CoH Writer's Guild Review

[VuDu DawL]

I need an invite to the writer's channel! (@vudu dawl and @ringa dinga <---don't ask... I didn't name her...)

The Photoshop tutorial is by a guy named Mark Monciardini.
http://www.photoshoptopsecret.com/
This guy is really really good with Photoshop. He's using CS2, or higher, but he always points out an alternative for those using earlier versions.

I am one DVD into it and have learned a ton of stuff. (Well, one and a half.. I scanned through and found a chapter that applied to my current project.) If you want to see what I have been working on:
http://artzone.daz3d.com/index.php?/gal ... &aid=41021

The Private Dancer series is old. The angels and the cat-girl are new. Battle Angel was finished tonight, uploaded as I waited for CoH to patch.

As for questions? Ask away. I am not shy. If there's something that I don't want to answer I will tell you so, but truthfully, I can't remember the last time that happened..... LOL.

[Tog]

That render wasn't done in PS was it?

Man I wish could do art. I need a CAD set up to make decent stick men.

The question revolved around this:

Then there was this near-death experience a week before finals...

Seriously. You can't say something like this in passing. There's gotta be rules against it or something. It's not really in the same class as "Then we went out to eat", or "my phone fell in the toilet.".

[Myths n' Wraiths]

He has a point there Was going to ask myself, but Tog beat me to it.

[VuDu DawL]

Okay... it's kind of a long story...but...

On Tuesday, April 22nd, about 6am, I was on my way to school when a rabbit ran in front of the car. Instinctively I braked hard, and my purse flipped end over end and fell off the seat. I quickly reached across the car and grabbed it and yanked it back up onto the seat. I felt a light pulling sensation and a 'twinge' in my upper back. I assumed I must have popped something out of place.

By the time I got to class at 9am it was mildly uncomfortable. I kept twisting around in my chair, hoping to 'pop' it back in place. By 10:30, it has started to hurt. Badly. It hurt in the back (a hard pinching sensation) and clear around to the left front. Had I not known there was something out of place in my back, I would have been dialing 911 for a heart attack. The pain and pressure became so great that I found it very hard to breathe.

Around 11:30, I went to my professor and told him I was in pain and was going to have to leave. I called my husband and asked him to come get me as I wasn't sure I could drive. He couldn't get away right away, and for some reason was more worried about finding someone to come get my car, so by the time I made it to the parking lot (a couple of blocks from the school) I decided to just try to drive.

I don't remember much about the trip home except for stopping twice to try to roll around in the back of the CR-V and get whatever it was back in place.

By the time I made it home, I was too hurting and exhausted to drive the hour to the chiropractor. I made an appointment for the next morning, took some Tylenol and Advil, and tried to deal with the pain.

The chiropractor did some x-rays and said I had calcium 'bridges' forming on the front of my vertebrae, from slouching (over my books). He treated me, and I felt a lot better. By the next day, the pain was back. I didn't go to school. I went to the local office and saw his associate. He managed to get the upper part to adjust, that hadn't adjusted the day before. I felt suddenly better, and thanked him and went home.

It started about an hour later. No 'twinge' in the back to speak of, but a SHARP pain running from the middle of my back all the way through to my RIGHT front. (The earlier pain had been to the left, approximately where the heart is). This pain was different from the back pain and magnitudes more intense.

I am no stranger to pain. Having experienced childbirth, a uterine biopsy with no anesthetic or anesthesia, the extraction of all four badly impacted wisdom teeth at one time, and various other pain inducing events, I usually tend to handle pain well. After my hysterectomy several years ago, I was up and walking around that night, doing manual labor three days later, and back to work in two weeks. My body USED to have an absolutely incredible regeneration rate.

I knew instinctively that something was terribly, terribly wrong. By 6pm on Thursday, the 24th, I was in so much pain it was hard to form cohesive thought. My brain was totally involved in just processing and coping with the pain. I was taking 800 mg ibuprofen (Advil) every four hours, and with a two hour interval, 1500 mg. of Tylenol every four hours. This made the pain more manageable, but it was still nearly unbearable.

For the past two days, with the back injury, the pain had made it nearly impossible to get comfortable enough to stay asleep. My appetite had diminished. I was drinking protein 'meal shakes' to survive, and the only thing i had eaten in the past few days was a plain small skinless chicken breast at school on Tuesday. I felt completely exhausted and drained.

I called my chiropractor and told him I may need to see him on Friday, as the pain had become suddenly worse, and had migrated to my right side. He mentioned that as being odd, but assured me they'd work me in first thing in the morning if need be.

