Website update- 24th August 2022
Been much longer than I had planned since last update with not the 'sabbatical' year I was hoping it would be unfolding (so far anyway). I have been either physically and mentally unable to do this up til now or putting it off until I had something positive to report as I've always hated the idea of using this as a forum for whining about personal problems rather than actual Sea of Pain news. But since we are now undoubtedly well amongst an unimpeachably unprecedented era of (mostly bad) irreversible changes to life, the universe and everything I figured I'd bend with the new wind direction and tell you my own version of the shit sandwich sometimes known as 2022.
Well, we actually have to go back to the last update in October to get a start on it, after the last six week drawing workshop of 2021 concluded I put it out there that I would be accepting new private students until the border to the plague infested south opened on the 13th of December. Over the following seven weeks my book was always full and I met some lovely and diverse new students and many very productive and enjoyable private sessions were had here in my studio. Among the interesting characters were an 85yo lady who filled me with inspiration with her passion for life, an amazing Filipino lady trying her best to recover (and relearn) after serious brain surgery and a very enthusiastic and quirky newly retired Metricon executive who bailed from the Mexican chaos just before the entire southern fan became irrevocably turd coated.
All enjoyed the experience except my ever worsening back of course which has deteriorated so much now I was quite relieved when the 13th Dec inevitably rolled around and my "year off" from all teaching for the first time since 2008 finally began. I was genuinely looking forward to it as I have always wanted to do the Grizzly Adams thing for a year or so (or more) and just utterly immerse myself in all the long planned creative project/s in all the many and varied mediums available to me without ANY distractions or responsibilities but my back had unfortunately reached the point at which further medical investigation was no longer optional so I finally got a long put off CT scan to have a good squiz under the bonnet, during which the radiologist managed to crush my lower legs and feet which took weeks to come good but I digress.
It turns out: down at the pelvis end I have a broadly bulging disc, 65% stenosis (narrowing of the space for the nervous column), very badly swollen main ligament, bridging osteophytes (bony spurs growing out from each side of the injured vertebrae), and epidural lipomatosis, which is a benign tumour wrapped around the base of my spine from past untreated trauma about ten years ago. In the thoracic area (the original site of the work injury that ended my career as a Fitter and Turner back in 1996) I have severe vertebral wedging (side view of verebrae looking like a door wedge rather than a rectangle), 65% stenosis, severe disc deterioration (it's more or less gone altogether which explains why I can feel the bones grinding together), more bridging osteophytes and a Shmorl's Node (herniated disc up through bone into the neighbouring vertebrate rather than poking out sideways).
I'm now on a (very long) waiting list for back surgery for the lumbar area, the thoracic area remains every bit as surgically inaccessible as it was 26 years ago. So for any and all the lovely knowledgeable humans who have ever doubted the seriousness or even existence of my severe chronic spinal pain over the past 26 years all I can possibly offer is the same advice the Ukrainian soldier on Snake Island gave the Russian warship (Google it if you live under a rock).
My much loved bull terrier Budweiser Jones (Buddy boy) died of old age and cancer on the 21st December a little while after midnight, I buried him next to bull terriers Nos.1&2 (Zenny girl and Guzzi boy) at first light. He was 14 years, 2 months and 3 weeks old and despite him being very old and very sick his passing shattered me like a large pane of brittle glass that never saw the rock.
The big gallery project I put so much time, thought and energy planning and drawing up in great detail had to be abandoned as a bad joke in the end after the initial quote blew out to three times as much after many months waiting for them to get back to me, with a condition on the quote/contract (that I never signed) that I would also be liable for any and all extra costs and price increases until it was actually built at some misty unspecified point in the future plus any costs associated with engaging any official goons deemed necessary to chase me for anything outstanding! Again with the unspoken but all purpose Russian warship reference.
I caught Covid around mid Feb despite all my best laid plans and being fully vaccinated, whatever good that did. The initial experience manifested itself mostly in the form of extreme fatigue, headache, and a nose that literally ran like a tap for a week or so, I thought I'd gotten off lightly after a couple of crook weeks but by early March it had re-descended upon me like a truck full of rocks and made me as ill as I've ever been in my life with constant bad headache, vertigo, chest pains, irregular heartbeat, painful dry cough, sore throat and lung issues so bad I had to consciously push and pull hard to get each shallow breathe in and out through what felt like a foot of wet sponge.
