You guys, I took actual shower this morning, and it was amaaaaaaaaazing.
I say this as someone who is normally not a huge fan—someone who generally regards showers as perfunctory and boring—but after ten days of sponge baths? That. Felt. Good.
Category Archives: life
Um, Yaaaaaaassssssss???
I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me earlier.
When I finally got my surgery scheduled, it occurred to me, of course, that down the line I might finally feel happy enough with my body for audition for the enormous portion of dance jobs that can be filed under “Topless Boys Live!”
It occurred to me that I would probably be much happier in class without a compression vest, and definitely would be much happier swimming without one. And, of course, it occurred to me that I would definitely be much happier when the Queen of the Costume Vault inevitably holds up some tiny-ass shirt and says, “He’d look great in this!!!” and the choreographer-director goes, “Make it so!”
It didn’t, for some reason, occur to me that I would, say, finally feel comfortable just sitting around the house with no shirt on.
Which, I realize, probably sounds like no big deal to most of us in the first world—only I’ve somehow contrived to live in a very humid place and also in a house that lacks both central aircon and proper cross-ventilation. In short, it can get pretty sticky in my house, and the more skin you can expose without feeling weird about it, the happier you’re going to be.
So just now, after changing out my most recent round of Post-Op Pasties™, as I lamented the impending inconvenience of a shirt, it occurred to me that, hey! Now I can sit around my house half-naked, like any other idiot-without-central-air-or-cross-ventilation.
This feels so much better.[1]
- Yes, my office is that freaking chaotic right now, because too much travel. In addition to being where I do the book-keeping[2] and fold the laundry (and eat Cup Noodles), the office serves as a dance intensive-and-festival staging area. This year, we started staging stuff in April and really haven’t un-staged, ever.
- Yeah, I’m basically doing the book-keeping in dance shorts AND NOTHING ELSE. You wanna fight about it? (Well, I don’t. Really, it’s too warm for all that.)
So, anyway.
In other news, not that any of you really need to know this, but given the particular surgery I had done there’s a potential for significantly reduced sensation in the nipples. (I’ve fretted about this a bit before.)
Evidently, I’ve completely dodged that bullet, as mine are hecking ticklish right now. I am rather grateful for the post-op pasties, or I wouldn’t be able to get anything done that involves wearing a shirt (which, to be fair, wouldn’t prevent me from doing stuff around the house, I guess?).
Anyway, the right one looks a little weird because it’s a little scabby for some reason, but honestly they look and feel rather a lot better than I thought they would by this point.
Look, they’re basically normal! Also, that’s a lot of tape (all of which is beginning to think about peeling off).
The weird part is that the sutures around my aureolae have caused me exactly no discomfort, which is not what I would’ve expected. I figured that would be the worst part, but nope.
You can probably tell from this shot that I have some minor swelling (which comes and goes, so I’m not worried about it) near the middle of my chest. Curiously, that’s the only place where I’ve regularly had any discomfort, and the place where it gets uncomfortable is nowhere near the sutures.
Behold the mysteries of the human body, I guess?
Lastly, I got to do a little work today at Bark in the Park, a fund-raiser for the Animal Care Society (one of the best local organizations for animals in need). Basically, I wandered around in shiny vertical-striped lycra twirling a dance ribbon and conscientiously avoiding raising my arms or my heart rate. That was fun, not least because I got to meet all kinds of nice doggies.
It was also fun not to have to wear a compression vest under my costume in the 90+ degree (F) heat. The festival was pretty quiet (mostly, I think, due to the heat), but the folks in attendance enjoyed having some circus-y folk afoot.
In Which I Revisit An Important Concept
(…Or, “Hey, what do you know, maybe knowledge really is power!”)
I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.
I’ve been looking stuff up on the internet since I was a kid. I should know how this works by now! Got a weird question? Pretty sure you don’t know anyone who can answer it? Ask Dr. Google!
Anywho, I’ve been fretting over the deep details of What Is Going On With My Chest, and what should make me worry, and what shouldn’t, etc. For some reason, however, it didn’t occur to me until this morning to just, like, look it up.
Even though research is, like, kind of my jam[1]?
- Or, like, my tertiary jam, close on the heels of dance and circusing. But, like, if this was a horse race, research would definitely still be in the money.
