New bras and scars

That first day of the operation passed quite quickly, as the anaesthetic wore off I slept for most of the rest of the day (which wasn't very long as I was in the theatre for 5 hours), the only time I was properly awake was when I had to go the toilet. I had a drain in each of my boobs, so going to the toilet that first time was hard, i had a drain in each hand therefore no hands free. After a strange night's sleep I woke up feeling more myself.

The drains weren't so bad, except if I forgot about them the entry wounds stung like bitch! Luckily I took to the hospital treatment well and avoided moving as much as possible! My first drain was taken out just the morning after, and the second drain the morning after that.

The first time I saw them properly was when one of the nurses fitted me with a bra. There was a mirror in the fitting room and when I took my gown off and looked in the mirror it was as if I was looking at someone else's body. It just didn't look like me. I mean they still looked like my boobs but there were bits of body I hadn't seen for years! Ha;f of the skin between my belly button and underneath my boobs had been covered by boob mass for so many years, it was so surreal to look in the mirror and see these average-sized, perky breasts with normal sized nipples on my body.

They have been healing very well, they were never very bruised, just lots of yellow bruising, no massive purpleness or anything. My dressings were taken off only a week after the operation. I have dissolvable stitches with dark purple glue holding everything together. The glue falls off when the wound has healed, and now, 3 weeks on, most of the glue has fallen off. They're a bit dry and I need to moisturise them often and out stuff on the scars, but they're still a little temder, at least one is. The nipple on my left boob is still sre, and every time I brush it (you really take for granted how easily you brush your boobs against things) it makes me very aware.

Whilst there was a little bit of suffering and strangeness and sadness (part of me will miss my gigantic bosom), I'm really happy with the results. They look completely in proportion with my body shape and height (except for the massive belly I have grown since I haven't been very active for 3 weeks plus my mum's been here fattening me up!). I have already bought clothes that I would never have been bale to buy before, including shirts which button up all the way without gaping! Proper, fitted, womeny shirts, which I shall be wearing, smart ocassion or not, from now on. I have only tried on one bikini and couldn't really look past the glue sticking poking out in places so I'm going to wait a while longer before I dive into them. i think I'm going to need ones that cover up the scars properly this year, because they'll obviously still be very pronounced.

So that's that! The 2kg the surgeon removed from my chest I seem to have accumulated onto my belly, even though I think my belly is exactly the same, it's just that there isn't a massive mass of boob to draw attention away from it! It will have to go sharpish.

J and my mum have both been amazing throughout this. From the start, the first time I showed J my new boobs she said she loved them already and thought they looked perfect on me. I think her (and my mum's, but her's mainly cos I obviously want her to love them) encouragement has been a great help. If I was with someone who didn't want me to get it done then I don't think I owuld have been happy with the results, whereas now I'm excited about being naked with her again (I have to wear a sports bra for 4 - 6 weeks, no underwire, 3 down!), properly naked! I'm also excited about underwear, these support bras have left me with no cleavage which is a strange phenomenon to me.

So that's that!
Whenever I think about it, I still can't believe I've actually had it done, but I'm so glad I have, and I'm sure that in a couple of months I'll have forgotten all the negatives to it and be enjoying th benefits of a much lighter chest.

At the moment my mum and I are in Cambridge staying with my aunt (the one who I visited in Aberdeen last year). J came to stay over the weekend and it was amazing, she got on really well with my aunt and everything was great.

Next weekend we are going to London to watch Jay Z and Lily Allen (AT LAST!) at Wireless festival, and we have also found out that London Pride is on at the same time! So I'm very excited about that! I've never been to any Pride and I think London Pride would be a very good way to lose my pride virginity!

Hope you are all enjoying your summers, and prides, and thank you for keeping up with me and my inconsistent posts.

A complete change of body shape

I have wanted to write this post for weeks now, but have been a bit caught up in my mum being here, my boobs being reduced, moving to a new flat, waiting for and then receiving results.. I'll start with the boobs, which have completely overshadowed my 21st birthday (sad face) and the end of my time as an undergraduate. So I had said that I would write a blog about my breast reduction, well I was wrong. I haven't wanted to share the experience with anyone other than J and very close friends and relatives, mainly because initially it really shook me up.

At 7.15am on the 7th of June my mum, J and I arrived at the hospital. I was asked to be there for 7.30 so when I arrived and they didn't have a bed ready I thought it was fine, I'm early anyway, I can wait a little bit. Weellll we waited ages, we spent 4 hours in the day room reading magazines (I was called into the ward every now and then to talk to the anaesthesist and the surgeon, and for the surgeon to mark me up) until they called me in for surgery at around 11.30am. The surgeon had said that he would take out almost half of each breast, each one weighed about 2kg so he would take about 1kg from each. Before I went down a nurse told me that after the surgery I would be woken up in the recovery room and then brought up to the ward where there would be a space waiting for me. I went down, my mum was there, the anaesthesists (one of whom was rather fit) were talking to me, and the next thing I know I woke up in a weird room with two weird doctors jabbering and shuffling about. I hated waking up in the recovery room. There was a male doctor, who was a bit brash with me, shoved a syringe (without a needle of course) with painkillers into my mouth, half of it dribbled down my face and I obviously had no idea what was going on. Maybe it was me but I did not like that doctor, and I especially did not like waking up with no familiar faces around me, not even the fit anaesthesist's.