About 7:30, he called the house to check on me. I was in bed, thrashing around in pain. My husband answered the phone and came in and asked if my right arm hurt. It did, and the chiropractor told him it sounded like my gall bladder.

Now... about three years prior, I'd had an echocardiogram of the heart, and they saw when they believed to be a large gall stone. I discussed this with my CNP and she examined me and said I could either have it out, or just simply take a wait and see stance, as many people have gall stones all their life with no problems. I opted to leave it alone, since it wasn't bothering anything.

So I figured at this point, that stone had finally, after all these years, migrated up to the duct and gotten stuck -causing the pain. I decided that a trip to the emergency room was in order.

We drove to Austin (about an hour from where I live) and went to the hospital that my mother-in-law had recently been in. We signed in and took a seat in the waiting area. It's a Thursday night, but the place is packed with all kinds of people who really didn't need an emergency room. Sick children, a sprained wrist, a bandage on a finger that wasn't even visibly injured... two and a half hours later, everything I'd taken had worn off and I was in tears and snapping at my husband. My voice had turned to an almost feral growl. At that point he asked them how much longer it would be and got a "we don't have any idea" in response. I opted to take four more Advil because I just couldn't stand it.

About fifteen minutes later (typical) this snippy little nurse calls my name. As she's taking me back she's asking questions. "Did you have anything to eat or drink?" I told her about the Advil and she got very rude. "You know you aren't supposed to eat or drink anything once you come to the emergency room." By this time I was in so much pain I lost it. I told her that I'd waited two and a half hours, the painkillers had worn off, and I was in "the worst pain I have ever had in my life" and needed something. She put me in a room. I almost couldn't make it to the bathroom by myself as standing up and walking was becoming more and more difficult.

The inserted an IV and began examining me. She poked my side where the pain was and I shot up into an upright position. The area was swollen and warm to the touch, but I wasn't carrying much of a fever, so they said. (It had been hovering around 99.0 - 100.3 at home). They took me for an ultrasound, after giving me a shot of some painkiller (Morphine or Demoral, I wasn't too sure at the point.)

A while later, a doctor comes and tells me that:

a. yes there is a gall stone and it looks like it is in the duct, and needs to come out, and

b. there is no evidence from the ultrasound or my blood work that there is any infection present.

The low-grade fever, combined with an only slightly elevated white blood cell count led them to believe that I was fine, despite my insistence that I was in absolutely incredible pain.

She wrote orders for me to "call Friday" to the doctors group (the idiot that wouldn't come in that night and take care of me) and perhaps they'd get me in for a "consult" on Monday, and schedule my surgery for the following week. I was flabbergasted. I told her that there was no way I could go all weekend at this level of pain. She merely shrugged and said "There is nothing we can do for you. We can't just admit you and do surgery. Eat a low fat diet and call and make an appointment. Maybe if you ask them they can work you in on Friday and schedule the surgery for Monday, but I wouldn't count on it." She said the doctor she'd consulted didn't feel it was necessary to take any action at the present. I mentioned what I'd had to eat over the past three days, and told her it doesn't get any more low fat than that, and the pain got worse, not better.

I could not believe that this was an "emergency room" and here I was, in the midst of what I knew was an emergency, and they "couldn't do anything" for me?

Several times I reiterated that the pain was incredible and I even pointed out that I had a high pain tolerance, and this was still intolerable. She merely shook her head, shrugged her shoulders. She left the room, claiming that she again called the surgeon, and he again stated that there was nothing they could do. I asked her how I was supposed to deal with the pain and her answer was a prescription for Vicodin (even though I told her that it was finals week and I couldn't take them because I needed to be somewhat lucid to study). I was determined not to let this prevent me from finishing the semester!

I left the hospital shocked and disappointed. I felt like I'd just flushed the $125 co-pay into the toilet.

About an hour later, the shot they'd given me was wearing off, and I was in incredible pain. We got the Vicodin filled, and I took one, hoping it would allow me to sleep. I also took four Advil half an hour later. Nothing was helping. I was awake and in pain all night. By five AM the next morning, I was in tears, trying to find some way to get someone to help me.

I started calling my doctor's office at 7 am. Finally around 8am, I got a live person. I explained the situation and they said come right away and they'd work me in. It's a medical group, so by not having an appointment with my PA, I ended up seeing a new doctor. He was a very kindly older gentleman. By this time I can only imagine how bad I must have looked. I hadn't slept (or eaten much) in days. The doctor took one look at me and said "Why are you here? You need to be at a hospital!" He examined me and ran to call a surgeon.

