Ep. 77: A Personal Update: My Top Surgery, Scented Joys... etc.

It's been about six months since I put out an episode of Ink Medicine. I am back. Hello. May this new year of 2025 bring us some unexpected joys. 

I got chopped. I concentrated on healing solely for a while. Now I am slowly getting back to my regular life. Including this. 

It's good to be here. I will talk to you next week. 

You can connect with me, Micah Riot, as well as see my tattoo art on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/micahriot/

Micah's website is www.micahriot.com
The podcast is hosted on Buzzsprout but truly lives in the heart of Micah's website at:
https://www.micahriot.com/ink-medicine-podcast/

Chapters

• 0:27 Personal Update and Future Plans
• 9:30 Strawberry Scent Obsession Happiness

Transcript

Micah Riot: 0:27

Hi darlings. It's been a while, micah. Here I'm a little bit out of practice, but what are we going to do? Get back into it. It's a new year, 2025. It's January the 10th and I'm not having the usual enthusiasm about starting a fresh year, probably because the state is burning, california is burning, you know who's about to become president and things feel uncertain. But what we really got to do is stay present, certain, but what we really got to do is stay present, love the people we love, do the things that make us feel good and support each other and support artists, feel ourselves in ways that are good for us. We're going to need that strength for whatever is coming next, and that's where I'm at. So I want to start this thing back up. It has been about six months and it was a good break. It was a needed break, and I do not have it in me to upload an episode every week, as I did the first year. It was a really good exercise and I was really happy that I did it, but I do not think I'll have it in me, but I want to be here, I want to make episodes. I love the idea of talking to you and you listening and I have some episodes planned with interviews with really interesting folks, and I'm sure I have some things to teach you about tattooing, tattoo culture, share some thoughts of mine about tattoos and tattoo culture and also nothing to do with tattoos at all as well. I wanted to give you a little update about me. What's been coming up with me for the last not so much six months that's going a little far back but the last couple months and so the last couple months I was healing I finally, after about 20 years of thinking about it, got top surgery and for those unfamiliar, it is a double mastectomy done for the sake of mental and physical comfort.

Micah Riot: 2:51

It is gender related. It is um for me. For me, it was elective. It's not elective for every trans person out there. A lot of trans people need to have these physical modifications to feel like they want to be here, like they want to live.

Micah Riot: 3:07

For me, it was a choice based on feeling like I, too, deserve feeling comfortable, but I did not feel like I couldn't live without it for me personally, and still I decided to do it. I decided I didn't need to compare my desires and wants and degrees of need to other people's, so I decided to do it and 20 years ago, when I first was thinking about it, I just never thought that I could afford it. Back then, insurance wasn't covering the surgery and also I was working putting together less than minimum wage jobs to pay $500 rent and buy a few groceries, and I just didn't think that I could ever set aside enough money or have enough money to do this, because besides the surgery fees, there's also the living expenses that one incurs while healing, because you cannot work for I would say, at least a month, but more like six weeks. Yeah, it's taken me a long time to get to this place where I could feel like I could actually make it work logistically. And here we are.

Micah Riot: 4:25

I'm on the other side of that. I'm back to work. I'm feeling really good Every day when I put on my clothes or put a t-shirt on work. I'm feeling really good Every day when I put on my clothes or put a t-shirt on. I feel really comfortable. I love not wearing any type of bra or layering if I don't want to. It just feels so good and liberating and I just feel like now my body is all mine, like there's nothing kind of attached to it. That's not mine. It's not that I feel like it's all perfect now. You know like I still have my little complaints about things, but overall it just feels more mine. There's, as I said, nothing extra. It's like more streamlined. It's so nice, it's a nice feeling and I think yeah, I think my partner said is several times. She said she's never seen me this happy with my body, and that's it's a nice observation to receive from someone who has been with me for the last six years and has seen me struggle in different ways.

Micah Riot: 5:25

A couple months before that, I was getting ready for the couple months that came after I did a little fundraiser. I felt really loved by the support I received and the money people gave me and the food people brought me and the lovely messages checking in on me. It felt really good. I tried to work as much as I could leading up to it to also save up a little bit more money. And then I had my surgery and you know I was so nervous about the surgery part and that day, yes, I was so nervous, but it was sort of the easiest maybe day because we arrived early in the morning. I think we arrived at like 6.30, 6 o'clock or 6.30. And I felt very calm going there and my partner was able to come in with me and be with me until they wheeled me away into the operating room and they, you know, ask you a bunch of questions and there's the final conversation with the surgeon. But they also gave me Valium to help me with my nerves and so by the time I was talking to the surgeon it had started to kick in and I was just like really happy and just being like, just make it look good, it's all good. Good thing. He knew what I wanted. We had discussed it before, the Valium on board. I was happy and it all happened and it was really fast and I did not wake up in the middle of surgery like so many of us are afraid would happen. And then it was over.

Micah Riot: 7:01

I think that, yeah, we got there before 7 am and I think that I think Liz picked me up around 11. So 7 to 11. It was really fast. And then she took me home and on the way home I was in pain but I also got some drugs when we got home and then the pain went away and then I just didn't really feel a lot of pain after that. That was kind of the only time I was feeling badly, so, pin wise, everything was pretty smooth. You know it's uncomfortable, not really a lot of pain. The hardest part was probably not being able to do much and having having to ask people to help me and just, uh, feeling frustrated when people couldn't read my mind. And sleeping on my back, although I did get one of those pregnancy pillows If you're going to get the surgery, I think this is a really really awesome piece of equipment that you need. I actually didn't use any other special equipment besides this pregnancy pillow. Sleeping with it kind of curled around you, you just kind of feel cocooned and you can't roll and your arms feel really comfortable. So I recommend. So that's kind of what I've been up to. I also read a lot of books this past year and I'm going to be putting out an episode about all the books that I read. This will be the next episode coming up next week.

Micah Riot: 8:27

And I also have been really obsessively getting into perfume. I mean I've always been into perfume. Um, getting into perfume, I mean I've always been into perfume, but I sort of fell away for a few years because I just felt like nobody around me was into it and I just thought I would be annoying to people around me with my perfume and then I just decided that I wanted to smell my samples again and I pulled them out, started smelling. I somehow got onto a perfume talk on TikTok and it just fueled my obsession. It's looking at notes, ordering samples, smelling things, testing things, talking about perfumes, listening to people talk about perfumes. It's been the other thing I've been busy with while I've been healing and I've also been making stickers. I made a bunch of new stickers for folks who donated money to my healing fund and I'm now busy giving out the stickers and some other things I made for those folks.

Micah Riot: 9:30

That's kind of where I'm at. That's what I've been doing. Thank you for listening. Kind of where I'm at, that's what I've been doing. Thank you for listening. I appreciate you still being here, or being here again or being new. It's good. It feels good to be back. May this year bring us many more joys that are unexpected and if you're anywhere near LA, stay safe. What's the thing that's been making me happy lately? Perfumes, smelling perfumes. One of my perfume friends has a big strawberry scent obsession and she just sent me a box of scent mail with a couple of bottles of perfume and also a bunch of samples of some of her favorite strawberry scents, and that's what's making me happy lately. I'll talk to you next week.