Out Sick

Pretty much my entire summer was lost due to illness. First, I coped with a banged up knee from weeding my garden last spring. Horribly swollen, unwilling to bend without pain. My bad knee is an old injury, from when I was a young woman, taking Kung Fu lessons. It has haunted me ever since. It haunts me still. Stubbornly, I do not want an operation of some sort to fix it… so I cope with magnesium lotion, Arnica and KT tape. I will consider an operation someday, just not now.

Second, I got Covid. It was more like the flu, not that bad, but of course I had to remove myself from society, my job, and hang out at home. My cat enjoyed having me home. I discovered that I could order groceries and have them delivered out to my car, while I sat in the car and spoke to the delivery person through the car window – with some hand signals. I wasn’t so sick that I couldn’t drive, just contagious for a while. My boss made sure to bring me my work laptop and I worked from home for a couple weeks. I enjoyed that. Now I know why the managers all work from home and the grunts have to go into the vast cube sphere and slog it out.

I had pretty much recovered from Covid, and had returned to work with a mask… and then was struck with sickness number Three. This was indeed, a horrific traumatic event for me. I woke up around 3:45 am, in horrible pain. I knew it was my Gall Bladder, but this time was different. The pain was intense, vomiting, sweaty. This is also when I discovered that being a solitary introverted artist type, without a friend to call – was not a good thing. The dude across the street was gone, he would have taken me to the hospital. I was in so much pain, I didn’t feel safe to drive. I finally contacted my boss, who freaked out, and wouldn’t help, and put me in touch with HR, who didn’t want to help… HR finally, grudgingly said, we will call you a taxi. I hadn’t thought of that – like duh – but accepted. Needless to say, I really was incapable of thinking about anything beyond my pain. The Taxi took me to the ER, and luckily there weren’t too many people waiting in line. I got in immediately, the surgeon came in and took a look at my distended tummy with an ultrasound, and told me I needed surgery immediately. I was in the hospital for seven days, infected Liver and Pancreas, Gall Bladder removed – a gallstone the size of a marble was the problem. Needless to say, I was quite sick, very fragile. My son came and took care of me for three weeks. I have since changed my diet, regained my strength and feeling much better. I never want to go through that hell scape again. Ever.

I finally was strong enough to start back to work on my latest piece. I am needing, wanting to move in a different direction… and I feel like I am succeeding. It is a mixed media collage piece, female figure of course. It is not quite done yet. Still a little more to do. Experimenting with tintype images in Photoshop, printing the image on mulberry paper, fixing the image, acrylics and cut decorative paper. I have an idea and then work intuitively piecing it all together on gessoed board. I use an exacto knife and tiny scissors to cut the paper; often using tracing paper over the piece to figure out the proportions before I cut. I am conscious of color, and there is always some thematic consistency of spirals built in. Here is a portion of it: