Tomorrow is TUESDAY, which means, no nurses, no kids and no Blake – it’s my DAY OFF! I’m so stoked! Here is what tomorrow will ideally entail because I do better with structured days than unstructured ones:

• Morning pages (I’m doing The Artist’s Way again. Last time I did it for a week and gave up, this time I’m doing it for real because I think the crux of my depression is that I’m creatively blocked. Very little makes me unhappier.)
• Waffles with REAL maple syrup (because my mommy loves me) and butter
• Moulin Rouge and sketching (I got brightly coloured feathers on my last trip to Michael’s and I want to use them in a burlesque painting)
• Burlesque (with Xtina Aguilera) and more sketching
• Figure out what to do with BEADS. If anyone has any idea on what I could do with brightly coloured glass seed beads, I’d love to hear it. I mean like, in my paintings, not in general. They were on clearance in tubes for $1 at Michael’s a while back, good quality ones too, so I got a whole bunch of them  and they’re really really pretty. The only thing I’ve been able to think of for them is to make them gravel in mermaid paintings. There’s gotta be a better use for them.
• Read The Artist’s Way for at least an hour.
• Read Painted Pages, which came today, for at least an hour.
• By that time, the kids should be home, so I’m going to see if Madison wants to watch The Sweetest Thing because that was the movie I won in the grocery store’s colouring contest (actually it’s 3 movies on 1 disc but the other two are stupid; Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle and My Best Friend’s Wedding)
• While we watch the movie, I’ll finish my last Sketchbook Project sketchbook page.
• Salmon steak and salad for dinner

Then the rest of the evening is a mystery! I know I’ll watch something with Blake, maybe The Tempest if there’s nothing else on TV because I know we have that downloaded and maybe we have The Ides of March too (I hope so, Ryan gosling, rawr) but whatever we watch, I’ll be working on Argent’s painting, which is fast becoming the bane of my existence because I keep FUCKING IT UP but hopefully tomorrow I’ll get a handle on it.

Tonight we’re having steak and grilled garlicy buttery potatoes for dinner (with peas!), and the Leafs are playing the godforsaken Islanders and we’re gonna win GODAMMIT and that’s all I have to say about that.

Today was pretty uneventful. I sat in my office all day and watched Oprah-related television while I wrote in my Artist’s Way workbook about my issues right now involving all things creative, then I started reading The Artist’s Way from the beginning because the last time I picked it up, according to my last morning pages, was the winter of 2005 and that was before I went nuts and considering I remember very little in this house before I went nuts, I figured I should just start all over again instead of where my bookmark had left off. Evidently I only read a chapter of the book the first time around too. No wonder it didn’t help me.

Janice was my nurse today. I like Janice, she’s nice and bubbly and funny and probably my favourite out of all of them. She also listens to me, for the most part, whereas the others don’t really. :o/

Anyway, I spent most of my day away from the internet and it was pretty great, so I think I’ll do the same tomorrow. I need to have better days than the ones I’ve been having, that’s for sure.

Have a lovely evening!

~*PLEASE DONATE SO I CAN GO TO ART CAMP!*~

Blake heard back from Hanrahan’s office and apparently the specialist I’m to go to for my first surgery is so booked up that I may not get in to have the surgery until JUNE. Their office said that they have two people from the SUMMER who are still waiting for the same procedure as I am. :o(

Before American conservatives bitch at me about wait times and universal healthcare, just don’t even start with me. I’ve racked up a crazy amount of hospital bills that the government is paying for where if they didn’t, we would have had to have gone bankrupt to survive financially. 1) The procedure I’m waiting for is not a life-saving procedure. I won’t die without it. 2) I need a specialist and this is the specialist my other doctor (Hanrahan) knows. I would still be in this position in the US. They’re going to be calling around to look for another specialist who can maybe do it and I’m sure they’ll find one.

The other thing is that my body, this whole time, has been in the process of reabsorbing the fluid from the pseudocysts so they could be shrinking as I type this, making this procedure completely unnecessary, which would mean I could just go ahead and have the big surgery as soon as they’re small enough.

As Blake pointed out, in the last 6 months, my body has absorbed and processed 100 LBS of extra fluid.

I’ll have to go have another CAT scan to see where things stand. No idea when that’ll happen.

When Blake first told me about this, I cried. For obvious reasons (JUNE!) I was pretty upset because my life’s been on hold for this shit long enough and now it was possibly going to affect Squam, which is the only thing in life right now that I have to look forward to.  But Blake put it into perspective: Say I had to wait until June or July to have the procedure done, which I may not have to do because they could find someone else to do it. That means I could have my surgery right away and I’d have 2 months to recover before Squam. If it was later than that, then we schedule the big surgery for AFTER Squam, which I would absolutely be willing to do. Squam is my top priority right now. I need Squam. If I have to wait longer to have my big surgery, so be it.

Blake called Colette, the art lady from Touched By Fire, today because she told him to call her once things had calmed down from the holidays and she gave us some interesting advice. Apparently in Toronto, there’s this store that has an art gallery attached called Magic Pony. The gallery is called Narwhal Gallery. I went to both sites and took a look at what they have and she’s right, my stuff would fit right in.

Apparently they have an online application process, but I couldn’t find it, and Colette suggested that I do that but she was worried that the pictures of my paintings don’t do them justice, through no fault of my own, they’re just difficult to photograph accurately, so she suggested that if the online process didn’t work out, she’d take a portfolio (I’m not sure what that means, exactly) to the actual building and show them my paintings first hand.

So since I couldn’t find the online application, I’ve started drafting an e-mail to them where I’m going to include the YouTube links to the videos I’ve made of some of my paintings because that shows them more accurately and we’ll see where things go from there. It looks promising though!

