Blog moved!

I'm a bad blogger...I decided to make the move to Wordpress with the Adventures of a Part Time Wheeler blog.  There are things I like about both blogging platforms, and dislike about both platforms, but it is allowing me to organize my posts in a way that works better for my work/school/pain-addled brain right now.  I'm hoping that I will be able to afford my own URL as well in the fall (likely www.parttimewheeler.com, or a similar derivation).  It's still under construction, so don't mind the dusty bits.

Feel free to head over there and take a look.  If you like what I'm writing, doing, accomplishing, I would love donations to my adaptive aid fund through GoFundMe or directly through Paypal.  If you like how I write and want to hire me for editing work, check out the details here to get started (rates negotiable!  Help a gimpy grad student pay her medical bills!).

Moving to a new blog home?

Wheelie selfie

I'm thinking about moving Adventures of a Part-Time Wheeler to Wordpress, but I want some opinions.  I like the post format better through Blogger, but Wordpress would allow people to subscribe to my posts.  Another perk is that since I've been blogging with Fierce Freethinking Fatties, I already have an account there and the organization would be easier on my pain-addled brain.

What do you all think?  Stay with Blogger or go with Wordpress?

OOTD: Bee-autiful in blue polka dots

OOTD in my laundry room mirror

Photo description: a selfie taken in front of a rectangular mirror in a laundry room. My body is only visible from neck to ankles. I'm wearing a black waist-length cardigan with a royal blue and sky blue polka dotted empire waist dress. Black leggings are visible underneath the dress.

This dress was actually my second garment from Gwynnie Bee, a clothing subscription service geared for sizes 10-28.  Because I had a free garment for getting a referral credit, I accidentally had this in two colors at the same time (whoops!).  This was my first attempt at wearing an empire waist in a non-stretch fabric and I'm in love with this cut on my body.  Even though I was in quite a bit of pain that day, I felt dolled up and adorable!

OOTD: More Gwynnie Bee, office edition

OOTD from a couple weeks ago

Photo description: a standing selfie taken in an office bathroom with stalls. My hair is pulled back, with clear glasses, large circular earrings, and a brass forearm crutch. I'm wearing a camel colored collarless blazer with a brown multi toned tea length dress.

This blazer and dress combo was another outfit from Gwynnie Bee.  I was having a really rough pain day (hence the pulled back & somewhat greasy hair), but I was trying to compensate by looking pretty.  This dress got a lot of compliments at work!  It was also decently comfortable, although the arms on the blazer were a little snug.  It also came with a decorative belt, but my spine said "no" to anything sitting firmly near my cyborg bits.

So far, I'm pretty happy with Gwynnie Bee...I just wish I could have more control of what garments come at what time, but it's been satisfying my desire to shop but keeps me to a better budget with the membership cost (free to try with this link, then starts at $35 per month depending on how many garments at a time you have).

One of these days I'll have an OOTD (outfit of the day) with my wheelchair.  Because my office and campus as a whole aren't particularly wheelchair accessible, I've been toughing it out with my crutch and pain meds.

Cyborg Birthday: A year and a few days post-op

X-rays from during surgery 1/16/13

I started this post at the year and a day mark (although I just today finished it because of school & medication issues that I'll blog about soon)...kind of like a Celtic wedding, except for my cyborghood is a bit more permanent than that.  I have a lot of conflicting thoughts about this past year, and a lot of those thoughts really boil down to "hindsight is 20/20."

For example, I really wish that doctors wouldn't have told me that I was too young for surgery and that I should wait as long as I possibly could until going under the knife. Recently, I've found information that is specific to the spine abnormality and injuries I had (spinous process fracture, bilateral pars defects, grade 2 spondylolysthesis, resulting in degenerative disc disease...for those of you medically curious) that points to surgery being more successful in people with low-to-mid grade vertebral slips (spondylolysthesis).  Well hell's bells.  Add to that some anecdata from other "spondy" patients that show that the longer we wait, the more nerve (and in some cases like mine, spinal cord) damage we have....that can become irreversible if surgery is postponed.

I have to admit that this is one of those things that I wish I could go back in time and change.  The time, money, and energy I have invested because of chronic pain is immense.  The things I've given up, the time burned away because my thoughts were stuck in painbrain, the events I've canceled or skipped because I couldn't function....the list goes on, and yeah, I'm a bit bitter and upset, and that's valid.

Long story short, I have a lot of nerve damage that probably would have healed had I not waited (especially with my birth defect....less damage would have been easier for my physiology to attempt to heal from).  Chronic pain is exhausting, and it's really wearing down on me.  It's also exhausting to live as a fat gimpy person where doctors refuse to believe my activity levels or desires, especially in a society that privileges walking over wheeling and assumes that all wheelers are paralyzed.

I regret postponing the surgery, not the surgery itself.  There's no telling that I would have a better outcome, so I'm trying to not beat myself up about how everything happened.

Call For Proposals: National Women's Studies Association 2014 Fat Studies Interest Group

Here is the NWSA Fat Studies CFP for 2013. Please feel free to pass on!

NWSA 2014 Fat Studies Interest Group Call for Papers--
November 13-16, 2014 in San Juan, Puerto Rico
Papers on any topic at the intersection of women's studies/ feminism/ womanism/ gender/ sexuality and fat studies will be considered.


