august and my birthday came and went and now september is chugging along at a quick pace. i had a good, if low key, birthday. i had cake and ice cream with my beloveds on the actual day and had a couple spectacular meals out with sweet friends in the days after. i saw some art, i bought some art, i made some art. all in all, it was a pretty good birthday.
pet work has been steady but not overwhelming, which is good. mutual aid work has been slow the entire summer as lots of folks have been on vacation. and my level of energy and inspiration to work in the studio on creative projects has ebbed and flowed, as usual. i started working on some silly cat paintings, i turned a block print into a silkscreen print and did a small run of them, and i sold a favorite painting that had been up in my shop for a while, which makes me happy.
i’ve set a date for another holiday season porch pop-up sale like we did last year – saturday december 12th. more details as we get closer but both of my artist friends who sold last year will be there again and maybe another one or two? who knows. a lot can happen between now and then and if i really get my shit together i might even do another earlier porch pop-up in november. that is aspirational at this point and i’m not willing to commit to it yet because, well, keep reading.
the other thing that happened in august was that i had my every-6-months MRI on my brain, the week after my birthday. and while the news was not bad – it hadn’t really grown at all since the last scan and only 1 mm or so when compared to scans from 2022 – my docs do seem to think it might be time to go ahead and do the radiation treatment that was initially recommended to me shortly after my surgery in 2020 but that i declined at the time. i just wasn’t ready to do something else so big if it wasn’t absolutely necessary at that moment in time. but now it feels like enough time has passed that i feel more able to handle it. my radiation oncologist was on the fence after looking at the new MRIs but then he had me see a neuro oncologist who is head of her department and she feels pretty strongly that radiation is my best bet to stop the growth of these things and then basically be done with them. “one and done,” as she said. continuing to watch and wait is a bit of russian roulette as it’s uncertain how any continued growth might affect me since parts of the tumors (yes there are 2) are nearing important facial nerves and encasing my carotid artery. so i feel resigned to it now. let’s just get it over with.
we are still in the process of making the decision though. my neuro oncologist has me scheduled for a PET/CT scan this coming friday and then a follow up appointment in two weeks, after she and my other doc present my case to the tumor board after the scan results come in. so new adventures in brain scans await me this week and i get to learn what it feels like to be radioactive for some hours. lol if after all this the decision is to go ahead with radiation treatment, it will be 5.5 weeks, 5 days/week for 15 minutes a day. i have no idea when that would start though. and i really have no idea how it will affect me physically, as folks’ reactions can vary widely from nothing to debilitating, in terms of fatigue. i won’t know til i’m in it and probably not til i’m close to done with it, as it’s a cumulative buildup that doesn’t usually become obvious until you are well into your course of treatment.
i am of course afraid i won’t be able to work – or work as much – and who knows if i’ll have the energy/inspiration to paint or print or otherwise be creative. it’s all a big question mark at this point, which is why i’ve been feeling like i need to be working right now to get some stuff done before this all starts happening. just in case.
so i’ll be hopefully updating the web shop soon with some more stuff.
what else? i quit the bloom studio academy in august after only a month cuz i just can’t afford to stay in that program, as much as i enjoy it. maybe when i get to the point where i’m making consistent money from my art i will feel like it’s worth it but for now, i think i’m done with art2life classes/memberships. i wish i could afford to do one of their retreats or the business intensive that’s coming up but it’s not in the cards for me now unless i win the lottery. i just need to focus on making work that i enjoy making and that i like as a finished result that i can eventually, hopefully, sell. so stay tuned for more of that!
