Hmmmm.
This is pretty interesting.

8-Year-Old Juliet’s First Hardcore Song

I do not own a tiara. Strange but true.

What an obnoxious, mixed up kid. *shakes her head*

So basically I could absolutely murder Madison. Do you know what she fucking did? SHE E-MAILED ERIC CALDERONE AND TOLD HIM I’M AN OBSESSIVE SUPER FAN AND THAT IT WOULD MAKE MY CHRISTMAS TO GET AN E-MAIL FROM HIM. She said I would FAINT if I received said e-mail. She said I listen to his songs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. She also grossly exaggerated my health issues because she misunderstood when Blake told her to “play up” the health issue, not thinking Erock would even read her e-mail. Well he DID! And yesterday when I woke up at 3am, I checked my e-mail and lo & behold, there are TWO e-mails from him, one a letter and one a link to a file sharing site so I could download his EP for free.

This is what she said in her e-mail to him:

Hey E-rock,

So I’m sure as you know christmas is coming up, uhh, tomorrow, so Merry Christmas!

This summer my mother, Sunny Crittenden, has been through a lot. She was in a hospital in toronto from July until very recently, very sick with pancreatitis. She was unconcious for most of it and she was on millions of IVs and on machine support for everything from breathing to even simply pumping her heart. The statistics were that only 1 out of 5 people would survive what she has been through, and now here she is, a miracle coming home for christmas. She is still very sick, and she is hospitalised at home still, but we I am very grateful to have my mother here and alive. And all day, everyday, I get to come home and hear you playing guitar. From 5:00am (when the first nurse comes) to 10:30pm (when the last does). She downloads them off your site and plays the youtube videos on a loop, and that’s all I’ve heard since she came back. She has liked your facebook page, follows you on twitter, knows all your solos, and seen every inch of your site. She LOVES you, and as I couldn’t think of a better christmas present, even though it would be a late, I was wondering if you would pretty pretty please, for a cute 13 year old girl and her sick mom, plz give Sunny Crittenden a shout out on one of your videos, she would flip out if you so much as said her name. I don’t know, but I think that would make her christmas worth living for :)

Thank you so much whether you do it or not, I understand why you might not. Although, even emailing her at: sunny@sunnycrittenden.com and mentioning her daughter emailing you would make her faint :P

-Your biggest fan’s daughter

Is that not the most embarrassing thing ever? It’s REALLY hard to embarrass me, but Madison succeeded admirably, not because of the fan stuff, but because me, being extremely honest, I now had to e-mail him back and tell him that Madison basically lied to get a response from him and that made me feel like shit. Before I get to my response, here’s what he e-mailed me:

Hey there Sunny,

I hope you’re feeling better. Your daughter recently emailed me and filled me in on whats been going on. First of all, I’m really glad that you got to spend Christmas at home with your daughter who (i can tell just by her email) loves you very very much. I also want you to know that she also filled me in on how you’re a HUGE fan of mine. Just for the sidenote, i always feel interesting about calling people or having fans haha I just do what I do because I love it and consider myself a fan. Anyway I’m really glad that you enjoy the tunes and would like to thank you for your support. For me, nothing is ever one sided so if there is anything I can do for you to maybe brighten a day or put a smile on your face, hit me with it, its my turn to return the support. Im going to send over my EP (dont know if you have it or not) and include 2 unreleased youtube tracks (shhhhhh those are top secret :)) They cant fit in the email so im going to send them via YouSendit. If you need anything from me at all, dont be afraid to ask, we’re gonna get you better! :)

Eric

Nice guy, right? And I think he was kind of maybe excited about this whole thing because he also e-mailed Madison just to tell her to tell me to check my e-mail, which put a lump in my stomach  because I didn’t know what to say to him.

