Blood :: Treasure :: Ship

I have never been one for setting New Year's Resolutions but I love Chris Brogan's idea of choosing 3 words to act as pillars for the year ahead.

First off I was curious as to whether there was a pattern in the words that Chris and his followers had chosen. So I put them all into Wordle to see what they looked like as a word cloud [click on the image to see a larger version]:



The 3 words I've chosen for the year ahead are: Blood, Treasure, Ship. It was difficult to choose just 3 words from all the ones I thought of so I've gone for ones that mean more than one thing to me.

Blood:
I've been trying to encourage folks to give blood by bribing them with promises of free art for the past 8 months. Since I was lucky enough to be the recipient of a blood transfusion last month I now feel personally indebted to those who give blood and I'll be encouraging/cajoling/inspiring as many people as I can to give blood this year and beyond.

It's also a reminder of a favourite Nietzsche quote: "Of all writings I love only that which is written with blood. Write with blood: and you will discover that blood is spirit." I want what I create and do to have my blood and my spirit in it and hopefully that will mean my work connects directly with other people's hearts in a most pleasing manner.

Treasure:
I am not talking about ancient chests over-flowing with precious stones and gold - I want to continue to unearth the everyday, ordinary, easily over-looked treasure and hold it up for people to admire and be inspired by.

I also want to spend more time treasuring the everyday things and people that surround me and make my life worth living and constantly inspire me to become myself and step up to share that with the wider world.

This anonymous quote sums it up for me: "the greatest treasures are those invisible to the eye but found by the heart."

Ship:
Firstly, this is a reminder to myself that for me it's not enough to make art, I have to get out of my own way and get the things I create out of the door.

Secondly, this is a reference towards a very special story-writing and art project that I'm working on with my creative conspirator, Portia.

Thirdly, it reflects my desire to spend more time on/by the water over the next 12 months.

Fourthly, it's a reminder of a couple of favourite quotes:
"You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water." ~ Rabindranath Tagore

"I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship." ~ Louisa May Alcott

To keep these 3 words in the front of my mind during the rest of the year I've designed a poster to put in a frame and hang up in our house:

There will be blood [part 2]

*WARNING* readers of a sensitive disposition should refrain from reading this blogpost - it contains slight to moderate gore and medical/biological oversharing.

Where was I? ... oh yes, the day of the operation ... So anyhoo, we arrived at the hospital at 11:30am as instructed and headed to the pre-surgery award where we were met with the news that bed shortages meant the surgery might be cancelled. Happily it went ahead as planned after a lot of waiting around and being measured and questioned on things like allergies, the presence, or lack thereof, of dentures and what my choice of anaesthetic was. The anaesthetist explained the same thing I'd read in my 'Anaesthesia and You' leaflet ... that a spinal anaesthetic would enable me to awaken quickly after surgery and mean that I could eat sooner than with a regular general anaesthetic. To be honest I had no clue which option to go to and so I tried to get away with opting for 'whatever option the anaesthetist felt was best for me' ... the response from the anaesthetist was a quiet snort of derision and a look that said 'no chance buddy, this decision is all yours'. So I figured that a spinal anaesthetic would mean that I would be compos mentis when I saw Mark after the operation, which would mean he would worry less about me ... Boy, was that the wrong decision! (but more of that later)



Mark stayed with me for a good few hours before heading off to wait at a friend's house and I sat with a book open re-reading the same page over and over again and trying to ignore the crappy daytime TV playing in the background, while I waited for the nod that it was time to go down to the operating theatre. The nod came at about 3:45pm and I wandered along with the Staff Nurse, down stairwells and along blurred, empty corridors to the operating reception area. By this point I'd explained my art project ideas to the Staff Nurse and she excitedly relayed my ideas to the young nurse who was registering my arrival, who then looked at me as if she wasn't sure whether I was amazing or crazy.