At minimum, your submission should fall under one of the following themes for NWSA 2014:

• Rethinking the Nation
• Trans-feminisms
• Technologizing Futures
• Love and Labor
• Creating Justice

For more information on the themes, visit: http://www.nwsa.org/


While this is an open call, topic suggestions from last year's meeting include:

• Social media and Social Networking
• Fat sexualities (asexuality, hypersexuality, deviant sexualities)
• Defining and Refining Fat Studies
• Fatness and Beauty Ideals/Beauty Privilege
• Women of Color and Body Size/Fatness
• Fat Intersections (including race, nationality, disability, sexuality, appearance/beauty)
• Fat Feminist Research Methods (including role of the researcher body)
• Fat Feminists Theorizing the Body
• Fatopias/Fat Utopias
• Transnational Fat Bodies (immigration, globalization)
• Knowledge-sharing/de-colonizing
• Fat Performance/Performing Fatness/Fat Icons
• Fat Activism & Feminism/Fatosphere

If you are interested in being a part of the 2014 Fat Studies panels at NWSA, please send the following info by February 13, 2014 to NWSA Fat Studies Interest Group Co-Chairs Michaela A. Nowell and Candice Casas: (michaela.nowell@uwc.edu and cdbuss@uncg.edu). Please make sure one of us confirms receipt of your submission.


Your submission should include your:
*Name, Institutional Affiliation, Snail Mail, Email, Phone.
*NWSA Theme your paper fits under (and fat studies topic area/s if yours fits any of the above).
*Title for your talk, a one-page, double-spaced abstract in which you lay out your topic and its relevance to this session.
*AND a 100 word truncated abstract (NWSA requirement).


Each person will speak for around 15 minutes, and we will leave time for Q&A. In order to present with your name in the program, you must become a member of NWSA in addition to registering for the conference.
_______________________________________________________________

If you submit a fat studies related paper or panel, you can tag it with the keyword 'fat feminisms,' and likewise search the program for 'fat feminisms' to find relevant panels. If you submit a paper or panel on your own, we encourage you to use this keyword if your paper or panel fits the bill. We thank NWSA for adding a keyword that helps conference attendees locate fat studies panels.

Cyborg Dance Projekt: Workin' the Workshops!

I've been looking forward to this weekend since I heard about it.  It was World In Motion's New Year's Gala with workshops and show.  It's really the first time I've performed for a bellydance-specific audience since about 2009 at CONvergence back home in Minnesota. The weekend included four different workshop options (3 on Saturday, 1 on Sunday), each workshop lasting for 2 hours a peace.  I knew that my spine was only going to tolerate one per day if I was lucky...since I was performing with my troupe Saturday night, I had to be really really careful with my spine if I wanted to be up on stage.

Pre-performance selfie- false lashes!

The Saturday workshop options were an ATS® combinations class with Nandana, a tribaret class with Emily Beaman, an ATS® with a Veil class with Sadiya from MN.  I was torn between the two ATS® classes, but ended up taking the first one as it gave me enough time between the workshop and the performance so I could rest up before the show in case my spine misbehaved.

Sunday had one option, a tribal fusion master class with Sara Beaman.  That was a no-brainer as I've taken a few classes with Sara, and she has been one of the people cheering this Projekt on (even offering to help me figure out bellydance biomechanics post-surgery, even though I didn't take her up on the offer).

The workshop with Nandana went well, no thanks to some charming North Carolina winter weather including a huge thunder storm.  She taught us a slow move with a three variations (the strongarm), a fast duet move that uses a base move that doesn't bother my spine when I don't overdo it (Arabic do-si-do), then a combination series that demonstrated how to string movements that help make the dance style look almost choreographed (Egyptian to double bump to single bump turn, to single bump half turn). During the Arabic do-si-do, I paired up with a troupe mate, but we ended up picking up the movement so quickly that we split up to help other dancers....which helped me realize that pursuing ATS® teacher training if I can financially swing it this summer is a good idea.

After the workshop I spent the afternoon hanging out at my partner's parents' house relaxing and trying to stay reclined until I needed to get my makeup on, hair done, and strapped into my costuming.  I was a little nervous as my partner had never seen me perform and it was his first bellydance show.  On top of that, I was a little wound up because I was relying on a troupe mate to bring hair flowers as I made a last minute costuming decision but didn't have hair decor that went with my black, red, orange, & white color scheme (see photo above for the hair as it all worked out!).

The show went really well.  I danced with four troupe mates to a slow but short piece that garnered a lot of compliments.  Thankfully my balance kept me upright despite my usual stubborn habit of leading a move that involves briefly being on the balls of my feet (camel walk....I'll usually "cheat" the move and not go on releve if I'm not leading, but since I'm so short I worry that dancers following me will have trouble catching the cue otherwise).  As usual, I overdid it....but I really don't regret it because of all the fun I had dancing....plus I got to see a lot of really fantastic dance of a variety of styles.  My partner enjoyed himself as well...so bonus!  I hope he realizes that this means he has to come to more of my shows!

Post-workshop with Sara Beaman

This morning was a bit rough going.  I slept very poorly because of pain, so I was a bit worried about how the workshop was going to go....but since Sara is somewhat familiar with my spine-related impairment (we're Facebook friends), I figured I could get away with doing whatever I needed to do to have a productive experience. That really made my experience better.  I brought my crutch into the studio and ended up using it quite a bit to lean on for locking drills & liquid backwalks.  I sat on the floor for the breakdown of sidewinders.  I leaned against the wall to drill some arm movements.  Long story short, I did the best I could with what my spine was offering and I had a fun and productive time.  Even better...I have some movement ideas for what I want to do when I settle on music for the Cyborg Dance Projekt solo performance and I am learning how I need to dance with my crutch to make it work.