So I stewed about it all day. My friend Robert gave me a good foundation to work with so I just spent all day trying to build on that in my head. I also had no idea what to suggest as a possible song for Eric to cover because his e-mail sounded like maybe that might be an option and while I thought of a bunch of stuff over the past few months, my mind was a total blank when basically asked. Blake and I discussed it when he came home from work and I decided that I would e-mail Eric when I woke up this morning. First thing. Here’s what I sent…it’s…long… :o/

Hey there Eric,
I cannot thank you enough for your kind message. My daughter is right that

I love your work (to a ridiculous degree), but I fear she may have

exaggerated our situation to invoke a response from you and I’m a little

embarrassed about it. Madison is 13 and when her dad suggested she “play

up the sickness angle” as a TOTAL JOKE, not knowing she actually would

e-mail you or that you’d even see her e-mail, she took that to mean

“exaggerate greatly”.
But the thing is, I *am* sick, I’ve had a really really hard road, I

really did come close to dying this summer due to pancreatitis and things

aren’t so great these days as a result. This e-mail is probably going to

be pretty long, but I feel like I should tell you the TRUTH behind what

Madison said and you can decide whether or not I’m deserving of your kind

sympathy.
Here goes…:
At the end of June I woke up one day with the worst pain imaginable in my

stomach, to the point where I could barely even breathe. I was supposed to

work that morning but I was in way too much pain so I told my boss

something was wrong and that I couldn’t work right now as I was going to

have to go to the hospital because I knew something wasn’t right. As I was

doing this, Madison took her little brother, Wes (age 8) to school and

then ran back home to help me. By the time she got home, I could barely

talk or breathe or function, my husband was at work in Toronto (which is

about 2 hours away) and he’d CARPOOLED to work, so he couldn’t just come

home and take me to the hospital, so Madison called 911 and then called a

family friend to come meet us at the hospital.
In the ambulance, I threw up and was in immense pain, but they got me to

the hospital in more or less one piece, and when I got to the emergency

room, they immediately hooked me up to an IV and fed me morphine and then

they gave me a CAT scan and an x-ray and they came to the conclusion that

it was pancreatitis. Pancreatitis only occurs for two reasons: alcohol and

gallstones. I don’t drink, so in my case it was a rogue gallstone that had

lodged in my common bile duct (which is shared between the gallbladder and

the pancreas), which made my pancreas inflame. They said that pancreatitis

goes two ways: it either clears up really fast or it goes south really

fast. The treatment for pancreatitis is basically starvation. If you don’t

eat anything, the pancreas doesn’t have to process anything, so by

starving yourself, you give the pancreas a rest and the inflammation goes

down, so that’s what they decided to do.
While all this was going on, my husband, Blake, took a subway, then a bus,

then a cab to where his car was parked and THEN he got to the hospital. It

took him like, 6 hours to get there. Meanwhile, our family friend, Ronny,

had taken Madison back home and they picked Wes up from school on the way

and Ronny just looked after them until Blake got home from the hospital.
At about 10:30pm, Blake got a frantic call from the hospital saying that

he had to come now because they didn’t know if I was going to make it

through the night. Remember when I said that pancreatitis could go south

really fast? Well that’s what happened to me.

 

When Blake got to the hospital, I wasn’t breathing on my own and they were

trying to insert a central line, which is a big IV in the neck. Our little

local hospital basically couldn’t deal with what was going in with me, my

respiratory system was crashing fast, and the bigger hospital closest to

us couldn’t either, so they loaded me up in an ambulance and drove me to a

big, scary hospital in Toronto called St. Mike’s, which is a pretty big

fucking deal. Like, you know if someone is at St. Mike’s, they’re knocking

on death’s door.

 

I don’t remember St. Mike’s though, because I spent from June 25th-July

25th completely unconscious. I was intibated, which means I had a

breathing tube down my throat because I couldn’t breathe on my own, and I

was tied down and sedated because I kept trying to pull the breathing tube

out. This is apparently instinct and everyone does it, except in my case,

I succeeded more often than not. This is me after removing my breathing

tubes. I was proud of myself (I was pretty drugged up) for removing it so

I asked Blake to take a picture: http://www.wildrumpusday.com/Tubeless.jpg

 

This is me in the ICU: http://wildrumpusday.com/icu.jpg

 

When I was in the ICU at St. Mike’s, they wouldn’t let me eat or drink

anything because the pancreas had to rest. Instead, I was fed through a

tube in my nose that bypassed my stomach and went straight to…actually

I’m not even sure, I just know that it bypassed the digestive system to

give the pancreas a rest. I had this feeding tube until mid-August. Also

while I was in the ICU, they said I was probably the sickest person there,

which is pretty scary considering where I was. They said that 70% of

people who were as sick as I was, died, so Madison wasn’t far off when she

said that 1 in 5 died.

