Sexuality Happens

Last weekend, Q’s birthday weekend, we were both sick as dogs. I mean, I have had a lot of illness in my life, but the majority of it has been respiratory; whooping cough, pneumonia, etc. Or it’s been physically injury, like my knees, and hips, and getting hit with a boomerang, or having my foot caught in the fly wheel of a bike. I’ve been lucky enough not to have had much in the way of stomach bugs since I was a kid.

WARNING: Story is about a stomach bug. Don’t read if you have a weak tummy.

Now, this is good, because I hate throwing up. I’d rather have 30 MRIs or 50 injections that throw up once. I hate hate hate the feeling of throwing up. It’s one of the many reasons I’ve never been a big drinker; the fear of possibly drinking to much and then throwing up is a very potent weapon to sticking with a glass or two of wine, and frou frou and delicious drinks.

But all this aside, I came home the night of the 5th from teaching a class at Fascinations on the G-spot and Female Ejaculation. I was fine. I made myself some homemade guacamole, ate it with pita chips, and suddenly, I didn’t feel so good. We went to bed.

An hour later, Q found me on the floor of the bathroom, holding an alcohol pad to my nose (it can reduce nausea) with an empty bottle of Pepto Bismo.  I was hugging the toilet, trying to do everything in my power that I could to not throw up. Unfortunately, it didn’t work.

For the next 6 hours, I had one of the worst nights of my entire life. Every hour, on the hour, like clock work, I would run to the bathroom to projectile vomit. I’ve never experienced this before; vomit being forced out of your body, through your mouth, and both nostriles, while you’re essentially peeing out your ass. I’d vomit and shit at the same time. My throat and nose were burning, my ass was chapped. I used every available place to throw up; the toilet, the sink, a trash can, the bathtub.

And through out all of this, Q had a damp washcloth on the back of my neck, and helped me clean up and bleach the crap out of everything…each and every time I pulled an Exorcist. I couldn’t even keep down water, and my black eye make up from the night before was smeared down my face, adding the the look. She brought me SmartWater, and helped me into bed, each and every time. Finally, at 5am, when it showed no signs of stopping, she drove desperately trying to find an open drug store (this is AZ, remember?), and brought me home more Pepto, and Gingerale, and Gatorade.

Through all of this, I don’t remember much, although I do distinctly remember trying to verbalize how much everything hurt and how much I just wanted to die. However, as I lay in bed the next day, my muscles exhausted, too weak to even move to get online, I remembered how cared for I felt. How much having her help me through this meant to me.  

Oh course, the poor thing got sick Saturday night (although she only threw up once), and was dead to the world all day Sunday. Birthday plans were obviously postponed.

Love has many facets. There is the attraction, the reliability, the thrill of something new, the chemical connection, the familiarity. But when I am sick, there is nothing more in the world that I want (other than possibly to die, in this case) than to have someone taking care of me. And when Q, who had a luncheon and two presentations the next day, spent her night taking care of me, I just realized, yet again, how much I love her, and how much love she has for me. Cleaning up after the Exorcist? Now THAT is love.

-Essin’ Em

When I got into Phoenix after my trip to Denver, I could not walk on my own accord, and had to rock the airport wheelchair not only to the baggage claim, but even to my car. When I woke up on Sunday morning at the hotel, my left knee was literally the size of a melon; a cantaloupe to be more specific. I couldn’t bend it.

Luckily, at Thunder was a friend who happened to be a nurse. I bought some vet wrap for a non-kinky purpose; I used it for compression. When I got “home” to Phoenix, we had a quick bit to eat, and then headed to a local ER. The one my friend recommended was more than 35 minutes away, so we chose one in a hoity-toity area near us, assuming that because the area was rick, they’d be able to hired decent staff.

Boy, was I wrong.  Not only did they not have anyone on staff to help me with a wheel chair, but once I waited the few requisite hours to make it to triage, the nurse there not only had no idea what synvisc (my injections) were, but couldn’t seem to figure out how to put my sulfa drug allergy in my chart. Sulfa drug allergies are incredibly common, yet she had no clue, and finally gave up, just writing it on my allergy bracelet. It got worse from there. 