So, needless to say, this morning I decided to apply my research-fu to my involved questions about the whole healing process … and, actually, I found really good answers from legit sources (being able to identify legit sources is an important skill, you guys).
Basically, the problem has been not the what, but the why (and how):
- Why can’t I put my hands in the air like I don’t care?
- Why can’t I lift things?
- Why, from a physiological perspective, are those things bad ideas right now?
- How could they impact the healing process (and, more importantly, are they going to make my nipples, like, fall off or something????!!!)?
- How can I prevent myself from screwing everything up?
Anyway, I now understand what’s going on physiologically, which will make it a lot easier to remember not to do things.
I find it very helpful to have that extra data point—it not only strengthens the synaptic connections associated with the information in question, but adds a degree of motivational magic.
Basically, a really strong motivator can, to a degree, sometimes curb my impulsive nature[2]. The challenge is finding a motivator that’s stronger than the motivators that lead me to do dumb stuff.
- Works best in combination with Adderall, admittedly.
The motivation to make sure that all this surgical stuff heals as well and as quickly as possible is very powerful, but not terribly specific.
The specific knowledge of what’s going on under my skin and what I’m avoiding by following my surgeon’s instructions is really very helpful: it adds a layer of information that makes it more likely that the motivator, “Don’t eff up your surgery” will win in one of those momentary battles between impulses.
On the upside, I’m now past the point of greatest danger of really crazy outcomes (like my nipples actually going necrotic and sloughing off, for example o_O) … which is good, because the first thing I did upon halfway waking this morning was stretch, and although I stopped myself immediately, it made me feel a wee bit panicky. I also got fed up with my compression dressing in the middle of the night, woke up, and took the freaking thing off.
Turns out that I don’t really need to worry about either of those things too much—just keep an eye on things as always, but they probably haven’t done any real damage to the healing process. I’m doing a pretty good job behaving myself, and the nipple-aureola complexes should pretty much have made themselves at home at this point, having been significantly disturbed during surgery but taking only about a week to establish themselves again. They’ll be back to normal resiliency within a couple more weeks.
Anyway, I’m feeling much better now.
So, basically, I have yet again discovered the age-old principle of alleviating concerns by increasing understanding.
Um. Go me? Yay?
In other news, maybe I should also Google, “How the heck do I get all this freaking medical adhesive off my skin?” (Edit: Yup, I Googled it. Evidently, acetone—the main ingredient in nail polish remover—will do the trick. Going to give that a try in a bit.)
~
PS: I am working on Saturday—a wee bit of low-intensity ambient dancing. It will be an interesting challenge to see what I can accomplish without raising either my heartbeat or my arms 😀
Check Out My Fancy Hospital Pasties
I’m officially decompressing!
It turns out that what was driving me so crazy was the combination of uber-tight compression wrap and surgical drain tubing, which conspired to irritate the living daylights out of my intercostal cartilage and muscles. Those are still a bit angry, but sooooooo much better sans poky tubing and with relaxed compression.
During my surgery, I got trimmed down and liposuctioned and so forth, and now I’m all taped up and decorated with ridiculously large hospital pasties (I feel like perhaps I should decorate them?[1]) … And, yes, I still have nipples 😛
- Made an attempt. Didn’t bring any wide Sharpies, though. SOON.
I debated whether or not to post pictures, but I’m going to bite the bullet and do it.
First, I’m really stoked about how clean everything looks already. My body just looks like, you know, my body. I don’t know what exactly I was expecting? But I think it involved bruises and stuff.
Second, I’m not the first guy who’s had to undertake this kind of surgery, nor will I be the last—and I was okay with it in part because I saw photos in various phases of the healing process from other guys who’d had the same thing done. Maybe mine will help someone down the line—another dancer, even—feel okay with it, too.
A note about the dancer-specific end of that: I hemmed and hawed about which surgical approach to pursue in part because of the potential for scarring and the fact that, as a male dancer, I’ll have more options if I feel like I can take roles that require me to dance shirtless [2].
- Like, for example, I’ll be able to work in modern dance, which is apparently code for “Topless Boys Live!”, ever at all
Ultimately, I opted for an approach that would leave longer scars, but in more discreet places, and would be a sure shot in terms of removing extra skin in awkward spots. Having seen myself this afternoon with no shirt and no medical pasties, I know I made the right decision.
