Hello again from my bed, at Soco in Buenos Aires. Today I woke up stiff and weak, so I'm taking the big hint, and staying in bed.  I think I'm a little like every animal that gets knocked about, and then puts up a big bluff about being tough enough, but then runs to a little crevice in a tree eventually, and hides until it heals up.  All this exciting difference around me isn't enough to get me out and about today.  My face feels like a mask, my back seized up like a rusty bicycle chain; I can think only slowly, with effort.

Such a nice, comfy bed, though.

Just a picture of my face, healing nicely, in the SOCO hotel lounge, July 28.

The picture there is part of Ani's brilliant graffito iconography, soon to be available in some way... I am feeling much better, little pain, almost no bleeding, swelling down.  My new face is emerging.

Please read the previous two posts if you want the background:  I am recovering from facial feminization surgery in Argentina.  I will resume PressWatch broadcasts mid-August.

I went to the Clinic this morning to be checked by the surgeon, a Dr. Robles, a focused and capable man, and I thanked him for my upper lip, which seems feminine even in the context of my naturally bloated post-surgery face.  He was of course looking for abnormalities or infections, and found none.  I told him that I had awakened during surgery, and had found it quite a horror. 

I believe I have encountered an entirely different attitude hereabouts, that is, in Buenos Aires, about pain management.  I had read an article that said US citizens were accustomed to better pain control, and I think I can vouch for that now.  That said....

But let me set the stage.  This blog follows on the one previous,in which I, Theresa, the big mouth behind Press**Watch, go to Argentina to get some basic facial feminization, that will (I hope) allow me to go about my daily duties with less abuse and/or notice from queerbashing types. I paid up front for the surgery with my savings, held back enough from several paychecks so that I could get here and hang out in a bed-and-breakfast, and here I am, recovering from the surgery.

I'm not broadcasting until mid-August, because I have traveled to Argentina, where I can find experienced surgeons and a working-class surgery price ($6200+hotel+air fare).  Although I have a union civil service job, transgender medical care is specifically prohibited, in writing, in the policies set by my employer ("Tri-Met").  So whereas I have had two expensive non-transgender surgeries in my dozen years there, I cannot address my current medical needs, except on my own time and on my own dime, so to speak.  When queried about this situation, Trimet responded that trans care was like breast enhancement--an option, or a whim.  So it goes.  And so I have crossed the Equator.

Destroy billionaire rule...

Doomsday, as it turns out, is a queer-bashing event.

This free documentary, THE BATTLE OF CHERNOBYL, has very relevant information about radiation disasters.  It is gripping.  See it free now, or bring it up, and bookmark it for later viewing.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-battle-of-chernobyl/

Al Jazeera reported  this morning that the Japanese Prime Minister had been heard shouting at the head of TEPCO, the nuclear power corporation in Japan,  ""What the hell is going on?!"  And surely the world echoes with his question.  I have been monitoring the nuclear disaster in Japan with great interest since the first explosion, and when I read that day that cesium-137 had been detected, I immediately wrote letters, which were of course ignored, to both Oregon Senators, asking for distribution of potassium iodine pills.  My reasoning is that, since cesium is a daughter-product of fissioning uranium, its presence indicated at that moment that the reactor containment was breached and that meltdown was likely; and though I did not say so in the letter