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lunasarielFirst, the big news: I had my first Actual Grownup Surgery with general anesthesia and very serious instructions for incision care and everything! I got my tubes tied last Friday. Or rather, I guess I should say I had my tubes removed - apparently the risk of ectopic pregnancy is to high with tying/clamping/burning/otherwise separating the Fallopian tubes, so now they just remove them altogether, which also greatly decreases the risk of ovarian cancer. Yay!
I've known I didn't want to have kids ever since I became aware that it was an option. To steal Terry Pratchett's phrase, when they were passing out maternal instinct, I must have been hiding behind the door. I do love my friends' and stepsiblings' kids very much, but it's never been something I've wanted for myself. On top of that, the process of pregnancy and delivery would very likely be a pretty dangerous one - both sides of my family have had something go majorly wrong at least once in every generation. My dad and his older sister were both born with major medical problems that required long hospital stays for both mother and baby, and his younger sisters were born identical triplets, but one was stillborn, so now they're usually called "the twins." My mom's only sister had one miscarriage that led to a six-week hospital stay, and my maternal grandmother had what sounds like pretty awful post-partum depression. I will never forget the look on her face when she told me, "For the first three weeks, I very sincerely wanted to die." As someone who has also very sincerely wanted to die, and now very sincerely does not want to, I would like to avoid that, plz and thank.
When R2 and I first started talking about getting married, way back in 2015, having kids was my only hard no. We already knew that our career goals, general life goals, attitudes towards money/religion/etc. were in alignment, but this just hadn't come up. I actually had kind of a cold, shivery "oh no, what if we can't get married???" moment when I realized that I had no idea if R2 wanted to be a dad, and if the answer was yes, I wasn't the girl for him. When we talked it out, it turned out that he also had 0 desire to have kids himself, but he did (and kinda still does) feel a strong sense of family obligation - he's the only child of an only son, so if he doesn't have kids, there will be no one left to carry on his surname. I can't say that I know how this feels, since there are a LOT of people with my last name, so I wanted to be respectful of that...but ultimately, we decided that obligation to carry on the name wasn't a good enough reason to bring a whole-ass new human being into the world. We did agree to revisit the question of adoption after we'd been married for 10 years, tho, although I did forewarn him that my answer was still going to be no.
We told our families that there weren't going to be grandkids when we got engaged, to a variety of reactions (*thumbs up* from my mom, a slightly wistful "I understand" from my dad [who has enough parenting instinct himself for, like, 5 people], and a kind of confused blink from R2's parents). At the time, I remember thinking, "well, if I'm really serious about this, why don't I just get my tubes tied?", even though we were already using all the usual methods of birth control. But i guess I kinda weenied out then - it's surgery! with knives! and it'll hurt! And anyway, if any of our parents were still expecting grandkids, we assumed that they would get the picture as the years went on and grandkids continued to fail to appear.
But then we lost Roe v. Wade, and I had to face the possibility that, if I did get pregnant, for the first time in my life, abortion might not be an option for me. I mean, I live in California, so there would have to be a nationwide ban, but it honestly terrifies me that there is now a non-zero chance of that happening now. Reproductive health/abortion rights have always been the hill that I've chosen to die on - my great-aunt (the older sister of my maternal grandmother, the one with post-partum depression) died in 1943 after a botched back-alley abortion. It had an enormous effect on my grandmother, who was staunchly pro-choice before it was popular, or even necessarily legal. I do not have the words for how angry the recent Supreme Court decision made me; I actually don't think I've ever been this angry in my life before. Even in 2016, I was upset and scared and confused, but not furious like this. Now we've lost rights to health, safety, and freedom that we've had since my mom was in high school, and I don't quite know what to do with that.
But anyway, on a less macro level: I found myself making a plan for what to do if I became pregnant and was unable to obtain a safe, legal abortion at a licensed clinic, attended by a registered doctor or nurse. I thought about it, and I realized that it wasn't just that I have no desire to have a baby; the process of pregnancy feels quite a bit like body horror to me. I know a lot of people for whom it is/was a joyous, life-affirming process, and culminates in the birth of a baby that they can't wait to welcome into the world (this was certainly the case for KM, my grad school buddy, who was devastated by a miscarriage about 4 months into her first pregnancy, and was absolutely over the moon about the subsequent births of her two kids, who, it must be said, are very cute). But for me, it's kind of the opposite. After thinking about it for a while, I realized that I felt strongly enough about this that the passage of time, my biological clock, etc. were all very unlikely to change my opinion, so I might as well get it over with.