At some point the anaesthetist flew into the room and started preparing the back of my hand for some unmentioned pre-op medical thing, all the time firing questions at me about allergies etc. She then realised she'd forgotten something and rushed off, only to re-emerge at the same speed a minute later to carry on where she'd left off to install a cannula in the back of my left hand. While she'd been gone the young nurse explained that the anaesthetist always rushed around like that - not exactly one of the qualities I look for in someone who is shortly going to insert a needle into my spinal column but it seemed too late to back out at that point.



I won't dwell much on the process of being given a spinal anaesthetic but suffice to say that a whole room of people suddenly shouting "don't move!", then slightly freaking out at you while the anaesthetist urgently exclaims "is she symmetrical?" is not something I ever want to experience again. The next thing I remember is waking up in the recovery room with about four people, including the specialist who'd performed the operation, standing at the foot of my bed who all walked away as soon as I opened my eyes. I glanced up at the clock above the doorway and it was 6:30pm. The next few hours drifted by in 20 minute chunks as the staff in the recovery room flitted back and forth, regularly checking in with me and letting me know what was going on.

I was in the recovery room for 5 hours before being moved to my allocated space in the Gynaecology ward. My memories of those 5 hours are a bit jumbled and fragmented but they're made up of a morphine trigger for me to push, discussions about the amount of blood I was losing, a second cannula being fitted to my right hand so that they could start giving me a blood transfusion, me asking someone to phone Mark to make sure that he knew I was okay, speaking to Mark and realising that he'd sat around at the hospital for a couple of hours not knowing if he'd be able to see me (which he couldn't in the end), and hearing one of the nurses telling her colleagues that she was staying past the end of her shift to look after me until I was stable. I think that she finally left at about 11pm and I remember looking at her name badge so that I could remember her name and thank her later ... I think it was Allyson but I can't remember any more than that :(



At 11:30pm the porter arrived to transfer me to the ward. The next morning it became clear that I was being kept as 'nil by mouth' so I'm guessing that they were anticipating having to take me back down to surgery if the bleeding didn't let up. I had an oxygen tube in my nostrils, tubes coming out of the cannulas on each hand, a catheter tube coming from (ahem) down there, a drain tube coming from the left-most end of the surgery incision and two tubes attached to automatically inflating cuffs around both my legs ... in other words I wasn't going anywhere in a hurry.

At some point during the morning I got a check-up visit from two doctors, one of whom had been present during the surgery. He confirmed that surgery had gone well and that they'd removed a large fibroid, he held up one of his fists to give me an idea of how large it was (ewwww!). In the afternoon the specialist who'd performed the operation visited and gave me further information about how it had gone. Firstly they'd removed a large fibroid, he held both of his fists up together to give me an idea of the size (ewwwwwwwww!). Both ovaries had been left intact, which wasn't a massively big concern for me but came as a relief all the same. He'd tried to remove the cyst but it was attached to my lower intestine so all they could do was open it up and drain it. While they had me opened up they could see that I had endometriosis which needs further treatment in the shape of a monthly injection over a 6 month period. Not all good news but pretty good news overall as far as I was concerned.

I think that's probably enough gore for now ... next time, the process of recovery, life on a hospital ward and the inherent comedy of the 'caution: wet floor' signs.

There will be blood [part 1]

*WARNING* readers of a sensitive disposition should refrain from reading this blogpost - it contains slight to moderate gore and medical/biological oversharing.

And now the time has come for me to (belatedly) share a few details about the surgery I had last month. But first, some background ... In May last year I went to give blood and discovered that I was anaemic ... because of very heavy periods I had been suffering for a couple of years . In the space of about a month I had appointments with my GP and a specialist at York Hospital - an abdominal scan was shortly followed by an MRI scan which established that the underlying cause of the heavy bleeding was a large fibroid on one side of my womb (urgh!) and a large ovarian cyst on the other side of my womb (eek!).

