The coalition have kind of fucked up the whole vaccination rollout, leaving much of Australia back in lockdown purgatory with the vague hope of maybe, y’know, not dying from COVID-19 while we wait for vaccines which may or may not ever arrive thanks to a government who may or may not have lied about even ordering them in the first place- paired with a staunch refusal to invest in any form of on-shore manufacture (in any industry, that one’s not solely limited to life-saving medications).
Category Archives: life update
Do you hold their lives from a string?
Recently my GP of the past 10 (11, even?) years moved interstate. 2020 was kind of a rough year for… basically everybody? And while I’ve certainly been stressed out that somebody who has been so integral to my healthcare over the past decade is no longer accessible to me, he basically singlehandedly restored my trust in the medical industry, for which I harbour significant gratitude. Wishing all the best for him and everything the future holds.
Which brings us to the point of today’s entry:
Finding a new GP, in the middle of a literal pandemic, as a transgender person, is certifiably
u n h i n g e d .
Off. On.
Ran a server upgrade recently which resulted in a “critical error” for WordPress requiring a full reinstall. Turns out my folder decisions and image categorisation from the previous migration was a good choice and everything was back in functional order after about an hour.
Am I fading in light?
Recently I have been able to obtain a little toaster fellow who is not actually a toaster at all but a USB sort of device into which hard disks may be plugged for external ease of access.
Little toaster fellow.
It took a bit of fussing around; firstly in figuring out how to even get the hard disks out of the dead ASUS at all, they were T H O R O U G H L Y bolted in there. Then the regular sort of incompetency I tend to be faced with where one (1) disk was accessible no problem, but the other (more important, of course) was not accessible at all.
You’re angry, and you should be.
Has it been 6 months again? Or closer to 2 this time? Every day the sun comes back around and I think: “It’s just one more day, you just have to make it through today.”
But being a hostage of capitalism throughout a literal pandemic has really taken it* out of me.
It’s so overwhelming and I hope no one can tell.
Survived to December somehow. Can’t say the same for my Facebook page. The impact of capitalism on social media makes it very difficult to derive any joy from something that was originally set up as a hobby.
Looks like the end of year meltdown is going to hit right on schedule. Subverted it last year by pushing it up to August to coincide with Hobes’ death instead. Thinking about Hobes still makes me cry, which is just something I’m reluctantly existing with at this point.
(Hobes’ death alone makes 2020 far from my worst year, like, personally.)
Bring me news from the dying world.
Dan says we’re grounded.
Not gonna lie, I was high-key hoping for increased lockdown measures. Daniel Andrews has my full support and respect. Ideally I’d have liked to see these measures implemented sooner, but there are still people who:
- Insist that they’re being “locked up” for “no reason”.
- Think human lives are acceptable collateral damage when deemed old or immunocompromised enough.
Fun fact:
If it appears to have been for “no reason” that means people aren’t getting sick, thus, it’s working! Kind of like… oh, I don’t know, vaccinations? Just to, you know, throw a random example out there.
Tried hard to correct it, but nothing was effective.
Hi, uh… what the fuck is going on?
Not that I casually disappeared from the blog for, assuming I read the date on that last entry correctly, 6 entire months or anything, but in my defence the country was on fire and now there’s a pandemic.
Full disclosure though, it turns out pandemic lockdown is my ideal lifestyle:
- Everybody has to go home and wash their nasty little hands.
- Nobody is allowed to touch me.
- Kicky post-apocalyptic looks encourage others to maintain a minimum 1.5 metre distance of awed respect.
Destroy the middle, it’s a waste of time.
Back in August I wandered past a SkinKandy store and figured it might be worth checking with the staff there whether or not the anatomy of my ears was suitable for a scaffold style piercing. Evidently it was, and they also happened to accept walk-ins, so with my general life situation somewhat improving I figured I’d treat my inner emo delinquent kid to a nice titanium bar.
The piercer even took into account the position of my glasses so it wouldn’t be jostled by the frames.
The very next day I had a doctor appointment to do with that whole “arms not working properly” situation, which has been getting progressively worse for… rather some years now.
Unfortunately the ultrasound and nerve conduction had both come back normal with no signs of the common forms of repetitive strain; in particular the main symptoms really seemed like a combination of carpal and cubital tunnel syndromes.
How quiet it is all alone.
On Tuesday the 30th of July Hobes and myself both had medical appointments.
The recent ultrasound on my busted arm couldn’t find any physical signs suggestive of carpal or cubital tunnel syndromes, so I will be following that up with nerve conduction testing.
Hobes unfortunately had enlarged kidneys with impaired function and I was advised to make palliative accommodations for him.
While he initially took quite well to the renal prescription diet, his health deteriorated rapidly and he was euthanized just 10 days later, at 17:25, on the 9th of August 2019.
Hobes | ? / December / 2011 – 09 / August / 2019
Based on his age and the quick progression of his illness, it was likely to have been an aggressive form of lymphoma.