{ kass } an artistic journey

boycott

I think my blog is being boycotted - I apparently went from 80+ hits per day to 0 - yep ZERO - in the past 10 days!! Wow, did I say something wrong??? lol....ah, I guess that happens sometimes hey!

We are back in Melbourne after the week away. I wont pretend it was the most special Christmas ever coz frankly I was rather bored, feeling rather crappy and I felt rather unloved by my father. But it's almost a new year...and I don't dwell much on the past. Soon I will be able to say "that was sooooo last year!"

I spent a lot of time reading and drawing while I was away - I got some Faber-Castell Watercolour pencils which I love LOVE LOVE! I also got some cheap Atelier acrylics and some more Art Spectrum pastels which I am enjoying playing with :)

Happy 2008 everyone - I hope it is a great year to everyone. 2007 has NOT been my year but it WILL be better in 2008, I know it!!

Kass

happy holidays!

we are heading off first thing tomorrow morning for Christmas with Michael's family on the South Coast of NSW. We'll be back on 30 December.

Until then, have a happy, healthy and SAFE holiday season!

I will only have limited internet and mobile phone access though SMS should be OK if anyone needs to contact me.

Kass, Michael, Elvis and Sunny xo

bah humbug

This is how the conversation went:

Doctor: "Well Kassandra, the good news is these scans and tests show everything is within the normal range and I don't think you require surgery to your septal deviation, as I don't think that's causing your pain. There's no evidence of tumours anywhere and I think the ear drum will heal itself".

Kass: "That's good, when might that be?"

Doctor: "Hard to say. It might take a while but you have Nurofen, right?"

Kass: "Yes, but what's the problem?"

Doctor: "I don't know. You might have to see a neurologist instead next year."

...

Moral of the story - I am back to square one and they have no idea what is causing this pain.

Kassie not happy.

update...

the hearing tests yesterday were fairly good, there is some small loss in the right ear but he wasn't sure if this was permanent or because of the deflated ear drum.

I see the ENT again this afternoon, so I guess we'll see what HE says. Hopefully it'll be something like "oh this is EASILY fixed!"

where to now?

Liz asked me what happens now with my health...

Good question, the answer being I don't exactly know!

I am seeing an audiologist tomorrow for testing. Given that there is already a low percentage of deafness in both ears, that wont come as a surprise - I guess they are now looking to see if further damage has/is occurring. Truthfully I don't have a clue.

Then Thursday I see the ENT specialist again.

I don't know if the septal deviation of the nose and deflated ear-drum are related or not, which means there could be two plans for attack. I have read that sometimes re-inflating the eardrum requires a day-surgery procedure which they thankfully give you general anesthetic/sedation for. If that's the case, that's GOOD coz I don't want a bar of knowing about being awake for that!!

It's all a big WAIT AND SEE thing, and the reality is it will be January before anything is done anyway so I have a few weeks of this to go. I tell you, it's all fun being me right now!!

Apart from the waiting, what's also frustrating is the energy it's draining from me. All I want to do is sleep. My body is constantly aching from being asleep so much too. All this for a friggen little deviation of the nose and an eardrum!! Some days I think I am cursed, health wise!!

Today is my day off and mentally I want to do some arty stuff. Physically I want to go back to bed. Sheesh...

good news

1. The MRI scan came back clear. He said they found nothing. My best friend asked if that included my brain.

2. KiwiScraps has 6x6 Clear Acrylic albums for sale - for those who took Finishing Line Scrapbooking at Stacy Julian and friends, you know how groovy these are. They also have the acrylic album things from Nic Howard's class. I got myself some today. you should too.

finally....a completed album

NYC Album

This is the album I have now finished (minus some journalling I need to complete) as a result of the Finishing Line Scrapbooking class I took with Stacy Julian at KiwiScraps. It is freakin' HUGE - it doesn't close properly and its kinda overloaded but I needed to include everything!

It includes postcards, maps, subway tickets, menus....everything I saved. I am totally rapt with the results. I used Jenni Bowlin papers, and Crate Papers, plus a variety of embellishments, most of which I painted black. I am so proud of it, because it documents everything, it's not over-embellished or flash - it just does it's job.