We were put in a room with no pillows (forget my neck — I wanted to elevate my leg), no ice pack, and no way to press a button or get ahold of a nurse. Once the nurse finally came in, he rattled off a list of things it could be, and possible solutions. Not so with the doctor — he gave me more percocet (despite the fact that I told him I already was ON narcotics to handle the pain), and said that if I didn’t have a blood clot (which I didn’t), then it wasn’t an emergency, and it didn’t matter. No offer to drain my knee, or deal with the fact my foot was as large as my calf.  In fact, when I pointed out I thought my allergic reaction to the red in my tattoo might be infected, he told me “no, that’s just the ink spreading out.” I had circles of reddish-purple irritation ONLY around the red leaves, yet his brilliant answer was that the ink was spreading out. Right.

Finally, after the ultra sounds (negative for blood clots), and waiting for another 3 hours with no nurse checking on me (no one ever asked me my pain level — every ER I’ve been to has always asked CONSTANTLY where I’d am with pain), and Q having to ask not once, not twice, but three times just to get a pillow for my knee, I was sent home. I asked the doctor if he’d be willing to drain my knee, or put some sort of anti inflammatory in it, but he looked me in the eye and told me it wouldn’t help. He told me doctor’s don’t like to touch other doctor’s patients. I pointed out my doctor wasn’t in state, so he told me to find a surgeon here, but I’d have a hard time.  I explained back to him what he just said, and asked him to drain my knee, PLEASE. I reminded him that it took forever to get into an ortho as a new patient. He told me later on that he talked to an ortho in the ER, and he had promised to get me in his office in the next few days, and that he was “obligated” by the referral to see me.

I found out the next day when I called that he was under absolutely no obligation to see me, at any point, and that his next “new patient” appointment was more than two weeks away, and that ER doctors (at this ER) lie to their patients about this all the time.

I caused a stink. I explained that this wasn’t just random knee pain, but that I couldn’t even bend my knee enough to sit down on the toilet, that I couldn’t function at all. I called my ortho in Denver; mooses bless him. He was in surgery, but his PA called me back right away, and he texted her from outside the OR with his suggestions (draining/aspirating the knee, and injecting it with cortisone to alliviate the swelling). The PA had the ortho tech call SynVisc to see if this was a common reaction, and they called me back to let me know it was unusual (especially in one knee) but not unheard of. And finally, I snuck in on Tuesday to the Ortho in AZ.

What did he do? He looked at it for about 15 seconds, told me the only thing for immediate relief was to drain it right away, and inject it with cortisone. Surprise. When he drained it, he literally drained almost a full cup of fluid from it.  You know those cups you have to pee in? Full of fluid of grossness from my knee.

Suddenly, I could actually bend my knee. It still hurt, and I still needed the cane, but I could actually put a slight amount of pressure on it without it giving out on me. 

I was so angry at that ER doctor. And then I found out that I knew someone who’d gone to the same ER; he had a blood clot, and they sent him home because it was a “small one.” Two days later, he had an embolism in his lungs. So I guess that not having a cup of fluid drained from my leg isn’t that big of a deal, because it couldn’t have killed me.

But this whole experience made me question how Q viewed me, whether she’d given up, whether she’d finally realized how difficult it was going to be living and dealing with someone like me.  But that’s a whole new post.

-Essin’ Em

Always Aroused Girl has been blogging a bit lately about the oh so fun game of trial and error with her pills, and I feel so much empathy for her, she doesn’t even know. I actually have to have a spreadsheet now of what pills I’ve tried for which problem, their dosage, why they didn’t work, etc…other wise, I have no idea when the doctor asks me if I’ve tried Alavil, and if so, why it didn’t work.

I take about 8 or 9 pills every morning, depending on the condition of my knees. Then 2 at lunch, and another 3 before bed. This is assuming I’m not in any intense knee pain (up it by one more pill every 4-6 hours), or having a migraine (I get 2-3 a week…then add 3 pills to start, and 1 every hour till they knock me out).

