Well it’s been a full month since I posted this, and I’m only sicker now. More than 2 months of coughing, plus conjunctivitis and nosebleeds. Just started my second round of antibiotics.
More pix to come, I’m sure.
Sick Pix
Category: $100 Drawings
Why can’t I Be Sick Like A Normal Person?
In March 2023 I got COVID which kept me in bed for 6 weeks. The following month it kept me in bed every other day. After that I got back to normal, except my body temperature remained a degree-and-a-half higher than before and, unbeknownst to me at the time, I developed Crohn’s Disease. I was diagnosed by the end of that year, and the first few months of 2024 I spent with worsening symptoms while getting infusions of Skyrizi, a monoclonal antibody treatment. It kicked in after about 4 months and I stabilized by Summer 2024.
Skyrizi is an immunosuppressant. I took extra care avoiding exposure to communicable diseases, wearing a mask at the grocery store, not flying, avoiding crowds. I got through 2024 without so much as a cold.
A little over a month ago, I got what I think was RSV. It nailed me in bed for close to a week; then I thought I was recovering, with “just” a lingering cough. Then it got worse, then a little better, then worse, then to “Convenient Care” where I got my first chest X-Ray (seemingly normal) and tested negative for COVID and Flu A & B. Then back in bed for a several days.
I couldn’t talk without coughing, so I stopped talking. I canceled what few plans I had. I rested, and rested some more. I watched more TeeVee than I did in the previous decade. I played a lot of Lexulous with the Level 8 practice robot, which I now beat more often than not.
I think I am finally recovering. Although I am still coughing, I am able to speak again. Yesterday I bicycled, albeit slowly. My brain is coming back online. Cori and I recorded a Heterodorx last night, first in weeks. Unfortunately, all I had to talk about was how sick I have been because I have nothing else going on. (Cori’s adventures make up for my lack.)
I just drew “Cough Monsters,”above, from a sketch I made near the nadir of my illness. The last drawing I made was still on the scanner — it was called “Exiting Winter,” which I drew the very day my cough started. Hilariously I thought the worst of 2025 might be behind me. Boy was I wrong.
Reality & Mystery
I listened to a 2-hour video of this academic saying that Reality isn’t real, there is no reality without someone to perceive it, while I attempted to hand-animate a fat Earth goddess I called “Reality,” because that morning I had imagined praying to Reality, who doesn’t care about my feelings, and also to Mystery, who might. Reality and Mystery, sisters. Systery. My animation failed but I still wanted to draw Them. Is Mystery the snake that twines around the Goddess? Is Mystery Reality’s backside? Is Reality that which can be illuminated but seldom is, while Mystery cannot be illuminated at all? Is Mystery just the parts of Reality we can’t see, or is She something else entirely?
Anyway Mr. Academic says There Is No Reality, only consciousness, and “science” backs that up. Dude, I read The Doors of Perception when I was 17. Sure, “reality” is some informational plasma that doesn’t take shape (as we know it) until we interpret it through our senses. But that plasma triggers multiple flesh-instruments the same way; it can be measured, even if measurements of Reality aren’t Reality itself. He sounded to my ears like a freshman in a late-night dorm room, however:
I do love the idea that nothing is in fact real, that everything is an illusion, because it takes a huge load off. All my pain, search for meaning, criticism, loneliness, frustration, fears: they’re just artifacts of my mind, which is itself an illusion as well as a generator of illusion. My mind isn’t real, my thoughts aren’t real, reality isn’t real. Ohm.
On the same day I saw a video of a young mother who regrets motherhood. She’d always wanted a baby girl; now she has one, and while she loves her daughter infinitely, she hates the experience of motherhood, the physical and psychic changes, the long stretches of boredom and meaninglessness, the absence of fulfillment, becoming a lifelong host for a parasite, the pain and suffering and emptiness despite the love. The disappointment.
And I think: I feel the same way about having been born! What a colossal disappointment.
She urges women to consider not becoming mothers: it’s not worth it. And I encourage ethereal souls to not become incarnated on the human plane: that’s not worth it either. Spare a mother, spare a child, solve multiple problems at once.
Luckily, none of this is real.
Ohm.
Sleep Scrutiny
I scrutinize myself trying to fall asleep as I try to fall asleep, which makes it harder to fall asleep, upping the scrutiny, etc.
I’ve struggled with insomnia my whole life, and today thought drawing a picture of it might help. It’s never helped before, but neither has scrutinizing my sleep.
Warm Anger
