(no subject)

Lots of small health updates in no particular order:

Yesterday I promised a friend that I'd do much resting today and tomorrow.

Progress in my life right now is two steps forward and one step back.

I can't stop thinking about the cardiologist's comments that there were three likely outcomes for me (when my eye went kablooey) and that he was happy that I chose the least bad (my body chose half-blindness above full blindness or death, it seems - an odd turn-the-wheel-of-fortune game).

All that cortisone I took for the inflammatory disorder still has side effects, so I should steer clear of anaphylactic shock and let my immune system pretend it's like the immune system of a more ordinary person. I've volunteered to be allergic to someone else's skin for a change, but no-one's willing to take me up on it.

I should have taken pictures of my inflammatory condition the day I did 3D finger drawings on my leg and stomach. I could have given them to horror-writer friends as inspiration.

Each day I have more hours before the fatigue hits. Each day my brain fog lifts for longer. This is good, because each month my PMT takes up more time. My perimenopause is in battle royal with my blood pressure and etc. Boredom is currently not something I need to worry about.

The question I don't want friends asking this week is "Do you hurt?" I do. Constantly. The thing is, it's not from the serious stuff: it's just the 'everything else.' Give me a couple of weeks and I'll have it under control.

The good news. The news that makes all this tolerable? Healing is happening. I need to take care of myself muchly until my follow-up with the cardiologist and I need to finish the tests (echocardiogram Monday week, for instance) but mostly I can start thinking that there will be more normalcy in my future.

The other thing I dwell on? Not a single medico has an answer for how I tell if I am having a heart attack or whether my RSI/IBS/asthma is misbehaving. There is no consensus on how I'm going to deal with this. What we've decided seems to be that we try to make the question moot by getting my heart better and taking my RSI back to the painfree zone and abating the IBS (it's mostly tension driven these days, so it should fix sooner, now that things are better).

For a wonder, everyone's thinking long term. This means that the short term is such a pain in so many ways, but it also means that I'm going to be fine.

Thinking about Great Women and Heroines (and writing using capitals)

There are some really interesting posts around the traps right now due to women's history month. Sometimes it's the ones that make a brief note of something and have a picture (for instance, this one) that get me thinking.

Our heroic women tend to be beautiful, don't they? Or glamorous? There's always some sort of description of their looks or their clothes or their poise. No wonder the Mitford sisters tangled their lives in such interesting ways. They were being heroes. Beautiful and challenging and daring to be different. It was almost permissible to be a Fascist and Friend of Hitler if one was beautiful and so very well connected. This is the power of looks for the Heroine. Or even the Anti-Heroine.

One other group that's different is mothers. The Sarah Connor Chronicles (with all their Terminator richness) play on this. So Great Heroines are allowed to be maternal. This is good. Mothers are worth celebrating. Mothers who defend their offspring to the death appear in so much of our literature that it's not surprising that, whenever we look at, say Eleanor of Aquitaine, we assess her worth as a parent.

Does anyone know any potential Great Heroines who are noted for their commonsense or practical advice (Trotula, perhaps)? Or their erudition (Abigail Adams, Anne Boleyn)? What other traits ought we desire in our Great Women?

Once we get a decent list, I can keep an eye out and find women from history (Sarah Connor is real, I tell you!) that will match. It would make me very happy to be able to look through what I know of history and find new and interesting people to introduce to students.

What qualities do you think I should put on my list?