Thanks Stacy for the inspiration to get it done.

Look Me In The Eye

This is a book I just finished. It's called Look Me In The Eye by John Elder Robison, the brother of Augesten Burroughs who wrote Running With Scissors.

Robison was diagnosed at age 40 with Asperger's Syndrome, which is on the Autism spectrum. The book tells his life story, living with this syndrome as a child and growing up. He talks about how he was constantly told he would amount to nothing, that he was a freak and how he was shunned by his community and, in many ways, by his own parents.

While I found the first two thirds of the book interesting from a memoir perspective, it wasn't until he received his diagnosis and was thus able to understand his life, that I found the book really fascinating. For example, his childhood was varied and he lived with parents who were consumed in themselves - his father in alcohol, his mother losing her mind totally. He went on to become an engineer for the band KISS, designing Ace Frehley's guitars with special effects. This was all really interesting but it was not, in my mind, what I wanted to know about him - it was the way his Asperger's affected his life that fascinated me and when he goes on later in the book to talk about that more specifically, that's when I found this memoir compulsive reading.

I'd totally recommend reading this book - you'll enjoy it immensely but you may not learn as much about Aspeger's as you might hope so keep that in mind.

not quite what I had planned

Things haven't quite worked out the way I thought they might over the past couple of days.

I went yesterday morning to see the the ENT specialist. I was going alone but at the last moment I rang Michael and asked him to come with me, and I am glad I did. He used a local anaesthetic and put a camera in my nose - no pain because of the local but uncomfortable. He then asked if he could take a biopsy which I (reluctantly) agreed to, but before he could do that, I passed out. This is why (amongst other reasons) I was glad Michael was there to catch me! I was "out" for about 30 seconds I am told - I have no recollection of it. So he didn't get the biopsy after all.

I was then sent for an emergency MRI. However, it took a fair bit of ringing around by my persistent Mum to get me in (thanks Mom) - it seems if you're not actually IN hospital, you're not an emergency. I finally got one and went and had it. Has anyone else had one? Different to the CT scan, you actually stay in the tunnel for about 45 minutes and you can't move, but you also can't doze off because of the noise! I'm not usually claustrophobic but gee, was I ever glad to be out. I don't like being forced to stay still with about 4 inches breathing space for so long.

I came home and slept for several hours - I'd had a couple of dizzy spells in the afternoon and wasn't feeling so great. Then late last night I found a message on my phone that I had to be back to have a second MRI at 8.20am this morning - not as long this time thankfully. They told me they missed getting some pictures they'd needed. Maybe it's the experience of the past, maybe I am cynical, but I kind of don't believe that.

So now it's a waiting game. We don't know what is happening other than something on the CT scan caught the attention of the ENT. What we do know is that I have a deflated ear drum (which I think may have started or happened on the flight home from KiwiScraps in November - I didn't think at the time my ear had popped properly). We also know that my sinuses are actually clear - he doesn't think this is a sinus problem per se.

The waiting is the hardest. I have been through this so many times in my life. The waiting is worse than the knowing, even when the knowing is not great news. It's NOT cancer again, that would be unlikely and would come as a shock. But something is going on, it's causing me huge pain and not knowing makes me anxious. I just want to know.

And I am a bit sick of being sick.

I knew it!

For YEARS I have been telling people that my nose is not centered. There is a flat bit of cartlidge and it's off center. No one believed me - everyone said it was fine (other than my Mum and husband who agreed with me).

So I had my CT scan today and - SHOCK HORROR - they've finally said "your nose if slightly deviated" near the septal part of the sinus - exactly where the flat bit is!! BOY oh BOY did I enjoy hearing that - I knew I wasn't imagining it.

So I see an ENT specialist on Thursday morning. They may drain cartridge fluid out but it may also require re-setting!! I am not a vain person but my nose being off centre bothers me, don't ask me why but I really notice it. So although the idea of major facial surgery doesn't exactly appeal, if it meant it looked normal then maybe I would be willing to get over that!!

Most of all I just feel a bit vindicated - shame I have to endure so much pain to get them to take notice!