Chicks Dig Scars

The hair was already short, so there was not much that needed to be removed. Scissors seem to have done a sufficient job of providing the necessary exposure of the scar, which really did heal rather beautifully. I don't think that clippers or even a razor will be necessary. Just need a hair grip to keep the remaining longer bits pulled back.

I am pleased to say that the lighting in the second photo was just right for capturing the location where the bone flap was removed - you can see it crossing the scar. When this area is covered in hair, there is a slight unevenness that is just barely visible at my hair line, but if you didn't know it was there, you wouldn't notice. Normally if I turn my head in just the right way when looking in the mirror, there is only just enough deformity to cast a shadow, and I have to look carefully. I'm surprised to see how prominent it is here. 

What isn't visible is the shape of the bone flap itself. It is a half circle (you can see it drawn on my head pre-surgery if you scroll down the page), and if move your fingers across that area, you can feel not only the dips in the skull, but little raised bits. The raised bits are the clips holding the bone in place. If you can read Braille, the bumps spell ... nothing, probably. And if you were a Victorian head reader, I don't know what you would find out. I imagine that other areas of my head already provide indications of all manner of Victorian Ladies' Diseases.

Next person to donate 50 quid can, if they choose, have the baggie of hair pictured below. Not very dramatic, I know. It's just a little clump. It isn't like I've shorn a large amount of luscious locks - my hair has been short and ridiculous for several years now, and attempts to grow it longer keep failing. Scissors are always too near. 

I've also just noticed that the baggie has bits of soap or something sticky inside it, for I am thrifty and used a bag from the toiletry case I use when traveling. I cannot entirely rule out the possibility that the hair itself is icky and sticky. You may not want this pathetic clump.

Or! The other option that has just occurred to me is as follows. The next person to donate 50 quid gets an object d'art containing this hair. Perhaps a little fluorescent salt-dough skull with this filamentous biomaterial protruding from the top. Or maybe a piece of scrap paper with glitter and stickers and popsicle sticks and hair smeared across it in glue, the kind of thing a small child might make in kindergarten, a depiction of some inexplicable view of the cosmos through the lens of cartoon fantasies and The Neverending Story. Eh? Or not.

Tories Are Tumours

Why not share your views? I'm sure Brain Tumour UK will be very polite in their upcoming visit (13 July) to the House of Commons, during which time they will speak on behalf of the flock of zipperheads they try to provide support for. What they should be doing is going in there with surgical saws and doing what is necessary to the thick skulls of high ranking officials who are Blue precisely because they were deprived of oxygen at birth, but money ensured they got to go to public school and then allowed them to assume office among a whole gaggle of other inbreds. Perhaps drop the charity a few lines they could use in their address to said gaggle.


In related news, for those of you in London, come and raise a vicious fuss on 5 July. Details here.


And, having said all of this, the run is in 8 days. I am extremely grateful to everyone who has been sending monies on my behalf. Means a lot to me.

run plus sun does not equal fun

And there you have it. Thirteen more sleeps before I have to do this in close proximity to lots and lots of people. It's absurd. And I'm still only at 71% of the goal, so step up, You.

Tired. Over-sunned. Dry mouth and sticky hands. Feet smell. Bad.

Jazz Police/Black Block Hybrid supports Charity

I have two of these banners. Who wants to hold/wear the second one on the 10th of July?

They sent me a Shirt for "Racing"

In 31 days' time I will not be racing, but I will be somewhere in the back of the crowd with all the other people who are 'running' as best they can but struggling because they didn't know what they were getting themselves into, or because they are balancing an egg on a spoon or wearing a novelty costume as part of the challenge they decided to undertake as a fund-raising stunt. But I will be looking very stylish. 

1. I will be RED (this happens after five minutes: face, arms, knees/thighs), and there will be fear on all sides of me that I am about to collapse due to said colouring. After an hour this may be true, and I'll have to keep moving for longer than that. It's not my fault that my legs are short and stubby.


2. I will have hair that may or may not be altered for the occasion. I have been trying to grow it, but it may be necessary to revert to a really retro style, circa 2008, baby. That involves a little pink and some awkward bald bits and some black marker. Maybe. We'll see how I feel about it as the date approaches.

3. I will also be wearing a very special shirt for special people on a special team that isn't all the other teams. It's made of that special slippery icky flammable material used for a lot of athletic wear. It arrived this afternoon and, despite being 100% polyester, I am pleased to say that it is in the size I specified.

