The Barnum Effect

I was born in the 70s. That gender could have a separate definition to biological sex wasn't a question that had hit the general public consciousness,  so I grew up in a gender normative environment at a time when biological sex and gender were considered to be the same and immutable. Sixty years after the suffragettes started the feminist movement, my mother's generation pushed the cause forward.  My mother taught me to ignore society's sexist prejudices. I learnt from her to not limit my ambitions or accept being treated as lesser. Fast forward another two generations and sexism is still ubiquitous, if less blatant, and it still blighting women's lives around the world. The place we find ourselves in now, where we are challenging the notion that biological sex and gender are the same or that is gender is immutable, has been a long time in arriving. If it mirrors the slow progress made by the feminist movement, there could be many decades of struggle ahead, and stil

Six months have washed by, on their one way journey into history. The river of time flows inexorably, sometimes meandering placidly, often in full spate - turbulent and roiled by events.  I find it usually manages both at once, which I dub the "slow/fast duality of time".  In an "At-Risk" category, I've spent the majority of my time sheltering at home.  The metronome of work still ticks and tocks, back and forth.  Start work, finish work Start work, finish work Start work, finish work Start work, finish work Start work, finish work Weekend Weekend ... The days waltz by, working from home, with the odd day of annual leave to break the rhythm. It is all somewhat muted without the hurly burly of the commute and the hubbub of the office.  The constraints on my activities external to the house seem to constrain me within the home. I'm oddly stilled. Held quiescent. Time slows. Blink. It has been 6 months. It went by in a flash. Where did the time go?

My earliest fears were of nuclear war. Born during the cold war, I was afraid, especially at night whenever a bright light flooded my room. Was that the flash of a nuclear explosion? Was the catastrophic shockwave about to hit? No - just a car turning in the street - its headlights flashing past my window. I was not yet 10 when I became aware that scientists were starting to predict climate change. This worrying prospect was ignorantly laughed off by one of my primary school teachers, who nonchalantly said it would be nice to have warm summers. Concern about the destruction of the ozone layer came next. Optimism flowered during my late teens. There were signs the world was becoming a better and more tolerant place. The fall of the Berlin wall and the subsequent break up of the Soviet Union made the spectre of nuclear war fade. International bans on CFCs began the healing of the ozone layer, and raised the hope that nations might cooperate to stop climate change. During my early 20s t

I'm swollen around the chest area as I'd expect after the double mastectomy - there are some sloshy seromas building up which I've been told not to worry about - the seromas should self-resolve, and if not they can be drained with a needle. I was particularly aware, as I woke up this morning, that my face and neck feel quite puffy. My eyes feel all crowded in by swollen eye lids. I feel like I've gained 10 pounds around my middle too. This swelling has been developing since my operation three days ago. I thought it was my imagination until I looked in the mirror and saw a big round moon face looking back at me. Why, oh why, am I puffed up like a balloon after my operation? Thank goodness for the internet. While it can on occasion lead us down dark alleyways, often it can take us straight into the light... It seems evolution provided a way for injured animals to lay up for a few days to recover from traumatic injuries. With an injury hormones are released which

The day after my last post I fell ill with flu, which delayed my operation by two weeks. I'm now two days post-surgery, back home, and recovering. I had breast cancer operations in 2001 and again in 2008. Those were traumatic experiences, my post surgery recovery was tainted with feelings of loss, and fear for the future. Each of those operations were just the heralds of more debilitating treatment - the long hard slog of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Following on from that were the yearly scans and tests to check for new cancers and secondaries, a regular cycle of building tension as each appointment came due, plunged back into the medical world for the tests, then the gruelling wait for results, hoping to hear those precious words "all the tests came back clear" and feel the giddy relief once more. This has framed the last 18 years of my life. I allowed it to box me in. I focused on getting through each day. I made no long term plans. I did not peer in

A little over 18 months ago I had my ovaries and fallopian tubes whipped out. In two days I'll say goodbye to both breasty-dumplings, with a double mastectomy. 8 years ago I wondered on this blog: How would I feel if I went down the free-martin path and said goodbye to ovaries and breasts? Once done there is no turning back. Answers on a postcard to... I'm now on the verge of finding out. Will I wake up one morning suddenly feeling released from fear when the cancerous Sword of Damocles hangs over me no more? Will I mourn the loss of my breasty-dumplings? Will I revel in being free of the bouncy bits and take up jogging? Or will life continue much as before? Cancer in 2001 reduced left-breasty dumpling to a B, whereas cancer in 2008 resulted in right-breasty dumpling growing to a FF. So I'll certainly be glad to lose the lopsidedness. I'm going flat - no reconstruction for me. I will not subject an innocent part of my anatomy to the surgeon's knife in or