The recommended course of treatment was surgery to remove both the fibroid and the cyst ... or in medical terms, " a laparototomy for myomectomy and ovarian cystectomy" ... *warning* do not do a google search on any of those terms, you will be scarred for life. I was warned that the surgery would be "very bloody" and that it might involve removing one, or both, of my ovaries or require a full hysterectomy depending on what they found when they opened me up. In the month before the operation I was also told that there was a 80% chance that I'd need to have a blood transfusion but that they'd be using something called 'cell saver' during surgery to re-use my own blood to try and avoid the need for a transfusion.



The week before the operation the dark shadow of bereavement fell heavily across my family's world and my thoughts settled on my own mortality more readily than usual. The day before my operation I scribbled down my final wishes on both sides of a postcard just in case the unthinkable happened and I didn't make it through surgery. I knew that the chances of that happening were infinitessimally small but I also knew that I didn't want my husband and family having to unecessarily worry about making the right decisions about funeral arrangements etc. On the day of the operation I couldn't find the postcard so my poor husband had to take my final wishes from me verbally during the car journey to the hospital. I will always be grateful to him for not trying to hush me up or tell me that I was being stupid while I talked him through everything. [In case you're curious, the main points were: cremation (unless he had strong feelings that he wanted to bury me); cheapest funeral possible; Bird on a Wire by Leonard Cohen; any opportunities to make money from my art should be exploited; ashes to be scattered into the sea or a river.]

Is there any room between the peas and the mashed potatoes?

Every Sunday evening Eric Maisel's weekly newsletter slips silently into my email inbox. Some weeks I read it, some weeks I don't quite get round to it. Whenever I do read it I find something to inspire me for the week ahead, quite often there's an invitation to get involved in Eric's latest project or a call to action to get going on a creative project that's accumulating dust somewhere in a neglected corner of my noggin.

Eric's New Year newsletter was a powerful call to arms, an rally cry which encouraged us all to find a cause we care about and change the world around us by forming our own 'armies of one' as individual activists. Eric's newsletters are usually quite a gentle reading experience but this sabre-rattling missive was something of a wake up call for me. It resonated so wildly with me that I got in touch with Eric straight away to ask him if give me permission to publish it on my blog. He kindly gave me his unreserved permission, so here it is for you to enjoy in full:

"Hello, everybody:

Activism is not a standard career. Zorro, Robin Hood, and Spiderman are not business models. Fighting for a principle is not a job description. You can’t make a living as a whistle-blower—in fact, you’re likely to get crucified. Rebellion in the face of the forces aligned against the individual is ridiculous—and pays nothing. Why bother?

Plus, we’re all very busy.

Some people become accidental activists. The following, quoted by Ernie Shreiber in an Internet posting I received this morning, recounts the story of an inadvertent Canadian whistle-blower:

After Dr. John O'Connor, a family physician who was a visiting doctor to the small northern Alberta community of Fort Chipewyan, reported high levels of a rare cancer in those living downstream from the Tar Sands, the Harper government set out to destroy him.

The family physician never anticipated that speaking out about his concerns would land him in a career-threatening struggle against the federal government with his medical license on the line. "Looking back, it's been a nightmare for me," O'Connor said in an interview. "It's just something I never expected in a million years. I just wanted to be the family doctor that I was when I went up there."

Dr. O'Connor and Andrew Nikiforuk, author of Tar Sands: Dirty Oil, were asked to speak at a special parliamentary committee. Expecting to be treated as the experts they were, they were instead ambushed by a gang of thugs. As Nikiforuk recounts, “Both O'Connor and I made a terrible mistake. We assumed that committee members would be interested in rigorous dialogue regardless of political affiliation. Instead, we were subjected to abusive tactics geared to dismiss, discredit and dishonor us.”

Inadvertent activists pay a particularly heavy price because they haven’t enlisted for heroism and, by getting blindsided, suffer a greater shock than someone who enters a war zone of his own volition. On the other hand, because they never enlisted they can refrain from doing it again. Having learned a harsh lesson about how the authoritarian personality reacts to exposure, they can choose discretion over valor. But what about the person who has enlisted?

It is 2011—a new year. If I look at my clients, I would say that not a single one of them has much room of his or her plate for activism. They are trying to create, build a practice, handle family affairs, deal with medical emergencies—a million things, all pressing, all difficult. Where is their room to put a cause on the plate?

