Russ Foxx stopped by again today with some friends to do a photo shoot for a tattoo magazine, and I snapped a few photos of the suspensions that happened. Of course if you’re in the photos feel free to snag the pictures for yourself. The day began with a knee suspension:
Then an Angel-style suicide suspension:
Then a lotus suspension:
And finally, a first time suicide suspension (the official photographer had left because it’s a women’s magazine):
Here’s what I made in the last couple days. They’re all added to the shop, and you can click them to get them. As always these are one-offs so first come first serve, when they’re gone there’s no guarantee that they’ll ever be added again in the same form. In fact, there’s a good chance they won’t be! And oh, my hands hurt so much… I don’t think I’m going to be able to make anything in a little while, even if I wanted to. Which reminds me, here is a great article on talking to people with serious illnesses — 10 things not to say to someone when they’re ill — I hate it when people ask me how I’m doing!!!
Oh and click any of the pictures to also see lots more high res pictures!
Edit: I originally said this was tiger eye, oops, not at all — that’s striped cherry amber, sorry!
Skull Ring with Tiger Eye Cabochon Eyes
Brainiac Skull Ring with Orange CZ Gemstone Eyes
Skull Ring with Moonstone Cabochon Eyes
Metal Lego Minifig with Star Ruby Cabochon in Chest
Metal Lego Minifig with Embedded Natural Peridot Stone
Jeez… I don’t think I even want to do any more typing, my fingers are miserable.
I had my CT scan (with contrast) of my head done today as part of figuring out what tissue affected by my genetic calcification disorder and what the cause of the neurological problems including central apnea are. I have no idea if it will tell them anything useful or not, since when they were diagnosing the muscle, everything was inconclusive until they actually cut a bunch of flesh out of me and stuck it under an electron microscope (at which point it was very obvious).
My favorite thing about these scans is that if you pay them $10 for the CD, you get to take home a copy to look at on your computer. When I got home and viewed the data, I almost had a heart attack when I saw a bunch of white bumps in the middle of my brain! Yikes! A tumor? Calcification? Doesn’t look good! But I did a little poking around and viewing other people’s scans online, and, whew, I’m quite certain that these are perfectly normal images of blood vessels that are supposed to be there. Feel free to scare me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that’s how things are supposed to look.
Oh, and you can see my earrings and stretched lobes in the scans, check it out:
Finally, I uploaded the whole thing to YouTube as well.
Oh and the IV injection of the contrast dye is a really neat feeling — intense warmth spreading through your body. As it collected in my pants, I had a moment of terror in which I thought I’d “wet the bed”. It’s a very strange sensation. They told me there might be a metal taste, but I don’t think I noticed any of that… The effect for the scanner only lasts a moment, so at the end of your scan (at least in my case), they hit you with the dye, you feel weird for a moment, they fire up the machine, and a couple seconds later you’re done. I didn’t know this, and had assumed that the with-contrast scanning would be the majority of what they were doing rather than just a reference frame (or something). So when the tech nurse came out almost immediately, I was quite confused and thought that perhaps I’d blacked out when she told me we were done. But no, I just didn’t know the schedule.
I did some jewelry work yesterday and pushed myself a little too hard and my hands are aching — I can hardly close my left hand, it’s like some whithered claw from a Gypsy curse or something. But I did make some great progress so after a little luck and a lotta pain coping I will finished off the pieces I was working on and will be posting them here and to Etsy later today, so check back if you have the time. I have a couple nice new items that I think people will quite like. Oh, and all the orders I had pending from the holiday sale went out in the mail yesterday if for some reason I missed emailing anyone to let them know.
First let me set the mood with a wonderful new piece of graffiti that sprung up on the building around the corner. I wish I could take credit for this cheery piece but I can’t. As with most of the pictures in this entry you can click to see it bigger.
We had a very nice week here, which is why I didn’t post last week. Tomorrow it’s “back to work” and I’ll be fulfilling Etsy orders (and I’m leaving that sale coupon running until then), and then on Thursday it’s back to the hospital for a CT scan of my noggin, but now let me update the ol’ diary. Because it was spring break for Nefarious’s school in Virginia (versus March Break in Canada last month) she was hear visiting, and the visit began with a trip to her grandmother’s to have an Easter Egg hunt and to see her cousins as well. During that time, Caitlin and I explored the county, going both to various beaches and parks (Little Bluff, Point Petre, Lake on the Mountain, Prince Edward Point, and so on), as well as checking out various funny antique shops (no we did not go “antiquing”, it was more looking at budget outsider-art galleries or something) and the likes. And I rooted my tablets (Acer Iconia 500 and 501), which was a great call because now I can mount all kinds of devices that I couldn’t before, such as large (64gig+) memory sticks and NTFS drives.
Tourist pictures of Caitlin and I:
We also saw a cool old diving pod:
And made rock men:
We did all sorts of stuff when we got back into Toronto, including a visit to the CN tower because I’d been promising Nefarious that I’d take her up to the very top. I’d never been to the Skypod, and neither had she — we’ve just been to the large main section. The Skypod is actually 33 stories higher, which makes a remarkable difference. When you look down, the main section might as well be on the ground, and if it were not for the Skydome putting it to scale, you’d think it was — that’s how much higher it seems!
It also has some cool pod windows on the lower story, and then normal large windwos up on the main level… The pods are actually cooler because they make you feel like you’re in a hovering spaceship coming in for a landing or some kind of airship or something.