 

With pancreatitis, there is often an issue with fluid building up in the

body and this fluid compresses the lungs, making breathing extremely

difficult and in my case, almost impossible and fatal. At the time I got

sick, I weighed probably between 150-160 lbs but with all the fluid that

was collecting in my body, I weighed 220 lbs. On July 5th, they had to do

something drastic to save my life, so what they did was cut me right up

the middle of my belly to extract this fluid. Right off the top, they

extracted 4 litres of fluid, which is TWO big bottles of pop worth! I’m

not sure how they did it, but they continued collecting fluid through this

big wound in my belly until the swelling in my body went down

considerably, then they dressed the wound with something called a “vac”,

which is this foam that is covered by plastic and then a vacuum is

attached to the middle of it and fluid is sucked through the vacuum and

collected in a little canister which they hooked at the end of my bed. I

would have this dressing until the beginning of October, changed every

Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

 

During this time, my kidneys failed so I had to have dialysis. They didn’t

know why they failed, they just did and then 2 weeks later, they just

started working again. The body is weird, man, we know so little about how

it works.

 

At the end of July, on the 25th, I had improved enough that I could be

moved to a hospital closer to home, so I was transferred by ambulance to

Royal Victoria Hospital (RVH) in Barrie, Ontario, which is about 45

minutes from our house. I would be put in the ICU of course, and since I

had no recollection of ANYTHING that happened at St. Mike’s, when I woke

up in RVH and Blake and my mom told me everything that had happened and

that I’d missed an entire month of my life, I just cried. I still cry even

thinking about it because it was just so goddamn scary and my mom and

Blake and my kids went through so much, not knowing if they were going to

get a call one day saying that I’d passed away.

 

So in the ICU at RVH I still had the feeding tube, although this one went

straight into my stomach, and I had the vac dressing on my abdominal wound

and I had a trache, which I’m going to explain in case you don’t know what

it is: A tracheotomy is when they punch a hole through your throat and

hook it up to oxygen because you can’t breathe on your own. The one that I

had initially at RVH didn’t allow me to speak, so I had to mouth my

questions to Blake and my mom, about what had happened at St. Mike’s. I

was so drugged up that I couldn’t write (see an example of an attempt at

writing here: http://www.wildrumpusday.com/SunnyPage.jpg), so that wasn’t

an option either. Eventually they would put in place two other traches,

one that allowed me to speak like an android and then one that allowed me

to speak normally, and then none at all.

 

When I was first at RVH, they wouldn’t let me eat or drink anything, but

after a while they took the feeding tube out of my nose and allowed me to

eat things that were a pudding consistency because since I hadn’t eaten

anything in so long,there was a danger of choking. I couldn’t even have

water because it was too liquid.After a while of that, they did a test to

see if I could swallow solid foods and they found that I could so solid

foods were added to the menu, which I was grateful for. They also gave me

all the water and Coke I could drink.

 

I still had the vac dressing, which got changed every Monday, Wednesday

and Friday and one day I convinced a nurse to take a picture of the wound

with my cell phone. Here it is if you want to see it, but I’m warning you

that it’s pretty gross and graphic:

http://4bit4.livejournal.com/166479.html

 

I was (and still am) on a LOT of drugs, including high dosages of

morphine, so a lot of my hospital time is pretty much a blur, but two

weeks after being transferred to RVH’s ICU, they moved me to a general

surgery floor because I had improved so much. This was a very good, very

surprising thing because at St. Mike’s they said I wouldn’t be out of the

hospital until Christmas, but I sure showed them! The problem though, was

that I couldn’t walk. I hadn’t used my legs in almost 2 months so I had to

re-learn how to walk, which was a long, really frustrating process. I had

to walk with a walker on wheels until mid-October.