 Blake’s assuming that if they accept my paintings, it’ll be consignment, which I don’t know anything about. All I know is that I want $250-$300 a piece for what I have “in stock” at the moment, what THEY charge THEIR customers, I don’t care. And I think that’s how consignment works, right?

I hope that works out because it looks like a cool shop/gallery. Expensive though, but for me that’s probably a good thing…right?

I think my mom’s sold on Squam but I’m not sure. She says she wants an “A-OKAY” from Hanrahan but I have no idea when we’ll be seeing her next. Blake had her office on the phone twice today and they didn’t want to see us so I think it’ll be a while before we see her again and we need to have our registrations in SOON. I see absolutely no reason why Squam would be held up by my medical situation so I say we just DO IT. But my mom might have other ideas… :o/

Okay I have to go to the dentist now to get this damn tooth looked at. It stopped hurting around Sunday so I’m wondering if the nerve isn’t dead or something. I guess we’ll find out!

On Sunday we cleaned my office. And I took pictures. Cleaning my office is significant because it basically never happens. I have a really large, square, u-shaped desk that is my pride and joy and it is usually piled a foot high with…VERY IMPORTANT STUFF. Also my office and my studio are the same thing, I just prefer the word “office” because it makes me sound important whereas “studio” makes me sound pretentious. Basically it’s my “stuff room” where I keep my stuff and do my stuff and I love it. I spend a LOT of time in there.

There’s a TV, a Blu-Ray player, a cable box with HBO and The Movie Network OnDemand. There’s my beloved Canada flag that I gaze at with pride every. single. day. There’s the banner Blake made me for my 28th or 29th birthday that says “It Is Your Birthday” that I loved so much because it was so funny that I never took it down (until Sunday). There are 3 paintings: one of sad flowers that was just an experiment in using acrylic on canvas long before I knew I could paint happy girls and two paintings that are a set, one called “Damaged” and one called “Dirty”. “Damaged” is done in reds and “Dirty” is done in browns. Here they are (super old pics, sorry for the crapola quality):

“Damaged” is about my body and I supposed “Dirty” is too because they were both made during a depressive episode where I didn’t shower for a few weeks. This was in 2005, according to the dates on the paintings. My friend Sini bought these two but said that I had to promise to always hang them on my studio wall, so that’s what I’ve done. They’re probably my 2nd and 3rd favourite paintings that I’ve done.

Anyway, let’s take a tour of my office with the “before” pics…

Look at that mess! Look at all that VERY IMPORTANT STUFF!
I am BADLY in need of a new desk chair, I have been for years, it’s just never happened.

This is the most common sight in all of Sunnyland: laundry baskets and receipts.
The dryer is in my office, hence the laundry baskets.
I never throw away a receipt if it has anything to do with Sunnyland Studio.
I don’t even file taxes as a business but I’m scared one day I’ll get audited and I’ll need these receipts so I keep them.
The playing cards on the left-hand corner are pink for breast cancer, underneath them is Skip-Bo and Uno’s in that mess somewhere too.
The bottom corner of the coffee table was chewed off my our old puppy, Zulu.
The black binder is from metabolic clinic and the green one is Cammity Jane.
The round thing above the binders is this awesome blue and silver star garland that I’m going to put around my office door after Xmas when I steal the lights off the Xmas tree to put around my door with it.

I think this one’s pretty self-explanatory.
Blake took the banner down on Sunday so I would be able to put up the lights and garland when it will be time to do so.

Blake got me the TV for Xmas last year and beside it is the furnace.
And of course, my flag.

I love my bookshelf. It’s getting a little full, but I think that’s a very good thing.
Right now I’m reading The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen who is amazing to me.
Blake once described Joyce Carol Oates’ prose as being “chewy” and if that’s the case then Jonathan Franzen’s is “smooth” like vanilla pudding.
More laundry baskets of course.
And a dog who wants to go out.
And a treadmill with Blake’s gross sweaty towel hanging off of it.
And that turquoise-y thing on it is a heat pack that you put in the nukrowave.
Lots of boxes in the corner because you never know when you might need one.
There’s an easel back there too, that I never use. I save it because Blake got it for me and maybe one day I’ll need to display my art on it or use it to take pictures of my art.

Despite having a large room all to myself, I share it with a furnace and a dryer and one wall is aluminum siding and therefore mostly unusable so my paint sits in this box beside my desk while the colours I use the most sit ON my desk.
These clear boxes are full of scrapbook paper, one is just glitter paper alone and these boxes aren’t even the whole paper stash…I just compulsively buy the stuff because NOTHING inspires me more than paper.
On top of the paper is a Michael’s bag full of Hello Kitty puzzles for my sisters for Xmas.
On top of the box are my treadmill shoes and a 3-hole punch.
Behind the box is a big frame that my step-mom gave me a million years ago for Xmas that is pre-matted and says something stupid on it about family. I save it because one day I’m going to use the frame for something, I just don’t know what yet.

LOOK AT THIS MESS!
To be fair to myself, this was AFTER going to Michael’s for supplies to make my office more “me” and to make some Xmas presents, it’s not normally this messy, but pretty close. I usually have a workspace in the middle on this side of the desk.
My phone’s not normally on the desk (the rectangle thing beside the remote, the other phone is usually on the desk).
All that paint is always on the desk.
All that tissue paper (on the left by the Barbies) is for making paper peonies that I’m going to be hanging from the ceiling.
Currently hanging from the ceiling are these gross rubber spider moneys Kevin gave me a long time ago and birdhouses I never got around to painting. The spider monkeys are going in a box and are being put away and the bird houses are gonna probably be thrown out. Oh and there are crystals hanging from the ceiling too, but I’m probably going to leave those there.
The wicks (center) are because I’m going to be consolidating all my candles. I have a million candles where they burnt down to the bottom but there’s like, 2 or 3 inches of scented wax left over. I’m going to melt that wax and make new candles with these wicks I got for $4 a pack. It’s cheaper than buying new candles and it isn’t such a waste.