Behold, for I AM SPORT. 

Meanwhile, key information contained in the Official Event Programme: "Text 'toilet' to 80097" in order to be directed to the nearest shitters on the race course. It is recommended that runners "arrive well-hydrated", but are also advised to "be sensible and go to the toilet before leaving home". Should I drink water or not, then? Piss or not piss? And if I take a laxative at 11pm on the evening prior to the race? Then I would be able to cross the finish line with various fluids trickling down my legs. "Gatorade will be available at the finish on Whitehall'", so I suppose I can always re-hydrate if I let it all out while running.

Hammer Smash Enemy

::: Just in case it isn't clear what is going on in the post below, and why :::

The details of my situation are complicated and I won't go into them (ask me sometime, if you like). But the evidence for my conviction is strong. 

What can I say in short? Mobile phone liked me immediately because it found that I was one of those who is just a bit more susceptible than others to the high-risk factor of developing brain cancer from bullshit portable microwave ovens. Love at first sight. Isn't that sweet? So sweet it could make you vomit?


Now, I promised myself years ago that I would point out to people the dangers of wireless devices whenever an appropriate opportunity presented itself, including to my friends, and then after mentioning it I would not continue to drone on and preach about it. That simply wouldn't be fair, as these devices are so commonplace in nearly everybody's daily life that it's practically illegal to not own one. That, and it's tedious, it's boring, and no one wants to know, and obviously not everybody in the world is going to develop a brain tumour because they have a mobile phone (even though the chances of it happening sky-rocket as soon as you pick one of those things up). 

And yet I can't help shaking my head, or growling, or gritting my teeth, or making my little insinuations - as I have done throughout this blog, and in my little campaign, and every time I tell someone that I have a brain tumour. It is difficult enough to try to spit on my own head at the enemy within, but it is actually harder to let go of my resentment for the object I know played such a massive role. Perhaps I feel that I need something tangible to function as scapegoat? It certainly helps to be able to point a finger and retain hatred for a thing, and being angry is quite thrilling, really. But this is too simplistic, and the role of the thing in this whole scenario is far too prominent to let it pass by unnoticed. Brain turd, greatest enemy, you were born of a storm started by an object that interfered with my corporeal electricity.

So let's consider this post, right now, to be the official moment of a full declaration of hatred of the device that did this to me. That device, and its networks which are not being researched extensively and urgently enough to "prove" the risk factors to a logical-positivist public. The telecommunications industry is one of the most profitable in the world. As we know very well, there is nothing - including human lives - that will stop the capitalist appetite. Which company is going to actively encourage research that will damage its profits? Et cetera. My advice: quit wireless. (They should put that on the NHS). Cigarette, anyone?


That said, I'll now retreat to my low-level criticisms again. Who am I anyway? Cassandra? 

Enjoy the smash-up. I wasn't able to have it on video, unfortunately. That would have been slightly more exciting, although admittedly, for the sake of keeping pieces close by for the lovely stills, and for the sake of preventing shrapnel from flying around and endangering the cats' feet, I attacked the things inside a plastic bag. The original New Year's Eve smashing of several years ago was out on a road, covered in ice and snow, at midnight, and involved flying sparks and a lot more melodrama. What is in the photos below is a rather nice, tidy presentation. Well, whatever. Pretty pretty.

Bad News

Well, it hasn't been the greatest day, and I'm sorry to have to share this information, but it's pretty important and it's going to affect all of us, as of now. It's not the easiest thing for me to say, but I have to do it.


I have found a brain blob fighter girl who is vastly superior to me in terms of both blog and warrior strength. 

Samantha Kittle, of Chicago. She's having a harder time than I am, but with way more style, and not for the express purposes of committing emotional blackmail on her friends and family like I am. She's far more respectable and way more cool. I'm just a hermit and beat myself up for not being able to manage my skoolwerk, rather than enjoying the fact that I am alive.

I encourage you all to go and investigate - she's really quite amazing. But don't leave me, just don't leave me. I'll turn a blind eye to your little infidelities as long as you promise to stay with me. And give me your money (ha) because I start to fade a little after the 6km point, which is a bit lame considering the 10km run is two months away. But come on, make Brain Tumour UK feel like something is being accomplished, and make me feel like a Firework, because Katy Perry says I am, although when I'm tired and bored at 6km, I stop believing her.

Smashed on My Birthday

It was my birthday a few days ago. It took a little extra time to get this post sorted out. But now it's here. Let's pretend it's still my birthday.