All in all a productive weekend, even if I am still grumbling about missing the veil workshop.  I'm going to sweet talk my troupe & dance collective sisters to pass along their knowledge once I get the right kind of veil for it!

Photo descriptions: 
Top photo:  the background is a white walled room with a dark brown door behind my head.  I'm wearing heavy stage makeup with red, white, and black faux flowers on my head and my hair pulled up. On my upper body I'm wearing a black choli with a red decorated bra along with a pewter coin necklace.
Bottom photo: taken in a dance studio with only sunlight lighting the room with the photo showing us from the hips up. I stand arm in arm with Sara Beaman, who is a bit taller than me with short brown hair & a warm smile.  We are both wearing dance practice clothes and my crutch is barely visible in the photo.

OTOD: Clothing the Cyborgling!

Because my brain has been stuck in painville, I've been back to playing with various aesthetic things lately again.  Since I'm still in love with my current hairstyle (an undercut with the top layer shoulder length), still in love with my bright auburn hair dye (although, if my job would allow me to, I would love to play with funky colors), and am not in a financial position to get the tattoos that I'm planning, I'm left with clothing and makeup.  I'm not a particularly feminine person most of the time, but my adventures in appearance-related things always feels like drag.

"We're born naked, and the rest is drag." ~RuPaul

The problem is that this kind of experiment always ends up being expensive, and my finances really haven't sorted themselves out since a while before my spine surgery almost a year ago.  Not only is it monetarily expensive, but it can be hard from a physical energy standpoint (trying on clothes when you have trouble bending or twisting makes trying on things in store more difficult).  It's also a hassle when many companies that cater to people above a size 14 sell most of their clothes online.

So when I heard about this company called Gwynnie Bee on Facebook and through an article on xoJane I was intrigued.  What it is is a subscription clothing service that you pay a monthly fee for (the first month is free with a referral, so if you are interested check it out), with the fee dependent on how many items you want out at a time much like Netflix with physical DVDs.  It caters to sizes 10-32 and has dresses, tops, skirts, blazers, and cardigans from a variety of clothing labels (sadly no pants...I have the most problem with pants).

I'd been waffling on the service for a while because of the price.  It starts out at $35 a month for one garment at a time (shipping both ways included in that price), but I realized that I probably wasted that much trying to find things that I like, that fit me well, that are work appropriate, and that last more than a few washes (which is my current issue with Old Navy right now).  I figured that the first month free was a good way to try it out, so here's my first item....an Asos Curve tailored skater skirt with a belt.

Black + black + black

Photo description: the author seated on a bench taking a self-photo in an accessible dressing room with a black tshirt, black flared skirt, brown belt, black leggings, and black boots. She is holding one of the grab bars with her right hand, and the left is holding a cellphone to take the photo.

Thanks to measurements that one of my conference roommates took in November for my wedding garb, I had a better idea of what size would work for me. This skirt was great, although I've never worn a high-waisted garment like this before so I was constantly fussing with the skirt waist (it was a little loose, so that didn't help).  I felt cute, looked professional enough for my office (with a cardigan over the shirt), and the whole experience made it so I have a better idea of how Asos Curve's size chart runs (a little big, but worked well on my pear shaped body with my 10-11 inch difference between my waist & hips).

This skirt was great for the office on a day where I was using my crutch to get around.  Since my wheelchair doesn't have clothing guards, this skirt won't work for a wheeling day (I'm sitting in the photo above to show how poofy the skirt is since I was walking and not wheeling that evening).  There are a lot of skirts and dresses that like to get tangled in crutches and canes, so I'm really happy with this style overall.

I wore the skirt once then popped it in the pre-paid, pre-addressed bag so I could get the next item in my queue (they call it the closet).  They dry clean every item in between customers!  Pretty slick deal.

There are a few things I find a little annoying about the service though.  You have to have six items in your closet for them to ship an item, and you don't get to pick what ships.  I was actually hoping that this red leopard print dress from Asos Curve was going to ship first, but alas.  The second complaint I have is that they don't have pants.  I'm guessing that this is because pants can wear out faster depending on body shape (like chub rub for those of us with pear or hourglass shapes, or with large thighs).  The last one I have is that some of the items are much more "trendy" than I would normally wear, so I had trouble finding enough items that I wanted to try right off the bat....although since I only have one item out at a time, I decided to put different colors of the same item in my closet to try to increase my chances of getting a style I wanted, even if the color wasn't my favorite.

I just received my second item today to try out, this red polka dotted dress from Cherry Velvet.  I'm not in love with the pattern, but I snagged it to try the cut of the dress.  I'll post another OTOD (outfit of the day) to tell you all how it went!

Cyborg Dance Projekt: Whiskey Tango....

Because of a combination of the holidays plus my wedding, I haven't danced much in the past month.  Sure I've done some really low-key drilling (less than ten minutes at a shot), but nothing that really keeps my muscles where they need to be.

Snipped snapshot

This became really clear when I went to an ATS class at a new studio in a nearby town.  For some reason, I decided that I didn't want to use my crutch to walk from my car to the studio (I also didn't know that there was a flight of stairs).  That probably didn't help my spine at all in hindsight, but alas, hindsight is twenty-twenty.

Photo description: A snipped snapshot of the author with auburn hair pulled back, rimless glasses, red cheeks, black sleeved shrug, black tank top, and a burgundy skirt with hands on hips.

