The passersby were amazed...

More about The Blood Doctor appointment on 11/11.

I had what seems to me and friends I've talked to, including some with actual medical backgrounds and one who's a literal nurse, that I had a DVT after a bad fall. Before the meniscus surgery, even! And doctors etc kept dismissing it. The ER dismissed it when I rolled up with a foot so swollen I couldn't wear a shoe.

A little more than a year ago I had a pulmonary embolism (at which point the massive swelling, heat, and incredible pain in my leg cleared up). One of the treatments for a PE is an anti-coagulant (commonly called "blood thinner") and I've been on that ever since and I hate it for uterus-related reasons I shan't go into detail here. So I saw The Blood Doctor to see if she thought I could finally get off this shit. She asked a bunch of questions about bruising and bleeding and other than my super shitty periods I'm pretty normal. I even fell down REALLY hard a few months ago and got only normal-levels of bruising.

We talked a lot, she got my medical history, and when she asked how many pregnancies I'd had I said one viable one and a bunch of miscarriages including one early in the second trimester. She asked, of course, how many is "a bunch" and I said well, at least five. Except for the one, they were all really early... only about a week after my period was due. "Well, how do you KNOW you were pregnant?" Pregnancy tests.

Our plans for a family involved having two or three kids. I feel incredibly lucky that I have the kid that I have. Having more than one would absolutely have put a big financial squeeze on us, and only having one kid means we can do so much more fun stuff with/for them including summer theater camp.

The doctor suggested I have a clotting disorder given my history of miscarriage and my surprise-to-everyone-else pulmonary embolism. So I'm having a lab steal all my blood to test for that and the fact that I mentioned my history of miscarriage to every doctor I've seen including two different gynecologists and have never had any of them suggest this might be an issue is really infuriating. Just absolutely... absolutely infuriating.

And I got really upset, like hey this could have been addressed, I could have had the family we planned for. This could have been treated. But that would mean I wouldn't have the kid that I have... who is the best kid in the world. Sorry to all you kid havers out there, your kids are second or possibly third best. My kid gets the prize. I think if I hadn't had any kids at all I would have been absolutely devastated by this but I lucked out and have the kid that I have.

And, you know. Maybe I don't have any kid of clotting disorder and I just was unlucky until I was lucky. I don't know. But nobody even brought this up. Nobody ordered tests for this. And one of the symptoms of a specific miscarriage-causing clotting disorder is problems with B12... which my general practitioner has noted in blood work before as causing the persistent anemia nobody seems to care that much about.

I'm frustrated.

Link Dump

How Necking Shaped The Giraffe
I have never really thought about giraffes before, and thus did not know that I needed to read this little essay. But now I have read it and wow, amazing.

Cavities and Crowns: What Our Teeth Tell Us About Our Lives
As someone who paid $20k+ on dental care after years of not being able to afford dental care this really resonated with me. An infected tooth and mandible nearly killed me, quite frankly. I didn't experience the poverty growing up that this author did, I had access to dental care and also to orthodontic care that ensured I could bite and chew and talk instead of biting up my own mouth. People who haven't experienced this absolutely do not understand what it's like or how it impacts people emotionally, physically, and financially.

The Return of the American Bison is an Environmental Boon - And a Logistical Mess
The reintroduction of Bison in Yellowstone is a mixed bag... primarily because of the way they interact with humans and human borders.

Grogu and the Dust Bunnies
Studio Ghibli and Lucasfilm have united to make a cute little short available on Disney+.

Medieval Times Performers in California Unionize
Have you ever been to a Medieval Times performance? It absolutely is dangerous and yes all workers deserve union protection but if your job is outright dangerous like this you especially need union protection.

Just A Note To Say: Nikola Edition

I know some of you have been following me for a long time, since before I even had a kid.

That kid is now 13, and asked me a few years previously not to discuss them on FaceBook unless I asked first. I had already begun phasing out blogging about them. I do mention them on twitter sometimes but twitter is so fast paced that those mentions are just a few droplets in a fire hose.

I took down that baby blog about a year ago and am eventually going to go through and lock posts here as well.

Anyway. I have an amazing kid. Any mentions of said kid are going to be entirely about me (for instance, a recent post about fertility issues), a minor aspect of a larger thing (for instance, I had a bunch of errands to do which involved dropping them off at a friend's house), or something posted with their explicit permission.

It used to be easier for parents to blog about their kids knowing that the primary makeup of their audience was other parents, and that these blogs could be helpful (I gained some very specific valuable knowledge that has helped me in parenting) and cute and sweet and, sometimes, an example of what not to do. Even with the blogging landscape having changed, shifted to instagram and tiktok and youtube and choreographed family dance routines and stuff... parents post stuff about their kids and with their kids that isn't seen just by other parents any more. It's seen by the entire world and that includes their kids' friends and teachers and neighbors.

It's a real invasion of privacy.

And one of the big things is fifteen years ago? People largely just didn't think about that. It wasn't recognized as a concern for the most part. But now? People talk about it. Kids who were (or still are) involved speak out about it. And folks keep on doing it.

So many people HATED Dooce and Amalah and Finslippy and some other "mommy bloggers" for "monetizing their kids" but it was absolutely nothing like what happens now, and most of the influencers doing this shit don't get anywhere near the push back... maybe because so many of them are more aspirational?

I miss seeing facebook memories pop up something else about Nikola... I think the most recent entries were from 2017? There's so much to forget, and those little fb entries... some just a sentence or two long... can trigger some powerful memories. I guess I could post them in entirely private/locked posts but... I don't know.

Anyway, I don't personally know anyone who treats their kids like that, and I love updates about other peoples' kids, and maybe I'll post some stuff that's locked but I've pretty much gotten out of the habit of writing about my wonderful, charming, very tall, hilarious child except in... brace yourself... an actual facts paper journal. (It's a calendar with spaces for daily entries/to-do lists and I can write about a paragraph and also I put stickers all over the place.)

Much love to all you parents and guardians and cool aunties/uncles and grandparents and assorted other caregivers out there.