Today it is sunny and there are things growing in my garden. This pleases me.

In celebration of this, and in acknowledgment of today being my Special Day since the first time I took a breath of air on the planet, I have prepared a simulation of New Year's Eve 2007/8. The items in question were found discarded on a night bus somewhere in south London. Now they prepare to meet their end.

This time I am taking the precaution of removing the batteries first, which when smashed will leak in the garden, and I don't feel good about that. I don't actually have soil in my garden (it's very sloppily paved from its ex-car park days), and the flowers and radishes and carrots and beetroot and potatoes in the immediate vicinity are in containers, but I have to consider the quadrupeds. Or, cats, as some people call them. 











This is not to say that removing these batteries from my plan of wreckage means I will "responsibly dispose of" them ("recycle", yes, "recycle") in their unadulterated state, passively allowing them to be shipped off to China to poison humans and animals over there. And to disobey labeling and just toss them straight in the bin means they'll go to a bit of land or a section of the nearby off-shore irradiated liquid that some people call the sea. So it's not a clear-cut NIMBY situation: we will all be drinking the acid from these batteries, just like we drink it from billions of other batteries all the time. I just don't want my quadrupeds or green growths to be in immediate danger of concentrated poison in the garden. In the components of a mobile telephone, the radiation emissions during operation simply don't compare with the INSTANT DEATH of ingesting battery acid.

Not that there aren't benefits to INSTANT DEATH. I am tempted to just go ahead and smash the batteries and let them leak all over in the name of exterminating squirrels, aphids, and a small selection of fungi and parasitic infections that prey upon my plants. It is not entirely confirmed whether it is the quadrupeds or the squirrels that are responsible for digging up seedlings and bulbs. (NB: squirrels not included in the category "quadruped". They are evil. I care not for the number of legs they have. 'Twould be better if they had none at all). There is indisputable evidence that the cats have had their way with some of the larger containers where the greenery is barely established. They have been caught in the act. But there is also evidence of squirrel misdemeanors, mostly in the form of bulb theft or nut relocation. They are returning for their winter booty - although during my very thorough digging and re-shuffling of dirt for planting I only found two nuts. And I put them aside for retrieval. Who's been trodding on my land, then? 

Perhaps cats and squirrels are conspiring together? Just when I thought they were enemies, they rise against me.

But look, I'm not withholding squirrel food. They have little stashes spread out in all the gardens. And the cats are fed to bursting, plus they have free reign over birds and mice outside. Somebody here is taking the/a piss. Or the squirrels are just too stupid to realize that it doesn't matter how many times they dig their little holes in the same pot for a non-existent nut - it isn't going to suddenly materialize. The cats, on the other hand, know when they're in trouble for something, and they know what is not permitted. And they also - unlike most cats - stay out of pots, especially when something is growing in them and the soil is wet. They find the sensation on their paws to be rather icky. So it is possible to gauge - based on soil consistency and moisture, size of holes (or lack thereof), and which container is under attack - who the culprit was. And it's turning out to be squirrels more often than les chats.

My rage is usually with aphids. I have to crush them all individually and occasionally spray them with garlic and dish soap, which is a lot of work. Snails and slugs? They now have a designated weed-filled resort area that keeps us all happy. Plant diseases are deeply upsetting - sometimes there just isn't a remedy, even if I were a hard-chemicals-gardener. BUT. I have never harboured ill-will towards a squirrel until about 3 weeks ago. I have ceased to be amused by their fat butts and stupid twitchy tails. And so I consider carefully, and seriously: should I put squirrels and INSTANT DEATH together? Here they are together in this sentence. Shall I put this poetry in motion?

No, no, no. How could I. I suppose the squirrels are alright. I'll crush an aphid but I cannot touch the squirrels.

Because I might get rabies.

Anyway, let's get back to what I came here to do. I made the decision to remove Lithium-ion battery from said device. Here we go now, time to smash it up:

  
For those of you in the market for a new phone, your choice might benefit from the fact that the Samsung phone took longer to break than the Nokia. Such durability.

"... sorry, retarded ..."

Brain Coral

Faviidae from the Indo-West Pacific and Read Sea. Deepest thanks to all who have brought me up to 54% of my fundraising goal, both at the donation site, and by paper method.

Apparently you can buy these and keep them in an aquarium. But at your peril. I suspect they wouldn't like a simulated environment, like most other living creatures don't. It's not a matter of Do they have consciousness or Do they have emotions or Can they feel pain. They are brains. 