Speaking of that, I got to see myself sans Hospital Pasties this afternoon, and I’m quite happy with the results—though as a good citizen of the internet I’m kicking myself for failing to grab a photo.
Anyway, I had a bunch of extra skin before (thanks, collagen disorder!), but you’d never know at this point. Also, I appear to have normal tactile sensation everywhere, which is great. It wasn’t terribly likely in my case, but I was a little worried about ending up with tactile “dead zones” that could be awkward for some kinds off partnering.
There will be narrow scars below my pecs extending from about 4 cm to either side of the center of my chest (looks closer to the center in the shot below due to tape and guidelines) to a point straight down from my armpits. They probably won’t be very visible. The upside of the collagen thing is that I tend towards hypotrophic scarring, which in turn tends not to stand out too much against my ultra-pasty pallor.
How do you like these gigantic pasties? You can also still see some of the guidelines my surgeon drew before surgery 😛
I’ve also got extra gauzy stuff and even moar tape going on under my arms where my drains came out today. Those will be there for about a week. (You guys, I really should’ve purchased stock in 3M’s medical supply division.)
I have some sutures in my aureolae, so I’m supposed to wear some kind of medical pasties for a couple of weeks whilst those heal up, but my surgeon suggests the big, square band-aids with adhesive all the way around. There’s no need for them to be huge like the current ones; 4×4 gauze just happens to be ubiquitous in US medical practices.
I feel like I should thank my ballet and aerials teachers for making my surgeon’s job and my life easier. He had zero trouble locating the margins of my pecs, and my blood supply and overall fitness are basically stellar, which made everything smoother and easier in every way.
That’s it for now. We’re heading home tomorrow, so I might even make it back in time to stand around idly at rehearsal on Wednesday, learning by osmosis.
PS: I am greatly enjoying wearing just one shirt at a time. I cannot explain how amazing that feels.
PPS: Still heckin’ itchy, though, because omg so much tape. At least the stuff under my pecs will fall off on its own in about a week.
Post-Surgical Thoughts
-
I thought I understood annoying compression situations. I did not (to be fair, my moobs were mostly loose skin, and didn’t require much compression). Post-Surgical dressings are fierce o_O’
- It turns out that I normally put my hands up above my head a lot. I’m not permitted to do that at the moment, and it’s driving me crazy.
- Itching: the struggle is real.
- Surgical drains are a great invention, and the ones I currently have are super-easy to work with. That said, by the end of the day, the tubing under the compression bandage feels like someone poking me between the ribs with malice aforethought and extreme prejudice.
- For whatever reason, the compression dressing was applied with my shoulders scrunched up around my neck. It is impossible to express how much I’m looking forward to being able to relax them down where they normally live.
- This whole process has been fairly smooth, and actually quite a bit less itchy than I anticipated.
- But still itchy enough.
In all, I’m grateful as all heck that I’ve finally got this sorted. Follow-up visit today (maybe I get to put my shoulders down!), so I’ll finally get to see the results, though I expect things still look a bit sore and lumpy.
Don’t worry, little dinosaur, I feel your pain!
How to Get a Dancer’s Body: Two Strategies*
I: The Slow-and-Steady Approach
- If you don’t live in a locality with a good professional company, move to one
- Go to performances. Identify a dancer whose body you wouldn’t mind having.
- Find a teacher. No, not a dance teacher; that takes way too long. I’m talking about a teacher of the obscure occult arts.
- Gather such materials as you may require: the black goat, newts’ tongues, and rooster’s egg may be difficult to source in urban areas.
- Using the materials and methods already acquired, become incorporeal.
- Once you have become incorporeal, locate your chosen dancer and cause him or her to become incorporeal as well.
- Take over the body of the dancer in question.
- Congratulations! You now have a dancer’s body.
II: The “Ain’t Nobody Got Time For That” Approach
- Start dancing. No, seriously, right now, to any kind of music or none.
- Are you dancing? Are you in your body? Congratulations! You now have a dancer’s body!
*for best results, attempt with tongue held firmly in cheek
…You Stop When The Gorilla Gets Tired
(File under: Every Aphorism I Know I Learned In Bike Racing)
I’ve been having a tough time with re-entry following this summer’s intensives.
Not that I’m, like, pining for the fjords. Just…
Hmm. How do I explain it?