The surgeon's office hours didn't start until 2pm. We arrived around 12:30pm, and his office manager found us in the hallway. She opened the office and put me in a room immediately. At this point, much of what happened was blurry, with my husband filling in a lot of the details. The doctor came, examined me, and said he'd put me on the schedule for surgery. They'd gotten my records faxed from the emergency room the night before. He said he could clearly see that the stone was lodged in the duct, that it was fairly large and that in itself would cause excruciating pain.

It took six attempts and the help of an anesthesiologist to thread my IV, because I was so dehydrated. The pain had gotten to the point where it was coming in fierce contractions that made labor pains look like a small muscle spasm. Finally they got me prepped and into surgery.

A short time later, I was in recovery, feeling a bit like a bus ran over me and looking like I was nine months pregnant. I had four new holes in my gut. But the pain was GONE!

And I was hungry!

The next evening, (Saturday) the doctor came to release me. I got the shock of my life.

He said he got in there and my gall bladder was totally necrotic and gangrenous. He described it as "a huge mess, dripping all over the place." He said they had to irrigate and irrigate in an attempt to flush out all the infection. The reason they'd kept me most of the day on Saturday (instead of letting me out early in the morning like they'd planned) was due to the fact that he ran two courses of antibiotics.

When I mentioned the ER telling me that I should wait until Monday for an appointment, he said "You'd be dead."

At my follow-up a week later, I asked him why I felt so weak and drained. I mentioned that laproscopy is a not nearly as invasive as the hysterectomy I'd had, and I felt much worse this time. He said "It's simple, you weren't full of infection when you had your hysterectomy. You almost died. It's going to take a long time for your body to recover."

So.......

That's my 'near-death' experience. It did take about two months for me to get back to normal. I was sleeping 10-15 hours a day. But I did pull off ALL my finals, and manage to do so with all A's. I was so worried that this was going to trash my whole semester and the grades I'd worked so hard for.

I find it mind-boggling to think that a part of my body just DIED... evidently some time before this, and I had NO CLUE. This coming from someone who can tell when their fever goes up only one degree, or feel when she ovulates. The only thing I can figure is that somehow the nerve to the gall bladder had been pinched and wasn't giving me any feedback, until after the chiropractic adjustment, hence why the pain suddenly manifested itself. It is still scary to think that part of me actually died, and rotted inside myself, and I never knew anything was wrong until it was almost too late.

I have to believe that God has an incredible sense of humor.....

THE MORAL OF THIS STORY!!!!
DO NOT EVER take a practitioner's word at face value when you KNOW something is wrong. BE PROACTIVE ABOUT YOUR MEDICAL CARE! You know your body, and if something is wrong, insist on further care, even when you have to fight for it. If I had simply taking the ER doctor's advice, I wouldn't be sitting here typing this.

So, now you know... the rest of the story.

[VuDu DawL]

Oh and...

No, I don't use Poser. I use DAZ Studio:

http://www.daz3d.com

It's free! Of course, they make their money selling all the goodies to go with it, but it is VERY community-supported and there is LOTS and LOTS of user-submitted FREE content! I love it. (ArtZone is part of the DAZ community - kind of like an art-sharing version of MySpace).

[Tropic]

Near death indeed!

I have a girlfriend who is fond of saying "You know why they say they are 'practicing medicine'? Because they're practicing on you!"

I had to have my colon removed about 4 years ago (see www.j-pouch.org for the gory details) and because it met their criteria they removed the tube going from my nose to my stomach that sucked out all the bile while my guts were in shock. Needless to say tney took it out about a day early. Throwing up 2 days after abdominal surgery is no barrel of monkeys!

Trop

[VuDu DawL]

Ugh. I can only imagine. Did you have to take B12 shots while you had the ileostomy?

I hope you're doing much better now.

[Ockham]

Wow what stories.

Just to freak you out, or not got this about rabbit totem:

Fertility and New Life

The Rabbit is known for its ability to procreate,
its fleetness, and its movement is by leaps.
People with this totem may find that their
endeavors go in leaps and bounds also.

If a Rabbit totem has appeared in your life, it may indicate a need for more planning
or to check those plans already set in motion.
Do not box yourself in a corner.

This totem may also bring a need to examine the kinds of foods you eat.
Perhaps a vegetarian diet, if only for a short time, can help you strengthen and heal.

The Rabbit is associated with the goddess Hecate.

Maybe the rabbit was trying to tell you something.