Did you know Martha Stewart makes acrylic craft paint now?
She does and it’s GREAT.
It’s $2 more expensive than the paint I use now so I’m not going to use it for everything but her metallics (she calls them pearls) are fantastic. The pink metallic paint that DecoArt discontinued on me? Martha makes the exact same shade. She also makes a lighter pink metallic that is the same colour as the stuff I was hand mixing for “Pink & Green I” and “II” AND she makes a light turquoise metallic called “Aquarium” that is just gorgeous. I wish I had money to burn because they’re 60% off right now and if I had the cash, I’d buy one or two of every metallic colour she makes.

I do my makeup at my desk because it has the best light, hence the mirror and lipstick.
Behind that is all my pens and markers in old mugs.
This is the back corner of my desk, it faces a window but I always keep the blinds down.

More of the back of my desk.
Sketchbooks straight ahead in a pile.
Embroidery floss in the box.
Vitamins.
Odourless mineral spirits in the tall skinny bottle.
Watercolour paper leaning against the window.
Sparkly gel pens to the right and also this fantastic circle-draw-er I got at Michael’s for a shocking amount of money, considering what it is. It’s for drawing BIG girls, which I’m going to start doing in the new year.

This is the OTHER back of my desk. If I were to sit here, I’d face a wall. Usually my computer is hooked up here (hence the monitor), but right now it’s in the living room and there it’s going to stay until after I have my big surgery.
To the left is paper and a box of glitter. Also my Sketchbook Project sketchbook which I haven’t worked on in weeks. :o/
Behind that is a bunch of drawers that I never use. All I knew before going through them when we cleaned up was that one of the drawers contained a mummified mouse carcass that we found behind the stove and that I wanted to do something with, but I decided I never would so we threw it out.
Beside that is my clipboard.
Beside the pile of paper and glitter is a turquoise bra and my pencil case, which is High School Musical. (Blake has a strange sense of humour…)
Beside that are turquoise glitter letters that I’m going to use on Argent’s painting.
Beside that are tickets that I got at the dollar store for $2.50 a roll! NO idea what I’m going to do with them yet but they’re cool as hell so I bought 4 rolls in various colours. I would really like to do a Mardi Gras girl so maybe I can hang the “beer” and “liquor” ones from strings as a background or something. They say “beer”, “liquor”, “admission” and I think “refreshments”.  I love them.
Beside those are the Touched By Fire catalogue and my printer that is perpetually out of ink.

This is my ribbon shelf. It also houses tape.
In the bag is a LOT of pink and neon green tissue paper from Xmas last year.

AND NOW THE “AFTER” PICTURES!
It only took about 4 or 5 hours, but we got it organized (more or less)!

Look at that! You can actually see the DESK!

All my paper neat and tidy!

The little bag to the left is my Powerpuff Girls makeup bag. I love it.
The little white jar that says “Golden” on it is their crackle medium, which I’ve had for years but I’ve never used. I hope it’s still good because it was expensive. I’ve never used it though because it’s weird, you put it on a had surface and the stuff, which is white and like a paste, crackles and then you paint over it. Not really useful for what I do.

So there ya have it. My office. Now clean.

What’s funny is that now that it’s clean, I’m afraid to spend any time in there in case  I mess it all up again. Stupid, I know. I was in there yesterday with Blake where we watched Ren & Stimpy while he walked on the treadmill and I tried my hand at making paper peonies. I got really frustrated with it though, because the paper kept ripping, so I got pissed off and crumpled it up and threw it in the garbage. Then I put away all the materials for them and announced that I would not be making any more of them. Blake said, “okay”, because sometimes he sucks and doesn’t say the right thing.  The right thing would have been to be encouraging.

Anyway, I ended up getting the half-finished peony out of the garbage and finishing it, which wasn’t so hard once you knew to go slow, and when Madison saw it on my desk after school, she asked if I would make some for her room too, which I will. My plan, after this post, is to wash my hair and watch movies while I make more paper peonies. Random fact of the day: my computer is named Peony.

So there’s been a bit of drama…I think…in Sunnyland recently, having to do with Xmas. I say “I think” because it’s hard to infer tone in an e-mail sometimes, but I think my step-mom, Lisa, is pissed off at us because we’re not going up there for Xmas like we have for the past few years.

The reason we’re not going up there is because it’s almost 2 hours away, in the opposite direction of the hospital, which very well could, since no one wants to be in the hospital during the holidays but me, call and say “be here in a few hours to claim your bed and have your procedure”. Being 2 hours in the wrong direction would not be a good thing if that happened. Not being at our home phone number, the only number this doctor has for us, would be a very bad thing. Having to wrangle kids and dogs and pack up presents, which is a process in and of itself that usually takes sometimes over an hour, is not something I want to deal with. Dressing changes while we’re up there and bringing supplies (and hopefully remembering everything – what happens if we don’t?) is not something I want to deal with.  Dealing with days worth of pills is not something I want to deal with when I take well over 20 of them 3 times a day.

I am high maintenance. I don’t want to add the chaos of kids and dogs and dealing with my father to the mix, thankyouverymuch.

When Blake e-mailed Lisa to tell her we wouldn’t be coming, we got an e-mail back 3 days later that was pretty frosty, saying that our presents were on a bus to Barrie already so we’d have them in time for Xmas (which we wouldn’t care about in the slightest but I guess it was important to her?). Also in this e-mail she mentioned that Phil had taken some time off work because his father had died.