People joke with me that I’m a travelling pharmacy when they see my giant travel pill box. But I have to have it with me at all times, because I never know when something will act up. Plus, of course I keep a bottle of IBprofen in my purse, because that’s my first line of defense for my knees/hips before I add the oxycodone.

I hate it. A lot. I hate having to swallow literally a handful of pills every morning. A whole handful. If you ever meet me, you’ll be very impressed with my ability to swallow almost a dozen pills all at once. I’m like a python or something.  It takes practice. I remember having to learn to swallow pills when I was younger, and I got to practice with M and Ms. Which actually sucked, because you didn’t get the taste the chocolate.

I hate not being able to go anywhere without the clacking of my pills. Without my purse, I get nervous.  What happens if ___.

I mentioned on twitter my frustration with all the damn pills (keep in mind some are not traditional Western medicine; I take glucosamine chondrontine for my knees, and flaxseed Omega-3 for my heart and B-12 cause I’m a vegetarian), and someone said that when they felt that way, they just stopped taking them all for a few days.

While this may work for some, please note how dangerous this can be with many drugs. In college, I was on Paxil, mostly for my insommnia.  I got sick of taking it, and so in my 16 year old mind, the best option was to just stop taking it, ignoring the fact it had taken 2 weeks to ramp up to my current dose.  4 days of cold turkey and I ended up in a severe depression and tried to kill myself. PLEASE be careful with your drugs.

The point of this post? There really is none. Just me bitching about the ridiculous amount of medication I have to take on a daily basis, and to please warn people about going off any med (prescribed or OTC or natural) suddenly. Your body needs time to adjust.

I don’t need any more migraine med recommendations. I’ve gone through the list. The med my current neurologist wants to put me on has been refused by my insurance (like my allergy medication), and costs $160 for 4 pills. FOUR PILLS.  It’s cheaper for me to go to the ER ($150 copay) than to pay out of pocket for the migraine pills I need to keep me out of the ER.

So I just up the doses of what I have, and hope it works.

People wonder why I don’t really care about gambling…it’s because I do it every day with my health. Trying to figure out which pill fucked up which part of me, trying to avoid taking pain killers, but guessing whether the pain will become unbearable. It’s all roulette…just with me, instead of red and black.

-Essin’ Em

I wrote about sex at 2am a few months ago, and I’ve re-edited it to include how my chronic pain plays into my sex life, decsions I make about said sex life, and so on.  This is one of the pieces I read last night at Femina Potens for the Sizzle event focusing on dis/ability.

-Essin’ Em

It had been a long day. One of those days where I wasn’t sure if I would make it through on my own, whether I should pop a pill or just rely on the ice packs that had become my best friends.

It was supposed to be a romantic day.  We were supposed to do all these things; a walk in the park, a picnic, and then of course, have lots of hot sex.

But like it sometimes happened, today was one of those days. The pain trumped our plans, and suddenly, our romantic evening turned into a night of cuddling on the couch, trying to find just the right position where we could still be entwined, but where the pain couldn’t take over.

She went to sleep before I did, sometime around 11. I stayed on the couch, typing on the computer, watching mindless shows on the TV. The swelling had gone down, and the pain had mostly subsided with it. Of course, NOW I was ready to be romance, NOW my body agreed with me. Thoughts of “if only” danced through my head, but I pushed them aside. Pain is pain and there is no debating with it.  Finally, I started dozing off, and I headed to bed.

She lay there, arms splayed, cuddled up cozily in her sweatshirt. So peaceful, restful even.

God, did I want her.

Thoughts of what I wanted to do to her raced through my mind. It was 2AM; should I slide into bed, ready to sleep, and save my salacious plans for the next day? Or perhaps, just maybe, would I be forgiven for waking my handsome partner, as long as I did it with such good intentions? The questions raced around, and I decided to grasp the moment.  It seems as though there are fewer and fewer times where I’m in a low pain place, and even fewer when I’m relatively pain free.  Carpe diem and all that, right?

Gently, I crawled into bed to lay next to her. Oh so carefully, I draped my arm over her, my fingers gently grazing her nipples through her sweatshirt. No movement.  A bit more intently, I ran my fingers over her breast, concentrating carefully on her nipple. A small sigh escaped her lips. Success. The dice has been thrown, the decision made. I began more ministrations to wake my sleeping lover.

