“The opposite of love is indifference”

You are in a perfect storm of pain. I’m so sorry. 

I’m very sorry to hear about your dad AND the ovarian cyst rupturing. I know how miserable the latter is and can sympathize with the former.

Lately, for me? “I’m a Stranger Here” by Five Man Electrical Band, in which an extraterrestrial lands on Earth and asks humanity to account for the mess it’s made of the planet. Humanity recites, defensively:

Katie! Aw damn. 

I’m so sorry about your dad. Anniversaries are very hard.

Well I tried to make it sunday, but I got so damn depressed
That I set my sights on monday and I got myself undressed

This is engraved on my heart: “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make”.  Beatles, Abbey Road.

“are you wishing on a star?

There’s a little group called Shivaree headed by they extraordinarily talented Ambrosia Parsley, who writes most of the lyrics. Mostly they’re only known for the song Goodnight Moon which has been used in a couple of movies (Notably Kill Bill.)

Leonard Cohen not only saw COVID-19 coming in Everybody Knows, he predicted the Delta variant that’s keeping us from enjoying Hot Vax Summer.

I’d stop my dreaming
I won’t do too much sceming these days
These days
These days I sit at corner stones
And count the time the quarter turns to ten
Please don’t confront me with my failures
I had not forgotten them.

Music is so important to me. It’s often been a refuge from a reality that was way more harsh than I could handle. To pick one significant lyric is impossible. All I can say right now is a song that’s hitting me hard in the heart is “Liability” by Lorde.

The trick is to keep breathing by Garbage

I am sorry. Doctors told me I couldn’t have a baby if I got pregnant after 25. They also told me it would cure me. Both of these things were wrong. I got pregnant immediately at almost 30. But my endo was worse postpartum than before. My IUD helps so much but it’s not a silver bullet and I can tolerate the hormones. I…

Many doctors are wonderful. The ones I have a problem with are the ones who look at me with my complicated history and tell me I’m lying about the pain and trying to get drugs, conveniently ignoring that I told them at the beginning of the appointment that I don’t want or need drugs because I’m working with a pain…

Ah yes, the “curse of Eve.” Love that evangelicals decided that PMS is God’s punishment for eating the apple & giving it to Adam too.

Ahh, the ol’ burden of Eve. Yet again something to thank the Patriarchy for.

To be fair, the academy basically DOES hate women.

Signed,
Someone with a PhD who is also a woman

However, funding is how to solve this (you are right). Maybe before I hit menopause in 20 years, they will have a treatment.

At the same time, most doctors (most of which were WOMEN) have made fun of/ignored/refused to care…

Endometriosis sucks and it is wonderful that more research is being done into various subtypes so that they can be treated appropriately, rather than lumped into one generic category that ignores huge differences in pathophysiology. This stratification happened in cancer treatment over a decade ago, and the fact that…