CrazyAl is a fun guy to draw into the strip. You guessed that, didn’t you?
Writing you guys into the cartoon is a little tricky. I don’t have your voices in my head- not like Paste’s and Bob’s voices are just kinda ‘there’ when I need them. So… If and when I draw you into this mess, and it doesn’t exactly SOUND like you? You have my apologies. Show your friends anyhow. They’ll think it’s cool.
Geez. Is it Monday again already?
I had a discussion with a friend of mine about the Peanuts cartoon that ran this past Saturday. Peanuts is a comic strip you don’t normally have to recall the previous day’s cartoon to enjoy, but this was a Summer Camp Story arc, and involved a kid who didn’t want to talk with anyone. It seemed to be part of a running gag because it wasn’t necessarily funny by itself, but only when tied to the rest of the series.
Today’s Hubris is kinda like that. Maybe not funny by itself… but it’s part of the pace. I guess it’ll look good in the book.
I considered having her call the kids ‘Nutlets.’ But only for a very short moment.
The madness passed.
Motivation is fun to write about.
Okay, yesterday was kinda self-indulgent, but today we’re back to our story.
Just in case anyone missed any details, I’ll tell ya what went down. If you don’t want to know (because, “Bleaaah” feel free not to read any farther. Take a walk outdoors. That’s my advice.)
Thursday morning, I run the dog and do a little workout. Taking a shower afterward, I realize that my ankle and knee are kinda swollen. Weird. Later that night, I ask my wife (a nurse) to have a look. She says it’s not her usual area and kinda jokes that the only thing she knows that makes your leg swell up is a blood clot. (It was a joke because she assumed there were lots of other things that would, too. Ha. Ha.) End of prologue.
Friday morning, when I assumed I’d wake to a normal leg, I woke to an even more swollen leg. So I called the doctor’s office. I went in, they had a look, and said they were going to send me in for an ultrasound to see anyone could spot a clot or anything wrong with my leg. I ran home, did a couple of hours more work on a comic book I’m desperately trying to finish, and then ran off to the ultrasound appointment.
The ultrasound tech got really quiet and polite and asked me how I felt as she led me to a chair to await what the doctors decided.
The doctors decided to have her tell me to go straight to the emergency room without stopping anywhere. She then scared the begeezums outta me by looking earnestly into my face and saying, “But really… How ARE you?” before letting me go out the door.
I got to the emergency room, explained why I was there, and in a very short span of time, I was in an exam room. Many people asked me if I’d made any long trips or had a fall. My butt went numb from sitting on the gurney-style bed.
Someone eventually got some CT work back that showed that the blood clots had already gotten to my lungs. I was sent to ICU. Things slammed into motion then.
A hell of a lot of blood was taken, an ultrasound of my heart was performed at some point, I was asked many more times about pain, about long trips and about falls.
Eventually, they knocked me out, ran a tube up the inside of my leg, placed a filter just south of my lungs and started pumping me with some high-quality clot-busting drugs that work in tandem with a radio transmitter. I staying fixated in that rig for the next 39 or so hours.
There were tubes and catheters and tests and more blood taken and more CT scans of contrast chemistry…
…and a bleed.
Apparently, that would be the worst? The bleed in my right hip. I felt weird, put my hand under my covers and said, “I think this is a problem.” The problem was an enlarging lump forming where my right leg met the rest of me. Now, this was the few minutes of total overdrive. Lots of nurses and shouting (shouting and cursing on my part) my wife offering at least twice to hit the ‘code blue’ button on the wall, and all the while the nurse Noel’s fist socked down on that bleed trying to hold pressure on a rupture no one could see but only guess at. My blood pressure and heart rate tanked bad, but came back after they had the bleed under control. My right leg (and other bits) were now filled with darkening blood that would pool in some pretty unfortunate ways for days and even now still make me look like I bathed with some leaky Sharpie markers. My thigh is pretty much a rich red-purple trending finally this morning toward the yellow/green bruise color people have been gleefully predicting for a week now.
After the aforementioned thirty-odd hours on the clot-busting system, I had another procedure to remove all of that except the filter, and had two stents added to two veins in my leg.
By Monday night, I was moved from ICU to Stepdown. I was already a day late on my Hubris cartoons, but I’m ashamed to admit I was finding it hard to care at that point. Something to do with answering basic questions about who and what I was in order to rule out brain bleeds and other near-death fears left me ambivalent about drawing in a way that I haven’t otherwise ever felt. Low point.
Step-down is nice. There was a couch for my wife or my mom to sleep on. I improved in stages and was working on yesterday’s Hubris cartoon by the time anyone mentioned going home in a way I believed and that finally made me realize that the entire ordeal would end up taking slightly more than a complete week of my life.
Also, there was an esophageal endoscopy that was re-scheduled to fit in with my stay in the hospital… y’know, so I wouldn’t have to have it done in two weeks when it was originally on the calendar. I dunno. Complicated. I will tell you guys, though (and some of you know this much better than I do, after hearing the merest details of your stories) it’s awfully nice to walk yourself to the bathroom without a robot attached to any veins.
You can read people’s minds in comic strips. We’re accustomed to it. We know that when words are contained within lumpy clouds that the words aren’t spoken aloud.
I watched ‘Young Frankenstein’ with my youngest kid yesterday. It was his first time seeing it, and I became more attentive to what was onscreen knowing that. I was pretty amazed at how much dialogue could be cut from that film because you could read the thoughts of the actors written, not in floating bubbles over their heads, but right there on their faces. It was great.
And then there’s Bob. I like Bob, but I’m thinking there may not be as much thinking going on as those around him might suppose.
We’ll see.
Bear Grylls. Man, that is one distinctive name, ain’t it?
Like Rip Torn… or Dash Riprock.
We’re cruising up on Weird Week, folks! That week when I don’t typically find the time to make new cartoons.
Not that I don’t want to, mind. It’s just the other stuff that goes on.
But we’ll see.
Also, I’m late sending out Patreon Patrons’ Christmas goodies, and I apologize for that.
I thought there was another word for those soft icing-spreading kitchen tools, so of course, I went to Google. Turns out ‘icing spatula’ is totally a thing. And you know what that means- there are VARIOUS SPECIALIZED SPATULAS! How weird is that? I might be using an egg spatula to do fish! I might be using a cast-iron cookware-only spatula on a teflon pan! Those paint scrapers in the basement might be some kind of spatula, too!
The mind boggles.
If you let it.
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