Moving slowly, I slid my hand under her sweatshirt, fingers finally contacting directly with her nipples, hardening beneath my touch. Moans emitted from her throat as I begin to pinch her nipples, playing with them more roughly as she started to come into consciousness. 

“I’m sooooooo sorry to wake you up.” I whispered sweetly into her ear, just before nibbling it softly, rolling her earlobe over the tip of my tongue.

“No you’re not.” Her eyes her still closed, but her chest had begun to heave up and down more; her sleep breathing interrupted.

“You’re right. I’m not sorry at all…you were just…there. And you looked so hot, so enticing, I just had to start playing with you.” Not once did I stop the movement of my fingers. Not once did I even consider stopping and falling asleep. My plan had been hatched, and I planned to follow through.

So I kept playing with her nipples, pinching and pulling them. That shut her up, as she was back to moaning and breathing heavily. 

Carefully, moving very slowly and with purpose, I slipped my hand into her sweatpants, slipping my fingers between her lips, searching and hunting for her clit. A gasp from her told me I was getting close. Running my other hand over the rest of her perfect body, nails scrapping against her skin, I whispered in her ear how hot she made me, how much she turned me on, how much I wanted to fuck her.

I honestly couldn’t remember the last time we’d had sex in the dark, and as her body gyrated to my touch, I felt a bit naughty. It was almost as though we were two random people, hooking up in the dark of the night, exploring bodies with no knowledge of each other. I felt my own clit begin to throb.

Pumping lube into my hand, I slid my fingers into her cunt to elicit a gasp. First two fingers, working in and out, in and out. Then I moved up to three as she bucked up into me, wanting more, needing more.

Wishing I could flip around, knees on either side of her head, I instead worked towards getting between her knees.  In the silence of the room, the crackle of the crepitus was evident, but she didn’t say anything, as my hand was still in her cunt.

She moved as if to take off her sweatshirt, but I swatted at her hands. There was just something to fucking hot about wanting it so bad that all I had time for was to push up her shirt and pull down her pants in order to get access to her. Then I lowered my tongue to her clit, and she pressed up into my mouth as I licked and sucked all over her, my fingers still working inside of her, fucking her almost relentlessly. 

When I felt like she was getting closer and closer to the edge, I slipped a fourth finger into her, her gasp giving me shivers. With one hand rocking her clit, and the other pistoning in and out of her, she was making all sorts of delightful and delicious noises as I fucked her closer and closer to oblivion. 

As she got closer and closer, I was so sweet, so kind, and I let her place her sexy black vibe on her clit. She was almost there, and then opened her eyes for the first time since we started, looking at me, the connection so strong.

“Am I allowed to come?” she asked, her look begging for the answer to be yes.

“Yes, you can. I want you to come so fucking hard for me.”

And she did…oh she did.  Her entire body spasmed, her cunt grabbing and squeezing my hand, working in and out of her, breathing so deeply, moaning so loudly.  She came over and over, almost for two minutes straight. 

We cuddled, my arms wrapped around her, our legs intertwined. We relaxed there, all of our limbs entangled, nuzzling one another, showering gentle kisses down upon smooth skin.  My hips were pressed up against her, one of her legs between mine.

Slowly, so slowly that I barely realized I was doing it myself, I began to work my hips. Forward and back, over and over, up against her leg.  Her leg was nestled perfectly between mine, giving me just a tantalizing glimpse of the stimulation I wanted. Needed. Was craving.

I started moving my hips faster. Hard. With a lot more insistence.  She just continued to hold me in her arms, breathing ever so deeply, almost as thought she didn’t notice me pressing myself against her over and over and over again. As though she couldn’t be troubled by my horniness, and was content to just drift off to sleep.

Sighing, I slowed down my hips. No use in working myself into a frenzy just to have to wait for it to abate as we both slid into the land of dreams.  I held her tighter, and tried to slow my breathing down. Tried to not concentrate on the throbbing making itself very well known between my legs. Tried not the think about all the things I wanted her to do to me, all the things that I wanted and needed and craved.