I admit, I felt more hesitation than I thought I would when my doctor told me that tubal ligations are no longer performed, and salpingectomies (removal of the Fallopian tubes entirely) are now standard. But I think that was just heebie-jeebies over realizing that they would be taking out a part of my body that just flat-out wouldn't be there anymore. Other than that, I felt remarkably chill about the whole thing. It actually took several people saying, "Wow, you must be really nervous!" to make me realize that nervousness might be the expected reaction, rather than how I actually felt, which was kind of like I was planning a big, complicated vacation. Like, yes there were forms to fill out and appointments to make and packing lists to check off and stuff, but mostly I just wanted to be there. XD
Oddly enough, R2 was the one who was really nervous. Of course we talked about it before I made the decision, and his stance (quite sensibly, imho) was "a) your body, your choice, and b) we already decided we didn't want kids, so *thumbs up*." But as we got to within a couple of weeks of my surgery, he started to experience an odd amount of FOMO. We talked about it quite a bit, and he was always very adamant that he didn't want me to change my mind and cancel the surgery, but he said that he was surprised at how strongly he felt that he was about to miss out on an opportunity, even if it was one that he had absolutely no intention of taking. Which I understood at least a little of - I did have a moment of FOMO myself, back when I first made the decision. Which I also found surprising, since I'm doing everything in my power to *not* end up with kids. XD But I was able to placate my own irrational FOMO with "well, we can always adopt if we want to in the future," which leaves that door comfortably open, but also means there's exactly 0 chance of me ending up with a kid that I don't actively want and am willing to work for. But it sounded like R2's FOMO went a lot deeper than that. We talked it out, and eventually came to the conclusion that this is just a Brains Be Like That Sometimes situation. R2 is one of those people who always needs enrichment activities in his enclosure, so to speak - boredom and stagnation are the absolute worst things for him, and the closing-off of this future path, as theoretical and unlikely as it was, felt like the beginnings of stagnation to him. But like I said, he was always very clear that he didn't want me to change or call off the plan. Which I respect the hell out of him for - it takes a good deal of self-knowledge to distinguish "I'm feeling weird about this and think we should reconsider" from "I'm feeling weird about this, but logically it's a sound decision, so I think we should go forward with it." And I'm really glad that he told me about it, even when it was something he felt confused or uncomfortable about. I definitely have a tendency to go "well, I cannot logically justify this emotion, and therefore it is a Silly Emotion and does not exist >:|", which, of course, always works. XP
Anyway, tl;dr: getting one's tubes tied is a big decision, and not one to be made lightly, but I made it, and here I am!
R2 was also a lot more heebie-jeebied out by the medical side of things than I was. I actually thought that it was kind of cool how they inject CO2 into your abdomen to inflate it, so that the laparoscope can move around and actually perform the surgery, but the added pressure means that I wouldn't be able to breathe unassisted, so I would have to be intubated during the procedure. It's also really neat that they only need to make 3 5mm incisions - I gave myself longer cuts messing around with my first Swiss army knife. But R2 was (understandably) super NOPE NOPE NOPE N O P E about the whole "hey, isn't it cool how they're going to cut me open and stick knives into my abdomen via a long snakey tube thing? :DDD", so, at his request, I kept the gorier details of the procedure to myself.
It really was kind of a neat procedure, though! I couldn't have any food after midnight the night before, and after showering and allowing my skin to cool down so I didn't accidentally absorb any non-internally-friendly chemicals, I had to wipe myself down from shoulders to toes with these giant antibacterial wipes. (Fun aside: when I went in to the OB/GYN office to pick up my pre-op box, I didn't notice that they had given me a c-section box instead of a salpingectomy box, and I was briefly O.o at the extremely intense instructions, before I realized that no, I was having an entirely different procedure, and would not need to re-learn how to inflate my lungs with an incentive spirometer. XD And all of the stuff I actually needed was in the c-section box, so it all worked out in the end.)
I had to sleep on freshly-laundered sheets, in freshly-laundered PJs, and I had to wake up earlier than I'd like on a non-work morning. It turns out that these days they give you a carb bomb beverage (which tastes a little like bubblegum cough syrup, for the record) that you're supposed to drink 2 hours before your procedure, which helps with post-anesthesia nausea. (My mom, who had her tubes tied in the early aughts: "Huh, I wish they'd had that when it was my turn!") My surgery was originally scheduled for 7 AM, which would have meant getting up at goddamn 4:45 AM to drink the thing, but they pushed it back to 8:30, so I didn't have to get up until a queenly 6:15 to get it drunk by 6:30.