I didn't think I was doing too badly today (hence no crutch) until I started to do a taxim (the first move in this video).  Then a slow bodywave (about six minutes in on this video).  Stabbing pain with a stuck feeling on both of them.  I wouldn't say that my spine eased up at all during the class, but I pushed through by trying to keep the movement small and cheating where necessary.

After the class, a couple dancers I know from a workshop earlier this fall came up to me and assumed I was doing So Much Better because I wasn't using a crutch. Being honest to a fault, I told them that I'm not doing better than when they saw me last, but that I just choose to prioritize dancing above everything else and that I use the crutch the rest of the time.  I was trying to be nice about it because their comments were meant to be nice....but it hurts sometimes.  I'm not one of the lucky ones that Gets Better.  I admit that I am better than I was a year ago (surgery was 1/16/13), but I'm pretty much stuck at my 4-5 month post-op point.

I'm just doing the best I can with what I have....and that's all I can do.

Access in feminist scholarly spaces

Silly selfie sitting next to my wheels

Last month I was at the National Women's Studies Association annual conference in Cincinnati, Ohio.  I've been to the conference four times now, thanks to one of my masters department professors letting me know about a call for papers in 2010.  As a co-chair of an interest group of the organization, I have to go whether or not I'm presenting a paper or moderating a panel.  This year was one of my "multiple hats" years, with co-chair duties, co-presenting a workshop, moderating a panel, and presenting a my own paper.  So off to Cincinnati I went for my annual gathering of scholarly feminist type people.

Photo description: A selfie taken sitting on the floor next to my wheelchair. The black cushion & back tire with thin spokes are in the foreground, with the rosy cheeked, bespectacled, auburn haired author in the background smiling.

Because of the cost of this conference and the lack of funding available at my institution to get to events like this (which, for people who want to become professors and work in academe, these conferences are required to get a job after graduation), I decided to drive from North Carolina to Cincinnati, Ohio.  Without stops, the drive takes about 7.5 hours according to Google Maps.  With the hourly stops my spine requires of me, this became a really long venture.  The perk was that I could pick what assistive devices I wanted when I wanted them.  I wasn't stuck with only crutches, or only my wheelchair.  This gave me some freedom....and it came in handy because the elevation changes from driving through the Appalachians resulted in less-than-fully inflated tires on my wheelchair (with no good way of inflating them without hunting down a medical supply store or bike shop).

I can't get to the first floor! Ack!

While my transportation afforded me some choices, the conference is notoriously barely accessible for a variety of reasons.  The past years' conferences were held at a hotel convention center.  This year it was at the Duke Energy Convention Center with a separate official hotel (I stayed in a nearby town with Amanda of FatBodyPolitics and another scholar from Texas, & commuted to the conference).  This place was hell as a gimpy person.  The first day we attended we had trouble finding the one accessible entrance (I used my wheelchair).  We then had issues with elevators only going to certain floors, with all the elevators really far from each other.  Also, thick carpet...evil, evil thick carpet.  Add to that bad signage and last minute schedule changes (like a change of time for the Disability Studies Interest Group meeting between the program, the webpage, and the app.....that was complete and utter access fail). I made due with the company of other rad scholars (feminist pool party!!), but it felt like an epic pile of microaggressions.

Photo description: A photo of an elevator button panel. The sign above says "Duke Energy Convention Center" with descriptions for levels 2 & 3. Below are buttons showing options for the second (main) floor, the third floor, DH (unknown location), and open, close, and alarm.

I should make an art book with my crutch

Saturday I decided that my tires were just too flat to use even though I was having a bad pain day.  I really realized how bad the distance between different meeting rooms was that day.  The disability related panels were on one end, the fat studies ones in another area, with access to the exhibition hall and food/sustenance in another.  Because of this, I ended up taking pain medication and found it really difficult to be a functional academic on the day that I really needed to be "on the ball" (with the workshop, moderating, and presenting in the same afternoon).  My paper was in the last panel of the evening from 5:25-6:50pm....while a concert was doing a soundcheck nearby, while a grad student social was going on, in a strange corridor that people had trouble finding....if it wasn't for the awesome response I received for my paper (an autoethnographic work about my experiences as a fat spine fusion patient), I would have seriously considered quitting my involvement with the organization.  Thankfully a bunch of us had a lovely dinner together that made me realize how much I value these kinds of scholarly gatherings (including one scholar and I reminiscing together about life in Northern Minnesota, as both of us are studying elsewhere).

Photo description: a bronze forearm crutch with a rainbow dyed rose propped on it. They are leaning on a brown wood countertop. The roses were in a vase that said "take one" (not shown).

Sunday was a short conference day, so thankfully less eventful.  A couple panels then going through the exhibition hall (a lot of publishers and organizations advertise their scholarly wares in there...most of the organizations don't set up on Sunday though, but most of the publishers offer book sales on display copies).  I had a long drive home that day, so I tried to walk as much as I could....although overdid it because of the books & talking with my hotel roommates (it was like scholar slumber party all weekend and none of us got sufficient sleep.  I regret nothing!).  I warned my partner that I was overdoing it and may need to stop somewhere to either nap or get a hotel room.  Thankfully I made it home in one piece despite being afraid to drive in the mountains at night, but copious amounts of caffeine plus the Honor Harrington audiobook got me back home.

There's my belated conference post.  The TL:DR is that feminist conference spaces need some serious work in accessibility.

Nerdlyweded!