And then, before I realized what was happening, she had me on my back, her arms pinning mine above my head. Not a word was spoken, but the power had definitely been exchanged in that moment.

Leaning forward, she placed her mouth on my nipple, beginning by slowly licking and sucking, and working her way into nibbling, biting and pulling. First one, then the other. My hips rose up towards her, in hopes of finally getting my swollen clit some of the relief it so desperately needed. Nothing.

However, relief was long in coming.  Putting both of my wrists into just her single hand, she slid halfway off the bed, grabbing a towel to place under me. Returning to the bed, she kissed down the rest of my body, and reached for the bottle of lube.  She squirted some into her hand, and without bothering to warm it up, she reached for my clit.

I gasped at the cold sensation, but before I had the time to really feel the temperature, she was rubbing and teasing me, taking my breath away. It felt so good, but damn it, she knew I couldn’t come just from fingers on my clit. She KNEW she was just firing me up even more. Breath regained, I begged her to fuck me. Begged her for even just a finger or two inside me, something for my aching cunt to clamp down on. She said nothing, just continued to tease my poor, swollen and completely over stimulated clit. Her ignoring my pleas only fuel the fire, and I begged even more, even louder, even harder.

Finally, just when I thought I was going to have to push her off of me, when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, she slammed two fingers into me. I moaned, I groaned, I sucked in air, and then I stopped breathing for a few moments as she just fucked me and fucked me and fucked me.

“Breathe.” Her voice reminded me that air was vital to both living, and to not getting panic inducing, hospital visit causing migraines. I sucked in more oxygen. As soon as my breathing was slightly more regulated, she added a finger. And then another.  Four fingers fucking me, not letting up, her thumb drawing circles over and over on my clit.

“We’re not playing any games tonight. You can come if you’d like.”

And I did. Over. And over. And over and over and over.  My cunt clenched around her hand as she never let up, fucking me harder and harder as I came on her, clamping down until she couldn’t move her hand, ejaculating on her arm, her hand, the towel, and anything else in the way. Reaching blindly, I grabbed the Hitachi, turning it on low and placing it on my clit.

I held it there and came more. Maybe another 15 times, who knows.  My hand was sore when I let go, almost in pain from clenching the vibrator so hard. Finally, I came hard enough to knock the wind out of me, and I was done.  I pulled her hand out of me, and pulled her up to me. Koala bear time, I thought as I wrapped my legs around her for cuddling, barely registering the puddle in which we lay.

We drifted off to sleep like that, completely entwined, thoughts of the delicious sex that had just occurred floating through our dreams.  Come morning, all that remained of the sex at 2am was the rumpled sheets and sore muscles. And of course, our memories.

Pain is in my life. It ebbs and it flows, but I can barely imagine what it would be like to live completely without pain. It interrupts my plans, dominating my life and I can’t call red to make it stop. I can’t stop it, but nor can it stop me. If my plans have to change, so must they, and if that means sensual, lights out, barely a word spoken sex at 2am, then that is when I’ll have it.

Photo Credit: John Foley

Given all of my joint awesomeness (read; suckiness), there are a lot of things I can’t do bondage wise. I’ve tried being suspended before, but having my arms bound behind my back cause immense pain…and after the 20 or 30 minutes it took to actually get me up in the air, everything hurt badly, so I had to come down, and it took another 20 minutes to get me out of everything.

Another such thing is the hogtie. I DEFINITELY should not be put in a full hogtie unless you want my pelvis displacing again.  No fun I tell you.  However, here is a partial one I did for the shoot, kind of a damsel in distress kind o’ thing.  Same photographer as last week’s hand HNT.  An odd shoot, because it’s the first shoot Q ever came to and I hate wearing gags of any sort, but overall, some great pictures.

Happy Half Nekkid Thursday to everyone!

-Essin’ Em

Some people like birth control. Some people hate it. Tons and tons of people are on it for a variety of reasons.

People are always shocked when I tell them I’ve been on the Nuva Ring for years…and am STILL on it. I’ve been on birth control of various sorts (different pills, the patch, the ring) for seven years now. I went off of it for 2.5 months this fall as a test…and guess who is planning to go right back on it?