 

Finally on August 25th (I don’t know what it is with hospital personnel

and the 25th of the month), they let me go home. It was almost 2 months to

the day of when Madison had called 911 and I was eager to go home. Once

home, a nurse would come to the house every other day to change my vac

dressing and to make sure I was doing okay.

 

The vac dressing came off around the beginning of October (I think), which

was fantastic because it really sucked carrying around a canister of fluid

everywhere you went, especially since I kept dropping the unit and almost

broke it many times.

 

When they cut me open though, they cut through the muscles of my abdomen

so now they’re herniated and my guts are all out of place and swollen. I

get crazy stomach pain because of this, which is why I’m still on the

morphine. These pictures are what my stomach looks like now because of the

surgery, but I’m warning you (again) that these ones are semi-nude and not

safe for work:

http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=7910 I basically

look like I’m 6 months pregnant and I need surgery to fix it but it’s a

waiting game because I also have cysts on my pancreas because of the

pancreatitis and I have to go BACK to St. Mike’s to have a surgeon drain

those cysts before my surgeon up here can fix my stomach. Right now we’re

waiting for a bed at the hospital so they can run some tests on me and

then do the cyst-draining procedure. Very soon after that, I’ll be able to

have my “big surgery” to fix my guts, which I’m really scared about

because I’m going to be in a lot of pain afterward and there’s going to be

a long recovery time when it’s all over. I’m also going to have to stay in

the hospital during most of the recovery and they’re saying that that’ll

be around 2 weeks. :o(

 

During this whole ordeal, I lost my job. I was a customer service

representative for a website, working from home, and it was a pretty

cherry job. Technically I was a sub-contractor (from another country, no

less) so it was perfectly legal for them to replace me and I don’t blame

them, they needed someone to fill in the gaps that were missing because of

my absence, but at the same time, we are now down to only living on

Blake’s income and that’s almost impossible. We’re putting groceries on

credit cards because we truly cannot afford them otherwise. We’re going

into debt pretty fast and it’s really really scary.

 

To make matters worse, due to poor nutrition (because my guts are so

screwed up, until recently I would throw up just about anything I put

down, so essentially I was bulimic), my hair started falling out. A LOT.

Here’s a pic:

http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=8099&g2_serialNumber=1

 

The good news though, is that my wound is healing really well. Up until a

couple of weeks ago, a nurse would come every day to clean the wound and

change the dressing, but now Blake does that every other day and a nurse,

named Siske, comes Monday, Wednesday and Friday to also clean the wound

and change the dressing and just to make sure that it’s healing okay. We

had a setback a few weeks ago where the new tissue started breaking down

due to too much moisture, but that seems to have been corrected by using

different material to dress the wound. Here’s a big of what it looks like

now, that weird bit on the right is actually my BELLYBUTTON. They’re going

to build me a new bellybutton when I have my big surgery because my old

one is so messed up:

http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=8102&g2_serialNumber=1

 

Believe it or not, this is a REALLY REALLY condensed version of everything

that happened, but I’m trying to keep it as brief as possible so I don’t

waste your time. Sorry this is so long. :o/

 

Here’s me just before Christmas, after putting on about 10 lbs because I

stopped throwing everything up:

http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=8268&g2_serialNumber=1

 

SO, things are improving, I’m just really waiting to have these two

surgeries so I can go on with my life. I’ve been extremely depressed and

my psychiatrist thinks I have post traumatic stress disorder because of

everything I went through and I don’t disagree with that.

 

But enough about that, let’s talk about you! YES, I am a huge fan, Madison

didn’t really exaggerate that point (although I don’t listen to your songs

24/7 like she let on, but I do listen to some of them often). My favourite

pieces of your work are Rolling in the Deep and Skyrim, but I also loved

your rendition of My Little Pony. I thought Skyrim was SO well done that

that’s the one everyone in this house now knows by heart because I listen

to it so much.