I thought I would start to actually get worried when we got to the hospital, but nope, I felt really quite remarkably chill the entire time. The only thing I was actually worried about was that I would forget something on my massive timetable/List of Lists, which I deliberately made as granular as possible, on the assumption that I would be hungry/sleepy/otherwise distracted. And it turns out that the only thing I actually forgot was to add "bring a mask", which, being a hospital, they were amply provided with. :D
That one hiccup aside, everything actually went as smoothly as it possibly could - we got to the hospital in plenty of time, check-in went smoothly, and once I was admitted, R2 went back home to get a jump on the week's worth of chores I wouldn't be able to take part in. And it's all on him this week, too - P went back to the Netherlands last weekend, and A will be staying with our mom this week. I know she would have been happy to stay & help out, but she takes a *lot* of emotional energy, and I really just wasn't up to worrying about whether she was eating enough & going to class on top of my own recovery. So it's just R2 & me this week, and tbh, I'm really enjoying it being just the two of us again. I love my siblings dearly, but they can be Rather A Lot on occasion. XD
Where was I? Oh yeah, check-in. The pre-op portion was actually remarkably comfortable. They had me do a pregnancy test, Just In Case(TM), hooked me up to some IV fluids (which, funnily enough, were the exact same ones we used to give Chico & Rasha when they both needed subcutaneous fluids) to get me all plumped up, and wrapped me up in an exceedingly cozy hot blanket. Aside from the needle in my hand, I could get used to that! :D I brought Fellowship of the Ring with me, not only since I was almost done with it, but also because my phone doesn't hold a charge for that long anymore, especially if I'm using the Kindle app. I got a surprising number of approving comments for bringing a real live paper book with me, and I got to trot out the "I'm a librarian; it's a professional hazard" line, which people really seemed to like. (I mean, really, librarians read just as many ebooks and audiobooks as anybody else, but there is a ~mystique~ to be maintained, after all. XD) I met my surgeon and my anesthesiologist, and liked them both a lot. Dr. Kwan, my anesthesiologist, told a lot of dad jokes and we talked briefly about Tolkien, and Dr. Quinlan, my surgeon, had little itty bitty bat earrings, and a tattoo of a kitty with bat wings that had elements of all five of her cats. I'm perpetually researching my first 2 tattoos (#1 will probably be the tengwa parma, which stands for the word "book" as well as the sound p, but might also be a full phrase in tengwar, actual phrase TBD; #2 will probably be the owl of Athena as soon as I can convince my still-more-Wiccan-than-I-thought hindbrain that tattooing the symbol of a god on my skin will not have Dire Consequences XD), so we had a nice talk about local tattoo artists.
I was repeatedly told that, due to the anesthesia, I might not remember entering the OR. So, of course, I was bound and determined to remember everything. >:| And, surprisingly, I pretty much do! I remember the names of all three surgical nurses, as well as my anesthesiologist & surgeon (of course), although I couldn't tell which nurse was which, since I had my glasses off by that point. But I do remember one of them had a flowery surgical cap, and the anesthesia hit me right as we were talking about how we were all on the shorter end of things, and I started to say that R2 is 6'7", and... I'm pretty sure that I got the whole sentence out, but it was a struggle. XD
I woke up back in the recovery area, under another exceedingly cozy hot blanket, and with an oxygen tube up my nose (which wasn't as uncomfortable as I thought it would be). It took me a little while to wake up fully; I think I asked what time it was at least three times. R2 said that he was a little late picking me up because the pharmacy took like 20 minutes longer than expected to fill my prescriptions, but I was definitely not tracking time well enough to notice.
I spent the rest of Friday actually feeling pretty chipper. A lot of this was definitely due to still being on some residual Good Shit, but part of it was also that I expected to feel awful, and anything above "completely incapacitated" was a pleasant surprise. But I was able to walk up a couple of stairs into the house by myself, I ate a lot more than I expected, and I even made it up the stairs to our bedroom with minimal help. I spent the rest of Friday either napping or reading (weirdly enough, I was apparently in the mood for mid-20th century children's fiction *shrug*).
Saturday was also pretty good - I spent a good portion of it sitting up, and walked around a bit as instructed. By Sunday, the Good Shit had pretty well worn off, and I felt a bit more flu-like, but I was still able to get up and, like, go to the bathroom without assistance, so I still counted that as a win.
R2 has been AWESOME this whole time. He spent all of Friday cooking all of my favorite things to eat - tofu & broccoli, ginger chicken congee, yogurt with honey, and an estimated fuckton of sourdough toast. He has also liberally plied me with ice cream, which is a significant sacrifice on his part since the kind of crackly sound ice cream/gelato makes really skeeves him out. No greater love hath he, etc. etc. etc. But seriously, he's been really amazing about bringing me snacks on demand, being woken up at the ass-crack of dawn (for him, which is about 9:15 AM) for a glass of water when I didn't feel like I could handle the stairs myself, keeping me entertained with dramatic renditions of the D&D campaign he's running, and so on. This whole week, I've been very cognizant of the fact that I have an awesome partner who supports me on an intellectual "your body, your choice" level as well as on a physical "does 100% of the housework for a week and change and also brings me snacks" level. Oh, and he drove all the way into Sebastopol yesterday to pick up Paladin's Hope after they called to say it was ready to pick up as we were driving home from the hospital. <3
Speaking of! I inhaled Paladin's Strength pretty much as soon as I got it, but overall I think I liked Paladin's Grace a little better. I was very much looking forward to a longer Saint of Steel novel, but ultimately I think this one could have been a good 15% shorter with not much lost.
I did like the more horror-y elements, though. A lot of these elements, like the warrenmind and the little porcelain heads inside the zombies (particularly the three nuns!) were quite arresting, visually and narratively speaking. There were also more fight scenes than Grace, and I love me a good Battle Couple, so those were awesome.