Excuse me? My grandfather dies and no one fucking tells me? No, we were not close, yes, I barely knew the guy, but I was planning, if I could, to go to his funeral to learn about the guy. And no one fucking tells me? Why the fuck would no one tell me? I don’t understand! And I’m fucking HURT. Yeah, I feel like SUCH a part of this family now, we should all scramble to act like one for Xmas and hey, if I have to wait 2 more months for my procedure, that’s okay, at least we gave Lisa the happy family Xmas she wanted.

God I hate Xmas. There’s just no such thing as a bullshit-free Xmas and at this point I actually WANT us to have Xmas at home every year just to avoid all the bullshit of going up North. Ronny and Alex may be sleeping over on Xmas Eve so they’re here for Xmas morning, where we’ll do presents with the kids (Blake and I aren’t getting each other anything, except the new Jeffrey Eugenides book, which we’ll both read) and eat breakfast and everything will be mellow until we eat the Xmas dinner that Blake will have lovingly prepared because he’s totally awesome.

One note about our turkey this year: IT’S FREE! Our grocery store has this thing called “turkey bucks” where if you spend $50 on groceries, you get one “turkey buck”. We’ve spent enough on groceries that we may have enough money for one and a half free turkeys or just one large one (which is probably what we’ll do because our freezer won’t fit a turkey). Also at our grocery store, there’s a colouring contest for all ages and last time Blake looked, not only was mine the best, but it was also the only one in my age group so I’m totally gonna win. NO IDEA what the prize is (hopefully it’s not a turkey) but yay winning!

And that’s all I have to say.

I am soooooo wiped out. Last night after the art show I almost fell asleep while I was eating so Blake put me to bed where I slept ALL NIGHT (a rare occurrence) and then this morning I had a 2 & a half our nap. Granted, it was because of the hydromorph, but I’m still just kinda “blah” from being social and out last night. I just leave the house so rarely that when I do, it really takes a lot out of me, especially if I have to talk to people and like, climb stairs. (Stairs are still really difficult for me.)

I’m an artist.
My name tag says so.

Touched By Fire was a great event, just as it is every year. I didn’t have any of the appetizers because all of them had either ground meat (swedish meatballs, sliders) which I try to stay away from or weird cheeses, which I also stay away from. Oh and one had spinach. Gross. So that part kinda sucked considering that was what I was looking forward to since I knew I wouldn’t win one of the awards or sell my painting so I was really just going to see the art and eat good food.

But the thing is, I DID SELL MY PAINTING! I was in absolute shock when my mom told me. The buyer didn’t come speak to me at all, so I have no idea who bought it, but this is the first time I’ve sold a painting to someone I didn’t already know. So thank you to whoever bought it!

I’d brought business cards with me to put on the tables that are usually strewn about the event, so Blake distributed those and I’m going to assume that some new people are now reading this as a result. Hi new people! :o) And it’s not as tacky as it sounds, my business cards are Moo cards with full bleed photos of one of my girls’ faces on the front with my website url and Etsy url on the back. They’re more like ATCs than business cards, totally collectible. Also, the last time I did this event people did that with their business cards and I felt totally unprofessional for not having any to do the same. This time I was prepared.

When we got there we were given a show catalogue each and they gave me my name tag, which I immediately hid by putting the catalogue over it because that name tag is the worst part of the whole thing. I hate it. But I know that’s just me and I realize that it’s necessary, but I still hate it. I guess there’s no law saying I have to wear it, but you’re supposed to, so I did, but kept it well hidden, especially when we got around to my painting. But let me back up…we got there and went upstairs to the gallery which is above a furniture store and is HUGE and we went around looking at all of the art, a lot of which is really cool.

My favourite piece was called “The Elephant In The Room” by Kimberly Denny. It was actually two pieces in one and it’s kind of hard to explain…she took two pictures of a brain, one on each sheet of paper, and then she hand wrote the story of this lady in the very early 1900s who was the first person to be diagnosed with multiple personality disorder and the reason she was diagnosed was because one of her personalities killed someone and her punishment was to be hanged. She got off though, because she claimed insanity. So Kimberly hand wrote that story on two sheets of paper and then she….I’m not even sure what she did exactly, to be honest, she used some sort of medium that dried clear and looked like glass when it was finished, and poured it onto the sheets of paper and allowed it to dry. Then she drilled two holes in the top of each sheet and they were hung from the ceiling at the show. The piece was meant to “get in your way” and be interactive and it was really really nice, I really enjoyed it.

Another one I REALLY liked was by Richard A. Jacobson called “I Saw My Father’s Eyes” because it was massive and so so detailed and realistic. He’s on the site twice, it seems, once as Richard and once as Rick. The paintings he has on there as Rick are similar to the one I liked (the faces) but the big one he has on there as Richard was there last night and it was really quite impressive. The wrench and the spade were there as well. I just can’t even imagine how you would paint something so big yet so detailed. I don’t have that kind of realism talent AT ALL so when I see it, I’m just kind of awed.

There were a LOT of really interesting pieces, you should check out the website gallery. (Although none of the pieces from last night will be on it.) You can buy pieces through the website but there are no “buy it now” type of buttons so I’m not sure how you actually buy anything. I guess you would have to e-mail them if you saw a piece you liked. Kind of an ass backward way of doing things, if you ask me, but at the same time, if you buy through the site, I would get 100% of the money, as opposed to Etsy where I have to part with 3.5% of the sale price.

