Hi friends,

Firstly I wanted to say I haven't left FA (even if I haven't been posting as frequently - I have plenty of new art to post soon!) and don't plan on leaving anytime soon.

However, things have definitely developed in recent weeks that I wanted to shed some light on and share with you. Here goes:

As some of you may be vaguely aware, I recently returned home following a rather unexpected 2-week stay at a university hospital about 5 hours away from my home.

On September 19, I started having pain and discomfort in my mouth, and what I had thought was a simple sore throat started to feel a lot worse the next day. It became readily apparent I did not have just a sore throat, when I noticed that the right side of my face around my jaw had started to swell up as though it had been inflated. My tongue had also swollen up, making it difficult to swallow.

A day after that, we had decided to go and have me checked out by a nurse practitioner at a local urgent care, to get an overall assessment of what might be going on. At the time, they weren't sure what to make of it and just in case prescribed an antibiotic to help bring the swelling down. They took some blood to test as well, and advised me to visit the ER if it got worse, or if breathing/swallowing became more difficult.

By that evening, I started to have trouble swallowing, enough to where I told my parents we should probably visit the ER. We went in and I was seen fairly quickly, went through a CT scan, had IVs put in, and spoke with an ENT surgeon. Within a short time I was brought into surgery where some exploration revealed a deep abscess in my neck on the right side, a pretty bad infection.

I have no memory of anything after being put under for the procedure in my town, but afterwards I was flown up to the university hospital to be in the care of the ENT team there. The next thing I remember is waking up in the ICU in bed, with a trachiostomy installed to clear my airway, and had been placed on antibiotics and pain meds.

While I was under, I had a second surgical procedure to drain and wash out the infected area. I remained in ICU for around four or five days, but was showing rapid healing and improvement each day, which was very encouraging to the medical staff. I underwent a CT scan and one last drain/washout procedure while in ICU, followed the next day by another scan before I was finally moved to a regular unit.

On the new floor, I went in for an esophagram to test my swallowing ability, as I'd been on a feeding tube and breathing with a trach for over a week. This was to test if I was ready to try eating food the normal way, which they would then switch out and downsize my trach and not only would I not have to eat through a tube, I could put a cap on the trach to speak (I had used a white board to talk to people until that point).

Everything progressed very well and quickly from that point, and I only had the new trach for 24 hours until they told me I was ready to have it entirely removed and replaced with a dressing.

The antibiotics they had me on were very effective in helping my body fight off the bacterial infection, and the care provided was above and beyond anything I've ever experienced. The staff are amazing and attentive, they CARE, I felt safe and welcome and they cheered me on during my recovery. Most of all, they really listened to me even when not being able to speak became so frustrating that I broke down in tears because I was so tired of the ordeal (trying to keep your spirits up for everybody can be very physically, mentally and emotionally exhausting).

As of this writing, I am doing very well, still recovering but finally home (as of Saturday 10/04) and back to attending to a few life things that I can do from a place of rest and comfort - but not overdoing.

I want to take this last section of my update to thank everyone so much for your love and support over the years and the past couple of weeks! It is truly humbling and means the world to me that so many care that much. Thank you to everyone who sent words of warmth and encouragement on my page or reached out to me via message to check in on me. I feel so loved and it made me so happy and hopeful just having people to talk to while I healed.

I hope something like this never happens again, but it makes my heart swell knowing I have such great friends. I intend to continue my story inspired by your kindness and help wherever and however I can.

Thank you. I love you all dearly