I continue to really like how T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon writes relationships - my ideal ship dynamic is friends/allies/friendly allies-to-lovers, with a dash of Fealty Kink thrown in for spice, so I guess it's perhaps unsurprising that I fell H A R D for the "tragic paladins make friends with badass embattled women & subsequently fall in love with them" series. XD I will say, though, that I'm not the hugest fan of yearning/pining in large quantities, and the aforementioned 15% that this book could have lost without much harm was the endless cycles of "but she's a nun and also under my protection So I Mustn't"/"but he's a paladin and I'm a monster So I Mustn't." I mean, both of these are good plot beats on their own - Istvhan in particular being very careful of their power dynamics (him being a very large man with a sword, and her being a traumatized escaped kidnapping victim) was a good thing to be aware of... but the fact that she can turn into a fucking eight hundred pound grizzly bear who Istvhan has personally seen bite a man's head off should also definitely be taken into consideration here.
I think part of the problem, at least for me, was that Istvhan and Clara were both positioned as The Sensible One; both of them are remarkably in touch with their emotions and good at having reasonable conversations about difficult matters, so it kind of strained my credulity that they would continue to dance the same dance of being attracted to each other, Istvhan pulling back because a) she'salmost kind of a nun, and b) he doesn't want to be all pushy & overbearing (har!), Clara reading that as him being disgusted by the whole bear thing, him noticing she's upset and misinterpreting it as her being traumatized/scared of him, rinse and repeat. Like, one round of this would have been great; five or six, less so.
That being said, though, the rest of their relationship was wonderful. Seeing them becoming Back to Back Badasses and learning to trust each other with the various ways in which they're fucked up felt both natural and endearing, and one thing I really loved was watching them both slowly learning to stop being afraid of each other, and thus themselves - both of them have immense potential to do harm, but in learning to trust each other's strength, they learn to become more comfortable with their own. Plus, how often do we get to see women who are badass in a physically imposing kind of way, rather than a pretty, petite, elegant kind of way? (I mean, the answer is not zero, especially these days, but still less than I'd like.)
In the interest of full disclosure, it took me an embarrassingly (geddit???) long time to realize that Clara can turn into a bear. I mean, there's a bear on the cover of the book! Her patron saint is St. Ursa! But it actually took me until shortly after her confrontation with Galen to get that she was any sort of shapeshifter at all, and at first I thought it was a bull or something. So, uh, good job T. Kingfisher on keeping up the mystery there. XD
Speaking of Galen, I'm really liking the thing T. Kingfisher is doing where she weaves in the protagonist of the next book as a secondary character here. Istvhan was Stephen's "if you don't stop angsting around here so help me I will smack you upside the head because I love you" bro in Paladin's Grace, and here, Galen was Istvhan's sorely-needed voice ofreason levity. In particular, I really loved him in the warrenmind scene -
"This is creepy as fuck, boss."
"No argument here."
and
"Nope," Galen said quietly. "That is not okay. I am not okay with this."
Mood, Galen. Big mood. XD
I also continue to like all of the other worldbuilding elements here - the gruff, practical, "do what you can, with what you have, where you are" affection of the Temple of the White Rat, the creepy-as-fuck porcelain golems, the sturdy little gnoles. The little gnole dude who showed up here, Brindle, also apparently showed up in Swordheart, along with Zale the put-upon lawyer from Grace, and now Swordheart is right at the top of my to-read list.
Oh, speaking of Brindle! Another thing that I'm continuing to like is how T. Kingfisher approaches gender. She's managing to fold an awful lot of information into the narrative quite naturally and gracefully, so the plot isn't brought to a screeching halt by Fantasy Gender Diversity 101, but we get enough asides that we know that, for example, Zale is a gender-neutral name, and indicates that the person is nonbinary. Clara also mentions that, since her life as a trader has brought her into contact with a lot of different gnoles, she knows that Brindle, as a gnole who works with large beasts of burden, such as oxen, and humans (or possibly, large beasts of burden, such as oxen and humans - thanks,hamsterwoman !), would use he/him pronouns. But probably my favorite instance of this was when Clara started her period shortly after joining up with the definitely not paladins oddly polite and decorous mercenaries, and Istvhan goes to ask the two female mercenaries for supplies. The first one replies that that's not a problem that she has, but directs Istvhan to her (presumably AFAB) compatriot, who gets them all set up. And later on, it turns out that the presumably-trans and presumably-cis mercenaries are a couple, which I didn't expect to be as cuted out by as I was. <3
I continued to really like all of the secondary characters as well. Doc Mason and his granddaughter Tolly (who of course are practical and charming enough to be working for the Rat), Proctor Ethan (whose holy calling is to look after other people's pets, particularly reptiles and amphibians), and the nuns (a small group of very nice women who illuminate manuscripts, gather truffles, and occasionally change into extremely large bears) were all enormously well-drawn, and I hope to see most of them again. Especially Sister Sigrid, who I'm firmly applying the "no body, no death" rule to until informed otherwise.