Yes, the title of this post is another portmanteau (nerd + newlywed = nerdlywed)...I'm a scholar and those of us in sociology and cultural studies tend to me full of them.  So I'll apologize for my blogging absence of late because my December went from finals week to my nerdy wedding.

Post-wedding selfie in the hotel room

One week ago, I married my partner and best friend in Las Vegas, Nevada on Friday, December 13th.  I know that the date may seem odd, but I am the person who has had some incredibly neat things happen to me on various Friday the Thirteenths (heck, I even have a tattoo with a shamrock and the number 13 on one of my legs).  It was also hearkened to the struggles he and I have been through, and that our relationship has been forged through fire (mostly grad school and spine surgery).

Photo description: A self-photo taken in a hotel bathroom showing a fair-skinned, red-headed woman with plastic framed glasses. Her hair is shoulder length with some of the hair pulled back, dangling earrings, and makeup. She has an olive green drape covering her shoulders and torso, & is holding an iPhone with a Starfleet logo and a Royal Manticoran Navy sticker

The Las Vegas part of the wedding was my partner's idea.  After I proposed, I asked him if he had anything he'd always wanted for his wedding.  He told me that he wanted to get married in Las Vegas by Elvis.  With a little research and discussion, we found a chapel that had a variety of theme weddings....including an intergalactic wedding (the Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel).  Since we're both geeks, we decided we may as well make this as fun and campy as possible (especially combined with my constantly uncertain.  I had no interest in wearing a wedding dress, so we wore outfits from our original intergalactic fandoms.  I wore a Starfleet uniform from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine with the officer's pips for Lieutenant Commander (my rank in the Royal Manticoran Navy fan organization) and he wore Mandalorian bounty hunter armor that he created from Star Wars.

We had both of our immediate families meet us in Las Vegas and it was absolutely fantastic.  Because the chapel broadcasts all of their weddings on their webpage, we were able to share the link to the ceremony with friends and family that couldn't attend for various reasons.  Even better, my parents agreed to pay to have the wedding stay on the chapel's webpage so even more people could virtually attend & celebrate with us when they were able!

Our view from the Excalibur hotel room

Photo description: A snapshot from our room on the 22nd floor of the Excalibur Hotel & Casino. Several brightly lit buildings of the Las Vegas Strip are shown as well as the red sign of the Excalibur.

As I recover from the trip, I'll write more about the trip....but we still have a local reception to plan for (details will be on our wedding site for local folks to attend).  I will also have a "Flying While Gimpy" post (I didn't fly with my wheels, just with forearm crutches).  I'll also post some about access issues I had in Vegas as a part of the User Friendly Vegas project from Pattie (my first guest blogger).  I'm trying to break up the trip by topic instead of giving you all a play-by-play of our five days of travel!

If anyone wants me to write about anything in particular, let me know!

Apologies

My crutch plus a rainbow rose

I just wanted to say that I apologize for the huge gaps in this blog.  I have ten posts, all unfinished, in the hopper but I can't get the right combination of time and energy to finish them (like the Gen Con post, or the post about going to National Women's Studies in November, or thanksgiving).  I've been incredibly busy and would love to tell you folks how it's all going....but I just am struggling right now!

With my GP (and not much help from my pain management doctor, sadly), we're trying to figure out why my energy level has tanked, why I'm having trouble with my short term memory and reading comprehension (which is a particularly hellish symptom in grad school), and why I still am sleeping like garbage despite how exhausted I am all the time (improperly treated pain plus untreated narcolepsy is my current guess).  I had a medial branch block series of injections yesterday that is supposed to help narrow down the nerve problems I'm having post-spinal fusion (we'll see what happens with that....I'll blog about that experience once I clear finals + my wedding).  On top of all that (plus the financial mess that makes because of the American Medical Industrial Complex).

Hopefully I'll clean up a post every couple days now that the semester is wrapping up...although I am still working on incomplete coursework from last year (because of surgery and not being able to take a leave of absence due to financial reasons).  Thanks for your patience!

Photo description: A bronze and black forearm crutch laying against a light and medium wooden desk.  A rose with rainbow petals is propped on the crutch.

30th anniversary of Shadow on a Tightrope

This post was actually supposed to be posted on November 8th, the actual 30th anniversary of the book, but I was in Cincinnati, Ohio at the National Women's Studies Association annual conference (which I will blog about in a day or two).  This is a part of a blog carnival being hosted in celebration of the anniversary.

As someone who has been aware of fat acceptance since my girlfriend at the time introduced me to Marilyn Wann's Fat!So? book around 1999, I thought I was pretty aware of a lot of the history of the movement.  I wouldn't say that I was an activist at the time, but it opened my mind to many possibilities to stop waging a war against my body that never started out as "normal."

When I began my masters degree program in 2009, I took the scholarly leap into fat studies with a paper I wrote for my feminist theory class.  I was fairly ignorant of a lot of things that happened in fat history until I started digging deeper and deeper in my classwork and my conference presentations.

In 2011, I presented a paper at the NWSA conference that talked about fat athleticism and dance, and connected writings by fat folks online to my Youtube dance video.  It prompted my culminating project that involved a more thorough search for published writing on fat physical activity as a whole, but more specifically on fat dance.  I found Shadow on a Tightrope while trying to get my hands on any published work that either referenced fat dance or had personal or creative work on what it was like to be a fat dancer.  I was thrilled as this seemed to be the first book that had published stories on fat women in motion (if someone finds earlier work, please let me know!).

