Think about guys who have caved-in chests. You're better off than that. Further it's a coversation piece. Maybe you can go for the sympathy lay. Honestly, it doesn't seem worth worrying about, but I don't really know how to convey that attitude. I'd say get the tattoo, but if you're this upset over the scar/missing bone, I'm doubtful you're the tattoo type.
I don't know if I'm "this upset," but when your own body feels strange to your touch, it takes some getting used to.
I think you mean "Fucking bears are dangerous!"
You could distract people with a big spider tattoo on your face.
After a while, it'll just be who you are. No one seems to notice the long scar up my wrist from the broken arm.
You've got a lot of chest hair, right? Is it going to be super-noticable once your hair grows back?
I'm sorry that your scar makes you sad. I imagine it must be difficult when you have one idea of what your body looks like and accepting a big change like that.
I'm sorry that your scar makes you sad.
Classic non-apology apology.
Really, don't worry about it from an attractiveness point of view (after all, is it likely to be visible when your body isn't shaven? The impression from the picture was that there wasn't a whole lot of exposed skin going on.) People have scars, and no one who's otherwise interested in getting naked with you would be put off by it.
I know what you mean about feeling weird about it, though -- I was surprisingly disturbed when I got my only significant scar, and it really isn't much: maybe an inch by a quarter inch of puckered skin on my knee.
I wouldn't assume the shape-change you note is permanent; I bet you've got some muscle atrophy because the incision site has been too painful to move. Once it's healed, and you're moving symmetrically again, odds are the change you've noted will diminish quite a bit.
Fucking scar is in one of the few not-so-hairy areas of my body (along my side).
No one seems to notice the long scar up my wrist from the broken arm.
Yeah, I've got a decent-sized scar on my arm, and I was prepared for a scar, but I wasn't expecting this weird notch.
6 - I totally didn't mean it that way! Sigh. I'm going to go slink off with Tim.
To be clear: totally not bothered by scars. Scars are cool; I have a few.
Oh, I just reread -- it's a missing rib, not muscle. Eh, so it might not go away.
Disturbing for you, absolutely. No one else will care.
What you should really do is post another picture, so we can all make fun of you if the 'notch' is too subtle for the human eye to detect. They you can feel free to date the commenter you busted on the dating site.
Poke it a whole bunch until you become used to it.
Poke it a whole bunch until you become used to it.
I'll post another picture, but I don't have a camera right now.
I'm sorry, Ogged. (Is that better?) You could watch a movie that is about the theme of disfigurement, and both relate to the character and think how much better off you are. The Horse Whisperer comes to mind--not a great film, but on theme, and featuring a young Scarlett Johansson. The most harrowing film of this nature that I've ever seen is a French movie about a "broken face" casualty of World War One.
You could also read Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy, about her disfigurement. These examples would be more extreme than your own, but would discuss issues of appearance and relating to your body, &c.
That's a thought ac, but I've never been able to watch disfigurement movies, news stories, etc. I guess it's no wonder I'm freaked out.
Perhaps the notch has an awesome function yet to be revealed to you. Is it say, notch-y enough to pleasure a woman?
17, 18: Could you conceal things in the notch, covered with flesh-colored latex? Drugs, weapons, microfilm?
It'll get better with time. I've got one around 7 inches long that goes right between my abs. Tore a blood vessel internally while throwing up. Didn't realize it at the time. After 24 hours of internal bleeding I passed out at the kitchen sink while talking to my wife (ironically, while telling her that I was really starting to hurt and I think I need to go to the hospistal, etc.). At the hospital, the ultrasound showed I had a ton of fluid in my abdominal cavity. They put me under telling me they were going to make a small incision under my belly button so they could insert a scope and see what was going on. I woke up with this monstrosity as when all they could see with the scope was a shitload of blood, they freaked and opened me up. 22 staples to seal it. The first year or so is the worst, because that's when it's still raiised up, and it's a noticeably different color from your skin. Didn't help me that my ancestry is primarily various parts of the British isles, and my default skin color is snow white. I don't have a notch, but when I flex my stomach a bump that appears next to the top of it. Like everything didn't quite reconnect right. Weird.
Over time it'll flatten out and fade. I tell people it happened in prison, and the other guy is dead.
But we're all being too easy on you.
at the moment I distinctly feel a bit freakish
This is different from your norm exactly how?
Maybe you could compensate for your freakish disfigurement by dieting constantly, getting highlights and wearing high heels? And only fucking in the dark?