Anyway, they took me up to the ward and let my mum and J come and see me and I just wanted to cry! I was completely overwhelmed by it all, but at least I wasn't in any pain.

I'm going to stop there for now because this post could go on forever and I've been MIA recently on here, my excuse is we have no internet at the new flat, I've been using my blackberry for the really important things like facebook (haha) but typing long posts out is a pain in the arse on my teeny tiny keyboard.

See you soon, and more often!

I am totally spoilt

So the 10th of June is my 21st birthday. My breast reduction is on the 7th, I will more than likely be bedbound on my special day. My amazing mum bought me the camera last week, it's amazing, once J moves into the new flat and we're a bit more settled I'll post all the best pics on flickr. So my mum spoilt me, she bought me an amazing present 3 weeks before my birthday. Now yesterday I waited at J's cos the presents she bought me were due to arrive while she was at work. So I waited and they arrived and I left to meet J after work. Basically, she wasn't going to let me open them till my birthday, but because I'll be bed bound she said I could open them. And oh my! She bought me a Wii! We both want one and I couldn't believe she'd bought it!! Then I opened the other one and she'd only got me a bloody Blackberry (which where I'm posting this from). So yeah, I am completely spoilt. The luckiest almost 21 year old EVER! I actually cannot believe she's got them for me! I cried when I opened them too, I was a bit o
verwhelmed!

Plus the fact that J will no longer be living with friend X after the weekend (she's been especially horrible since J started moving her stuff out). The flat is amazing, the flat mates are amazing, and my mum's going to be here. We're also going to see my aunt in Cambridge, the one who lived in Aberdeen last year. We're really close and I haven't seen her since then. Plus I am very much enjoying being free of responsibilities at the moment :)!

The Future...

... has me so excited! Yesterday I had my first exam, which went really really well, and on Friday I have my last exam of my undergraduate degree. I can't believe that I'm going to finish uni, after everything I've been through and the big changes I went through, moving to England, boyfriends, girlfriends, sadness, happiness, homesickness, richness, skintness, jobs I love, jobs I hate and most of all all the things I've learnt over the past 3 years. Not just university stuff but things about myself. And I've grown so much, I've changed, not a lot, but I definitely has changed, and to think that such an important amazing time in my life is coming to end is a bit weird and sad.

BUT I'm also incredibly incredibly excited about the future. The little things and the big things like the fact that J and I will be moving in together soon, with a couple of friends of ours, in a 3 bedroom flat modern flat and friend X will be nowhere in sight! The rent is really really cheap too because we're all sub-letting and there's 4 of us, which means we will have more money for travels!

Firstly I'm excited about my breast reduction as you will all probably, maybe know by now. After waiting so long for it the bloody thing is less than 3 weeks away! I will be writing a blog about that, mainly because over the years I have read a few and they have been really helpful to me but they were by women in very different circumstances to me. I have always found this problem with my boobs. There are bras made for people with massive tits but they're not really to a teenager's taste. From the age of 14 i have been wearing the same bras that my mum buys, not that there's anything wrong with them but I used to feel so left out when shopping with my friends and they all bought cute little bras with cute little designs on them or sexy plunge bras. I hated it! And I found that many of the blogs I have come across are experiences of older women whose boobs didn't shrink after they'd had kids, or who had big boobs most of their life but it didn't really bother them till now. None of them seemed to relate to me, except certain issues about what size to go down to, so I thought it would be good to put my experience out there too.

Oh did I mention my mum's coming to Derby for a month when I have my operation? That's going to be interesting, but I can't wait to see her, it will have been about 6 months since I last saw her when she comes.

Then there's Wireless, then Malta, then moving in with J, then life... And did I mention I have a new camera to document it all on?

Not to mention I am still head over heels in love with J, she makes me so ridiculously happy and everything seems to be working out for us perfectly at the moment :).

My mum bought me the Sony Cyber Shot DSC-TX5 for my 21st birthday :D (which is 3 days after my op). I saw it and I fell in love with it and I think it's a very appropriate present for my 21st :).

Anyway, I got a bit excited, I wrote it all down. Friend X is being a dick to J so now I am less excited more fuming that my girlfriend has to put up with such shit from a liar and a hypocrite. At least she's moving out of that evil house 4 months then she was originally going to.

I hope everyone is as excited as I am :)

Pope Benedict shares more words of wisdom

God I'm ashamed to be catholic sometimes.

The Pope Tells Portugal That Gay Marriage Will Kill Their Society

Portugal passed gay marriage legislation earlier this year, and within the next week, that legislation might be set to go into effect. All that's left is for Portugal's Prime Minister, Jose Socrates, to sign the law; a step most folks think he'll take, since during his campaign last year, he pledged to support marriage equality.

