♡♥♡cabbage♡♥♡

Finally I post, at the end of January. I have no excuse, I've been lazy. I began typing this .txt file in which I'll dump my whole January (or rather, what I remember of it) into. Cause why not. So let us begin with New Years. I spent it in a voice call with my bf as usual. It was a rather lame New Years because the fog was so thick I could not see the fireworks at all. Nada. Kind of left me feeling dissatisfied. But as a plus I cuddled with my cat a lot because she was slightly unnerved. Not really scared, but a bit restless from the sounds. I went to sleep pretty early, my boyfriend was already asleep at 11pm (it was midnight for him). Next I got sick... my mom caught a cold first and we were worried it might be rona since the new variant was really mild. She did a home test and tested negative so that eased our worries a bit. Getting regular tests here was nigh impossible at that time, the wait time was 7 days at that point. I had to do my best to stay away from her as I was scheduled for my wisdom teeth removal. And of course, I got sick the day before. I cancelled the appointment and felt bad about it since it was my second time cancelling it. I guess some higher power isn't letting me get rid of my wisdom teeth. Maybe it's a sign... Having a cold reminded me of this weird love I have for feeling slightly sick from a common cold. I didn't get sick for 2 years now as I'm definitely taking care of my health more than before the pandemic lol. Anyway, I love having a slightly stuffy nose, feeling generally tired and heavy and napping at home all day under warm blankets. Such a good experience. I even like having a slight fever, but I didn't have it this time. Instead my nose got too stuffy to be enjoyable and the skin under my nose was so red and irritated. That made me start using my panthenol cream I used for my tattoo and it helped a lot. I made a mistake when I tried to disinfect my nose piercing, my skin felt like it was on fire for a few hours. I haven't touched it for a week or so afterwards.

While I was sick I missed one class where I was the TA, but luckily the medical anthropology class got moved to online so I could attend it. We had to read something interesting this time. The article was one of the most gripping articles I had to read for any class in my long 6? years of studying at this uni. It talked about the way the body was portrayed in medicine, how all kinds of narratives are prescribed to it, used to push a certain narrative and as a means of social control. A pretty fun theme to explore imo, and easy to get angry at, as I did. One part of the article specifically focused on the immune system and the way certain "principles are being internalized" as the text says. Well what does that mean? Basically, as most of us should know, we have three types of immune system cells. B cells, T cells and macrophages. All sorts of gendered traits are prescribed to these three types of cells, that it borderlines on ridiculousness. I cannot emphasize how moronic I found this while reading it, and I am glad that biology and microbiology was not taught to me in this way, both subjects being very dear to me. T cells are portrayed as strong, alpha male killer soldiers. They're relentless, courageous and they strike, attack and assault. They're the very image of male virility, which will come into play later. They PENETRATE their enemy with poison. Macrophages on the other hand are a much lower form of a cell, much simpler. Thus, it is only natural that they are portrayed as females. They're wild, they devour everything that gets in their way. They're in a feeding fury, they're emotional and uncontrollable. They can also carry disease, such as hiv, much like lower orders of dirty females... They are also portayed as housekeepers, as they clean the dirt and the debris, dead bodies of the self and foreign cells alike. Unlike the T cells of course, which are considered much more intelligent and evolutionary advanced so they "attend the technical colleges of the immune system". Yes this is a real sentence from a scientific paper. Now the last type of cell I haven't mentioned, the B cell, is also portrayed as female. They are not educated in the college of the thymus, but they are "educated" in the bone marrow (lol), which is of course, the lower ranking college in the educational system of the body. In one popular book, the T cell is said to give the B cell "permission" to attack invading organisms. But exactly as the article says "this assertion is frequently made in spite of the interlocking nature of all the elements of the system". Our stupid tendency to give everything a human personality, to assign it a societally made up trait, gets in way of... understanding things properly. Anyway, to continue, B cells are considered feminine, even portrayed as such in certain books, with long eyelashes and heels, but they're higher ranking than the icky wild macrophages, although still needing permission from the superior male cell. Now, why is this such a bad thing, you may ask. Why, this is just a silly way to make things more clear to us peasants who find biology too complex! This certainly couldn't have any negative consequences! Well, that's wrong. I bring to you - the AIDS pandemic. The way this immune system was presented to us made it much too easy to truly demonize gay people and AIDS as the ultimate disease in which you lose your virility, you cease to be a man. The way language was used, the way it entered our heads and was presented to us was seriously ingenious. It was convenient, that it just so happens that the T cells - the ultimate sign of virility, cease to exist once HIV enters your body. You are only left with B cells and macrophages, the latter which betray you like the uncontrollable emotional females they are. So, so convenient! God! I'm still seething about this text, 3 weeks later. To my surprise, other students said this portrayal of the immune system was goofy and silly, and that they found it funny. What???????? I felt like I was the only one that actually read this article properly. I hope they were probably just too lazy to properly read it, but I was disappointed because most of the times everyone could string a coherent sentence and we'd have nice conversations.

