Why I disappeared

TW: Hospitals, illness

This year started off with a lot of creative energy and hope for me. I set out my goals early in January and started work on them right away. I felt so productive! And then my world changed.

On February 2nd, my dad was here helping me fix my dishwasher, getting up and down off the floor, moving things, tightening things. On February 3rd, he went to the hospital for a low-risk outpatient procedure, and that night he went to the emergency room with severe pain in his abdomen. He was set up in a hospital room and I arrived the following day, just in time to see him go into respiratory failure, followed by atrial fibrillation. He was moved to IMCU and stayed there for the next six weeks. He couldn’t get enough oxygen so they put him on a ventilator. He couldn’t eat, so they put in a feeding tube. Eventually he couldn’t get out of bed.

Some of you will remember that my dad was sick last fall. We were in the hospital for a week then, and I thought that was bad. That’s what I was expecting this time around. I guess the last time the procedure aggravated his pancreas a little. This time it aggravated his pancreas a lot.

The pancreas is something I haven’t thought too much about. I know it’s responsible for insulin production, and I know I eat entirely too many sweets, but other than that it’s just there. Like an appendix or a spleen.

But oh boy you do not want to piss it off. One of the doctors said, "We have three rules. Eat when you can, sleep when you can, and don’t fuck with the pancreas.”

Well, my dad’s pancreas got fucked with. And it came very close to killing him. I won’t go into detail, but it was really brutal. One of the hardest things I’ve ever been through. Certainly the hardest thing my dad has been through. And we’ve been through some stuff.

He’s okay now. He was discharged from the hospital, went to an in-patient rehab facility for three weeks, and is now home. He’s still very much recovering and probably will be for another year.

It’s so insane how quickly things can change. I know watching your parents age (if you’re lucky enough to have them around) is one of the more challenging parts of getting older yourself. You expect them to lose strength and mobility eventually, but it’s still hard to prepare yourself for it. Still, I thought it would be later. My dad was exceptionally healthy. He walked a couple of miles a day and was on zero medications. Now he can barely walk across the room and takes a dozen pills a day.

It’s tough, but he’s got a good attitude and is putting in the work and is improving a little each day. And he’s got a good support network. I think he’ll get it all back. It’s just gonna take time.

As for me, I dropped everything that was droppable. I took my iPad to the hospital so I could keep up with my client deadlines, but all other projects got pushed to the wayside. I’m now in the process of trying to dust them off and reignite the same fired-up energy I had in January.

Showing up here is the first step. I’ll have more art-related stuff to share in the near future but I didn’t feel I could jump back in like nothing happened.

I want to close this with a shout out to healthcare workers. I encountered so many over the last few months and the vast majority were seriously amazing. By the end, I had my favorites, but that list was long. I’ll never forget them and how much they helped support us through this intensely difficult time with kindness, compassion, and humor.