Perhaps the doctors took the rib to fashion a wife for you, ogged.
They only do that for good Christian boys.
Ogged, once you fully heal, you need to spar a bit and see if you can totally take a punch on that side better now that the kidney's gone. Or, will it still hurt because the body still thinks a kidney is there?
19- But see, it's just like reading gswift's comment.
I've still got my kidney, people! They only took out a third of it.
Nobody believes you about that, One-Kidney.
Perhaps the doctors took the rib to fashion a wife for you, ogged.
They took half a rib. I'm totally getting a crappy knockoff wife, aren't I?
I'm sorry, Ogged. (Is that better?)
Once more, with feeling.
I can certainly understand the feeling, ogged. I've felt bereft by trivial changes to myself. But, really, no one else is going to notice. And if they do, they're probably lying beside you, in which case, my sympathy for you entirely disappears. (You really must blog the first time you successfully use, "I had cancer" as a line of seduction.)
You should have a prosthetic rib extension made of titanium put in. And while they're in there, tell them to reinforce your entire rib cage with the stuff. It'd be a good first step towards being the Iranian Wolverine.
Autobiography of a Face is a good book. This is sad though.
tell them to reinforce your entire rib cage with the stuff
That's the kind of outside the box thinking I was looking for.
Jeebus fuck! I just realized the notch gives you a Touch and Feel (TM) exhibit for your tale of cancer. If the ladies are feeling your body in public, even after just meeting you, you're pretty much in there.
How much do you think it is to have a half rib removed as cosmetic surgery?
Scars are awesome. This may have been mentioned upthread, but bears repeating. It may be, Ogged, you don't have enough scars yet in which case you ought to go spit on a bobcat or something.
The weird touch thing -- is the skin still numb? That will go away, of course, you know. A fellow I once knew used to sit on his hand before engaging in horrid self abuse with said extremity, in order to facilitate his imagining that the hand belonged to another. I'm not sure what he did about the pins feeling.
No need to thank.
No, it's not numb anymore. I guess it's more accurate to call it a "groove" than a "notch."
You see, it's this precise sort of thread that makes us lurkers clam up. How to be extremely witty, and sensitive under the guise of callous, all at the same time. Must take practice.
A fellow I once knew
Lovely euphemism.
that's why you lurkers ought to pipe down already. This is the thread to be sorry for ogged, not to be sorry for lurkers who aren't sure how to be sorry for ogged yet. That thread is tomorrow.
I didn't know him very well of course. His name was txet. A dirty Georgian.
A fellow I once knew used to sit on his hand before engaging in horrid self abuse with said extremity, in order to facilitate his imagining that the hand belonged to another.
That is amazing. I'm still gigling.
I just realized the notch gives you a Touch and Feel (TM) exhibit for your tale of cancer. If the ladies are feeling your body in public, even after just meeting you, you're pretty much in there.
Be wary of the chicks who enjoy feeling it a bit too much, or you'll end up dating someone who's into stump porn.
Couldn't you have reconstructive plastic surgery for the rib?
Ogged, fill the groove with chocolate and offer to be licked.
Did your doctor by any chance suggest a silicon patch to put on the scar? The Kid put his arm through a window once, fileting himself, and the patch made the scar far less noticeable.
It'll get better with time.
Maybe, maybe not. When I had my appendix out, it turned out I was allergic to the sutures, so my doctor had to reopen the incision and let it heal from the inside out. (It was made even better by the fact that my appendix wasn't where it was supposed to be, so they had to make a bigger incision than they would have otherwise.) The scar hasn't improved at all in the 17 years since I had the surgery.
my appendix wasn't where it was supposed to be, so they had to make a bigger incision than they would have otherwise
Ditto my kidney; higher than they expected, which might explain why the top of the cut isn't as clean as the bottom.
I have a a quarter inch scar near my eye from when I faceplanted into a gravel road mountain biking a few years ago. I fretted about if for all of about six minutes before I decided it looked cool.
50: The fun part was that it was sufficiently out of place as to confuse the diagnosis. The first doctor I saw in the hospital actually said "Well, at least we know it's not appendicitis, since the pain is in the wrong place." Oops.
49: My dad has one of those. Back in the 40's, as a kid, he had his appendix taken out and turned out to be allergic to pretty much every kind of suture they had available. In a bathing suit, he looks as though a small carnivore had made a determined attempt to tunnel through him.