The lady who was sort of in charge of putting the show together (there was actually a jury of 3 people, two guys and this lady) is named Colette. She’s the Director of Cooper’s Fine Art Gallery. Blake found her at one point last night, to ask if we could take my painting home after the show since it would be a pain in the ass to have to come back down to Toronto just to get it. (That was before we knew it had sold.) She actually wanted to talk to me, so she came over to where my mom and I were standing and we started talking and she said how much she liked my work. I confessed that I wasn’t sure how I got into the show and before I could explain that my confusion was because my girls are usually pretty happy and this show is usually pretty dour or manic, she cut me off and said, “it’s because you’re really really fucking talented”. So I thanked her and then someone asked her something and she went off to talk to them, but at the end of the night when we were about to go home, I sent Blake with some business cards to find her and she gave him her phone number and told him that she wanted him to bring down some of my pieces so she could show this gallery that would be “perfect” for showing my work. I’m nit sure how all of this works, but I’m pretty excited about it because this is what I’ve been wanting for for a long time and now it’s looking like things are going to start happening! *squee*

The best moment of the show though, which was kind of awkward at the time but in retrospect I think it was my favourite part, was when we were looking at my painting (and reading to see that there were no typos in my blurb haha), Blake suddenly said to someone behind me, “do you like this painting?” and when I turned around there was a little girl who was maybe 6 and she was just kinda looking at my painting, and then back at Blake, with huge eyes and awe. Blake kinda put her on the spot  though (and me! because he followed up with “because she painted it” and pointed right at me) but it was the best moment of the show because she is exactly who I would want to see my work. She is my exact audience. That moment was so precious to me, I’ll never forget it. Aside from my own kids, she’s the first child to ever see one of my paintings. I’ve sold one to a guy (heinousjay) who gave the piece to his 2 year old niece but I didn’t see her reaction and she was probably too young to really have one.

Anyway…so that was cool.

After the show we just went home. Stopped at a gas station to buy a drink and my mom bought me a bag of ketchup chips since I didn’t really have any dinner (the appetizers were supposed to be my dinner) and I almost fell asleep on the way home. When we got to the McDonald’s on the highway we stopped for grungeburgers and as I said at the beginning, I almost fell asleep eating mine.

It was a great evening, I think my mom had a good time, and I hope I get into the show next year. I think I may paint another version of The Two Sunnies for entry, the original of which I gave to my shrink last year for Xmas, because that’s the kind of work I think they want. Also I was never happy with the original, I think I can do better, so I think I’m going to try.

Today has been pretty mellow. It’s snowing at the moment, a sight I’m going to have to get used to. I’ve gotten over my issue with eating salad during cold months, for the most part, and that’s what I had for lunch today. I call it “hospital salad” because this is how they made it when I was in the hospital last month:

Lettuce, spinach, English cucumbers, cherry tomatoes and grated carrots.

I also, for some reason, thought you should all see my desktop. I’m not sure why, it was just something I decided while I was editing pics:

Happy Weekend!!!

Canadian diamonds are the ethical choice, eh?

So I’m finally home and as I write this, I’m soliciting dietary advice from my vegan friend Katie to help me get more protein in my diet, ideally from plant sources for a couple of reasons.

1. It’s kinder.
2. We don’t have enough money to buy the quantities of meat necessary for me to keep up my hemoglobin.
3. I literally cannot eat the quantities of meat necessary for me to keep up my hemoglobin because meat is harder on my stomach than veggies.

I mean, the big revelation which wasn’t news to anyone but maybe my doctors is that I’m severely anemic. I had to have a blood transfusion because my hemoglobin was less than half of what it should be. My body is not making enough new blood and it’s making/keeping me sick. I need new blood to heal, especially after my big surgery, and if my body’s not making any or very little on its own, I’m looking at weekly transfusions and not only is that gross I think it’s wrong when I’m a mostly able-bodied otherwise healthy person. Save that blood for a hemorrhaging mother or someone who was hit by a drunk driver, I can eat my way out of this. I think I can, anyway.

So the official diagnoses were pneumonia, a bladder infection and anemia (but they called it a big long word I don’t recall where I’m not getting enough vitamin K and I’m not making enough albumin, specifically). I’m on oral antibiotics for the next 6 days (I think, we haven’t picked up the prescriptions yet but there are two of them) and I feel pretty okay. They thought that the anemia was the bigger problem and they spent a lot of government money to determine what I already knew and what most people would know just by looking at me, but whatever. One morning they took 7 vials of blood out of me and some of them had to be put in vials with tin foil over them because the testing had to be done without light. Weird. I had 3 blood draws in one day at one point and today was the only day they didn’t take blood from me. Last night they took out my IV, which was good because the site had been placed on Friday and it was getting old and had started to bleed a little. The damn thing was in the crook of my arm and really friggin’ hurt every time I moved. I was so scared sleeping with it in, afraid I was going to rip it out, that I didn’t sleep soundly a single night I was there.

Morale was very very low. The days were mostly dreary and I don’t like being away from Blake and my house at all, let alone “too long”, and I was just really bummed out the whole time I was there. The iPad helped of course. It kept me connected to all of you and all of my friends on Facebook and that really helped to keep my spirits up. One thing being sick had taught me is just how much I am loved. <3

I started reading a book that Charlie sent me called The Night Circus, which is really really good. It’s a slow read though, my attention span isn’t what it used to be, but I got about halfway through and I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve read so far.

The food at the hospital was oddly delicious. On Sunday night they had roast beef with gravy and mashed potatoes and carrots and I swear to god I almost came while I was eating it, it was so amazing. I have NEVER had roast beef like that before in my life and I’ll probably never have it like that again, it was phenomenal. It was tender, juicy, you could literally cut it with a fork and the gravy….holy shit I’m getting hot just thinking about it. Seriously, the way to this girl’s heart is totally through the stomach. If you can cook, I love you, because I can’t.

