Wednesday, November 2, 2011

A lot going on in my head

It's been almost 3 months since my last post. Things have been pretty crazy around here. Good news is we put our house on the market and sold it. We have also found a great house that we are moving into on November 15th. I will now have a true studio to work in. My current studio is small and has no heat or air. So it makes working in the middle of summer and winter tough. The new studio is in the main house and is considerably larger. So I'm really excited to get in there and start working.

Unfortunately I haven't been feeling well for the past 3 months. While working on my last painting I started to develop dizziness. I went to the doctor and he performed a number of blood test which all came back fine. After a few more weeks of feeling light headed he did more test which also came back normal. About this time I started to hear a whooshing sound in my right ear. So I was referred to an ear, nose and throat doctor to check out the cause of the tinnitus in my ear. After several test he determined that there was something pushing on the nerve that leads from the ear to the brain. He ordered a MRI of my brain which showed a 1 inch glomus tumor that is putting pressure on my jugular vein and is restricting the blood flow. That is what has caused the dizziness and the whooshing sound in my ear. Thankfully it is not cancerous. The doctor said that it is slow growing and has probably been there for about five years. The next step is to have it removed within the next few months. The surgery will be pretty extensive (6-8 hrs) and require 3 different surgeons working as a team to remove. If all goes well I should be back to myself within 6 weeks.

With all of this going on I just haven't had much motivation to paint. But that is starting to change and I'm getting the bug again to start something. I have several paintings in my mind that I want to start so to keep me occupied I might begin drawing out the next piece. I'll post up progress once I get it started.