I've known I didn't want to have kids ever since I became aware that it was an option. To steal Terry Pratchett's phrase, when they were passing out maternal instinct, I must have been hiding behind the door. I do love my friends' and stepsiblings' kids very much, but it's never been something I've wanted for myself. On top of that, the process of pregnancy and delivery would very likely be a pretty dangerous one - both sides of my family have had something go majorly wrong at least once in every generation. My dad and his older sister were both born with major medical problems that required long hospital stays for both mother and baby, and his younger sisters were born identical triplets, but one was stillborn, so now they're usually called "the twins." My mom's only sister had one miscarriage that led to a six-week hospital stay, and my maternal grandmother had what sounds like pretty awful post-partum depression. I will never forget the look on her face when she told me, "For the first three weeks, I very sincerely wanted to die." As someone who has also very sincerely wanted to die, and now very sincerely does not want to, I would like to avoid that, plz and thank.
When R2 and I first started talking about getting married, way back in 2015, having kids was my only hard no. We already knew that our career goals, general life goals, attitudes towards money/religion/etc. were in alignment, but this just hadn't come up. I actually had kind of a cold, shivery "oh no, what if we can't get married???" moment when I realized that I had no idea if R2 wanted to be a dad, and if the answer was yes, I wasn't the girl for him. When we talked it out, it turned out that he also had 0 desire to have kids himself, but he did (and kinda still does) feel a strong sense of family obligation - he's the only child of an only son, so if he doesn't have kids, there will be no one left to carry on his surname. I can't say that I know how this feels, since there are a LOT of people with my last name, so I wanted to be respectful of that...but ultimately, we decided that obligation to carry on the name wasn't a good enough reason to bring a whole-ass new human being into the world. We did agree to revisit the question of adoption after we'd been married for 10 years, tho, although I did forewarn him that my answer was still going to be no.
We told our families that there weren't going to be grandkids when we got engaged, to a variety of reactions (*thumbs up* from my mom, a slightly wistful "I understand" from my dad [who has enough parenting instinct himself for, like, 5 people], and a kind of confused blink from R2's parents). At the time, I remember thinking, "well, if I'm really serious about this, why don't I just get my tubes tied?", even though we were already using all the usual methods of birth control. But i guess I kinda weenied out then - it's surgery! with knives! and it'll hurt! And anyway, if any of our parents were still expecting grandkids, we assumed that they would get the picture as the years went on and grandkids continued to fail to appear.
But then we lost Roe v. Wade, and I had to face the possibility that, if I did get pregnant, for the first time in my life, abortion might not be an option for me. I mean, I live in California, so there would have to be a nationwide ban, but it honestly terrifies me that there is now a non-zero chance of that happening now. Reproductive health/abortion rights have always been the hill that I've chosen to die on - my great-aunt (the older sister of my maternal grandmother, the one with post-partum depression) died in 1943 after a botched back-alley abortion. It had an enormous effect on my grandmother, who was staunchly pro-choice before it was popular, or even necessarily legal. I do not have the words for how angry the recent Supreme Court decision made me; I actually don't think I've ever been this angry in my life before. Even in 2016, I was upset and scared and confused, but not furious like this. Now we've lost rights to health, safety, and freedom that we've had since my mom was in high school, and I don't quite know what to do with that.
But anyway, on a less macro level: I found myself making a plan for what to do if I became pregnant and was unable to obtain a safe, legal abortion at a licensed clinic, attended by a registered doctor or nurse. I thought about it, and I realized that it wasn't just that I have no desire to have a baby; the process of pregnancy feels quite a bit like body horror to me. I know a lot of people for whom it is/was a joyous, life-affirming process, and culminates in the birth of a baby that they can't wait to welcome into the world (this was certainly the case for KM, my grad school buddy, who was devastated by a miscarriage about 4 months into her first pregnancy, and was absolutely over the moon about the subsequent births of her two kids, who, it must be said, are very cute). But for me, it's kind of the opposite. After thinking about it for a while, I realized that I felt strongly enough about this that the passage of time, my biological clock, etc. were all very unlikely to change my opinion, so I might as well get it over with.
