I know I have not posted at all. I now intend to change that. I guess a lot of things have changed.

I'll paste an e-mail I sent to one of my teachers. It's easier than explaining this whole thing over again.

"Hi Amanda.

How are you? I'm doing well at the moment.
I apologize for the long delay between your e-mail and my response. I haven't really been able to/felt like sitting down and writing out an e-mail like this lately. It is long and extremely boring, I warn you. I'm telling you the whole story.

I am not technically enrolled in AI at the moment. I took an emergency leave of absence. You see, it's kind of a long story. Back in February, my mom was diagnosed with stage one cervical cancer. This was a big deal, but it wasn't too bad, considering that it would be solved with a radical hysterectomy.

When we went in for the operation, we met this cocky doctor who I will not name. He is apparently very well known in the medical community and is one of the heavy hitters for women's cancer treatment in Las Vegas. He told us everything would be fine and that the procedure would solve the problem. She went in for treatment about mid-February. We were all waiting out in the waiting room after seeing her sedated and scared. We were all nervous. The operation was taking place at night, and the hospital lobby was empty. Like a video game level, almost. The doctor seemed rather surprised at the number of family members we had. He seemed surprised in the least positive way possible.

Later, the doctor emerged from the room shaking his head. We all know what that means, right? Well, mom was not dead. It was a direct manipulation. He told us that the cancer had run wild in her system, and that they were going to remove one of her kidneys. Our group was very distraught. We waited some more.

The man emerged again from the room and told us that he would not remove the kidneys. He would not remove her uterus and cervix. He said that the best thing to do would be to close her up so she had the best quality of life for the three months she had remaining. According to him, there was absolutely nothing we could do.

Absolutely nothing.

The wind was rushing and screaming, and the moon was an angry eye. The emergency door in the long and unlit hallway of the hospital was propped open with a rock, and the air barreled in and expanded through the small opening and down the hall. There was what seemed to be some sort of foggy and unreal frequency in the air. It was like we weren't even home anymore. I don't think we were. I went home with my mom's best friend Debra. I trust her implicitly. My father stayed at the hospital.

From this point on, it was about recovering from the major abdominal surgery. The doctor told my mother that he "would be her doctor from now until the end" and that he did not want any family members or friends in her appointments with him. He enjoyed speaking about his daughter and his failed marriage and show business. He told my mother not to make a Christmas card list.

"It's a shame that you didn't have more shows in you." My mother didn't believe it for a second. Technically, the cancer turned out to be stage four invasive cervical cancer.

At this point, I sort of understood that this man was a quack. He liked my mom for some strange reason... I guess that's why he was so surprised when he saw all of our family. I think my mother had told him about my father's psychotic behavior (which had been going on for more than a year prior to this, causing my mother and myself insane psychological stress), and he had it in his mind that my mother was a woman who was alone and weakened by a screwed up marriage.

My mother spent weeks recovering, and I was at the hospital almost every day. I may have missed one or two days. Many of her friends are into metaphysical healing and the like, so I set up all of my crystals in the room. My father was a jerk to me on and off during this recovery, but it was not too bad. It's funny how the hospital was this large block sort of floating in a gray sky. The experience was best described as being in a video game's boss level. My friends Leo and Ty came to see me and help us out. We played some chess and went for a walk, where we encountered strange things like phantom elevator shafts in the middle of desert lots. We also took some pictures. Here's the most notable one:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v.....s/IMG_0157.jpg

After the hospital downtime, my mom was back at home. My dad pulled one or two more screaming fits and made her vomit. My aunt called during one of the episodes, so I told her to be quiet and put her on speaker phone. This is the first time she (or anyone else) had heard the screaming and vilifying and swearing.

"Maybe you should just go live with your f*cking grandfather, since you love him so much more than me. I should just get a gun and go to Baltimore to blow his f*cking head off."

My aunt heard all of it, which was good. I did not know what to do, so I reached out in the best way that I could.

Eventually, in the beginning of March, we decided to come to New York to get a second opinion. At Cornell University Medical Center, they told us that it could be fixed easily. They did scans on my mother. We were given some very interesting information.

The doctor should have NEVER opened my mother up. You see these things on a scan. My mother never had the necessary staging procedure. You do not open women who have this sort of condition, you treat them with radiation. This man performed UNNECESSARY MAJOR ABDOMINAL SURGERY ON MY MOTHER! Not to mention that there was NO cancer in her kidneys. It was around the outside of the ureters that lead from her kidneys to her bladder. He almost took one of her kidneys out. I cannot believe this stupidity.

