Eyeball tattooing update — I had a nice time getting my eye ultrasounded this afternoon, although it took me a ton of elevator rides to find the eye clinic because I had the wrong address and Princess Margaret Hospital has three separate towers to explore.
Anyway, it looks like what happened is that when I rubbed my eye too hard about a week ago (I knew at the time I'd damaged it), I broke a bunch of blood vessels in the tissue (which was weakened by the tattooing) above where the muscle injects on the outer edge of my eye and a hematoma has formed over the muscle, which is also slightly inflamed. This should break down over the next few weeks without issue, although I have another appointment in a week to have it checked out.
The doctors were nice and gave me a printout of one of the ultrasound shots. Assuming I'm remembering what I was explained to me correctly, there's a legend underneath this shot.
A. The conjuntiva (the outside of the eye)
B. The hematoma (the swollen part)
C. Muscle (slightly inflamed)
D. The sclera (the main shell of the eye)
E. Some peeling of retinal tissue (likely unrelated)
F. The interior of the eye.
Note: I may have C and D shifted up slightly; this wasn't the clearest of the shots so I'm not totally sure, but it's the one that was on the screen at the end so it was the one I was about to get a printout of…
My little rag rug is about three and a half feet across… I started to stitch it with heavy black thread, but I'm thinking about aborting that idea and knotting it with smaller bits of t-shirt. I like the idea of doing it that way conceptually but it'll make a lot rougher final product. I need to pick up a knitting needle or something though to be able to pull the cloth strips through the braids (only the centre section in the picture below is stitched and I'll probably pull those stitches).
I know it's kind of cruddy looking but it's surprisingly relaxing.
I'm really not looking forward to being off my feet for a month. I've got so many projects I want to complete… Well, hopefully looking forward to doing physical things helps me heal faster. That said, I'm also looking forward to being forced to sit for a month because it means I get tons of interview work and writing done which is always good as well. I love writing for ModBlog but I want to move the focus of my efforts back to deeper and longer interviews.
Other than that, I know it's all over the internet right now, but I'm just blown away by this latest executive order passed by the the US government authorizing the asset seizure of anyone who criticizes Bush on the Iraq war… I'm sure that none of this stuff would survive a real legal challenge, but that doesn't mean it can't be used to destroy the lives of those who challenge authority too loudly — it's not easy to fight a major legal battle when your assets have been taken.
Oh, and this is one of the most interesting body modification interviews I've read in a long, long time.
Well, off to the hospital!
PS. I'm sort of bothered by the “blogging for profit” concept that's out there these days (
how top bloggers make money and tons of
articles on getting more popular)… Yeah, it's true that my blog has
GoogleAds on it (I make about $150 a month on them), but I just think that people should focus on creating and expressing whatever is inside them, and not worry what anyone else cares — and certainly not worrying about what others
want to read. Fine-tuning how you express yourself for an audience is a mistake. Unless you're shooting to be a big-time commercial blogger and your motivation is simply to treat it as a mercenary business, the dollar amounts are just not high enough to make it worth prostituting oneself. I know it's kind of a lame thing to be irritated by, but I think it's wrong.
Yesterday, as well as some programming and (really fascinating) interview work, I worked on a rug. Well, right now it's just a massive long braid made of bits of t-shirt left over from the BME t-shirt quilt project… But if I have time I'll stitch it all together today into a rope/rag rug. That said, I may change my mind and make a basket with it instead…
Later today I'm getting my eye scanned with some side-scanning technique, by the guy that invented the technology… As a tech geek, I'm looking forward to that quite a lot. I'll try and get copies of the results but I'm not sure if I'll be able to or not. Basically what they'll be able to do though is image the hematoma to be able to tell how deep it goes and so on.
I made a cherry tandoori meal last night using about half left-overs from some Thai food I'd ordered and various vegetables… It turned out well I think.
