blog

Through The Paces

Well, I obviously dropped the ball on getting a website post out, so I thought I'd pop in and say I'm pretty excited about totally abandoning my digital camera for an upcoming vacation. My wife will be using her point and shoot — but I'll be using nothing but my FujiFilm Natura Classica (and I may even bring my Smena 8M along, too). I will, however, go digital with my Kodak Zi8 mini video camera — I'm really looking forward to using this little bugger "in the wild."

Stay tuned for the results!

Still Here…

It's been a while, I know — but don't give up on me just yet! Updates will be coming SOOOOOOON!!!

MUTE MATH 2009 Video Snippets

We went and saw MUTE MATH at The Warehouse Live last night, and the show was great — as expected. I took some video with my iPhone, but the audio sounds horrible — and even clips-out totally at some points — because I didn't turn down the input volume. SORRY! Anyway, here are a few clips of the AWESOME show!

New Faux Polaroid Technique

I've been working on a new method for recreating Polaroid-style images in Photoshop, and I'm pretty pleased with the results so far. Here's a before and after:

You could even go so far as to add a border, like so:

Here's another before and after example using a shot I took while in San Francisco:

I'm liking it!

Catching Up…

Let me start off talking to people reading via Facebook: this post is pulled from my personal web site at maurymccown.com, which is infinitely cooler than the bland and generic Facebook you're looking at now. Just sayin'.

Okay, with that out of the way — let's start at the top, or, rather, the bottom...

My foot is healing up quite nicely. The stitches came out October 6th, and I'm now wearing Steri-Strips for another week — and then my toe will be free and clear to begin fully repairing itself externally. And in case you haven't heard, ALL biopsy results came back negative, so I am 100% cancer-free! I mentioned that over on Facebook, but not here — sorry about that.

Anyway, the first thing the Doctor said at my visit October 6th was "that was a big tumor you had in there." It had, apparently, been brewing for a couple of years, and had grown all the way to the bone — and thankfully not back toward my foot. If it were to have grown that direction, I may have lost all of my toe. But like I said, all lymph node pathology and margin testing came back cancer-free, so I'm good for now in that regard.

I did, however, have a small hiccup when one of my 4 incision sites got an infection. It was the site on my thigh, right at my hip (where they removed 4 lymph nodes), and there were several days when I would have traded that pain for having my other great toe amputated. Holy crapola, I would have never guessed how much an infection can take it out of you! This set me back several days, but everything is under control now, and I'll be off the antibiotics this Saturday.

The other big hurdle has been nerve damage and muscle pain from the lymph node biopsies themselves. When I went in for the initial consultation, the PA said my toe wouldn't cause me too many issues as far as pain goes, and that what I'd have to mainly deal with was the pain from the lymph gland removal. We figured he was just trying to lessen the worry about the toe pain, so we kind of thought "yeah, whatever."

Tip: listen to the Doctors and their staff.

My entire thigh feels like a giant, torn muscle. Quads, hamstring, ligament, tendons, and all. Apparently, if you want to remove lymph nodes, you have to cut through muscle and do all kinds of pushing and shoving of tissue. This also ends-up leading to fluid collection, hematoma, etc. — which exacerbates the issue. Couple all that with the feeling my toe incision is going to split open when I apply pressure to my foot, and you can start to understand why he said what he did.

But thankfully, things are getting better and better every day, and I'm able to walk with just my cane and an open-toed sandal for a few hours out of the day now. The swelling and bruising have gone down tremendously, which is great. So, I think I'm going to be able to keep my desired schedule: just a cane or no assistance by the end of October, and returning to church in November. The big issue is being able to put my full weight on my foot, which I just can't do yet — so walking up and down stairs with out assistance is a no-go at this point in time. It's tough to step up or down from the little ledge thingie in the garage right now, thanks to my toe and leg muscles. But, I'm hoping I can get that under control in the next few weeks, then I can get back to playing at church.

I'm starting to get a a little stir crazy, too, because I had to put all my projects on hold since I have to keep my foot elevated — and I have lots of projects! Speaking of that...

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I'm getting back into building guitars again, which is something my Dad and I played around with way back in the day. I'm starting out with a body and neck built to my specifications, then I'll do assembly and final routing/drilling. That's not really building, I know, but that's where I want to start this go 'round. Once I heal up, I'm thinking of going ahead and building a storage building out back that will free up space for me to have a shop in the garage where I'll be able to sculpt and finish my own stuff again.