Portugal's marriage equality debate has some pretty interesting timing, given that this week, the country is being visited by Pope Benedict XVI. Many of us know where the Pope falls on gay marriage. In different contexts, the Pope has called gay marriage more of a threat to the world than climate change, an attack on creation, and an obstacle to world peace.

So it only makes sense that Pope Benedict XVI would use the opportunity of his Portugal visit to denounce gay marriage, given that the country is set to become the latest member of the marriage equality club. And denounce it he did, during an open air Mass before at least 50,000 people at one of Catholicism's most holy shrines, Fatima.

The Pope called gay marriage "among the most insidious and dangerous challenges" to society. Insidious is a particularly offensive term to use there, right? I mean, depending on the context, it either means "treacherous," "sneaky," "perilous," "corrupt," or "snaky." Not entirely a set of adjectives that anyone wants to wear with pride.

So why in the face of a global sex abuse scandal, a heightened nuclear weapons race, the potential economic collapse of entire countries, and a worldwide epidemic of terrorism would the Pope choose to count gay marriage among the "dangerous" things in the world? Talk about hyperbole. And the Vatican wonders why barely anyone goes to Church in Portugal anymore.

Apparently Pope Benedict XVI isn't really listening to certain other Catholic leaders under his fold, like Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, who went on record last week saying that it's about time for the Catholic Church to rethink its position on gay relationships. Speaking to the UK Tablet, Cardinal Schönborn said that the time has come for a change in theological thinking.

"We should give more consideration to the quality of homosexual relationships," Cardinal Schönborn said. "A stable relationship is certainly better than if someone chooses to be promiscuous." In other words, the Cardinal said, gay relationships deserve respect.

Respect, of course, doesn't come neatly wrapped in insidiousness. Instead, that's language meant to demonize, something that happens all too frequently from Pope Benedict XVI during his tenure as Pontiff. Count today as another moment of disappointment when it comes to the Vatican's approach to love.

Article can be found here: http://gayrights.change.org/blog/view/the_pope_tells_portugal_that_gay_marriage_will_kill_their_society

8 days...

... till I finish uni!
Also, wow I have 91 followers! I've been MIA recently but I've had loads of uni work and work work but soon I will be finished and having more fun and more time :).
Also, I have got myself a tumblr, because... Well because I had to, I'm stupid like that.
Click here to go to my tumblr :)

Election confusion

With the English election getting closer and closer, and the power of the EU allowing me to vote, I am insanely confused about who to vote for. I've watched the debates, read the articles and still have no idea. First, I came across this website mygayvote.co.uk, which makes it obvious that Conservatives are a no-go. It all seemed pretty simple before, get Labour out of government for a number of reasons by voting conservative. Not happening, especially after this came out yesterday: Tory candidate Philip Lardner suspended for gay comment. They may have suspended him but the conservative party is just that, so Mr. Lardner is probably not on his own, he's just the only one stupid enough to speak out about it.
Next i came across this How should I vote in the general election 2010? on the Telegraph website. You answer a number of questions and then choose the parties you would like to compare your results with. Whilst there no questions on gay issues, I thought it would be interesting to see anyway. I chose Labour, Tories and Lib Dems, since no one else really has a chance, and the BNP just for a laugh. Lo and behold, according to this questionnaire my top match (With about 45%) was with the BNP!! Second were Lib Dems (44%). It didn't really make sense to me, shouldn't they have polar opposite policies? The Lib Dems aren't so harsh about Immigration, which is one of BNP's biggest issues. Who knows.
Finally, I would like to vote Lib Dem. However, with the way seats are distributed, even if they achieve an overall majority, they still won't have enough seats in parliament. For this reason my dad thinks I should vote conservative, just to keep labour out. But I do not want to vote conservative, mainly for the reasons mentioned above. So J thinks we should vote labour since they are the lesser of two evils when it comes to issues that affect us.

Who knows, it's all too confusing. Malta's elections are so much easier, where you are 'born' into a party, the whole family would have been supporting them since the beginning of time and you basically have no choice in the matter. This is too much responsibility for a 20 year old, confused, gay/bi foreign person to take in!

In other less confusing but just as life-changing news, I came across a post-graduate course that sounds perfect for me. PERFECT. It's a Doctor of Educational and Child Psychology at the University of Sheffield, which is ranked number 18 in England overall and number 11 in England for Psychology. When I came across it yesterday I got so excited, I considered changing my plans for next year. It's close to Derby so i could commute, but then I remembered why I chose to take a year out. I'm not ready for a full on three year doctorate course and I definitely can't afford. I told J about it and she told me to apply for it, but anyway applications for September 2010 are closed, but in a few months I can and will apply for 2011. I think the thing I'm excited the most about is having a Doctorate by the time I'm 25! J said she would move to anywhere with me, so we could move to Sheffield if we fancied it too.

I am stupidly excited about the future, the near future, the distant future and anything that might happen in between. I've handed my dissertation in and I'm really happy with it. I'M SO EXCITED!