“History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”
- James Joyce, Ulysses
A lifetime of memories, stolen in the flash of willful medical negligence. A life-saving surgery, rescuing me from the twisted helix of familial DNA, cancer averted.
3 minutes of darkness into a void and then waking up 2 days later with explosions in my head. A dual simultaneous cerebellar stroke - 2 of them.
Life on the other side of disability with a severely shortened life expectancy is very different from my life before as an award-winning artist, an accomplished and compassionate death companion/patient advocate, and a retired photojournalist - having left my decades of Human Resources and people management for the DOJ and in clinical healthcare.
When there was no rehabilitation offered, I took matters into my own hands, creating a path out of nothing for survival. Using the skills passed down through the hands of my elders and my own hyper-creativity, a result of the strokes, until my hands surrendered.
I emerged from the void of death a different human being.
Before the light fades and I return home, these are my stories, my offering to humanity; with all of the love and all of the rage.
Let’s be human together.