I woke up at about 4AM in a ton of pain because I'd rolled onto my leg. It sort of feels like it's swollen and about to explode from the internal pressure or something, but of course it's totally illusion. It's crazy that just resting on it can hurt so much when there's not actually anything wrong. That said, I definitely thank my lucky stars that only the inside edge of my leg is affected. I don't think I'd be able to cope if it affected both sides of my leg. Since it's just one side I can be careful with things like pants so when I'm putting them on they only touch the healthy side and so on. Socks sure hurt though so I have to balance stinky-shoes and pain, haha.
I had a really weird seizure experience yesterday… I went out to lunch with my friend Daniel. I was a bit shakey when we got there, but that's not really that unusual for me. Then all of a sudden I had what basically felt like a full-body “brain freeze” — a very strange and overwhelming pain. It was extremely unpleasant. Anyway, Daniel helped me walk it off but I really felt pretty shaken up for the rest of the day (but it didn't stop me from enjoying So You Think You Can Dance, haha — which ironically helped me at the hospital because it gave me something to chat with the nurses at the eye clinic about). It happens every once in a while but this is the only time I can remember it being so physically difficult.
Oh, and I've been hearing rumors going around that I sold BME. That's 100% false, and it's not going to happen — in part because I consider BME as being owned and created by this community, and it would simply be wrong to sell it. If I get a lot sicker or something crazy like that and was for some reason not to continue taking a primary role, BME would continue with the people currently involved.
Another very long day at the hospital — I literally just got back now. I got the paperwork re:CRPS for my doctor… although really, I just want a referral from her to a new doctor, because thanks to her writing me off as someone trying to score drugs, instead of listening to my über-obvious symptoms, I missed out on the three month window where this condition is treatable (well, 50% treatable), to where it's either long-shot cures (remember when they put Dr. House in the ketamine coma?… not that I don't enjoy K) or life-long escalating pain. Anyway…
I also had my eye checked out again because I did some damage to it last Wednesday and there's quite a bit of swelling on the far right, at about the point where the muscles inject. My vision is still perfect, but there is a slight increase in the pressure in the eye which they think is just from the steroids (for my eyes, not my body — I was given them because of the initial muscle irritation in the eye). They want to do a bit of imaging on it so I have to chat with them tomorrow about that but the best guess right now is that it's a hematoma that should just break down on its own and it'll probably be just fine (although it could be something else; thus the imaging).
The yellow stuff is just the eyedrops they gave me when they were checking me out. Other than that, I just want to say how thrilled I am with how nice the doctors have been in all of this — I haven't been lectured once, which is quite a surprise, although I'd like to think that I present as a non-crazy person that speaks to them in a fairly intelligent and stable way (other than the obvious, haha).
Anyway, I'm tired out and turning my computer off for the day.
My surgeon's office called and bumped my surgery up a week, so I'm being cut open on August 1st now. Theoretically: they just called me now and told me that I've been denied healthcare coverage. I don't know if some ass called and told them I don't live in Ontario (I do obviously) and now I have to prove it, or it's some clerical error. I gave them a bunch more information so hopefully that's the end of it.
I'm just working on getting a really amazing interview that Ferg did while in Australia — it will go up today, finally. It's unbelievable hard to focus today. For the past three days it's felt like my leg is suspended in alternately boiling water and then ice cold water, on top of the rest of the discomfort. I really want to shave the hair off my leg because when it's touched it hurts, but I don't know if I can take the pain of shaving it… Either way, the interview will be posted today, with apologies for the delay.
In less pleasant news, Phil sent me this picture of a car that he saw down the street…
I'm really pissed off by it, because my request for the license plate “BAAL616″ and “
NATA2” (ie. SATAN) was denied for being “offensive or inappropriate”. What? It's OK to recommend one of the most effectively murderous and xenophobic religions out there, but I can't express my own views? I might print out that photo and take it in to the ministry and demand that they give me the same freedom as Christians.