I love that people assume that birth control is only used by women who are having sex with cisgender men.  I haven’t been sexually active with a cisgender man AT ALL in two years (well, there was a kiss on New Year’s Eve last year), and haven’t had any type of sex that MIGHT possibly make babies in almost four years.  Yet I’ve been on hormonal birth control for the better part of a decade.

Why? Because I get horrible, life consuming (and calling out of school/work) cramps pretty much any time I bleed.  And the whole bleeding thing? Well, I’ve been off hormones from the Nuva Ring for about 75 days.  I’ve been bleeding for at least 30 of them. My body doesn’t get it, never has. I first started on the pill because I had three weeks of bleeding in six weeks when I was 17.  Yeah.  I hadn’t been off the hormones since then, and clearly, it didn’t learn anything.

I wish there was a better answer than using CBC (continuous birth control) where I go from ring to ring, only taking a break to bleed twice a year, or when my body decides to tell the hormones “fuck you” and I bleed anyways.  I wish I could get an IUD or an implant or something…but those are to prevent babies, not to stop your period, and that’s all I use BC for.

I hated the pill – I could never remember to take it at the same time, and if I was off by more than an hour or two, I’d start bleeding (I know, right?).  I tried the patch, but a quarter of a corner would peel up, and bam – I’d start bleeding.  I love the ring.  I can accidentally leave it in an extra day, and it’s not blood bath and beyond right away. I never feel it.  I just change it once a month. I’m one of the lucky ones who doesn’t get a headache from it, and it helps my skin out (as I figured out when I got off of it and suddenly had acne like I was a 15 year old again).

So I raise my glass to you, my $40 a month Nuva Ring. Thank goddess I found you so that I can function, and not be participating in Shark Week for a few weeks of every month.  I wish you were cheaper, I wish I didn’t need you, I wish people didn’t make assumptions about me because I use you…but regardless, I am glad that you exist.

That is all.

-Essin’ Em

I’ve been having a lot of high pain days lately.  Between moving, and driving, and unpacking, everything hurts. I dislocated my knee the other night, and displaced my pelvis, straining my psoas and illiacus. Yowch.  My days have mostly revolved around icing, pain killers, and then sleeping off both the drugs and the pain.  I’ve been trying to get some PSO calls, but I need to work on advertising my NiteFlirt account a lot more. Also working on Pro-Domme stuff.

However, the pain is consistently interrupting my life.  I can’t get out of the house to make me feel like I’m not stuck in this condo. I can’t find any jobs that I qualify for that I can apply for online, but between the pain and the pain killers, I can’t really go out and look for work (not to mention that I can’t really walk in and apply for a job at any place that requires me to stand on my feet/walk around/life heavy items for the work). The hot tub in the complex is broken, so I can’t use it to encourage my muscles to relax, and I’m out of muscle relaxers and almost out of pain killers, and cannot afford either the doctor or the prescriptions.

I feel like I’m disappointing Q by not being able to finish unpacking, by not finding a job, by not going out food shopping, etc while she’s working.  She says otherwise, but it’s my own guilt.  It’s making me irritable too – pain has a mega tendency to do that to people.

I know this will always be an issue in my life, that it will only get worse. I NEED to figure out how to manage it when it comes and stays for several days, instead of one night at a time.  If the quantity of my posts slows down for it a bit, you know what I’m trying to figure out now; jobs, pain, and living in a new city. My apologies in advance. I’ll try to keep up with it, but just in case, fair warning!

-Essin’ Em

I am dis/differently abled.  Not every knows this (although I am fairly fucking open about it), as it is not “obvious” as it is with many. I do not use a cane for the visually impaired, nor do I rock out in a wheelchair (as of yet).  While I do have handicap placards in our cars, and sometimes require the use of a cane or walking stick, I am fortunate to usually be able to get by on a drug cocktail and ice packs, thanks to the three surgeries I’ve already have (to say nothing of the four more I need in the near future).