[Tog]

See? There was a lot more to it. I mean a LOT

That wouldn't have been the ER in St. Marks hospital in Salt Lake City would it? It sounds like them.

Glad it eventually worked out for you, and yeah, that is freaky. Right up 'til the end, I was thinking "Stupid rabbit", but it really sounds like fate or whatever works for you was on your side. Thanks for sharing that.

Did you follow up with the ER that sent you away at all? Maybe asked to see the hospital admin about maybe getting some people on staff that had more medical training than playing doctor in grade school?

My dad has an incredible tolerance for pain. When I was about 8, he had a finger crushed by a pipe and the nail went feral. He showed me what gangrene looked like, and how it smelled, then cut his nail completely off with the little knife from his pocket. Like, sliced the nail bed cutting.

A few years later, he was reduced to tears from the pain of kidney stones.



I was raised with the "go rub some dirt on it" mentality for injuries. I think I can count the times I actually went to a doctor on both hands (in base 10, some some freaky binary counting thing). Four of those were my choice, and not a single one was what I would call a TV experience.

A quick summary:
ER refused to even look at me because I was with my grandmother who was not my legal guardian.

Dr. did blood tests, urine samples, and a throat culture to determine why I had had a crippling headache for three straight days. I never heard back because he lost all record I was even there. Headaches were caffeine withdrawal from when I stopped drinking Coke to let my kidney heal from a kick I really thought I could block.

The first of 14 broken noses cost me three handfuls of blood and 3 hours in an Army ER to hear "Yep, It's broke. You can go." Worst paArt about that one was that I had donated blood 18 hours before, so I was literally about a quart low. Two days later I had a 2 mile run PT test. I missed my time by three seconds but the gold flashes I saw as I missed it were spectacular.

A self inflicted stab wound (cause I'm stupid) in my foot needed one stitch but got three. One wasn't even over the hole.

An open head wound from getting clonked by a 5 foot bead post with a marble cap got me three stitches, black to match my hair as opposed to blue to be visible to the guy taking them out, and instructions to go home and get some sleep. Am I the only one that watched MASH? Sleeping after a blunt force impact to the head? When the time came to take the stitches out, the guy doing it couldn't see them (They didn't shave the wound site and sewed hair into the cut) so he pulled out by the wrong side. Those little knots feel bloody huge as they zip under your skin. (St. Marks)

Another time I had what the encyclopedia identified as a boil. The problem was, it was on my daddy bits. I told the Dr what I thought I had. He looked at it, agreed it was a boil, then squashed it like a zit. Didn't even poke a hole in it.

One night at work, a guy cut his thumb really badly. I took him to St. Marks (we had to) and he sat there for an hour and 45 minutes, as the only patient in the ER at 4 AM, bleeding into a dishtowel. Correction: 2 dishtowels. When he told the nurse that the one he was given could hold any blood, she gave him a second.

[VuDu DawL]

Yeah, there was a lot. I just didn't think anyone would be interested in hearing about it, lol.

As for your history... wow......

Sounds like you have been down a rough road.

I am not too sure about the rabbit... this isn't the first brush I have had... but it is certainly one of the closest. Childbirth being the closest.. I actually felt myself pulling to get free right before the end. This time I really had no idea how bad off I was until after the fact.

No, the hospital was Seton Northwest in Austin, TX. I called and spoke with the ER director. They zeroed the balance on my bill, and the doctor and the surgeon that was consulted are both facing a peer review. Hopefully the next time someone presents in this condition they will take a little better look. I have no clue why my immune system was not signaling the problem. But hopefully the hospital will learn from their mistakes.

When I asked about the wait and their idea of triage, the guy was at least honest with me. He explained they have a 'fast track' area where they compete with Pro Med and other non-emergency 24 hour medical care centers. He said "It's greed, pure and simple." Sad....

[Tog]

None of mine have ever been life threatening, or even serious, really. I've come a lot close to dying from other stuff, but it was pretty binary. A bullet whizzing past your head, for example. Two inches lower and you die. If it misses, you're still fine. No gray areas.

Something like you had scares me though. I don't deal well with pain, so if it persisted, I'd probably have it looked at, but if it were "just" a fever, I'd wrap up in a blanket and ride it out. A while back I was sick for about a week with what was probably Bronchitis. I should have gone to the doctor, but since it didn't hurt, I didn't really see the point. Looking back, It was stupid.

[Ockham]

It's also stories like this the wonder why people want national health care run by the government. The government is good for killing people and breaking things. Alah, the military.