I admit, I felt more hesitation than I thought I would when my doctor told me that tubal ligations are no longer performed, and salpingectomies (removal of the Fallopian tubes entirely) are now standard. But I think that was just heebie-jeebies over realizing that they would be taking out a part of my body that just flat-out wouldn't be there anymore. Other than that, I felt remarkably chill about the whole thing. It actually took several people saying, "Wow, you must be really nervous!" to make me realize that nervousness might be the expected reaction, rather than how I actually felt, which was kind of like I was planning a big, complicated vacation. Like, yes there were forms to fill out and appointments to make and packing lists to check off and stuff, but mostly I just wanted to be there. XD
Oddly enough, R2 was the one who was really nervous. Of course we talked about it before I made the decision, and his stance (quite sensibly, imho) was "a) your body, your choice, and b) we already decided we didn't want kids, so *thumbs up*." But as we got to within a couple of weeks of my surgery, he started to experience an odd amount of FOMO. We talked about it quite a bit, and he was always very adamant that he didn't want me to change my mind and cancel the surgery, but he said that he was surprised at how strongly he felt that he was about to miss out on an opportunity, even if it was one that he had absolutely no intention of taking. Which I understood at least a little of - I did have a moment of FOMO myself, back when I first made the decision. Which I also found surprising, since I'm doing everything in my power to *not* end up with kids. XD But I was able to placate my own irrational FOMO with "well, we can always adopt if we want to in the future," which leaves that door comfortably open, but also means there's exactly 0 chance of me ending up with a kid that I don't actively want and am willing to work for. But it sounded like R2's FOMO went a lot deeper than that. We talked it out, and eventually came to the conclusion that this is just a Brains Be Like That Sometimes situation. R2 is one of those people who always needs enrichment activities in his enclosure, so to speak - boredom and stagnation are the absolute worst things for him, and the closing-off of this future path, as theoretical and unlikely as it was, felt like the beginnings of stagnation to him. But like I said, he was always very clear that he didn't want me to change or call off the plan. Which I respect the hell out of him for - it takes a good deal of self-knowledge to distinguish "I'm feeling weird about this and think we should reconsider" from "I'm feeling weird about this, but logically it's a sound decision, so I think we should go forward with it." And I'm really glad that he told me about it, even when it was something he felt confused or uncomfortable about. I definitely have a tendency to go "well, I cannot logically justify this emotion, and therefore it is a Silly Emotion and does not exist >:|", which, of course, always works. XP
Anyway, tl;dr: getting one's tubes tied is a big decision, and not one to be made lightly, but I made it, and here I am!
R2 was also a lot more heebie-jeebied out by the medical side of things than I was. I actually thought that it was kind of cool how they inject CO2 into your abdomen to inflate it, so that the laparoscope can move around and actually perform the surgery, but the added pressure means that I wouldn't be able to breathe unassisted, so I would have to be intubated during the procedure. It's also really neat that they only need to make 3 5mm incisions - I gave myself longer cuts messing around with my first Swiss army knife. But R2 was (understandably) super NOPE NOPE NOPE N O P E about the whole "hey, isn't it cool how they're going to cut me open and stick knives into my abdomen via a long snakey tube thing? :DDD", so, at his request, I kept the gorier details of the procedure to myself.
It really was kind of a neat procedure, though! I couldn't have any food after midnight the night before, and after showering and allowing my skin to cool down so I didn't accidentally absorb any non-internally-friendly chemicals, I had to wipe myself down from shoulders to toes with these giant antibacterial wipes. (Fun aside: when I went in to the OB/GYN office to pick up my pre-op box, I didn't notice that they had given me a c-section box instead of a salpingectomy box, and I was briefly O.o at the extremely intense instructions, before I realized that no, I was having an entirely different procedure, and would not need to re-learn how to inflate my lungs with an incentive spirometer. XD And all of the stuff I actually needed was in the c-section box, so it all worked out in the end.)
I had to sleep on freshly-laundered sheets, in freshly-laundered PJs, and I had to wake up earlier than I'd like on a non-work morning. It turns out that these days they give you a carb bomb beverage (which tastes a little like bubblegum cough syrup, for the record) that you're supposed to drink 2 hours before your procedure, which helps with post-anesthesia nausea. (My mom, who had her tubes tied in the early aughts: "Huh, I wish they'd had that when it was my turn!") My surgery was originally scheduled for 7 AM, which would have meant getting up at goddamn 4:45 AM to drink the thing, but they pushed it back to 8:30, so I didn't have to get up until a queenly 6:15 to get it drunk by 6:30.