My wife discovered she was allergic to chromik (sp?), the most common type of suture used these days, for her episiotomy.
I'm crossing my legs at 54, and I'm a guy.
You could get a few more ribs taken out and go down on your ...
umm... nevermind
55: Getting an episiotomy is generally much worse for a guy than a girl.
Ogged, dude. You had cancer. At the age of 33. Now you have a groove at the bottom of your left side ribcage.
Count your fucking blessings. It's not a disfigurement; it's like a quality mark or something.
Shorter B: "I wouldn't fuck you."
So there is this guy in LA that I knew growing up; we've made out the last several times we've hung out. But that was getting wierd, 'cause we're grown now, so what is with making out and not taking it further? Why didn't he want to?
But just this past weekend, I found out that he has a minor strange thing about him, and because of it he doesn't like first times. My only thought was relief and "Yay! He thinks he is freakishly deformed! Not me!" And of course, I didn't care.
Don't let it slow you down, 'cause your next girl could well misinterpret and think your hesitation is about her.
Proof that cancer makes you groovier! And qualifies you for a pity fuck!!!
Also, which loss do you mourn more, ogged: the chunk of kidney, or the length of rib bone?
Some information about the situation? Yep.
63: I'm thinking she did, but she is being a bit coy about it. It's not entirely clearly whether she found out about his freakiness through, say, a friend, or through actually getting busy with the guy.
Nevermind the "I Am Not A Terrorist" t-shirt, that guy needs a "My Pecker Is Bent" t-shirt. In fact, maybe we all need t-shirts proclaiming the thing about us that makes us most ashamed; it's going to come out eventually.
Yours should say "Groove is in the heart", ogged.
68 is perfect. Wish I'd thought of it.
Either that or "Jared, I'm sorry!!"
In fact, maybe we all need t-shirts proclaiming the thing about us that makes us most ashamed; it's going to come out eventually.
There's a lot of room in "eventually."
Anyway, everyone can see how pointy your head is, so no need for a shirt proclaiming that.
Nope. Different t-shirt for that guy. It isn't something you could guess.
To my great shame, my t-shirt would read "I have tan lines." On a Valley Girl, even.
It isn't something you could guess.
Nonsense! If everyone weren't already asleep, we could guess this in five minutes, tops. This is America!
My guess: his belly button honks when you press his tummy.
Maybe my shirt should say, "I despise your small-minded attachment to the stringing together of days that you call your 'life'"? Is that a winner with the ladies?
Here's a reference for 71, for the noobz out there (click on the "good friend" link in the post).
Ogged, your shirt could say:
I survived cancer (so far) and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.
And a groove.
And a hideous teddy.
75 - crap. You got that fast. He is actually a stuffed animal. I'm just practicing kissing on him, so that when I get to junior high I'll know how.
I can't believe you didn't do a post on Agassi, ogged. He's even nominally one of your people.
74: His penis is an "innie."
Maybe Megan's guy has a third nipple?
You know, that post/thread was another that happened in my absence, and y'all must be really callous bastards, b/c I'm totally on the side that torturing caterpillars and insulting friends with racist slurs are awful things to do.
The worst things I've ever done involved cruelty to pets, and I will probably go to my grave without admitting them.
So is the latest rollover yours, ogged? Or is Becks just all sulky that I spoke truth to her power?
bitchphd set me on fire!
Not "my" guy. An old friend, with a minor strange thing that is not a deformity and you won't guess.
I know people with third and fourth nipples, who don't know that's what they are. It's strangely personal to see their extra nipples outside their tank tops.
BPhD tied me down to an ant mound!
I remember that post that M/lls linked to. It's weird how I can cop to some horrible transgressions in my life, but it's little things like the ones mentioned in the post that I'm too mortified to tell anyone.
A few years ago I read Edward Said's memoir and what struck me about it was how his stories about little pettinesses from when he was a kid were almost painful to read about.
Megan: did the guy have a botched circumcision?
a minor strange thing that is not a deformity
He ejaculates with a force of (approximately) 950 PSI, and if you aren't ready, well...
Is that it?
No and no. Am I really going along with this game?
Premature ejaculation? Orgasm makes him cry? Impotence?
Oh wait. Minor small thing, not actually a deformity. Micropenis?
He thinks he is freakishly deformed!
An old friend, with a minor strange thing that is not a deformity
The "minor strange thing" is a dementia which manifests itself as a belief that he is freakishly deformed?
the worst things I've ever done involved cruelty to pets,
Any chance you were a bet-wetter late into your childhood?