 Furthermore: 

If placed high in the aquarium, be sure to secure its position, as damaged tissue from falls frequently leads to loss of this coral. Care should also be taken as to its position in relation to other corals, as this species can send out long sweeper tentacles during the evening. 

Not to be messed with.

Messing with the Wrong Broad in 1962

Highly recommended. Watch it here.

London's Official British 10K Cattle Herd

Horses and helmets and bugles and plumes. All of which I am allergic to.


If you can be bothered looking at the updates at the Britishest of British runs website, you can find out all about the atrocity to come. It isn't like this comes as a surprise, but it certainly makes me less and less comfortable with the whole idea. I aim to bring some proper non-British peasant food to educate the bejeweled guests of the Ritz with. Perogies! Cheap, buttery, delicious, and conveniently mushy, so they'll squish nicely into my pockets.

I need to come clean about something, though. The money you are donating to Brain Tumour UK on my behalf is not really going to the charity. In fact, all of the participating charities in this event are actually just paying their runners for the humiliation they have to endure as they shuffle along a route featuring the World's Most Famous Everything in this Great Historic City. Shuffle and shuffle, all 25,000 of them, and in various stages of undress. 

So cough it up. You get to laugh, I get to be potentially trampled in a stampede of sticky bodies and a lot of halitosis, and Brain Tumour UK gets a little bit of cash to put towards researching the neurological problems of the people who invented mass running races. There is no cure. But you can help. Give us your monies. I'm currently at 47% of my target amount.


And to more or less quote Sarah, in Labyrinth, as she tries to escape the clutches of Jareth the Goblin King (aka David Bowie):


Somebody save me! Somebody take me away from this horrible place!

Sometimes I feel like a plastic bag, but if Katy Perry assures me that I am a firework, then baby, I am.

The Making of a Moron

Now that it is mid-April and there is warmer air to run in, I have left the hamster wheel and relocated to the ring of red pavement outside. Running round and round in circles without the glaring screens of daytime television, I feel lonely and realise how much I took those screens for granted. I had something to look at and be furious with. And now, out in the fresh air, surrounded by real oxygen and shrubbery and grass full of tiny daisies and the top of the Waltham Forest Town Hall clock peeping up over the trees, I want to just sit down and have a little picnic, because it would be something to do and it's so nice outside. Ah, clarity, elation, blank mind, boredom, idiocy.


In other words, just when I thought the environment of the hamster wheel was sucking my soul out, I discover that the intense boredom of running round n round n round n round the track may be the end of me. Not only do I have to carry my full body weight without mechanical intervention, and I have to actually propel myself forwards using only my own strength, I now get bored and can't always come up with enough angry thoughts to motivate my scurrying. Could it be that I need television to make me angry, which in turn fuels the running? A rotten carrot to chase? I can't think about politics because I would end up shredding the metal fence, thus rendering my entire physical being useless. And I can't think about skool or I'll sit down and cry. And thinking about my brain is not a reliable option either, for the track is not the place for metacognitive speculations. That would lead me into a mysterious metaphysical mist and transport me into a distant dimension.

. . . where I would have . . . no . . . thoughts . . . ?  

Perhaps that is what is happening. It's a matter of dimensions and displacement. I have nothing to think about except thinking about a lack of a things to think about (for 'think' read 'rant'). Although oddly enough, I am more vacant when donning my sports attire and not having a television nearby, which is a rather counter-intuitive thought considering what we know about the matrices between vacant minds, muscle fanatics, television, passive consumption, obesity, wait what is going on here. What I need is something to make horrible judgments and criticisms about. There is no such thing as ethical fuel consumption, and fierce hatred of everything that exists is mine.

I do not profess to know what it is I am talking about at all. All I can say is that that machine has been my scapegoat for all the tar I harbour inside of late, including the parasite. And having achieved clarity, elation, blank mind, boredom, and idiocy by running free in the wilds behind Waltham Forest Town Hall rather than in the slippery and sour confines of the gym, I am an empty vessel. But a television at this point might fill me with further emptiness rather than anger. I am now developing the fear. I can never enter that gym again. I'm going to have to acquire an entire set of resistance machines and free weights and assemble it all in my flat. Does anyone have these? We could could be Oh So Pretty together.

