Off to the health spa

The time is upon me ... heading off to the hospital now ... I'll see you on the other side (with added morphine) :)

Thanks for all your support, it's very much appreciated.

Remember ... give blood! ... there's an 80% chance that I'll be having a blood transfusion today.

Also ... join the organ donar register if you haven't already!

That is all :)

a heartbreaking weekend of staggering tragedy

On Friday morning last week I thought I pretty much knew how I would be spending the remaining days before my operation. I had a couple of draft blogposts swirling around my noggin which I was going to write over the weekend, some industrial-scale tidying up to do around the house, and then I'd spend the start of the week finishing up with work and any final preparations for going into hospital on Thursday.

At 16.25 on Friday afternoon I was waiting at a bus stop on my way home from an event when I got a phonecall to tell me that my sister's husband had passed away unexpectedly. With that piece of devestating news my family's whole world was knocked sideways into the path of an emotional rollercoaster. Three days later and I still can't make sense of the news. We visited Tanya and my niece and nephew yesterday and I can only describe those few hours with them as surreal. Being at their house without Stephen there was odd ... it still felt like he would walk in through the door any moment. I can't tell you how much I missed getting one of his huge goodbye hugs when we left.

I was going to call the hospital today to see if I'd be able to delay my operation so that I can be at his funeral but my sister wants me to go ahead with the surgery as scheduled this Thursday.

I'm really at a loss to find any words that come close to explaining how cut adrift and bewildered I'm feeling. All I do know is that I'd like to use this art project to raise some money for my sister and her children - I know that things are going to be very difficult for her now that Stephen is gone.

I had hoped that this post would be a bit more profound but the words I want to say are floating beyond my grasp at the moment.

Music for hospitals

I'm collating a list of music to take into hospital with me ... all chosen for their relaxing / other worldly-ness / ethereal beauty / uplifting-ness:

Winter North Atlantic {A Memento for Dr Mori - Remixes}
Max Richter {The Blue Notebooks and more}
Brian Eno {Music for Airports}
Globus {Epicon}
Sigur Ros {pretty much anything by them}

I'll add to this list as I think of more ... all suggestions welcome for other music :)

hoping to put art into operations .... erm, oper-art-ions?

So the thing is ... erm, wow, this is more difficult than I expected ... erm, so anyway, on Thursday 16th December I'm having surgery ... the nice sort of surgery really ... well it's all relative isn't it? ... it's routine surgery and nothing for anyone to worry about but I'll be in hospital for about 5 days and it will take me about 5 weeks to recover.

I won't go into all the gory details in this first blogpost because a) some of you might be as squeamish as I am about this sort of thing and b) I can't remember the proper names for the procedures I'm having. In case the lack of detail is causing unnecessary concern I'll just say that it's to do with 'women's things' and leave it at that for now.

I've decided that I want to turn my experience into something of an amateur experiment in art therapy but I don't want to inflict medical details onto unsuspecting twitter followers or my blog readers ... so I've started this blog and a separate twitter account (@moremorephine) and those who have the stomach for it can follow my adventures here and there.

My initial idea for turning this into an art project is to track my movements with a GPS device to show my recovery as I start moving further from my bed. I'm hoping that I'll be able to use the data to create some beautiful visualisations which will represent my recovery metaphorically and literally.

Since I had that idea I've started wondering about whether I could also wear a heart/pulse monitor to track the changes in my heart rate and then see if I can map it to times when I was particularly stressed/relaxed etc.

I'm hoping that I'll be able to identify a collaborator or two who might help me work out the best tech devices to use and to help create beautiful visualisations at the end. It would be great if I could broadcast some of the data to twitter ... something like http://runkeeper.com/ maybe? Something to track my mood and or pain levels would be good too.

Any advice/help you can offer (or information about similar projects) will be gratefully received :) If you want to collaborate with me or lend me tech gadgets then all the better :)