Apply that to health care and the will kill people and break things. It's own citizens.

[Tropic]

Ugh. I can only imagine. Did you have to take B12 shots while you had the ileostomy?

Naw. I had Ulcerative Colitis for well...34 years until everything went south on me! It would flare up for a few months at a time then go into remission for 10, 5, 8 years at a time so I was able to lead a pretty normal life until then.

While I had the disease the only real notable thing was that my Iron was chronically low. After the operation they told me to take 2 iron tablets. Apparently after the surgery and the naughty bits were taken out all my blood stuff went back to absolute normal extremely rapidly so i was getting like 4x the amount of iron i needed. Who knew that much iron in your blood would make you writhe in agony? Well, I know now!

I'm actually fine. Near normal as I can be with reconstructed innards!

Trop

[Voltech]

I skimmed casually through this forum and caught certain tid-bits like "near-death" and a really long story by VD (who i have yet to formally introduce myself to.) "Hi, I'm Volt"

Anyway after seeing little pieces of stories along with medical terms, rough comentary and something significant about a rabbit. i decided to read. I'm gonna take an aimed shot in the dark and say we are all talking about our physical limitations/ailments/accidents.

Allow me share a brief piece of my medical record. At age 13, for some reason i dont quite remember, i think i got the chicken pox, i go into a dermatologist, go through the basic procedure where he looks at me, nods his head, and says "yep, you have the chicken pox." wow you go to 7 years of med school for that!?

anyway he noticed that i have many many moles, flat and irregularly shaped, most on my chest and back. The Doc pokes around, measures, checks the text book, and apparently i'm at risk for milgnant melanoma (so he says to the 13 year old boy.) In 6 months intervals since then i get skin checks, i have had 5 sugeries so far where they cut out a certain piece of my skin. the first was 14 stitches, second: 9, 3rd 12, 4th (done at the same time as 3rd) 3 stitches, and my most recent one was 8 and still livid. Its not as bad as some you people, but take into account that i'm only now 17. Makes for cool stories at the pool and beach though.

[Tog]

Good to see it worked out for you Trop.

As for Volt... Man, I guess it'e better to try to keep ahead of that stuff, but it must look like you were a victim of a drive by BB gun assault

Kidding.

I've actually been really lucky as far as surgery goes, so far. None I've still got all my original factory equipment except for a bit or daddy part and a lot of teeth.

Yeah. I've got getting teeth pulled down to a science.

Aside from those, I've only had 6 stitches total. Like I mentioned though, I've also had a lot of lucky escapes from stuff that could have left me dead or (in my mind) worse.

One time I was on a merry go round t a park. You know those flat metal things with the looping handrails you're supposed to sit on, but end up holding one for dear life as someone spins you faster and faster until you fly off? Well, one day, alone, I decided to see if I had good enough balance to stand up on the handrails while it was spinning. I knew I'd have to lean forward to offset centrifugal force, but I didn't lean in far enough. I had barely made it upright when my top half seemed to slow down. This caused my feet to slid out sideways and I did 3/4 of a spin before hitting the ground.

Now. I fall a lot. I'm good at it. Time really slows down for me. when stuff like this happens, so I'm able to think of stuff on the way down. Usually stuff like "The ground should have been here by now. This is gonna suck." This fall was only about 4 or 5 feet, but in the time it took me to hit, it occurred to me that I was going to land on the sand just about where it slopes down to the axle of the spinning thing. If I hit on the downslope, I'd slide under it, probably on my side. The way these are built, the plates that make up the top are sheet metal triangles that have folded down sides. These sides are bolted together underneath, and the metal bits stick down about 2 inches.

Haven't hit yet.

The way I'm falling and the way thing is spinning means that It will scrape all the skin off starting at my feet until it hits a part of me too thick to keep scraping. Hip, maybe shoulder. But then again, this thing is heavy, so probably wont stop right away. it might even shave off a bit of hip, then work it's way up my bare arm. By then the next section will be there.

I also hurried to get out here. so it might be 5 to 10 minutes before anyone finds me. I might bleed to death by then. At the very least I'm looking at skin grafts and infections.

So, I started rolling away from the thing. I hit the ground on my left side and was already starting to roll, but I did hit just on the downside edge of the slope. I managed to crawl away with just a bruise on my leg and some road rash.

Sometimes the stuff like this isn't my fault, but I get that lucky a lot. On the other hand, I get a minor bump or scrape almost daily. Slivers, bump my head on something. Minor burns. Drop a heavy thing on a toe.

Still. I think I prefer that to "count backwards form 100".