficult”) chain-mail corset-like thing [2].

Now. Back to my cancer issues. Having had my feeding tube yanked hours before leaving for Germany, I had prepped for that event by breaking myself from tube-feeding. Which I did by the only means feasible at the time—thick nutritious milk drinks made extra-caloric with a combination of Instant Breakfast and chocolate powder. With the exceptions of a week off in Germany and two weeks off in the Philippines, my diet for the past several months has been milk. Lots of it. On the order of 4 to 5 liters a day. To the point where my urine smells like lactic acid.

Which I can live with. My weight stays up, I feel healthy, and the cold thickened milk soothes my lumpy throat. But here’s the issue. I’m growing breasts. Seriously. They’re not enormous…well, I like to think they’re average for my height, thank you. And shapely. But that’s not the point. The point is I’M GROWING BREASTS.

Which wouldn’t be quite so humiliating except we’ve just embarked for two weeks at the beach. Eliciting periodic necessity to uncover torso. Which torso is now a bit curvy. Although still hairy.

I’m gonna have to cut back on the milk. Or find myself a chain-mail corset-like thing, preferably one that is not “difficult”.

I won’t update http://docviper.livejournal.com/ until the middle of this coming week, to give me some time to get some photos from the Outer Banks for your delectation. In the meantime, don’t forget to check the professional blog over at http://aehsfoundation.org/ . Thanks, all!

Notes

[1] http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-Women-Who-Fought-in-the-Civil-War.html

[2] http://www.cevsite.com/civilwomen.htm