Anyway, the best meal BY FAR that I had in the hospital was this one:

See up there where it says “cream of chicken”?
That should say “cream of screaming orgasm”.

It was homemade.
And it tasted like it was.
And combined with the egg salad sandwich, I was dying.

Another surprise from the hospital is that apparently I like tea. Who knew? That’s not true, I’ve loved tea before, when I was a teenager I liked getting loose leaf tea from the bulk food store and using my tea ball to make tea. I’d get like strawberry and blueberry etc. but now apparently I just like every day ordinary tea. I started having it with my meals at the hospital and then I began to crave it so I’d get Blake to hit up Tim Hortons* before visiting hours were over and get me the second biggest tea they have and I’d have them put in like, 8 sugars because THAT’S JUST HOW I ROLL. BAG *IN*, MOTHERFUCKERS! So I got in the habit of drinking tea at night and reading my book and I think I’m going to keep that going at home too because the tea really seemed to calm my stomach as well. Except that time I got the biggest tea Tim Hortons has and mixed it with a jelly donut and puked pink all over the place. That sucked. But other than that time, the tea really helped my stomach so, yeah, I already said that. Did I mention I’m on drugs?

Speaking of drugs, they mixed up mine yesterday which prohibited me from going home a day early. I’ll explain: I take hydromorph contin which is slow release morphine. Yesterday we had a student nurse and she gave me the fast acting hydromorph by accident and that accident was repeated all 3 times a day I take it and I wondered all day why the hell I was so tired. When my doctor came by my room, I’d been sleeping and she thought I was lethargic so she kept me in an extra day when in fact the hydromorph just had me knocked on my ass. So that sucked too.

Also speaking of drugs, I just want to state this for my own records: I am allergic to tegretol, ketamine and lamotrigine. If it’s ever called into question and someone’s gotta search my journal to see what I’m allergic to (like Blake had to do with the help of friends in June) those are the anti-convulsants I’m allergic to.

We just found out that my nurse this evening will be Ben. Ben is a handsome young man, fresh out of nursing school from what I understand from Siske. We didn’t think anyone would be coming out today so hey, bonus, we don’t have to change my dressing ourselves! They SUCKED at dressing my wound at the hospital. First of all, they didn’t have the right supplies to even do it correctly and second of all, what they ended up using instead I think I ended up being allergic to because I’m itchy as fuck! Also the white tape they used to tape the bandage down with kept curling up and sticking to the inside of my gown, making me absolutely insane, especially while sleeping because I was afraid I was going to bust the dressing wide open and bleed all over the place. Not that that would have been the end of the world, the wound’s getting pretty small and is pretty dry, but still, not something I wanted to have to deal with. I’m glad I’m home and Ben will be coming over to dress it properly.

Anyway, I’m getting pretty tired and I’m wishing this post would finish itself, so I’ll leave you with pictures from the hospital:

I was in isolation for the first few days because pneumonia is contagious, so Blake had to wear all that crap.

This was the scrambled “eggs” they tried to feed me one morning.
Not ALL the food was fantastic, just most of it.

THE END.

(*Tim Hortons is a national chain of coffee shops that are Canadiana at its finest and they do NOT for some reason, use a goddamn apostrophe to denote ownership in their name, a fact which drove me crazy in college when I was doing ad campaigns for them.)

This was shared by pretty much everyone on my Facebook friends list today and yesterday and when I finally got around to watching it, all I could think of was “Fuck yeah, Rick Mercer, fuck YEAH.”

In reaction to the bringing down of his government on March 25, 2011, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper seems to have borrowed talking points straight from the mouth of the most evil man in the galaxy: the Emperor himself… Darth Sidious.

Hi.

So it’s been a while since I’ve written. I’m sorry. Well…I guess it’s only Tuesday so it hasn’t been that long, but still, enough’s happened since the last time I wrote that I really should have tried to find the time to write before now, but I didn’t/couldn’t so now here I am.

Hello.

So Saturday night was an experiment gone…okay. Kinda horrible, but kinda awesome at the same time. Every year since (I believe) 2009, Toronto has put on this thing called Nuit Blanche where the entire city is full of art of all types from performance to giant Lite Brite boards in the middle of the street where 2L pop bottles are the pegs, from dusk ’til dawn. At this year’s Nuit Blanche, Art House Co-Op, the people responsible for A Million Little Pictures, The Sketchbook Project and The Fiction Project were in town at 401 Richmond with their Photomobile where Blake, our friend Charlie and myself each had work and we wanted to see the whole thing in person so we decided that Charlie would fly into town for the weekend and we’d go.

First, let it be known that I don’t meet “internet people”. I used to, hell I used to post on my Live Journal where I was going to be beforehand SO internet people would show up in the interest of promoting Scratching Post, but then I had one or two bad experiences too many and got turned off the practice fairly quickly. Meeting Charlie would be the first time in probably about 8 years that I’d be meeting someone from the internet and I was a bit nervous about it. Blake had met Charlie before when they went out for dinner last year because Blake was working in the city and that’s where Charlie happened to be and since Blake thought he was a pretty decent person, I wasn’t *too* nervous or at least no more nervous than I would be meeting anyone for the first time. So that was a plus.

