What The Whiny GYNie Has Been Up To Lately

The Whiny GYNie has been busy.

Not “busy” in the cute, polished, color-coded way people like to post about. Busy in the real way. The kind that involves advocacy, education, recovery, research, event-building, hormone strategy, surgery prep, and a near-daily reminder that women are still expected to navigate healthcare like unpaid interns in our own bodies.

So yes, I’ve had things to say.

Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time focused on advocacy and helping women understand that legislation is not some distant, inaccessible game for insiders in bad suits. If a bill affects your body, your healthcare, your wallet, your work life, or your basic dignity, then it is your business. Period.

Too many women have been trained to think advocacy is for experts. That’s convenient for the people making decisions without us. I’m far more interested in reminding women that lived experience is expertise, and that your story has value long before anyone hands you a title, a microphone, or permission.

I’ve also been continuing my work around women’s health education and community-building, because women are starving for clear, evidence-based information and are tired of being served a steady diet of dismissal, contradictions, and cosmetic concern.

Women do not need more patronizing head tilts. We do not need another soft-focus explanation for why our suffering has been ignored. We do not need to be told to “reduce stress” when the actual issue is that medicine, policy, and culture have been wildly comfortable under-serving us for decades.

What we need are answers. What we need is access. What we need is to stop acting like women’s health is some boutique interest instead of a massive public health issue hiding in plain sight.

That reality was on full display for me at the Lipedema Symposium at Harvard Medical School. Hearing clinicians and researchers discuss Lipedema, hypermobility, joint degeneration, and orthopedic outcomes was powerful, not because the information was new to my body, but because the medical conversation is finally starting to catch up to what many women have been living for years.

When you have lived through stage 3 Lipedema, undergone multiple surgeries, and are now facing bilateral knee replacements at 54, research does not land as a fun fact. It lands as a missing piece. It lands as overdue validation. It lands as one more reminder that women are too often forced to become detectives in the crime scene of their own healthcare.

I am learning more every day, and I now better understand that my body composition and mechanics likely played a role in my need for total knee replacements at this age. That is useful information. It is also infuriating information. Because clarity is great, but clarity after years of being overlooked is not exactly a victory lap.

That’s part of why I was proud to recently spotlight my story in my Two Moons Health blog post, “What Is Lipedema? The Signs I Missed for Decades (and What I’d Tell You Now).” Writing it gave me a chance to spell out the signs I missed for decades and the reality that too many women are still blaming themselves for a condition that was never properly named.

Read the Two Moons piece here: What Is Lipedema? The Signs I Missed for Decades (and What I’d Tell You Now)

And because menopause loves to add insult to injury, I’m also heading into this next total knee replacement hoping to avoid the brutal night sweats that turned my last surgical recovery into weeks of sleepless nights. That wasn’t a minor inconvenience. It was a full-body, middle-of-the-night mutiny.

I discussed those horrific night sweats with my Menopause Society Certified endocrinologist, including whether we may need to temporarily adjust my menopause hormone therapy during surgical recovery. I also conferred with three Menopause Society Certified MDs and a hematologist, and my care team determined that even with Factor V Leiden, I can continue my menopause hormone therapy after surgery.

That was the plan with my first knee replacement, and it will be the plan again for the next one. I do, however, need a prescription blood thinner for 30 days post-op.

That matters to me because too many women are told to white-knuckle surgical recovery while pretending menopause symptoms are some trivial side plot. They’re not. Sleep matters. Hormones matter. Surgical planning matters. Women deserve coordinated care that treats the whole patient instead of chopping us into disconnected specialties and hoping for the best.

At the same time, I’ve been doing the deeply unsexy work of preparing for my upcoming surgery. I’m back to regular workouts with modifications, focused on getting strong, staying honest about what my body needs, and doing the kind of prehab that nobody glamorizes because it doesn’t come with good lighting or a discount code.

But this is part of the story too. Not the filtered version of resilience. The real one. The one that includes scars, frustration, humor, adaptation, and grit. The one that says you can be tired and determined. The one that says you can be healing and furious. The one that says you can be deeply informed and still completely done with everyone’s nonsense.

And because I apparently don’t believe in easing gently into anything, I’ll be 12 days post-op when I volunteer with Team Whiny GYNie at Belle of the Ball on April 11, 2026, at the Hynes Convention Center. Belle of the Ball helps deserving high school students access free prom attire and accessories so they can have the prom experience they deserve, and being part of that is deeply rewarding.

If you’d like to join Team Whiny GYNie for Belle of the Ball, sign up to volunteer and I’ll supply you with a Whiny GYNie t-shirt. It feels especially meaningful to support an event like this while I’m still in the thick of recovery, because helping make prom dreams a reality for students who deserve that joy is exactly the kind of perspective shift the world could use more of.

That has always been the pulse of The Whiny GYNie.

Belle of the Ball volunteer sign-up: https://antons.com/belle/individual-volunteer-sign-up/

Truth-telling with edge.

Advocacy without apology.

Evidence with personality.

Patient perspective that refuses to sit down, shut up, and be grateful for crumbs.

So what have I been up to lately?

I’ve been learning. I’ve been organizing. I’ve been educating. I’ve been preparing. I’ve been recovering. I’ve been connecting dots that should have been connected long ago. I’ve been saying the quiet part out loud for women who are too exhausted, too dismissed, or too angry to package it politely.

In other words, I’ve been “whiny.”

And if by whiny we mean informed, strategic, relentless, and unwilling to let women be gaslit into silence, then yes. Very.