My used and loved copy of the book

I still remember finding a battered used copy and the book and smiling when it arrived in the mail.  It looked like the previous owner probably loved it dearly.  Reading the stories of other fat bodies in motion, seeing how similar some of the stories are to the stories I hear about today's fat bodies in motion....this is a powerful work that gets at so many parts of fat existence!

If you've never read this timeless book, I highly recommend picking up a copy.  Aunt Lute has kept this book in print and so many of the stories are still very relevant to a variety of fat experiences (I also highly recommend picking up a copy at a feminist bookstore like Charis Books in Atlanta...there are very few of these treasured spaces left in the United States!).

Photo description: A black seat with a cream colored book on top of a white take-out box.  The book says "shadow on a tightrope" in a large font with a sketch of a fat female-appearing face, with "writings by women on fat oppression" underneath and the editors names at the bottom.

NWSA 2013 Fat Studies panels, papers, & events

It's less than one week away from the National Women's Studies Association annual meeting, this year in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA from November 7-10th, 2013.  For those of you that are attending, I have the fat studies related panels, papers, and events posted here for your perusal (I'm a co-chair of the Fat Studies special interest group, so it's my duty to let people know what's happening in this corner of the scholarly woods).

Friday, November 8th:
5:25pm-6:50: Fat Studies Interest Group meeting (network with fellow scholars!), Room 209

Saturday, November 9th:
12:55pm-2:10: Fat Studies in the Women's and Gender Studies Classroom, Room 202-AV

4pm-5:15: Fashioning Fat Fashion, Room 263

5:25pm-6:50: Fat Positivity and Embodied Experiences, Room 263

Sunday, November 10th:
8am-9:15: Theorizing Fatness, Embodiment, Subjectivity, and Identity, Room 204-AV

We will likely be organizing a dinner get-together either after the interest group meeting on Friday or the last panel on Saturday.

~Casey

Not in polite society...but I'm going to talk about it

There is a part of surgery recovery that I never talked about because it's just not something that "good" people talk about in polite society.  It refers to something that some body scholars call "leaky bodies"....and I'm going to talk about my own "leaky body."  I'm also going to tie this with a Crowdtap sample that I received from Cottonelle.

I hadn't seriously considered how a mundane activity like using the bathroom would change.  I read forums on Spine-Health and read about gadgets for extending a person's reach with toilet paper...but it wasn't until the day after surgery, until the nurse took out the catheter, that the "no bending or twisting" rule really connected to the toilet.

As a fat dwarf that had just had spine surgery, there is no way to clean up without bending or twisting...without either mechanical or human help.  It's also absolutely exhausting, complicated by the side effects of anesthesia plus pain medications plus difficulty in physically moving (did you know that physical activity helps keep your digestion going smoothly?  It does...especially with bending and twisting the torso).  Once the occupational therapist armed me with a long set of tongs that I could hold a wad of toilet paper, life got a little better.  Once I figured out how much flushable wet wipes could help, life was better.

Some of the folks in the Spine-Health forum suggested wet wipes for washing their body until the surgeon cleared them for showering, but I quickly realized that flushable wipes would help my poor recovering body feel clean more quickly.  The also worked better with the bathroom tongs as one wipe wrapped around the tongs just enough to be secure yet come off easily without touching it.

When I had the opportunity to do a Sample and Share for Cottonelle's flushable cleansing cloths, I jumped at it because of how much better my recovery was because of a simple product.  It helped that I could get an "adaptive aid" from any store that sold toilet paper, and the fact that this product is being marketed to the normative leaky body (because we all create bodily waste).  It feels like an attempt at universal design for the toilet.

In short, they've made a product that really made my recovery experience easier.  Good job!

Cyborg Dance Projekt: Right Left Right

Dance costume selfie with a troupemate's bra

Photo description: Overhead yellowish lighting with yellow walls and a brown doorframe in the background.  In the foreground is a fat pale woman with red hair pulled back, green plastic glasses, wearing a teal v-neck choli and a red velvet bellydance bra with cowrie shells around the bustline.  The combination of a decorated bra over a choli is typical of costuming in American Tribal Style® bellydance.

I'm going to stop numbering the Projekt weeks since I've pretty much cleared the three month mark (especially because my school/work load has been keeping me way too busy to blog consistently).  Honestly, I never thought I would get this far, or have it go this well.  I do have to admit that even though it's going well, it could be argued that 1) dancing is still causing nerve problems so I shouldn't be doing this, and 2) dancing wipes me out in ways that force me to continue using various adaptive aids (I don't generally dance with the crutch, but I use it all of the time outside the house unless I'm using my wheelchair...I still can't walk more than a block without issues).  Call it stubbornness, but I'm going to keep dancing as much as I can!


That stubbornness has paid off.  A couple Sundays ago as I went to the studio to do my work-study (that's how I can afford to dance with my medical bills), I was invited to join Helix, the studio's ATS® student troupe.  I was so happy to be invited for a bunch of reasons.  The first was that I really wanted the sense of community and siblinghood that being in a troupe can give.  As an introvert, I sometimes have internal freakouts about whether or not people actually like my presence or if I'm being intrusive when I try to be social.  The second was that since I've been dancing for about ten years (granted, not as much when my spine got really bad...but dance was still in my heart and soul) and had been paid and asked to perform for shows, I felt uncomfortable with being in a student troupe for cabaret or fusion bellydance....but with the unique group improv format of ATS® and my relative inexperience in the style (one summer in San Francisco with FatChanceBellyDance plus another trip plus dabbling) made the "student" status a perfectly fine fit.