Going to a dance intensive is, in a way, very much like going to summer camp. You’re essentially excused from most of the responsibilities of adulting. Your daily activities are heavily programmed for you. You don’t have to juggle variables, interruptions, or random transportation disasters.
If you forget your ADHD meds, you make it through the day pretty well because all you’re doing, really, is dancing, and your brain works best when you’re in motion. You don’t have to remember a bunch of discrete, unrelated tasks and somehow accomplish them.
If you stay up really late bonding with your new dance family, it’s no big deal. You get up the next day, pour some strong coffee into your face, hit the studio, dance your butt off, and sleep like the dead when you get back to the dorms or your AirBnB.
And then you come home, and your body is adapted to an 8-hours-per-day-plus physical workload that you’re unlikely to match except during the most intense periods of rehearsal or performance, and you have to get back to Adulting (with or without ADHD).
For me, this illuminates one of the central challenges in living with ADHD: it never goes away.
To borrow a quote from Kiwi bike racer Greg Henderson [1]:
Swap “ADHD” for “training” and you’re good. (Shamelessly stolen from Pinterest, of course.)
- or a quote about success from Robert Strauss, who presumably doesn’t race bikes but could feasibly be a Kiwi; can’t be arsed to look him up right now.
You don’t stop when you’re tired. You stop when the gorilla is tired.
ADHD is, in some ways, a gorilla that never gets tired. Instead, you have to learn to manage your gorilla—and managing is largely a question of automation.
When I’m doing it right, I manage my ADHD by making it as hard as possible for myself to screw up the basics.
I lay out each day’s clothes the night before, so I never have to fumble around looking for clothes before my brain is working.
My morning and afternoon doses of Adderall are right there in my 7-day pillbox, so I don’t find myself thinking, “Feck, did I take my meds?”
My keys, wallet, sunglasses, and other important small things live on a shelf by the door, so I will always put them there when I walk in and never have to wonder where they are.
My phone lives next to the bed, where it acts as an alarm clock. Once I get out of bed, I either leave it tethered to one of its chargers or keep it nearby. That way, I never have to look for it.
My class and rehearsal schedules get written out on the whiteboard on the refrigerator door. Writing them down helps me remember what’s coming up; it also gives me a hard-copy reference when I’m not sure and lets D know where I am, when.
While I cook, I clean as I go and streamline general dishwashing into those moments when there’s nothing that requires attention.
I run errands before, after, or between classes so I won’t have to take extra trips out of the house. I maintain shopping lists on Google Keep so I don’t have to remember anything, including the shopping list.
I burn a ton of energy, knowing that it’s the only way I’m going to be able to sleep on anything resembling a normal, diurnal schedule. I run Twilight on my phone and f.lux on my PCs to cut out blue rays (this really does make a huge difference, for me). I don’t play video games or peruse social media in bed, because those get my brain ticking over too fast.
I pay really close attention to things like caffeine intake: and if I’m having a rough time sleeping, I avoid any caffeine at all after about 2 PM.
These are all fairly small things, but they add right the heck up.
The problem is, they’re all routine-driven, and once I get out of a routine, it can be really hard getting back in.
This week, I’m struggling really hard with insomnia. After being sick for most of last week (during which all I actually did was sleep), I’m left with a surplus of energy, but not enough on the schedule to burn it off.
Since it only takes one sleepless night to torpedo weeks of careful sleep programming, I’m currently in the midst of a really unpleasant cycle of sleeping two hours one night, then nine the next.
Last night was one of those two hour nights. I missed class today because of it: I finally got to sleep around 8 AM. Turned off the alarm at 9 AM, when I realized it would be foolish to try to do modern on one hour of sleep. Woke up at 10, when I should’ve been starting class, anyway.
I’ve realized I need to get back to negotiating with my gorilla. I’m home for one more week, then off to That Thing In The Desert[2] after all, then back for a week, then off for a medical thing[3], then possibly starting rehearsals for a thing, depending[4].
- In addition to the usual Open Barre sessions with mimosas, I’ll be leading some contact improv playshops at our camp this year.
- I’m going to apply my “to know, to will, to dare, to keep silent” clause here. This is a minor medical procedure but a huge freaking deal for me, so I’m trying not to feck it up.