Still, we desperately need our armies of one. It is a new year. Is there a cause close to your heart? If so, give enlisting at least a passing thought. You won’t have room for it on your plate—we both know that already—but maybe there is just a little room between the peas and the mashed potatoes …

Have an excellent Sunday!

Best,

Eric"

If you have an interest in writing and/or creativity (and more) then you might want to sign up for Eric Maisel's newsletter.

In this short video below, Eric talks about the importance of persistence and courage for the creative process ... it strikes me that those qualities are ones that will serve us well as activists too:



I was lucky enough to participate in one of Eric's Deep Writing workshops in London a couple of years ago and it was an amazing experience ... I didn't finish writing the book that I worked on during that week but it was such a *huge* relief to get the heavy bones of an unwritten novel, that I'd been carrying around for many years, out of my head and onto the pages ... highly recommended (as are his books - Fearless Creating is a good starting point imho) :)

pain :: mobility :: happiness

I realise that I never got around to explaining what the heck my art project actually is. The big idea (well, small idea really) was that I would collect metrics while I was in hospital and then turn those into a piece of art/pieces of art.

Plan 1: carry a pedometer with me to record how many steps I took each day of my recovery. Pro-tip: if you are planning to do something similar then source your pedometer more than a week before your surgery ... I found one I owned but it turned out to be borked. I then borrowed one from a friend but it didn't register my footsteps (most likely because I was wearing slippers and shuffling). Plan 1 was abandoned.

Plan 2: choose three things to score on a daily basis (at least) and turn the resultant metrics into triangular artwork of some description at a later date. The things I decided to score were my 'pain', 'mobility' and 'happiness' - I started on the day of my operation and have continued each day since, sometimes just once a day, sometimes several times a day ... basically whenever the mood took me. The scoring system is as follows:
Pain --> 0 (no pain) through to 9 (absolute agony)
Mobility --> 0 (unable to move) through to 9 (skipping about, happy as a daisy)
Happiness --> 0 (deep paralysing despair, probably crying) to 9 (over-joyed, probably crying)

I've found it pretty easy to score each of these every day - I haven't been much more scientific in my approach than thinking 'do I feel more or less pain/mobile/happiness than last time I scored myself?'.

Every time I scored myself I broadcast the score on twitter (@moremorphine). At first I included a hashtag (#myopart) but that fell by the wayside due to shortfalls in wordcount and my poor memory.

I have a vague idea for how I'll visualise the metrics as a piece of digital art and some other ideas for more abstract pieces which will incorporate other metrics I got from the hospital (e.g. morphine intake rate, blood pressure readings etc). I'm also planning to release all the various scores and readings as open data so that anyone else can turn them into artwork/data visualisations if they feel inspired to.

Watch this space! ;-)

What I hadn't really accounted for was the fact that my friends and family would start checking my twitter timeline to see what my latest scores were and would then feel worried/comforted depending on how I was doing. At one point I found myself hesitating before broadcasting scores that I knew they'd find worrying - In the end I posted the scores as they were but often added a mitigating comment which I thought would stop folks fretting about me.

I haven't set an end date for taking readings yet ... I'm possibly going to continue with a daily broadcast until my 100 days of recovery are up - I'll have a proper think about that and let you know :-)

Best laid plans and all that

It's fair to say that my plans for this blog were hit for six by the news that my brother-in-law had passed away unexpectedly. Suddenly the whole project seemed a little self-absorbed and lightweight - in the end I did go ahead with the project as planned ... not so much as the result of a well thought out decision but because I was on auto-pilot. In the weeks following my operation (more of that later) I had things that I wanted to share here but there didn't seem to be enough space between the words in my head and what was happening around me. Does that make any sense? I'm not sure it makes much sense to me so kudos to you if you can understand what I'm on about.

Over the next few days I'm hoping to fill in some of the gaps and share what's been going on and where things stand now that I'm well on the way to recovering from surgery.