Ring Ring

Wait a minute ... didn't people used to have things like this in their homes? They are objects that I dearly miss. And cuz I'm all retro-chic and stuff, I think I'll start carrying one around with me in public, or maybe strap it to my head so I can be, like, hands-free and all. People will be like, wow, she's like, so old-skool, as they fondle the smooth curves of their iPhone and send yet another microwave message (aka txt) out into the atmosphere. What can I say? Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner. Har har har, SAR, SAR, SAR.

The Brain is Made of Wires and Radioactive Blood

In other news, I am two weeks late in announcing that March is Brain Tumour Awareness Month in the UK. Now you know. Lots to catch up on. But to be more timely, I will inform you that the current week, the 14th - 20th March, is Brain Awareness Week! Did you know you had a Brain? Let thee now be aware. Let us contemplate and celebrate the existence of this strange ball of electricity by praising the cauliflower and the other members of the Brassica family, which all contribute to the maintenance and general health of brains everywhere.

My shock of the day was to discover that our brains - for those of us that have and are aware of them - contain an arachnoid membrane? We are all secret spiders, clearly. Or have been woven by them.

There is only one response to this discovery, and that is to revisit the days when crime was fought with sticky spurts.

No New Growth!

It has stayed the same size over the last six months, as the Brain Doctor's Lab in Calgary has now confirmed.  I am very pleased with this news.

I blame the combination of my sister's voodoo, an exercise regime, and the magic of the warmest, most genuine and kind yoga teacher for ensuring that new growth was prohibited this season. And the general family and friend love and laughs, of course. And cabbage.

My general conclusion about the state of the world is that it is one big steaming heap of human shit. I have a lot to say on the topic of turds and digestion and I could talk about it with interest all day, but we can't really escape the fact that shit is revolting. And human shit is especially toxic. It's not like a nice, wholesome manure. It's miserable, full of preservatives and cluster bombs and Monsanto and the Alberta tar sands and Qaddafi's bad hair and bad poetry and blood-soaked broken everything. It's full of perverted growths and the radiation of wireless communication devices that add to the incidences of perverted growths.

But within that shit I still sometimes see the glitter of undigested non-GMO seeds, good ones, like from strawberries and blackberries and tomatoes, all peeping out and following the master plan of their mother plant. I like the seeds in the shit. They make it okay to be alive. And that's how I've been feeling lately. Like a whole foods advocate with dreadlocks and a natural oils-induced spotty face, inflated with feelings of relief and elation and 'hope' (is that what they call it?), temporary as it is. I know the thing will keep growing at its own desired pace, but I currently have the upper hand so ha, bastard child of the O2 network! I hurl my seeds at you and confront you with Brassica and fish oils. You are a Tory, you are feces, you can't grow but plants will emerge from your sorry gut-spew.

I thank the rest of you all for your capital-enriched seeds at the donation page, by the way. Almost half way there now: 40% of the goal has been achieved. I've been altitude training here in Calgary, which is approximately 1025m higher in the sky than London. Which means a lot less oxygen and a lot less being able to run at all. Which has been embarrassing. But it should mean I'll have super powers upon my return.

Except that I've been eating port and Stilton. There's no reason why it shouldn't be consumed year-round, and in countries outside of England.

Michael

(front)

It was delayed, but they finally processed the plastic version of my membership card. I'd been using a flimsy paper one before that. This arrived by post yesterday. 

But what's this?

Pray tell, who is the individual named on this card? 

(back)

I have never met this person. I have never heard of this person. I am disgusted by the suggestion that such a person may be anywhere in my vicinity. I flew into a rage and marched over there to demand an explanation for this grievous offense. 

They couldn't explain what had happened or why this person has the same birthday and home address as me, but told me to use the card anyway. At least "until they process a new card." 

I stomped over to the hamster wheel and proceeded to watch "May the Best House Win" on one of the selection of unavoidable wall screens. Unavoidable because I need to run staring straight ahead or I risk falling off the machine. The best house prize of £1,000 was split between two winners! Nice, respectable young women with the best taste in tastelessness.

I commend the facilitators of the facility for providing such a thoughtful and considerate selection of television programmes suited to everybody's needs. There's always a generic for-everybody one (usually game shows), a news-related or talk show one, music videos for the youth, and reality tv and/or dangerous nature adventures - digitally manipulated, of course. No sound, only image, but script for the hard of hearing is available, so one can never miss a moment of antique teddy bear auctions. The sound, otherwise, is digital radio and whirring machines, and the occasional slamming of weights when posturing idiots realise they can't hold the ridiculously excessive weight they've selected. 

