Dread of Surgery
Monday Jan 25th I go in for surgery. Five days in hospital, some weeks to recover. You can read more about it below, if you want. First, the art!
I’ve been preparing for a month in all sorts of ways for this operation. A couple of days ago, two watercolors insisted on becoming visible, and here they are.
Outcome Optimism
The first is “Dread of Surgery.” It’s tiny: 7½” x 5½”. I don’t suppose it needs explanation, and anyway I have no words to add.
The second is “Outcome Optimism.” I need to work on these titles: they are uninspired! But accurate. This one is 11” x 7½”. Again, what you see is what you get.
For your amusement (and mine) I include here also what’s on the BACK of each. It turns out I used paper recycled from a recent culling of my old figure drawings.
The back of “Dread” especially – a Funky Figure – I feel is perfect to accompany the dark “Dread” itself. You surely don’t think it’s an ACCIDENT that it was back there, do you?!?
Funky Figure
The other one, the back of “Optimism,” is totally random.
Medical TMI for the curious/those who love me THAT much:
This is the fix-it follow up to emergency abdominal surgery I had eleven months ago, in late February ‘09. I knew that more remained to be done, but it took me five months to come to the point of being able to imagine CHOOSING to go through that surgery again. Now I’m getting ready to do it (clear liquid diet today and tomorrow).
“Whole person.” You might think this surgery is merely about having a whole body – but believe me, its reach is broader. And on all those levels, I am very stoked to be doing this, anticipating HAVING DONE it and being all fixed up again, the way I was before.
Recovery was slow before – I’m fully back really only the past couple of months in terms of energy; creativity was back in late August, September in New Zealand. Recovery will be faster this time because I’m not going into it sick and near death. Also the anesthesiologist heard my pleas and hit upon ways to keep the various drugs at minimum amounts to do the job. That will help: recovering from the drugs was part of what made it hard before. I’m hoping for fewer (or no!) paranoid hallucinations on the opiates and no cognitive losses once back home, unlike before. I’m an optimist: I think I’ll get all that – and more that I haven’t thought of!
Thanks for listening!