Q is the first partner who has been really good about this.  I have days I cannot get out of bed. She brings me ice packs and painkillers, and lies with me until I fall back asleep, or we watch movies together.  When we’re out, and the pain sets in, she’ll drive my car home for me.  She usually is really good thinking about accessibility, parking, etc.

Until recently, when we both got really stressed due to the move. She chose a beautiful condo for us…but it happens to have five stairs to get down to it.  Now, on a “good” day, that’s not bad. I take it slowly, use the hand rails, and not much to it.  But on a bad day, it seems like having to cross the Grand Canyon, and I almost want to cry just looking at them, either direction.  We had talked about stairs – she told me it was just one or two, and I figured it was the best place, so I was ok with it.  But because of her able bodied privilege, it never occurred to her that the difference between one stair and five was a huge deal.

When we were still in Denver, the night before our move, I had come over for a little. She drove, and we couldn’t find parking at her place. My pain level was high, and I was already on my narcotics, so I asked her if she could drop me off at her building, and I’d wait for her to find parking far away. her answer was that she was too tired, and we both wound up walking a very long distance back to her place.

It was this, and her asking me if I could try to drive 2-3 hour stretches on the way down from Colorado…when I had already explained that my knees tended to seize up after an hour or ninety minutes, and would need a rest break.  Not only painful, but pure and simply dangerous.

Now, we’ve talked about this since then. And things are better. None of this makes Q a bad person or less amazing partner, not at all.  But it is so important to recognize our privilege. We talk about white privilege, and hetero privilege, and class privilege, but we rarely talk about able bodies priviledge.  And if someone who is usually so good about checking in with me (see if bondage is hurting my knees, going to get me a drink at the dungeon so I can put my legs up, etc) gets stressed and suddenly forgets about the privilege part, then we all can. I know I forget about much of my privilege at times. It’s not something to beat ourselves up about, but rather, to look at, and think about, and see how we can change our actions to account for said privilege.

And last night, we came home, and she got me ice packs and water for my pills, and just cuddled with me in bed until the drugs kicked in. If she isn’t just the most amazing partner, I can’t image what would make her any better.

-Essin’ Em

By the time you’re reading this, I’m probably going under the knife. Or maybe I’m lying all doped up in recovery.

Regardless, I’m having my tonsils (and possibly adenoids, depending on how bad they look) removed today.  I have a few posts scheduled to go up, but probably won’t be posting every day as I usually do until I start feeling a little better.

If you’d like to send me amusing jokes, pictures to cheer me up, etc, please send them to EssinEm at gmail dot com.  Also, you can follow me on twitter (www.twitter.com/EssinEm) to see how my recovery is going.

If you want to send me something, the wishlists are on the side bar. Or ice cream/sorbet/sherbet would also be extremely welcome. Perhaps pudding as well. I’m only partially kidding. Do they have ice cream delivery service?

Regardless, I’m not falling off the face of the planet. Just going under for a good cause, and hopefully when I’ve healed, the sleep apnea they’ve been causing will be gone, I’ll be able to get a good night’s sleep, and breath play will be back on the list again.

Auf Wiedersehen (for a few days possibly…on the otherhand, maybe I’ll be just find and blogging in no time!),

Essin’ Em

I’m alive. I’ve just been having a crazy couple of days with work, knee pain, Q borrowing my computer, etc.

However, while you’re waiting for my next oh so brilliant post (yeah yeah, I know I’m not sexual Einstein), I’d like to direct you to the site ButYouDontLookSick.com.  I discovered this about a year or two ago, but have really been delving in as of late. I’d especially like you to read the Spoon story/theory.  

I’ve been having people I care about or talk to a lot read it as of late, because explaining my life in spoons is much easier.  Between my knee/hip/joint pain, migraines, and now this total exhaustion (caused by the sleep apnea which is caused by my ridiculously swollen tonsils…for which I finally can see an ENT on the 27th, I just don’t know how I’m paying for it), I only have a small amount of spoons, and trying to decide what to use them for is always hard. I highly highly suggest reading this concept in general, but especially if you have friends or loved ones with chronic pain, illness, etc.

Back to your regularly scheduled program tomorrow!

-Essin’ Em