Hm, I realize that might sound bad or like I'm creating some sort of hierarchy of shimmies or something.  It's just that I've taught and been paid to dance, and the teachers & more experienced dancers at the studio that dance with the student troupes are generally considered "guest artists."  My old troupe treated me really poorly because of my semi-pro dance experience, so I feel like I have to try to assert my worth as someone that's been doing this and doing it well for a decade (introvert problems perhaps?).  I would love to dance whenever and wherever I can, with whomever wants to dance with me because in the end, I love dancing WITH people versus being a soloist.

Anyhow, paranoid introvert rambling aside, my first performance is tomorrow!  I do have to work to get a few pieces of costuming together.  This style usually involves pantaloons, a big poufy skirt (10-25 yard bottom hem) over that, belts or scarves over that for the lower body, with a choli as a base on the upper body with a decorated bra over the choli (see self-photo of the choli with a decorated bra), plus makeup and a "hair garden" with fake flowers.  I already had a couple pairs of pantaloons, a couple cholis, and skirts.  I'm borrowing a decorated bra from a troupemate as I don't have time to decorate my own right now.  I need to find my pretty shawls that are hiding in the house along with the jewelry and hair flowers that I've collected over the years.

I'm excited but a little nervous.  My balance isn't getting much better, so I'm a little worried about falling on stage...but I think my troupemates understand my limitations and are just happy that we get to dance together. *grin*  If anyone takes photos, I'll post them for you all to see!

Nine Month Cyborg Birthday

My during-op hardware x-rays

Photo description: the photo on the right is an x-ray with two circular places.  The top one shows the back view of several vertebra, two of which have screws and rods connecting them together.  The bottom one is a side view where the length of the screws are more visible.

Today is October 16th....it's been nine months since I had two of my vertebra fused.  It's been a hell of a ride, and it's not done.  The true baseline impact of this surgery won't be really known until the 1-1.5 year mark.

There are some things that are going really well.  I have dance back in my life, even though I have to modify the hell out of it sometimes (I cannot drive any movements with my glutes, which is pretty darn difficult).  My nerve pain is down thanks to an upped dose of nortriptyline (an antidepressant that calms nerve pain for some people), so I don't get muscle spasms nearly as often and I don't feel like I'm being stabbed in the legs constantly.

I'm frustrated that I still can't walk for more than ten minutes....even though I can sometimes dance for 2 hours.  I have a feeling that this is related to the glute issue that causes nerve pain, as my personal post-op dance posture requires a pretty intense tuck in my pelvis and it's extremely hard for me to walk like that.  I'm not frustrated by my need to sometimes use a wheelchair though....the freedom that it has given me on bad days and the pain it has saved me on not-so-bad days has been a relief.  It's also given me a chance to be speedy and playful, makes me feel strong when my muscles ache from pushing a good distance (like at Gen Con or at the Mall of America).  The upright dancer but sometimes wheeler status feels weird and gets me some odd looks sometimes, but it's a balancing game that I play to keep my passion moving.

Also, I'm frustrated by my continued need for narcotic pain medication.  Really really frustrated.  These medications make it hard for me to function as a scholar and make me continually question my career path.  To be semi-functional in life (to dance, to work, to game, to be a student), requires me to take them....and to continually fight breakthrough pain and the brain fog that comes with them.  Sometimes I wonder if the benefit of taking them is worth it, but I really feel like I have no option.  The "option" would be to quit everything and try to get in the Social Security Disability system....but I would rather avoid the enforced poverty, the constant fear of paying my bills, and wondering if I can ever have a life worth living with the incredibly low income cap.

I really have to look back at the past year to realize that I'm doing better, even though I realize that I'm really at the same point a year and a half ago, wondering if I should have surgery.  Even though I'm better, my spine feels like a ticking time bomb right now, just waiting for the next joint up to fail.  I'm just trying to do what I can with what I have at this point....and remind myself that at least I have dance back in my life because of the fusion!

100th post!

Giant duckie in honor of the 100th blog post milestone!  Why?  Just because I'm silly!

Photo description: an outdoor water scene, probably a harbor with a big city in the background. In the foreground is a giant inflatable yellow duckie, like a rubber duck that one would put in a bathtub.  It is surrounded by orange and yellow round buoys.

I know the last post was a bit of a rant (and freakishly timely with the US government shutdown over the "healthcare" situation int his country), so I want to celebrate this blog's 100 post landmark with something silly....a huge inflatable rubber ducky....just because I love duckies and collect them. (I don't have the photo citation, but if someone finds that, let me know and I'll post it).

Thanks for reading and following!
~Casey

Health insurance is neither healthy nor insures health

My HumatroPen...growth hormone injection pen device

Photo description: A green plastic case with grey lining, holding a white and lime green cap, two pen injection needles in sterile packaging, and the pen device that is white & lime green with a dial on the right and the orange and clear medication vial on the left side.

I was so happy a couple weeks ago that my endocrinologist's office finally got in gear and responded to one of the drug companies' patient assistance programs.  A representative from Eli Lilly worked with me to get set up on my growth hormone replacement while they worked with my insurance (for free!).  The case worker would call me when more information was available as Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina would not tell her which type of synthetic growth hormone was in their formulary.  It was amazing, I was hopeful....until I get a series of weird phone calls that hinted that not all was well in pituitary medicationland.