If he makes his partner orgasm, he superstitiously insists on taking a victory lap around the bed?
Or is that too normal?
Bitch threw cosmetics that hadn't theretofore been tested on animals into my eyes!!!
92 and 93. No and no. I'm stopping now. This is way outside the bounds of his privacy.
Right after he cums, he yells out "Surrender Dorothy!"
95 - there are guys who don't do that?
Thanks for being such a spoilsport, Megan.
After the deed is done, he takes out a voice recorder and says "Captain's log, star-date..."?
Standpipe, is it true what they say about you and Brian Leiter?
95 - there are guys who don't do that?
I've been told there are guys who don't make their partners orgasm. Shameful if true.
Before I joked, now, there are other things.
94, no, dear god. I mean, cruel by my account. Not, like, mutilation or anything.
Jesus! Go away people, I hate you!
The link in 105 seems not to work.
He counts down to orgasm, and the moment of orgasm, he yells, "We have lift-off!"
106: You gave them horribly cute names? Made them wear horribly adorable pet clothes? Denied them canned food? Wouldn't let them crap in the bathtub?
If he makes you orgasm, he immediately has to get up and blog it?
Just stop. I'm feeling all fucking guilty not-talking about this.
I am realizing how limited my imagination truly is. Your guesses are great.
Your guesses are great
But are we getting warmer?
112: My apologies. Don't feel guilty.
But: all you women are just teases!
You mean, warmer and a little bit tingly? At the thought of blogging on an orgasm-by-orgasm basis? Only you know that.
I am not either a tease. If you want, I'll tell you all about when I met Ogged last spring. Since privacy doesn't seem to meet anything to him.
What do you mean "If you want"?
Of COURSE I want to hear about that.
EVERYONE at the Mineshaft wants to.
I met Ogged back in April, before he went to Chicago. I went to see him and he took me out for chalupas. Then we went back to his apartment and as soon as he closed the door, he was all “So, can I kiss you?” and I was all “Um, well, we just met…” and he was all “Dude, I paid for lunch.” So we kissed for a while, and then he wanted to take it to the bedroom. I wasn’t sure, ‘cause it was so soon, but he said that’s what all Unfogged meet-ups were like. “Really?” I said. “All of them?” And Ogged was all, “Oooooh yeeeaaaahhhh. You should have seen it when I was ‘auditioning’ the co-bloggers. Man, people’ll do anything to blog at Unfogged.” And I was all, “OK, I guess.”
So we were in his bedroom, and after a while, he wanted to do it. I’m like, “we just met!” and he’s all “Baby, I have to tell you something really personal and private. I got a disease, baby. I got the cancer. Some days it hurts real bad and there’s just one thing that cures me. Sweet love. You can heal me, baby. From the cancer.” I didn’t want him to have cancer, so we did it, although I can’t say I remember it too much.
Anyway, he didn’t call me after, so I thought maybe he was lying about the cancer. But then he did have cancer after all, so I guess he wasn’t.
I guess I was wrong about the healing me thing. Thanks for trying!
Well okay then, not all you women are teases.
I had kind of pictured ogged carrying on the "may I _____ you now?" questions past just the kissing stage. Now I'm going to have to rewrite all that fanfic.
I can not believe I went to bed and missed this entire conversation.
89: Jeez, dagger. When someone f*rts in the elevator, do you say "Who f*rted?"
b, you gave your dog chocolate?
I still say B's a serial killer. Animal cruelty, a non-denial denial of bed wetting. One could say that, even today, she has tendency to set verbal fires. Serial killer.
Jesus. No wonder I'm such a bitch. A girl mutilates one cocker spaniel, and you people just won't ever let her forget it, even if she feels really bad.
Mutilation? That sounds pretty bad B ... I'm sure you'd feel better if you told us exactly what happened, confession being good for the soul and all that ....
Did the cocker spaniel pee on your bed? Cause that would certainly be a mitigating factor . . .
No, I just thought that that sorta wavy coat would make a really nice muff.
134: Yeah, that's why I was thinking I needed a better muff.
136: Have you considerd pelvic exercises, or surgery, instead of torturing and slaughtering poor defenseless animals?
No wonder that spaniel pissed on your bed, she was probably terrified out of her mind what with the way you were looking at her.
She was used to being looked at that way, the fugly thing.
She was probably just putting on a brave face, and feared being labeled a humorless bitch if she objected.