 

I feel strange about using the word “fan” to describe the people who read

my blog too. I’ve had a website with a blog since 2000 and while it’s

nowhere near as popular as your YouTube channel, I do have a lot of

fan-like people. Instead of “fans” though, I just call most of them

“friends” because it’s easier when talking to other people about them.

Then again, I communicate with my fans probably more than you do because

of the nature of a blog, so it’s different for me than it is for you. You

also probably get bombarded with e-mails, if the comments on your videos

are any indication. :o) I hope you’re enjoying your fame, you deserve it!

 

I’ve been giving a LOT of thought over the past few months as to what I’d

like to see you do next and I think I’ve narrowed it down.

 

First, I think doing the Pixies could be phenomenal if you could pull it

off, but I’m not sure they could really be translated into metal very

well. My next idea (and my favourite band) was Hole, but sadly, I don’t

think your audience would appreciate that very much considering most of

them are boys who probably buy into the whole “Courtney killed Kurt” thing

(don’t even get me started on that) and if you did Hole then your cred

would probably go down. As much as I think Hole would be awesome, I

understand the reasons behind not doing it.

 

So, are you ready? Here are my big ideas as to what you should do next:

 

I have ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS wanted to hear a metal version of Hazy Shade

of Winter by the Bangles. I know it’s a cover (can’t remember who did it

originally at the moment) but their version, in my opinion, is the best

version and I think it could be really well done as metal.

 

My second idea was Atlas by Battles because I think that could be really

interesting as metal too.

 

My third idea is a band you’ve probably never heard of (but should) called

Mother Mother. They’re Canadian. Their song Polynesia could be really well

done as metal as well, I think.

 

Speaking of metal, I used to be basically the mascot for a Canadian indie

metal band, called Scratching Post, when I was in my early 20′s. I would

run around at their shows in a pair of panties with their logo on them,

and big boots and a Scratching Post t-shirt. Pics of that are here:

http://www.sunnycrittenden.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=5084

 

I just thought you’d think that as funny. :o)

 

Anyway, I’ve monopolized enough of your time (again, I am SO sorry this is

so long! future e-mails will not be this long, I promise!) and I thank you

again for your kind e-mail and the EP. That was very very nice of you. I

also apologize on behalf of Madison for exaggerating so much. She’s young.

 

I hope you had a good Christmas (or whatever you celebrate!) and an even

better New Year.

 

Your friend,

Sunny

 

PS. Just in case you wanted to, you can post this e-mail, or parts of it,

wherever you want. :o)

 

Like I said, I tried to keep it as short as possible, but it IS kind of a long story, especially when you have to explain so many things, like a tracheotomy. (Damn, I meant to also include a pic of the trache scar. Oops. Speaking of which, is it normal for a scar to hurt? I’ve never had a scar hurt before and this one really does.)  Also I’m just a really verbose person and this is partly why I don’t like replying to e-mails; every reply takes me like, an hour to type out, even if it’s for something really simple. I think that’s partly why I blog. If I’m going to take an hour to write so much to just ONE person, I might as well post it publicly so everyone can see it and I save time.  I hate it when someone I haven’t heard from in a while asks me what I’ve been up to like they’re so special I’m going to write a response just for them. Read the fucking blog! And if you don’t have the time to follow along or go back and read what you’ve missed then leave me alone and just follow along when you do have the time. My time’s precious too, y’know.

Anyway, I’m getting off topic and eerily enough, Eric’s version of the Skyrim theme just came on iTunes. I swear sometimes iTunes is psychic. Ghost in the machine!

Madison’s been spoken to about lying to get what you want, even if you think it’s for a good cause. I think this was a pretty minor offence because she really just exaggerated things that were true, but there’s still a lesson to be learned here. Do I think Eric will e-mail me back? I dunno. It probably won’t be for a few days if he does, I would guess, because it’ll probably take him that long to read my e-mail haha

So this is what’s been happening in Sunnyland over the past 48 hours. Now you know. And now I’m going to go stuff my face with waffles.

Expect a picture post later because the cat was being weird last night.  Oh also? I slept like, 8 hours last night. In a row. This is pretty much unheard of these days. Okay. Waffles.