I was afraid to go to sleep as I would wake unable to breathe either in or out at all and have to quickly leap out of bed and pound my chest with a fist while frantically trying to get a breath either in or out (either being acceptable) until with an audible crack something would give and the painfully shallow pushing in and out would (thankfully) recommence. This went on for weeks until I had to call my doctor one morning after wondering if I was going to make it through the night. He prescribed large daily doses of antibiotics and steroids over the phone which helped straight away but it took another couple of weeks to really start improving.
Only a couple of days after I could actually breathe in and out more than a tiny painful bit for the first time in many weeks on top of being as still sick as a dog the first kidney stone incident came out of the blue. I had three separate full blown attacks within a week and another one a couple of weeks later, with urine that looked like muddy black paint after 10-12 hours of indescribable hell each time. The Doc tested one jar full I gave him and found ten small kidney stones just in that sample alone. More weeks of many excruciating and exhausting 10 hour episodes followed as more and more stones that never made it all the way worked their way out of my bladder, all while still being so sick from Covid I could barely function on any level. The Doc gave me alpha blockers to help the remaining stones and sediment get out of my badly infected and inflamed renal system but the first one I took doubled my heart rate so not an option.
Then I went through a week or two of my heart suddenly getting worse than ever, stopping and starting, fluttering and pounding with bad chest pains for hours at a time. Through it all every muscle and tendon in my body hurt, with my spine in particular singing a song I never want to hear again (I never wanted to hear it in the first place which is why I tried so hard to avoid CoVid). It all went on and on and back again for many months, I'm just starting to slowly come back to some form of (relative) good now although my general health is still quite aways from being back like it was last year with a cough that just won't go away, exhausted all the time but can't sleep.
Cloudy heard I'd had another kidney stone only three days after the first ordeal and got worried enough to drive the 800km north overnight from her busy solo life in her hidden valley to make sure I didn't cark it altogether (gotta love that hippy girl).
Apart from those four or five days I took care of it all myself in the studio with the help of the Endone pills I take for my back pain. I learned you have to take half a dozen at the very first (unmistakeable) sign of coming kidney stone fun so the pills stay in your guts long enough to be absorbed before you enter the long hours of constant explosive diarrhoea and vomiting. Even then it just takes enough of the edge off the hellish pain so you don't flog around sweating on the floor like a beached fish the whole time. So to all the humans that have offered unsolicited opinions, soap box rants and disparaging looks as to the severity and even existence of long CoVid I can only refer them back to the Russian warship remark. It's fairly versatile.
Everything in my life was put on hold, left to rot or had weeds grow around it during this whole challenging extended era of misery gutted illness and is only now slowly emerging into some kind of order and forward progress so it goes without saying the plans to seriously re-engage with the drawing board and easel during my 'time off' have yet to even sprout let alone bear any fruit.
I'll never forget the worst of it doing the past six months here on my Pat Malone (bugger going near a hospital these days) if I live to be a hundred. To get through it I had to go to a place in my mind that was like an unlooked for spirit quest while on some exotic hallucinogen dragging horse skulls in the dust until you drop, with the answers to the meaning of life on offer if you make it out alive. There's definitely something very special about staring wide-eyed at the howling abyss for extended periods. The sort of thing that can't be bought no matter how much dough you've got. It may sound cheesy and/or perverse to the uninitiated but I actually feel privileged to have had and survived such a f#cked experience on my own and feel wiser and happier about my entire life because of it (but I never want to go back there, ha ha ha).
It's not over yet by a long chalk and nor is Covid generally by all accounts but I look to the future with a whole new appreciation, thankfulness and much more nuanced understanding of the ongoing miracle of sentient existence, in fact I will go as far as to say it has all been a mercilessly strict but incredibly effective teacher of the meaning and philosophy of life itself and made me even more exquisitely appreciative and enthusiastic about what is to come both artistically and mortally. Life is a blue ribbon education if you're paying attention.
My apologies for all the whining but reality is what it is and I had to write some damn thing on here sooner or later. I promise the next update will be less negative, more artistic and with fewer references to Russian warships.
I (still) am therefore I continue.......
Brett
