So, how bad is my spine?
Let me count the ways...Not all of them, because that would be too many, but I'll fill you in. Try to explain the most significant things.
It's hypermobile.
That means it bends too much.
Extra Bendy
This is down to a connective tissue disorder called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS - say 'ERRlers DANloss'). You can gloss over that for now or click here to read all about it. I suggest waiting and checking it out later.
The long and short of it is, our bodies are made of different collagens, a buzz word of today. Collagens are proteins. My body cannot make these proteins properly. Chances are, it can't properly structure them either.
The vast majority of our bodies are made of different collagen. We tend to take these proteins for granted until signs of ageing shows...
One repercussion of this malfunction in production is hypermobility - the ability to bend too much and the superpower to dislocate or sublux any and all joints numerous times a day. It impacts on every system in our bodies and, yes, it hurts. Relentlessly.
I have been in pain every second of my waking life since I was eleven years-old. My neck started popping out and really hurting me by the time I was 13 or 14.
There's a permanent fracture. I have no idea how I fractured my spine. Its official name is Pseudarthrosis (basically meaning 'false joint'). My spine fractured, my brain didn't see it as fractured and so never healed it. Given how badly my meat heals, is this issue made worse by EDS? I don't know.
What I do know is that sneezing, coughing, taking deep breaths and lying on my left side were agonising to impossible for 18 months. I just dismissed it, though, put this torture down to.
Degenerative Disc Disease. Yep, got that too. A number of blown discs down the bottom, and I think my neck has had numerous herniate there too. Let's keep going.
Right at the bottom of my Central Nervous System in my sacrum or sacral spine, there are three large aneurysms. By large, I mean around 13-15cm wide and around 9-11cm long.
The membrane around the roots of the spinal nerves as they leave my spinal cord are dilated and bag out like water balloon - except instead of holding H2O, they're full of cerebrospinal fluid (what I call Brain Juice).
They cause their own special joys and can do nasty things like causing loss of function, as well as eroding the bones of your spine.
Right at the top of my spine, my neck and skull don't sit together well, causing yet another world of trouble and disruption.
I imagine it to be impossible for you to understand how it feels when your skull and neck are not properly attached.
Be grateful for that.
A seasoned corset fits perfectly to your shape, not only physically
feels great, but it also sparks something inside me I struggle
to put into words...
Several surgeries to fuse my spine from top to bottom and pack the aneurysms with fat could be done - in theory. They'd need to be carried out overseas as nobody in the UK will operate to fuse a skull/neck joint with EDS and just that one operation would, if nothing went wrong, cost me around £250,000.
Then there would be the cost of fusing further down my spine and packing those pesky Brain Juice Balloons.
I don't have that kind of cash.
Besides, my body cannot heal itself (damn collagen proteins), with IV needles, stitches and scratches that don't even bleed leaving me permanently scarred.
Plus, I kind of like being able to flex and arch my spine...
One way to see how flexible your spine is is this:
- Stand with your legs straight and feet together.
- Keeping your legs straight and feet together, bend over to place your palms flat on the floor.
- Not your fingertips, your palms.
- And they must be flat.
I'll give you some space...
You should not be able to do this, so don't feel stiff if you can't. It's one of the clinical tests used to diagnose EDS.
As you can appreciate, wearing a well-fitting, boned corset supports my bones and really does help decrease and control my ever-present pains. Once a corset is seasoned and fits perfectly to your shape, not only does it physically feel great, but it also sparks a little something inside me that I may struggle to put into words.
We've never had so many lonely
straight men desiring a female
form and feminine touch...
Make that make sense.
Lady Lumps
I've never had the biggest Lady Lumps, humps or dump truck and, for slimmer people like me, suddenly seeing myself as curvy was a shock. And delight.
An even bigger surprise came when I started trying on the black outfits I'd ordered online that had fallen through my door at a steady trickle.
Black.
Tight.
Zipped.
Sparkly.
Aside from the great posture their restraint provides, I love the edge corsets bring to these costumes that, while packing some sort of punch, were just too middle of the road without corsetry. Maybe it's not just the tiny waist curving out to growing hips, the back arched, rigid and giving way to the soft flesh of buttocks I'm still slowly building?
Maybe it's also the way my bendy body can still move so much inside these fabric cages, while outwardly not seeming to move much at all?
Maybe it's the way my waist, once cinched in, emphasises my wide shoulders atop my EDS-made prominent ribcage?
Men always seem to have liked those wider-but-tiny shoulders.
Maybe it's because my corsets help to stop that prominent ribcage of mine popping out, saving me from the sound and sensation of my sternum popping back in?
Perhaps it's having less physical pain, allowing me to get back to myself as a woman inside this degenerating, torturous body for just a few hours before I take it off again.
Whatever the combination is, quality corsetry makes me feel more feminine, more aware of my femininity. In today's increasingly toxic world, it seems that femininity is now something to be criticised, abhorred, covered up, shutdown and called into question.
While, apparently, we've never had so many lonely straight men desiring a female form and feminine touch...
Make that make sense
I'll embrace, unapologetically, any facet of my own femininity that I so please.
My corsets make me braver.
Mentally.
Physically.
Sexually.
As soon as I saw my ass in the mirror behind me, bejewelled net and wet-look fabric stretching across my flesh, parts of that internal sense of womanhood came out to play.
And, with my
ever-expanding corset collection, that part
of me is never going away.