There was some last minute “where do we eat?” drama that needed to be taken care of because it had to be close to the venue or I wouldn’t be able to get there on foot with my walker and wherever we ate had to have *something* on the menu that I could actually eat. We settled on a vegan restaurant called Fresh on Spadina which was about a block from the venue and which also had sweet potato fries AND a make-your-own-juice option. I love drinking. I don’t know if I’ve ever really mentioned this about myself but I absolutely love drinks. Liquids are my friends. Liquids have never betrayed me (except for that one unfortunate event in the hospital involving chocolate milk). So I got the aforementioned sweet potato fries (which were just alright) and a strawberry, orange, cherry and pomegranate juice which sounds lovely in theory but in practice was sour as hell because I didn’t ask them to add agave nectar and immediately heartburn inducing, which is a very bad thing when you’re prone to puking your guts up, so I’d take a sip of juice, then a sip of water. Blake & Charlie got tofu burgers. Blake’s had thai peanut sauce on it that looked like diarrhea and Charlie got one with sauteed mushrooms, which I was envious of because I love mushrooms and I would have got a side order of those if I knew it was an option (it wasn’t on the menu as such, so I suppose it probably wasn’t an option).

When dinner was finished, I was feeling pretty good, no real nausea to speak of, so we went to the art gallery that was hosting the Photomobile, which was multi-leveled and we started watching the flamenco dancers as we’d agreed upon beforehand. I used the little seat on my walker to sit while Blake and Charlie stood behind me and Charlie told us a bit about the history of that type of dancing and how he’d seen it before when he’d spent time in Spain. As he was telling us this, the first wave of nausea hit where I thought I might be okay, that it was *just* nausea and that I wouldn’t puke, but then the second wave hit and I asked Blake to scope out a bathroom sooner rather than later. He found one and came back and we left Charlie to watch the rest of the performance while I left my walker outside the bathroom with Blake and in I went, into the handicap stall so I’d have room to kneel down and pretty much as soon as I did, I started hurling. Violently. Now, the problem with puking in a public bathroom when you’re me, as opposed to a bowl on my bed, is that my legs still aren’t that strong and I had a HELL of a time getting back up. I thought I was going to have to call Blake on my cell phone to come in and help get me up off the floor because I just couldn’t do it and after barfing like that, I was left feeling pretty weak. Luckily though, I made it up, I blew the vomit out of my nose, rinsed my mouth with water, got a piece of gum and was ready to go.

Charlie had spoken to a woman who worked for the gallery prior to his flying out here, to make sure that there would be wheelchair/walker access to the Photomobile and since there wasn’t really, she arranged for us to go down to the loading dock, where the Photomobile was, in their freight elevator and the elevator operator would stay with us to take us back up when we were finished which was VERY nice of her and VERY thoughtful of Charlie.

So apres vomitage, we headed down to the Photomobile where, as it turned out, each of us had 2 photographs in the exhibit. We tried to find our photos on our own, but I could only find one of mine (one of the shots of Wes, but not the best shot), Blake only found one of his and Charlie couldn’t find any of his at all, so we had to ask the organizer for assistance, which we got, and our photos were found. I took my camera with me and took pictures of our pictures but they were kinda dark/blurry and you guys have already seen the scanned ones (if you read my last post) anyway so I didn’t upload those to post here this time. My second photo was one of Blake and Madison, Blake’s second photo was a crappy, blurry one of two mini flower pots on our windowsill  and both of Charlie’s were carnival shots. I think one was a ride of some sort and one was of a concession stand, both night shots and both better than mine or Blake’s (bastard!). In hindsight what I should have taken a picture of was the Photomobile itself so you could see how it was set up but I never even thought of that until about half an hour ago. Oops.

I was feeling pretty sick/wiped out after the Photomobile so we had the elevator operator drop us off at the basement where artists were making art and we milled around there for a while just shooting the shit until it got to the point where I felt like I was going to start passing out, so we took the inner elevator up to the ground floor, Blake pulled the car around, we said good-bye to Charlie and we started driving toward home.

The drive was pretty uneventful.

When we got home, I had Blake help me out of my clothes and into my hospital gown as fast as possible because I was feeling like I was going to hurl again and as soon as we got my gown on, I grabbed the bowl on the bed and barfed up the rest of my dinner. Then I checked e-mail, e-mailed Charlie (or maybe that was Sunday morning, I forget) and went to bed.

So that was basically my weekend.

Today was another hectic day because today was the day I’d be seeing my surgeon. To be fair, it wasn’t supposed to be hectic, things just turned out that way.

First, Blake woke me up early. I hate waking up early. But at least I didn’t have to get up as early as my mother, who lives about an hour and 15 minutes away from us and who would be accompanying us to the doctor’s office. So  I got up early, got washed up, got dressed (with Blake’s help) and we waited for her because we were all going to go in our car.

My mom got here and we shot the shit for a bit while Blake finished up some work because technically he worked from home today, and then it was time to leave so we did. (Riveting! I know!)

I should also mention that until today at 3pm, I was vac-free because the doctor would want to see my cheese pizza wound, so yesterday when Siske came, she put on a “traditional dressing”, as opposed to the vac dressing because the vac dressing is a pain in the ass to put on for one day and it hurts like hell when they take it off. Also, you can’t just take a vac dressing off a bit of the way to “take a peek” and retape it because you break the seal, so it was decided that a traditional dressing was the way to go and that consisted of some gauze laid over the wound, followed by this big bad thing, and then the whole thing taped down with the same drape they use for the vac that looks like Mac-Tak (not sure if I spelled that correctly, think clear vinyl shelf paper). That way the doctor could take it almost all of the way down to look at the wound and then put it back with more drape.

So we get to the doctor’s office and almost immediately we’re put into an exam room (so much for the myth of Canadian waiting times) even though we were early. Not 5 minutes later, the doctor was in there with us and she had me up on the table to look at my wound. The good news is that it’s healing a LOT faster than expected (cuz I’m muthafuckin’ WOLVERINE *snick snick*), the bad news is that it’s a little bit infected. To fight the infection, she’s asked the nurses to dress it with silver somehow, like in a cream (??) underneath the vac dressing but the order wasn’t sent out until after Siske was here so we won’t be doing that until Friday.