I will never forget how cool it was to custom build my first guitar with my Dad. The neck was especially cool, because we did it all: took a rectangular board, sculpted into a shape and contour I liked, cut the fretboard from rosewood, slotted it, glued it, fretted it, etc., etc. It was a thing of beauty. It's wonderfully relaxing process, shaping wood — and there's just something cool about creating something out of nothing.

While I wait on my custom body and neck, I'm redoing the frets on several of my guitars, as well as performing other "invasive" tweaks, etc., to get them in tip-top shape. Stay tuned for more on that...

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Our band, The Lillian Pearl, has been on hiatus during all of the above. For starters, our drummer flaked on us (he didn't realize how serious we are), and then my tumor mess happened — but we're not out of the race just yet! I'm willing to bet we'll be doing at least one show before the end of the year...

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I miss driving my Jeep. I haven't pushed the accelerator since September 15th. Hopefully I'll be able to drive in a couple of weeks... =(

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I'm going to try and maybe go to church this weekend, but that'll depend on how much I have to keep my foot elevated by then. Sure, I could turn a chair around and all that, but that's pretty sloppy. I miss not being there, and I miss Thursday Smokes, too. We'll see.

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Hydrocodone just kicked-in...time for a nap...

Just A Second…

An update is coming soon. Stay tuned...!

7 Days Later

Today (tonight at 8:05 p.m. to be exact) marks day 7 post surgery, and things are going as well as can be expected. I'm still having to elevate my foot to keep down the swelling, and if I don't, I get the wonderful sensation of my foot filling with blood — and the feeling that everything is about to burst through my stitches. It's not a painful feeling — but it is most certainly uncomfortable. Kind of like the stitches are the cork that's keeping my insides from gushing out, and all that pressure is building up in that little toe. A Hoover Dam, of sorts. The only "pain" I've been feeling is a searing, burning sensation‚ and that chimes in every 3 and half hours or so, like clockwork. Thankfully, I take my pain pills every 4 hours with Tylenol in between, so I can manage it pretty well. So really I'm mostly just incredibly uncomfortable all the time, as far as the toe goes.

What hurts are the spots where they removed lymph nodes. CRIPES! It's like I've been hit with a bat, and they're swollen in kind. They hurt if I look at them! I also had a small mass removed from my left arm, right at the bend, and it's driving me nuts, too. I can use that arm now, but I'm ready for the Steri-Strip to come off so I can survey the huge gash it seems I have (but scars are cool), and get my range of motion back.

Another issue I'm having to deal with is nerve damage from the lymph node removal. From my inner thigh, down to about half my calf, I'm pretty much numb — and this is one reason walking is so difficult right now. I'd say about 80% of my leg is dead weight, and that's a lot of weight to lug around. The vast majority of the nerves should heal up within 6 months, so it's just a matter of waiting.

As fas as me getting around, right now I'm on crutches — and only getting up under necessity, and to get some circulation flowing in my leg for a bit. I'm hoping that after my stitches are removed in 2 weeks, I'll get to where I can put more weight on my foot and downsize to using just 1 crutch. If my nerves are cooperating and that happens, I'm hoping I'll be able to downsize yet again to using just a cane by October's end. Sometime after this, I hope to be able to return to church and start playing in the band again — as long as Bunker and Phillip will be my roadies and carry gear for me. Then maybe — just maybe — I'll pretty much be able to get along without a cane by Thanksgiving. But again, my nerve regrowth will dictate all this, and while I want to get back to playing at church ASAP, I won't walk up and down the steps until I'm 110% confident I can manage without falling. We'll see.

So that's it for now, and how things are going 7 days after my toe amputation. Now, a lot of people are wanting to see what this little bugger looks like, but I've been hesitant to show it to the public — not because I'm embarrassed or anything (I think it's kind of cool, personally), but because it's pretty freaky looking. I mean, the human brain just expects to see all 5 toes when it see "A Foot," and when one toe is just cut in half, it's kind of jarring at first. Couple that with my toe still having the big, black, and wiry stitches — and it's pretty crazy to look at.

So here's what I've done: I took a pic of my feet today and blurred-out the amputated portion — so if you want to see it unfiltered, you have to click the picture. Let the blurred image serve as a warning. Also, any redness you see isn't blood — it's just swelling skin. You'll also be able to see the start of the wonderfully huge bruise that will soon cover my foot — as well as some writing they did on the side of my toe pre-op. It's not gory or anything, it's just really unusual. In fact, it looks just like you would expect it to if you were to imagine a toe cut in half. So, here's the pic...

Are you awake yet? You didn't pass out and hurt yourself, did you?