I did notice however that in nearly every picture I appear to have grown finger-shaped bunny ears.
Might need to see a doctor about that. As if I don’t have enough reasons.
We also went to the Wizard World ComicCon, where Nefarious had lots of sword fights and had way too much fun shooting a stormtrooper for charity ($5 to the Make-A-Wish foundation if I remember right). It’s actually the first Con I’ve been to, which may come as a surprise, and I’ve got to say that the signature area, where various celebrities are there for pictures and signing, is really depressing. Dean Stockwell was stuck between Jeri Ryan and Scott Bakula, both of whom had long lines, while he had no one and looked very, very sad and awkward. It was quite depressing and I didn’t like looking at the scene. We were there early though.
I bumped into a BME friend there too which is always very nice.
Oh, there’s a lot more I could post but after two other long entries — and no sleep since Saturday night because of my “sleep deprived EEG” this morning, I’m rather wiped out and don’t want to do any more. So let me leave off with the odd metal ice-shield at Point Petre that always makes me fantasize that there’s a strange underground base there for Nazi U-Boats or something. It is after all linked to a massive no-trespassing Department of Defense monitoring station of some sort. I wanted to check it out but it had a big fence around it and no-trespassing signs.
Bedtime can’t come soon enough!!!
I wanted to update everyone on my leg pocketing. Since first writing about it, I have done two more pocketings above the first one using an identical procedure and, currently at least, identical 2ga (1/4″ diameter shaft) silicone jewelry. The first piercing has some issues with dry skin, but as you can see, my whole horrid right leg has this issue in that area and looks like dried up scar tissue. This is because of the neurological damage, not the pocketings. It’s also why the hair doesn’t grow properly in that area. I’m afraid to admit that my leg was super-gross to begin with, which is also part of the reason why I had absolutely no worries about this experiment. Not like anything could make it worse — it could only stay the same or get better, and I think it got much better.
Without further ado, here are three pictures as of last night. The bottom two are glow in the dark silicone, and the top one is just regular silicone, cast by me. It’s not technically implant grade, but it is FDA approved for food use. Of course, using it on myself is ethically very different from using it on others, so I am fine with that rating. Not for the squeamish!
As you can see I am still perfecting the placement of the top two and the angles need a little work. I’ve found that there is a little room to play there, and my using a very slight pressure bandage nudging them over I can get them to move enough to be in alignment with each other — I know it works because I did it with the bottom one. Here is a photo of how I do that by using bandages to “push” them into place.
I’m still debating what the best jewelery is. For short term and healing, I like this silicone stuff a lot, and it’s also nice because it can be banged without causing damage. It can also be removed and replaced easily to inspect the healing, and I suppose I could also easily make pressure fit caps for it if I wanted something decorative. However, I am also debating something very close to 2ga microdermals (anyone able to manufacture these, as I don’t have a jeweller’s lathe?). The reason I am considering that is I like the idea of wearing flesh tunnels that create a negative space inside my leg. Here is a picture of what I have right now, and what I’m thinking about:
The obvious problem with that jewelry is that it would be semi-permanent since like a microdermal, it would become anchored in place. That’s both a problem and an advantage for obvious reasons, but knowing me, once I have what I like, I won’t be swapping the jewelry out.
Finally, in my first entry about this I briefly mentioned the procedure, but now that I’ve done it twice more I feel confident that it worked well for me so I am going to describe it in full. Again, this isn’t for the squeamish and I wouldn’t suggest this to anyone who is not very in tune with their bodies and experienced with the safe limits of procedures as well as experienced with identifying infection and other problems, because this definitely plays close to the edge.
I begin by using a #11 scalpel to make an incision perpendicular to the skin, straight down into the tissue to about a 1/2″ depth. This is replaced with a sliver or spike of carved wood or bamboo (for example out of a disposable chopstick) about 5/8″ to 3/4″ long and roughly 8ga or maybe a little larger in diameter with a dull edge or point on the end. This is pushed into the hole and held in place with a light pressure dressing which will cause it to settle at a comfortable depth. It should not be particularly painful. In a way this is similar to indigenous body piercing methods. I believe the reason it works is that your body’s defenses react to the wood, a non-inert organic material, and begin a process of pulling away from it and building up a protective layer around it with safe natural discharge that acts as lube — this is not the same as pus from an infection although, especially mixed with a little blood, it may seem that way. It’s how your body responds to threats such as slivers. Within 12 to 24 hours this can be replaced with a slightly larger silicone plug of the same general design. I used a fairly hard formulation for this initial phase, but it’s still much softer than the wood which I feel is important so as not to do damage to the subcutaneous tissue. It should only take two to three steps of progressively larger diameter jewelry to reach the final 1/4″ size (and I don’t see why a little larger wouldn’t work if you want). There may be quite a lot of discharge during the first 48 hours, and there may be some minor discomfort and heat in the area but nothing major and I experienced no indications of infection or other complication. After the initial period it will lymph for a couple weeks and then settle down. Oh, and when I’m at the final jewelry size, I made a hard silicone version of the jewelry to “shape” the hole, and then replace it a day later with a soft silicone version, since the softer the jewelry, the less impact it has on the surrounding tissue. Finally, minor adjustments in terms of the angle of jewelry can be made using pressure dressings as I showed in the linked picture above.
Just want to be real clear that this was not a “how-to”! If you’re ready to do something this perverse to your body, you don’t need my instructions anyway.
Hope this is of interest to someone. I will continue to update on this project when relevant.