A week after that, I ended up at the e.r.. I woke up at 4am with a bellyache, but the kind where you know you're going to have a nasty diarrhea and it'll pass in a couple hours max. Well, 4 hours after some intense diarrhea and puking I only started to feel worse. My stomach started to hurt crazily, but not in a menstrual cramps kind of way where you can feel your intestines twisting and churning yet you can magically carry on with your day as if nothings going on. No, this felt sharp and "deep", idk what other way to describe it. I couldn't think, or focus. I couldn't pick up my phone to text my teacher that I won't be coming. I barely managed to do it and I missed my last class I was supposed to be a ta for. Shame! The pain continuned for an hour more, and I had to call my grandpa to drive me to the e.r., it really got unbearable. I have a pretty high pain tolerance so if something hurts to this extent I know it's serious. I got there at 9 am, the air was so crisp and cold it lessened the pain but I still felt shitty. The e.r. people took my blood pressure and asked me some questions, and they told me it was likely corona which.. kinda lol. They said they had a ton of people come in with puking/diarrhea symptoms and it would turn out to be corona which was interesting. Anyway they had no tests so they sent me to the main hospital and to their e.r.. I got there and I was already feeling better at that point but I figured why not stay and get some tests done, I'd been delaying doctor visits for a while now. The doctor at the e.r. was hilarious. He was openly calling everyone retarded which I found amusing. I encountered a type of situation I keep hearing about from all people that have experience with working in a hospital. An old lady comes to the e.r. and the doctor asks her "are you in pain?" to which she answers yes, then he proceeds to ask her for how long she's been in pain and she says "for a month". Then he proceeds to get pissed lmao. Funny dude. But apparently it happens a lot at the e.r.. They took me in, did some blood tests and told me it could be something to do with my appendix. Sent me to get an abdominal ultrasound, sent me to a gynecologist for a vaginal ultrasound, took a urine sample... Turns out everything was fine and I was just experiencing some crazy big ovulation and my ovary got so swollen it started pressing on my appendix, which was the most likely cause of pain. My period has been really delayed this time (I got it two days after the hospital visit), so I'm not surprised a problem arose from it, although I never had painful periods. As a kid however, right before my first period, I experienced this exact same pain, coupled with the exact same e.r. visit. At least I finally found out my blood is fine and I have enough iron. However, this whole experience has left me feeling like.. why the hell is female health the way it is? I ended up in the hospital for a normal function my body is supposed to execute monthly for like 40ish years... Come on, I evolved to do this, do it properly! And there's nothing I can do about this either, except hope that I never get so fertile ever again lol. Why don't men suffer this much with their sperm production...

Lastly, I visited my friend this week. I was happy to see her finally, and we always have a good time together. I gave her an old dress of mine that I don't wear anymore, it's made of a red velvet material and it looks very 2015ish tumblr grunge. She gave me her brothers old socks that he doesn't wear anymore, because I love socks with funny prints lol. And I got six pairs! Amazing. Never thought I'd be so happy to get used socks, but these are pretty nice. Me and my sister split them, and also unpaired (is that the correct word?) them, as my sister strictly wears unpaired socks. Also we watched a really shitty reality show before sleep, it's called Too Hot To Handle. Now, I'm really not the type to watch reality shows and I never was, not even ironically or as background noise or something. This was horrendous. Apparently it's 13+ but it's so raunchy and explicit I was amazed that the rating is so low. The show seemed like a porn parody of what a reality tv show would be, just horrible. We had a good time laughing at it though.