Tag: #thoughts

Post Enucleation Thoughts

The day started early and was full of anxiety. Time had flown by and it was surgery day already. I wanted to treat today like a work meeting during one of my endometriosis flare ups. I could join surgery from my bed with my camera off or reschedule it all together. The twinge of pain in my abdomen quickly reminded me why I needed to have this surgery. It is something that I have avoided in order to take care of everyone and everything else until the pain and problems began to cause a decline in my quality of life.

These procedures were both emotionally and physically taxing. Throw in some pain medication and I have declared myself temporarily decrepit. Women truly face unique challenges within the healthcare system, enduring inadequate care, dismissive attitudes and gender biases. I feel that it is imperative to shed light on this unsettling reality and advocate for the betterment of all women’s health.

It is very unfortunate that women are frequently faced with dismissive attitudes from healthcare professionals (medical providers, nurses, lab and ultrasound technicians, etc.) when it comes to our concerns. Many women have experienced a lack of empathy or belief from medical staff, leading to delayed diagnoses, untreated conditions, and unnecessary suffering. Our health concerns should never be undermined or trivialized, as women experiences and symptoms are valid and deserving of the utmost attention.

Women’s pain is often underestimated and incorrectly documented leading to inadequate pain management. Moreover, some medical conditions predominantly affecting women, such as endometriosis or polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), have historically received disproportionately less attention and research funding compared to other illnesses. This disparity perpetuates the neglect of women’s health concerns.

While reproductive health is an integral part of our overall well-being, it is often treated as an afterthought. Access to reproductive healthcare, including safe and legal abortions, contraception, and fertility treatments, is a fundamental right! However, we frequently face barriers such as limited access, affordability issues, and judgments based on personal beliefs or societal taboos. These obstacles prevent women from making well-informed decisions about their bodies, reproductive health, and planned parenthood. In addition to reproductive health, women of color specifically face racial disparities and a lack of trust in their concerns during pregnancy and childbirth. These inequalities further emphasize the urgent need for comprehensive and unbiased women’s healthcare.


Conditions like anxiety, postpartum depression, and PTSD are brushed off or dismissed as hormonal changes or exaggerated emotions. This lack of understanding and empathy perpetuates the underdiagnosis, under treatment, and unnecessary suffering of women dealing with health struggles. Addressing these issues is vital to ensure that we receive the care and support we deserve. By promoting gender equality, raising awareness, and empowering women to advocate for themselves, we can work toward creating a healthcare system that prioritizes women’s health, respect, and dignity. It is high time we write a new narrative – one that ensures equal treatment for all within the healthcare realm all over the World.

And Then There’s Me…

In a large room there are women with long flowing hair and short pixie cuts. Expensive weaves with nicely laid baby hair; Mongolian, Malaysian, Brazilian. Neatly parted box braids, faux locs and twists. Traditional dreads, teenie weenie afros, voluptuous curls, kinky curly styled tresses that are neat, styled, unruly or free forming. Full faces of makeup…Bobby Brown, Fenty, MAC and Bare Minerals. Nicely drawn eyebrows, firmly placed individual lashes or strips. Colored contacts. Perfectly contoured cheekbones and noses with bronzer and what appears to be sparkly fairy dust. Lips lined, filled and plump with a glossy, matte or satin finish. Rocking designer threads, some leaving absolutely nothing to the human imagination and others thrifty and well put together. Bodies made by Dr. Miami, some off shore clinic in Columbia or Mexico and then those naturally made and approved by good home cooked meals, vegetarian and vegan diets and gym routines. Manicured nails and toes, stiletto, coffin, round, and square shaped beautiful and unique nail designs. Tall, short, light, dark, plus sized, skinny, fit and unfit, freckled, flawless, young and old…they are all beautiful in their own way. Some fighting for the spotlight, an area in the front of the crowd, hoping for all the attention or admiring themselves in their camera or in the camera lens of someone else.

And then there’s an awkward girl, attempting to stay unseen in the back of the crowd of well put together women. Intuitively feeling all of their insecurities, arrogance, self-centeredness, self-love, self-compassion and self-confidence or the lack thereof. With her finger styled two toned locs, thin at the crown, with pieces of gray hair, unarched and sparse eyebrows, sad but somewhat bright eyes that sat behind big framed glasses. Bare but speckled face from many years of fighting teenage acne even as an adult. Sparse lashes and a big ass hanging bottom lip that was passed down from her Grandfather that concealed her gap teeth that were slightly permanently yellowed thanks to the consumption of a trial cancer medication side effect. No Boundaries Walmart shirt, with a pair of ripped Burlington Coat Factory jeans and some dirty soled Converses. She stands at what she believes to be average height, with a weird frame due to fluctuating weight gain and loss because of grief, depression and just utter complications of life. She watches the ladies in front of her in admiration wishing she cared as much as they did about appearances.

She doesn’t understand the women who stand before her but she respects them. She doesn’t truly care to understand them because just as she stands in the back of the crowd. She doesn’t desire to stand out. She is perfectly ok with just existing. She is me…

In all my awkwardness I truly love me. I don’t need the praise and approval of others. I love the skin I’m in. Every scar, bump and bruise has a story. Some good and some bad. Center of attention? I hate it. Spotlight? I’d rather not. Physical appearance is cool and I believe that everyone is beautiful no matter what they look like. But my pure heart is what I care about most. I care and I give. I’m naturally empathetic and sympathetic to others. And that’s to include total strangers. In this particular story, episode, or simulation of life, I just want peace and happiness…not attention. Not all the extra, not competition for material things or status. And that’s not to say, I can’t put on all those things (besides the body by Dr. Miami) when I absolutely have to. Or that I don’t have nice things. But they are not a necessity in my life.

This post was simply to give myself some grace and to pay homage to this body that my soul is currently occupying. Life is hard. Grief is just stupid and people don’t cease to amaze me. Returning back to the clouded bubble that is my life. Praying that the sun comes out tomorrow.