My campus pharmacy called on Wednesday telling me that a medication was called in and they wanted to know what to do with it...but couldn't tell me in a voice mail which medication they were referring to or which doctor called it in.  Thursday morning I received a voice mail from my endo's office saying that they called in a prescription for Omnitrope (a different drug company's medication....I was initially prescribed Humatrope from Eli Lilly).  Today I get a call from the representative at Eli Lilly that my insurance won't cover Humatrope and I will be dropped from their medication program.

A corporation, in this case an insurance company, should not be able to tell my doctor what medication I should be put on.  If they want to go that route, they need to be transparent about what they will or won't cover.  I should not have my health screwed up like this.  This is medication that will likely have a copay beyond what I can afford (my current monthly health expenses are 25% of my paycheck....that doesn't include making payments for my surgery, or any of my doctors to hit my deductible).

The sad part?  Somehow this is still "affordable" according to ORomneyCare (the Affordable Care Act was initially Romney's idea, not President Obama's).  Somehow, I need to treat my body like my car (something that I have to insure to be able to use), but I don't get to choose whether or not I have a body, or what kind of body.  I didn't choose this clunker, but I do have to live with it.  I treat this clunker as well as I can with what I have, and while I don't tend to love my body, it's the only one I have.  Want to know what's more broken than this body?  The United State "healthcare" system.

Back in physical therapy

My foot, my dumbbell

Photo description: brown carpet in the background, a pale short and wide foot with green nailpolish stepping on a grey dumbbell marked with "15" for its weight.

Because my new pain management doctor doesn't believe me that I'm taking three or more dance classes a week (and therefore meeting the current recommendations for physical activity according to the US government), I consented to going back to physical therapy, with the caveat that it had to be aquatic PT (I miss lap swimming, and my last pool adventure over the summer was a minor disaster pain-wise as the water pressure alone hurt).  Despite knowing he's being a fatphobic jerk, he's the first doctor that has taken me seriously about my desire to be on something other than opioids but realizing that opioids are the meds that are getting me through life right now.

A couple weeks ago, I had my PT evaluation with the new clinic (my old one doesn't have pool access).  I decided to wear my department t-shirt with the university logo and "KINESIOLOGY" in large letters, along with comfy drawstring shorts and my trusty sneakers.  PT evaluations almost always involve being touched in various ways to see how joints move (or don't move), to see what hurts with what kind of pressure, to test strengths, weaknesses, or imbalances, and sometimes end with heat, ice, or some other soothing modality (because if you're in need of PT, these evaluations almost always cause pain or other problems).

Since I've been through physical therapy quite a few times in my life (three times just for my spine fracture & vertebra slip), I have certain requirements that need to be met to deal with a PT.  First of all, my weight (if mentioned at all) needs to be addressed in a weight-neutral manner.  I have a history of disordered eating.  Yes, fatness is correlated with various biomechanical issues, but so is being tall, so is bone structure, so is age.  For the vast majority of people, weight is not modifiable.  The only thing dieting has ever done to me is make me unhealthy and bigger than had I just left my body alone.  Besides, people of all sizes get injured and disabled....so just treat me like a person with an injury or disability!

My second requirement is an acknowledgement of my desire to be active.  This is why I tend to go to appointments in my department's tshirt, a shirt from a triathlon or 5k, or a dance related shirt (like one of my Bellydance Superstars show shirts).  I want to be clear....physical activity isn't something that magically makes me a good fattie or some sort of supercrip.  I just have found that if I don't show proof of my prior activity status, I don't get treated seriously (I had a PT not believe that I was active at one point, despite my involvement in a dance troupe and dancing from 15-20 hours a week on top of my full time job).

Lastly, compassion.  The combination of my love of being in motion and being a people-pleasing introvert means I will push to far at least once...and I will struggle to the point of tears and panic to tell the PT or PTA that I've gone too far.  There are a lot of things that my body can do that I shouldn't do (like impinging my sciatic nerve), but I still do them in the attempt at getting praise and being treated as a "treatment compliant patient."  This is awful, both for me and the PT.  I'm slowly getting better at saying stop, but if I don't have therapist-client rapport yet....well, it's going to take a lot to actually be able to say it.  This is something that comes from trust (and works best when I have only a one or two person "team"....I only roleplay an extrovert!).

The therapy pool at the PT clinic

Photo description: shown at an angle, a small indoor pool, approximately ten feet by 10 feet with stairs and handrail leading in to the approximately four foot deep green-tinged water.  There is a mirror on the upper right side of the picture and wooden doors on the upper left side.  The tile around the pool is grey, the pool itself has beige, blue, and coral tiles in a geometric pattern.  A wooden bench is barely shown in the lower right side of the photo.

I agreed to biweekly aquatic physical therapy at the new clinic.  I gave it a good solid couple of weeks.  I really tried....but just being in the water hurt.  Walking hurt worse as the 98 degree Fahrenheit water loosened up my already hypermobile ligaments and tendons and ended up pinching nerves.  I wasn't even getting any benefit from the water exercise because I was either too strong, too flexible, or in too much pain.

Thankfully, this physical therapist is being awesome (not only does she meet my PT requirements that I put at the beginning of this post, but she's friendly and funny).  We're doing "land-based" PT including E-stim (like industrial TENS) and dry needling (like a cousin to acupuncture, but different in that it tries to derail nerve issues in trigger points).  We'll see what happens.  I really don't have the money to be doing the human guinea pig thing ($20 biweekly copays add up, especially with my other medical bills), but I would really like to be more functional in my life.  I'm still dubious as the increased pain is draining my energy, making school and work extremely difficult.  I guess what matters is that I'm trying, right?