thank you koalanon!!! i don't like talking about this (which you aren't forcing me to, don't worry), but i've mentioned it briefly in the past -- just to put everyone's mind at ease, i'm not like....in immediately danger of dying or anything, i just have a persistently annoying health problem that sounds bad but it's not AS bad as it could be.

the short form version is i had an ovary removed some odd years ago because basically both a big cyst and a tumor kind of........ate the whole thing. the tumor was malignant and my other ovary is kind of a mini me version of that one, with some cysts and a mass growing on the side of it. torsion happens and it feels absolutely awful for a few days, and the mass doesn't really help matters. it isn't super big and i'm on a regimen that means it all stays small and hasn't grown much, which is the ideal scenario. if it shows signs of growing or there's signs of spreading (i have to go to regular appointments for hormone therapy + ultrasounds) then they have to take this one too, which....is not ideal.

i could probably push and get it removed now if i really got annoying about it but having both ovaries removed in your 20s-30s greatly increases dementia and related symptom risk which i already have a familial pre-disposition for. also i'd have to go on estrogen until i was at a standard menopause age and if for whatever reason i can't afford it / access it, that also increases risk factors for shit....so it's like. the little shit in there can just stay until it gets worse.

it's WAY less painful than the other one i put up with at a grapefruit size for like two years which like CONSTANTLY was pulling bullshit (that's another story lmao), but that one was like a twice a month thing so maybe i've just grown soft....this one doesn't feel bad nearly as often, but when it does i want to die; i can't sit certain ways, my muscles spasm, women online say they'd rather go through childbirth again than deal with ovary/cyst torsion if that's any indication.

so that's the little spiel; it's hard to navigate it in a way that's bite-sized because it feels clickbait to call it a cancer thing even if it is, and that's super loaded (which is why i don't like talking about it, since it's like....i don't want sympathy or pity or some kind of stolen medical valor when i'm fine more often than not). it's 99% of the time it's something i barely think about and the other 1% of the time it's just annoyingly painful / psychologically stressful / i'm at a hospital taking up time in my day dealing with some shot or something. nothing crazy, nothing outrageous, just. a thing to live with. tl;dr i'm gonna be fine, it just gets stupid painful from time to time and i have to take a couple days to let that seep out of my brain.

i likely won't talk about this again since i don't like drawing attention to it BUT that's the explanation for all concerned / worried, and thank you for that! but i swear it's really nbd on 350 of the 365 days of the year, tops