The doctor asked me how I was feeling so I told her about all of the barfing and she prescribed me a drug called domperidone which basically pushes food through you faster. Her theory on what has been happening is that my stomach is so messed up by my organs being all over the place that food sits in my stomach longer than the body thinks is permissible and so instead of sending it down, it comes up instead. This drug will remedy that and just based on using it today before lunch, I agree. I haven’t eaten a whole ton today (so far) but I haven’t thrown any of it up either when just last week I barfed up THREE GODDAMN RASPBERRIES. I just took my second dose of it now with intentions of eating in about half an hour and I’m almost positive I won’t feel sick afterward.

The doctor wanted to see another CAT scan of my abdomen, blood work and a urine test before making any surgical decisions today, so she made some calls and the hospital said I could come in “right now” and they’d do the CAT scan. So off we went to the hospital where I was given a gown and a housecoat and asked to wait in the waiting room with my posse. Five minutes later (oh, damn those Canadian wait times!) they called my name and I was brought to the nurse’s room where I had to drink this fucking nasty dye in two cups of orange juice. Then they told me to wait while they called the lab to have someone come down and take blood to check my creatine levels to make sure my kidneys could handle the IV kind of dye (which had been an issue when I was in the hospital before). While we waited, the nurse put an IV in the crook of my right arm “just in case” (I hate that) and by the time she was finished, the lab guy was there to take blood so she got out of the way for him and he poked and prodded and then he gave me the bad news that the only decent vein he could find was on my ring finger’s knuckle which is a VERY painful place to have blood drawn from. Possibly the worst. And even then, when you draw blood from there, you don’t get as much blood as you would from other sites and he only got 1/2-3/4 of a vial.

After he was finished, the nurse said I could go in the waiting room with Blake and my mom because I had to wait another 45 minutes or so for the dye to take effect so that’s what I did. The whole time trying really hard not to puke it all up even though there was a nice, clean, inviting garbage can within spitting distance of where I was sitting. Oh and for anyone who cares, I now weigh 55kg or 121 lbs. Before I got sick, I weighed around 160 lbs and at the height of my fluid retention, I weighed 220 lbs.

Anyway, when it was my turn (I waited no more than 10 minutes over the time it would have taken the dye to take effect), they escorted me to the CT room and a lady helped me lay on my back on the slidey tray thing and they did the first round of images. Then one of the techs came in, while I was still deep in the machine, with my arms over my head, and hooked up my IV to…something, I couldn’t see. He held my hands while the lady in the booth injected the dye, which was a very strange experience. First it makes you feel really warm like you’re having a hot flash, then it makes you feel like you’ve pee’d your pants. Once the dye was in me, the guy left the room and the lady started the machine back up for the next series of images. Then I was finished and the guy slid me out and he asked me what caused all of “this” so I explained to him that a gallstone clogged my pancreatic duct and everything kinda went to hell from there. I should also mention that this tech had seen me earlier when I was in the nurse’s office and he recognized me because he was the tech for the two times they drained my lungs. Who knew I was so memorable?

After that we had to go to the lab, which was down the road from the hospital. The hospital lab doesn’t do outpatient blood work anymore, which is why we had to go to the second location. When we got there, they saw me right away (again, with the cursed wait times!) and the lady had a fairly easy time finding a vein in the crook of my arm which pissed me off because the hand one fucking HURT and the guy didn’t even really TRY to find a vein in my arm. Also the nurse who put my IV in had little to no trouble finding a vein to put my IV in either so I conclude that the lab guy was a DOUCHE.

Then I had to pee in a little plastic jar and of course I pee’d all over my hand because for some reason, I find the older I get, the harder it is to pee into one of those little bottles. Maybe it’s because I have bigger vulva than I did when I was a kid? That’s my theory because when I was a kid and I had to do it (I used to get a lot of bladder infections), I could fit my entire genitalia inside the jar and that’s just not possible now. Also now there’s hair which misdirects all over the damn place, making things difficult. But I did it and that was that and we came home and then my mom went home and then Siske came and put the vac dressing on me and then Blake got me a 4″ sub for lunch from Subway but they put too much pepper on it so I gave it to Madison after about 4 bites and that was basically my whole day. I’ve just been internetting ever since Siske left, pretty much.

Two observations of my surgeon though, good signs if you will:

1. She has the top part of the bridge of her nose pierced. She wears glasses at the office to cover it up but I bet she wears contacts during her off hours.

2. She has a tattoo on her foot. Something small and Celtic-y.

These two things obviously impressed me. Another thing is that Siske has nothing but nice things to say about her, going so far as to say that if she ever needed ANY type of surgery, she’d want my surgeon to do it. Siske says she’s the best. Plus I just really like her, she’s down to earth and no bullshit. I kinda wish she were my big sister.

So that was my day.

Now I have two things to show you. First, my trache hole, which the doctor says I don’t have to bandage anymore:

Second…I can’t remember if I mentioned this before but during my time at St. Mike’s where I was unconscious most of the time, I developed a pretty huge bedsore on the back of my head, which has only just healed itself. This bedsore is surrounded by a rather large bald spot where the hair is just starting to grow back. I was really embarrassed about it so I wasn’t going to show you guys, but I’m kind of over that now, it’s not like it was my fault and my hair covers it so you can’t even see it, so what the fuck, here it is:

These pics were taken on Thursday or Friday.

Okay, now I’m going to eat my dinner and put my tired ass to bed.
Hope everyone had a great day!