Last week I watched that most enthralling piece of  daytime programming: "Loose Women". Oh so naughty, these unattractive women who babble to distraction about s-e-x and other commodities, as if it were 1969, or whenever it was that sex was invented and became just another trendy, edgy word for sex. The gaggle were featuring a prolonged interview with someone who claimed to be a pole-dancer. 

Her physical demonstration demonstrated that she had clearly never pole-danced in a real pole-dance environment. Who would pay to watch such uninspired motion. It was like watching a dried-up winter tree in Marks & Spencer trousers stiffly navigate around a dried-up winter tree coated in stainless steel. The Loose Women team were tickled pink by the s-e-x-iness of this display and had a go on the pole. I nearly fell of the hamster wheel.

Then, bursting with Wellness, Health, and Fitness, I proceeded to go home and eat a Sainsbury's Chocolate Choux Bun. For dessert I had a second one, followed by a coffee, and a piece of toast with Marmite. 

Anniversary

My titanium clips are three years old today.
Or, it was 18 January 2008 is when my skull was opened.
Let us celebrate by revisiting some images from that time.
Please follow the links to maximize enlightenment.

"The tumour was marked out on the scalp and a bicoronal incision was marked out to allow access to the tumour. The bony opening was planned to be 1-1/2 cm off the midline. The patient's hair was shaved, the incision line was marked out as noted and then infiltrated with Marcaine and Epinephrine. The patient was prepped and draped in the usual fashion."

 "The craniotomy was performed using the Midas Rex with the B1 attachment."

The offending sausage measuring 5.2 x 3.1 x 3.2 cm was then cut out piecemeal.

"The wound was copiously irrigated and closure was undertaken. The dura was approximated with interrupted 4-0 Nurolon suture. The dura was covered with Gelfoam and bone flaps were returned to its normal orientation and secured with Bioplate plates. The scalp flap was returned to the its normal orientation and closed using 3-0 Vicryl for the galea, and staples for the skin edges."

33 staples: 32 across the length of the incision, plus one seemingly random one on the side of my head, which was punched in either because the operating team thought it would be funny, or because there may have been a little too much pressure from the pins of the “headrests” used during the surgery.

For weeks after I smeared my hair with Vaseline to keep it well out of the way of the zipper that had been bestowed upon me. I ate a lot of dexamethasone and ate food and food and grew and grew into something as ferocious and hurtful as the thing they had removed. The steroids, in hindsight, may have been the worst part of the whole affair.

Sleep didn't happen, even when I was sleeping. I watched a lot of sunrises, which in the middle of winter on the prairies are some of the most sickeningly beautiful phenomena I have ever seen. Things that happen in the sky are terrifying and squeeze the lungs, and when light is moving or the Aurora Borealis flickers or all the blackness nearly disappears because there are so many stars you feel tiny and disgusting and enormous and made of glitter.

Lying on my back with my hands on my stomach I would feel those hands swell larger than my torso, fingertips grazing my neck. It's something I used to feel when I was very small and trying to fall asleep. My father said he remembered having the same sensations when he was a little boy. It's the actual sensation of growth, of the brain - which has no nerve endings and can't feel itself - developing and sending messages along the wires to the rest of the body. As my brain reclaimed the space the tumour previously occupied, I could feel its expansion in my limbs: reflection and refraction, cerebral smoke and mirrors.

This was all at home, long after being in hospital.

When I first woke from surgery I was still dreaming. Or on morphine, in other words. It was dark outside with blinky lights. I found my legs in the grip of a species of airbag not unlike those found in motor vehicles, artificial leglungs to aid the circulation in my lower limbs that, a couple days later were coerced into walking again with significant difficulty.

I was brilliant company at this time though, entertaining visitors by falling asleep in the middle of their sentences. A friend made the mistake (sorry I haven't given it back, D) of bringing me Nina Nastasia's On Leaving to listen to, which contains a song with my name [Jim's Room]. My name is never in songs. Too strange. I was on fifty million clouds and the song asked me if I was there, and I probably would have wet the bed, except I was fitted with a catheter and couldn't even feel it when fluids left my bladder.

 

Now how to celebrate. Perhaps I'll have a sausage.

Gratitude!

I am very pleased to announce that allllmmmost one quarter of my fund raising goal has been achieved to-date. Many thanks to everyone who has jumped on board early! Here is a flower for you: It's a Celosia - also known as Brain Flower.