I thought I would start to actually get worried when we got to the hospital, but nope, I felt really quite remarkably chill the entire time. The only thing I was actually worried about was that I would forget something on my massive timetable/List of Lists, which I deliberately made as granular as possible, on the assumption that I would be hungry/sleepy/otherwise distracted. And it turns out that the only thing I actually forgot was to add "bring a mask", which, being a hospital, they were amply provided with. :D
That one hiccup aside, everything actually went as smoothly as it possibly could - we got to the hospital in plenty of time, check-in went smoothly, and once I was admitted, R2 went back home to get a jump on the week's worth of chores I wouldn't be able to take part in. And it's all on him this week, too - P went back to the Netherlands last weekend, and A will be staying with our mom this week. I know she would have been happy to stay & help out, but she takes a *lot* of emotional energy, and I really just wasn't up to worrying about whether she was eating enough & going to class on top of my own recovery. So it's just R2 & me this week, and tbh, I'm really enjoying it being just the two of us again. I love my siblings dearly, but they can be Rather A Lot on occasion. XD
Where was I? Oh yeah, check-in. The pre-op portion was actually remarkably comfortable. They had me do a pregnancy test, Just In Case(TM), hooked me up to some IV fluids (which, funnily enough, were the exact same ones we used to give Chico & Rasha when they both needed subcutaneous fluids) to get me all plumped up, and wrapped me up in an exceedingly cozy hot blanket. Aside from the needle in my hand, I could get used to that! :D I brought Fellowship of the Ring with me, not only since I was almost done with it, but also because my phone doesn't hold a charge for that long anymore, especially if I'm using the Kindle app. I got a surprising number of approving comments for bringing a real live paper book with me, and I got to trot out the "I'm a librarian; it's a professional hazard" line, which people really seemed to like. (I mean, really, librarians read just as many ebooks and audiobooks as anybody else, but there is a ~mystique~ to be maintained, after all. XD) I met my surgeon and my anesthesiologist, and liked them both a lot. Dr. Kwan, my anesthesiologist, told a lot of dad jokes and we talked briefly about Tolkien, and Dr. Quinlan, my surgeon, had little itty bitty bat earrings, and a tattoo of a kitty with bat wings that had elements of all five of her cats. I'm perpetually researching my first 2 tattoos (#1 will probably be the tengwa parma, which stands for the word "book" as well as the sound p, but might also be a full phrase in tengwar, actual phrase TBD; #2 will probably be the owl of Athena as soon as I can convince my still-more-Wiccan-than-I-thought hindbrain that tattooing the symbol of a god on my skin will not have Dire Consequences XD), so we had a nice talk about local tattoo artists.
I was repeatedly told that, due to the anesthesia, I might not remember entering the OR. So, of course, I was bound and determined to remember everything. >:| And, surprisingly, I pretty much do! I remember the names of all three surgical nurses, as well as my anesthesiologist & surgeon (of course), although I couldn't tell which nurse was which, since I had my glasses off by that point. But I do remember one of them had a flowery surgical cap, and the anesthesia hit me right as we were talking about how we were all on the shorter end of things, and I started to say that R2 is 6'7", and... I'm pretty sure that I got the whole sentence out, but it was a struggle. XD
I woke up back in the recovery area, under another exceedingly cozy hot blanket, and with an oxygen tube up my nose (which wasn't as uncomfortable as I thought it would be). It took me a little while to wake up fully; I think I asked what time it was at least three times. R2 said that he was a little late picking me up because the pharmacy took like 20 minutes longer than expected to fill my prescriptions, but I was definitely not tracking time well enough to notice.
I spent the rest of Friday actually feeling pretty chipper. A lot of this was definitely due to still being on some residual Good Shit, but part of it was also that I expected to feel awful, and anything above "completely incapacitated" was a pleasant surprise. But I was able to walk up a couple of stairs into the house by myself, I ate a lot more than I expected, and I even made it up the stairs to our bedroom with minimal help. I spent the rest of Friday either napping or reading (weirdly enough, I was apparently in the mood for mid-20th century children's fiction *shrug*).
Saturday was also pretty good - I spent a good portion of it sitting up, and walked around a bit as instructed. By Sunday, the Good Shit had pretty well worn off, and I felt a bit more flu-like, but I was still able to get up and, like, go to the bathroom without assistance, so I still counted that as a win.
R2 has been AWESOME this whole time. He spent all of Friday cooking all of my favorite things to eat - tofu & broccoli, ginger chicken congee, yogurt with honey, and an estimated fuckton of sourdough toast. He has also liberally plied me with ice cream, which is a significant sacrifice on his part since the kind of crackly sound ice cream/gelato makes really skeeves him out. No greater love hath he, etc. etc. etc. But seriously, he's been really amazing about bringing me snacks on demand, being woken up at the ass-crack of dawn (for him, which is about 9:15 AM) for a glass of water when I didn't feel like I could handle the stairs myself, keeping me entertained with dramatic renditions of the D&D campaign he's running, and so on. This whole week, I've been very cognizant of the fact that I have an awesome partner who supports me on an intellectual "your body, your choice" level as well as on a physical "does 100% of the housework for a week and change and also brings me snacks" level. Oh, and he drove all the way into Sebastopol yesterday to pick up Paladin's Hope after they called to say it was ready to pick up as we were driving home from the hospital. <3
Speaking of! I inhaled Paladin's Strength pretty much as soon as I got it, but overall I think I liked Paladin's Grace a little better. I was very much looking forward to a longer Saint of Steel novel, but ultimately I think this one could have been a good 15% shorter with not much lost.
I did like the more horror-y elements, though. A lot of these elements, like the warrenmind and the little porcelain heads inside the zombies (particularly the three nuns!) were quite arresting, visually and narratively speaking. There were also more fight scenes than Grace, and I love me a good Battle Couple, so those were awesome.