I left for Vegas for a visit. When I left, my mother was standing outside of the Holiday Inn. She was waving and crying. I only left for four days or so. When I got back, something was different. She could not stand too easily and kept falling asleep. She got dreams confused with reality and continually asked if we were "going to the hotel" or "out to dinner" when we were staying in my aunt's house. My aunt and uncle dawdled around. I didn't know what was going on.

After a couple of days, it got really bad. My mom said she needed to go the emergency room. At 4 AM, I got my aunt and uncle and told them we needed to go now. I went into the bathroom to find all of the fixtures coated in blood. My mother was standing in the shower, dazed, with blood pouring from her genitalia. We got her in the car.

At the emergency wing, we found her in Trauma. The people there told us that my mother had suffered total kidney failure and her potassium levels were almost fatal. They were able to stabilize her. I could have lost her then and there, but we managed to pull through. She was put in a hospital room after having tubes installed that lead to nephrostomy bags which would allow urine to drain.

My mother was admitted into the hospital and was in intense, screaming pain for weeks. She is not a pain wimp. I have never heard her scream in pain. She had lost three units of blood vaginally. My dad, still in Vegas to take care of the animals, continually called her and bawled and made a childish fool out of himself. It upset my mother very much and made her cry. He was even mean to her on a couple of occasions. I called him up and told him to knock it off, and he did for a few days. It was a slow, grueling recovery, but we finally got there. When she got out, my mother was on only one nephrostomy bag and her kidney function had returned to 100%, which is a miracle.

There were radiation treatments for months after my mother was released. We actually just had our last radiation a few days ago. The doctors said that the cancer was gone. My mother no longer has cancer.

At this point, I'm just in the basement at my aunt's house all day. My uncle is another sick man, and I have literally not spoken to him in days even though we live in the same house. I'm tired of people's psychological illnesses. I feel as if I am the only man in my family who can think in a straight line. I am not the only one who feels that way. My mother and I have been a very strong team through all of this. The experience, combined with new music, has also reared incredibly strong psychological experiences in me. I had insane, vivid visions to this music, and I really want to animate it. I have to admit, though... It is all much more intense and fiery than it ever was before. Calmness and winter has given way to an ignited Jupiter storm.

We should be able to return home before mid-October. We have won the battle, and we have defeated the soulless, gluttonous monster. I will apply for the first quarter beginning in 2009, and I really want to have digital imaging. I was looking forward to that class very much, but I had to leave. Maybe I'll have you as my teacher again. That would be really nice.

I have also attained a rather overpowering interest in entomology. I have a pet Bold Jumping Spider, and I just finished observing and photographing an adult female of the same species. This place is overrun with mosquitoes, but the spiders absolutely adore them. They're little crunchy snacks. The spiders prefer mosquitoes that have been engorged with blood. This is because blood contains all vital nutrients. Did you know that there is a species of jumping spider that attacks only mosquitoes engorged with blood? It also picks out the ones that are capable of malaria transmission. Spiders are truly our guardian angels."


Since I wrote this e-mail, things have changed a bit. Mom is still alive and well, and should remain that way for many years to come. We're still in New York.. We probably will not be home in time for Thanksgiving. Oh well.

I miss my friends, and I miss my life. I'm writing to you from a hotel room in Manhattan, but we're checking out tomorrow to head back to my aunt's house in Long Island. It sucks there. That's where we have been for the past eight months.

When it comes to my mom and her treatment, she had a bit of inflammation in one of her lymph nodes, and it indicated cancerous cellular activity. For this reason, the chemo doctor decided mom needed nine more cycles (equalling twelve, since she takes two on one visit). Our oncologist thinks the node will shrink on its own. The chemo doctor is very down-at-mouth, anyway. I don't trust her opinion. In all honesty, it took radiation and four chemos to destroy a cervical tumor large enough to feel with your hand through the pelvis, cancerous growths around mom's ureters that lead from her kidneys to her bladder, and other small spots of growth. This is a very small, invisible pocket of cells.

My mom now has numerous powerful herbs traveling through her system as well as the chemo and super-positive attitudes. This cell pocket is being attacked from all sides. I think it has no chance. My mother has taken four of these chemo sessions and she will have a PET scan this coming Wednesday. If the node is still enlarged, she will need further treatment. I think the node will be back to normal size. If it is back to normal size, my mom gets her nephrostomy tubes removed and we can go home. If that is the case, I should be home sometime in December...

See you all then.