- Here, too. I’m actually okay with waiting and auditioning for the next thing this company does, but it’s sort of up in the air right now whether we can work around my temporary restrictions after The Secret Medical Thing.
None of this makes it easier to figure out where to start rebuilding my Life Management Protocols, so I’m just going to do what I normally do: fumble forward and hope for the best.
In other words, just pick something and start where you are.
In that vein, I’m hoping to get a class in tomorrow to make up for missing today’s (though tomorrow’s class will be ballet, not modern).
I’ve got a doctor’s appointment at 8-o-freaking-clock in the morning for which I have to check in at 7-goshdarn-30, which means getting up at 6-what-even-is-sixthirty-30 because I kind of need D with me for this one and he needs more than 20 minutes to get out the door 😛
As such, I need to actually get my tuchas in bed at a reasonable hour tonight and, if necessary, hit myself with a whacking great dose of doxylamine succinate to make sure I don’t stay awake all night.
Those are some easy start-where-I-am steps that I can actually do (along with getting audition video links to the AD for the Secret Dance Thing and signing some documents for The Secret Medical Thing and emailing them back to the practice in question).
So, there you have it. I think I really wanted this post to be more of a thought-piece about managing ADHD than me scrabbling on about how I’ve managed to hose everything up for myself (though I did plan to mention that), so I suppose I’ll add that to my queueueueueueue of posts to actually write sooner or later as well.
Until then, I’ll be here, negotiating with my gorilla.
~
Oh: in other news, I successfully gave a bit of advice to a new guy in class last night, which felt really good.
So It Was National Dance Day
Rather ironically, I celebrated by mostly not dancing.
Well, there was some dancing, in the morning, before I headed for Mom’s. And my friends carried me down the hall to the door when I left.
Pilobolus Summer Workshop was beyond words—or, well, beyond words that I can find when I’m happily exhausted because I spent the week dancing and creating feeling and spent Friday night singing and drinking and dancing and talking and talking and talking…
Went to bed at 7 AM on Saturday. Woke up at 10:50 AM. My body didn’t feel tired, but I could tell my brain was tired.
Anyway, I’m rolling all this stuff around in my head. You leave Pilobolus’ workshop ready to work, but in need of some time to think.
Anyway, instead of writing, today I’ve been taking pictures. Here’s a few from today and a couple from the week for your enjoyment or what have you.
I realized tonight that this room no longer really belongs me, and I no longer really belong to it. ATM though it’s hard to explain what that means. Also, I kind of can’t believe this is my body. That is not hard to explain.
“Glory be to G-d for dappled things…” —Gerard Manley Hopkins
This is us: the surprisingly-cohesive little commune that was Week 2 in 2017.
There was a lovely cool breeze this evening. I sat on the bench near the house and drank it in and was glad to be alive and to be tired.
This was a rough moment: knowing we were all about to part ways. Hard to describe how much you can come to love a group of people when you’ve just spent a week learning to trust them to hold you, guide you, and lift you high into the air.
This basket has been hanging on the garage for a long time. I’ve photographed it before, in fact. The light was so beautiful that i couldn’t resist.
LexBallet Intensive 2017, Day 1: The Onliest Boy Rides Again
…A giant registration system SNAFU almost scuttled the whole thing! But! A bunch of us showed up anyway, and N, the director of the school, called us in for a huddle after class and said, “We can still make this happen!”
So we’re back on.
Tonight, whilst everything was up in the air, we just did the Intermediate/Advanced Open Class. It was a really good class, though!
After a tough morning in class at home which I couldn’t keep brain and body together (seriously, we did an awesome manège which I managed to screw up by losing track of which cycle I was on–did an extra on the first side, left one out on the second), it was a relief in to not go full Baby Giraffe tonight.
Tonight I apparently mostly remembered how to dance. W00t. There was one combination I didn’t pick up right, but I got it on the second run.
Also, heckin grand jetés across the floor. Evidently, I haven’t forgotten how to fly.
Tomorrow it’s back to the regular intensive schedule. We have, in essence, three days to learn variations o_O’
I have no idea what we’re doing, but Friday night we’re showing them, G-d help us!
Honestly, though, if I can dance like I danced most of tonight’s class, I’ll be fine.
In other news, C opted out this year, so I’m the Onliest Boy again. I guess it wouldn’t be right to make it through a summer without that?
danseur ignoble 