I continue to really like how T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon writes relationships - my ideal ship dynamic is friends/allies/friendly allies-to-lovers, with a dash of Fealty Kink thrown in for spice, so I guess it's perhaps unsurprising that I fell H A R D for the "tragic paladins make friends with badass embattled women & subsequently fall in love with them" series. XD I will say, though, that I'm not the hugest fan of yearning/pining in large quantities, and the aforementioned 15% that this book could have lost without much harm was the endless cycles of "but she's a nun and also under my protection So I Mustn't"/"but he's a paladin and I'm a monster So I Mustn't." I mean, both of these are good plot beats on their own - Istvhan in particular being very careful of their power dynamics (him being a very large man with a sword, and her being a traumatized escaped kidnapping victim) was a good thing to be aware of... but the fact that she can turn into a fucking eight hundred pound grizzly bear who Istvhan has personally seen bite a man's head off should also definitely be taken into consideration here.
I think part of the problem, at least for me, was that Istvhan and Clara were both positioned as The Sensible One; both of them are remarkably in touch with their emotions and good at having reasonable conversations about difficult matters, so it kind of strained my credulity that they would continue to dance the same dance of being attracted to each other, Istvhan pulling back because a) she's
That being said, though, the rest of their relationship was wonderful. Seeing them becoming Back to Back Badasses and learning to trust each other with the various ways in which they're fucked up felt both natural and endearing, and one thing I really loved was watching them both slowly learning to stop being afraid of each other, and thus themselves - both of them have immense potential to do harm, but in learning to trust each other's strength, they learn to become more comfortable with their own. Plus, how often do we get to see women who are badass in a physically imposing kind of way, rather than a pretty, petite, elegant kind of way? (I mean, the answer is not zero, especially these days, but still less than I'd like.)
In the interest of full disclosure, it took me an embarrassingly (geddit???) long time to realize that Clara can turn into a bear. I mean, there's a bear on the cover of the book! Her patron saint is St. Ursa! But it actually took me until shortly after her confrontation with Galen to get that she was any sort of shapeshifter at all, and at first I thought it was a bull or something. So, uh, good job T. Kingfisher on keeping up the mystery there. XD
Speaking of Galen, I'm really liking the thing T. Kingfisher is doing where she weaves in the protagonist of the next book as a secondary character here. Istvhan was Stephen's "if you don't stop angsting around here so help me I will smack you upside the head because I love you" bro in Paladin's Grace, and here, Galen was Istvhan's sorely-needed voice of
"This is creepy as fuck, boss."
"No argument here."
and
"Nope," Galen said quietly. "That is not okay. I am not okay with this."
Mood, Galen. Big mood. XD
I also continue to like all of the other worldbuilding elements here - the gruff, practical, "do what you can, with what you have, where you are" affection of the Temple of the White Rat, the creepy-as-fuck porcelain golems, the sturdy little gnoles. The little gnole dude who showed up here, Brindle, also apparently showed up in Swordheart, along with Zale the put-upon lawyer from Grace, and now Swordheart is right at the top of my to-read list.
Oh, speaking of Brindle! Another thing that I'm continuing to like is how T. Kingfisher approaches gender. She's managing to fold an awful lot of information into the narrative quite naturally and gracefully, so the plot isn't brought to a screeching halt by Fantasy Gender Diversity 101, but we get enough asides that we know that, for example, Zale is a gender-neutral name, and indicates that the person is nonbinary. Clara also mentions that, since her life as a trader has brought her into contact with a lot of different gnoles, she knows that Brindle, as a gnole who works with large beasts of burden, such as oxen, and humans (or possibly, large beasts of burden, such as oxen and humans - thanks,
hamsterwoman !), would use he/him pronouns. But probably my favorite instance of this was when Clara started her period shortly after joining up with the I continued to really like all of the secondary characters as well. Doc Mason and his granddaughter Tolly (who of course are practical and charming enough to be working for the Rat), Proctor Ethan (whose holy calling is to look after other people's pets, particularly reptiles and amphibians), and the nuns (a small group of very nice women who illuminate manuscripts, gather truffles, and occasionally change into extremely large bears) were all enormously well-drawn, and I hope to see most of them again. Especially Sister Sigrid, who I'm firmly applying the "no body, no death" rule to until informed otherwise.
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Date: 2022-09-27 03:14 am (UTC)Hehe :D
Proctor Ethan (whose holy calling is to look after other people's pets, particularly reptiles and amphibians),
Aww, I'm cuted out by the mere mention :D
Not having read this series, I don't have anything to add except that I enjoyed all your bear puns :D
(Also, if you and I are gonna see each other some time soon when you're up for traveling this way, I shall bestow Swordheart upon you. Or I guess I could bestow it upon you in ebook form remotely, if you'd prefer that to waiting, lol) But I'd still like to see you in person soon, of course!
I did not realize that your decision to get the surgery was connected to Roe v Wade. I do think we're probably safe in California, but I can definitely understand being disturbed by the general trajectory DDD:
I was curious to read over your deliberations/discussions, and the specifics of the procedure and recovery. And the professional hazard of paper book thing made me lol.
Also, I don't have any desire to get a tattoo, but if I had to, it would definitely be one of the tengwar :D ("anna", obviously, because Tyrell, you know XD)