Burning and Crashing
It wasn't too long ago that I was doing 1-2 paintings a day and looking forwards to my next one. Since I started about 4 yrs ago I have close to a thousand paintings. I started off using acrylics and then after watching a few Bob Ross videos on You Tube, I decided to try oils. Oils were fun but after a while the fumes began to bother me. I installed some ventilation into my studio which helped but not enough. I started getting sicker.
Turned out that I have stage 3 metastatic prostate cancer and started getting treatments for it. I also switched back to using acrylics. The increase in interest in painting just skyrocketed as it was a mental distraction from what I was going thru with cancer. I painted just about everything there was to paint from abstracts, animals, pets, birds, landscapes, winter-scapes, seascapes, lighthouses, portraits and self portraits. I learned the technique and about brushes from Bob Ross and just modified things to work for me. So all I needed was to learn the basics and off I went.
I never painted before nor did I have any interest in it. It was a complete surprise to me, a pleasant one though.
In March 2019, I noticed that my situation was worsening and treatment was taken to a higher level. My lower extremities began swelling up and the pain kept increasing by the day making it not only difficult to focus on painting but getting down a flight of stairs to my art studio became impossible. I also knew that if I could get down there, that's where I was stuck as climbing stairs just wasn't going to happen.
I began to put my focus that I had left back into music, after-all that has been my life for over 6 decades. I created somewhere around 45 tunes before things began going down hill. It was as If I was crashing and burning, burning and crashing all over again. I had no interest in doing anything anymore as the pain kept increasing and the psa levels rising. I ended up in the hospital again and had a little surgery. There was a blockage in my prostate and bladder which had to be removed. I also got a port for chemo installed while there.
About a week later, after being discharged, I got my first round of chemo. It was brutal afterward but managed to get thru it. My next round is coming up on the 26th. In the meantime, my lower extremities just kept increasing in size from swelling. I gained over 20lbs of water in a short time, which is now controlled by a diuretic (water pill) and the pain by a higher dose of a pain patch and adding a pain killer called dilaudid. My taste buds are gone from the chemo and have no appetite. My walking abilities have dropped down to a few yards and had to get a wheel chair.
As for the Dilaudid, I'm getting that from my pharmacy this afternoon. We'll see if that going to help with the pain as I still need to go up and down about 5 steps to get outside. Once I'm down and out, I can use the wheel chair to get to my vehicle. We'll see how things workout during the next week or so.
Here's a jazz tune I did featuring guitar, called "Hyper Drive", after I had lost interest in painting.
Turned out that I have stage 3 metastatic prostate cancer and started getting treatments for it. I also switched back to using acrylics. The increase in interest in painting just skyrocketed as it was a mental distraction from what I was going thru with cancer. I painted just about everything there was to paint from abstracts, animals, pets, birds, landscapes, winter-scapes, seascapes, lighthouses, portraits and self portraits. I learned the technique and about brushes from Bob Ross and just modified things to work for me. So all I needed was to learn the basics and off I went.
I never painted before nor did I have any interest in it. It was a complete surprise to me, a pleasant one though.
In March 2019, I noticed that my situation was worsening and treatment was taken to a higher level. My lower extremities began swelling up and the pain kept increasing by the day making it not only difficult to focus on painting but getting down a flight of stairs to my art studio became impossible. I also knew that if I could get down there, that's where I was stuck as climbing stairs just wasn't going to happen.
I began to put my focus that I had left back into music, after-all that has been my life for over 6 decades. I created somewhere around 45 tunes before things began going down hill. It was as If I was crashing and burning, burning and crashing all over again. I had no interest in doing anything anymore as the pain kept increasing and the psa levels rising. I ended up in the hospital again and had a little surgery. There was a blockage in my prostate and bladder which had to be removed. I also got a port for chemo installed while there.
About a week later, after being discharged, I got my first round of chemo. It was brutal afterward but managed to get thru it. My next round is coming up on the 26th. In the meantime, my lower extremities just kept increasing in size from swelling. I gained over 20lbs of water in a short time, which is now controlled by a diuretic (water pill) and the pain by a higher dose of a pain patch and adding a pain killer called dilaudid. My taste buds are gone from the chemo and have no appetite. My walking abilities have dropped down to a few yards and had to get a wheel chair.
As for the Dilaudid, I'm getting that from my pharmacy this afternoon. We'll see if that going to help with the pain as I still need to go up and down about 5 steps to get outside. Once I'm down and out, I can use the wheel chair to get to my vehicle. We'll see how things workout during the next week or so.
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| my last painting I did as of March 2019 |
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