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Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Teaching Day and the Fear of Epic Nosebleeds

This afternoon in my Biopunk! graduate seminar we'll be discussing Octavia Butler's Dawn, which I have always loved so much. We'll also be talking about two enormously interesting artists (one of whom is a bit of an impresario would-be artist, granted), Herwig Turk and Gunther Von Hagens. Normally, I'd really be looking forward to all this, but this happens to be my first return to teaching after my hospitalization and I'm rather nervous about everything. At the height of my bleeding in the ER two weeks ago I was actually bleeding not only from my nostrils and mouth but from my ears and eyes as well. My platelet count is still low and even after a week of observation the doctors can't tell me definitively what precipitated the event. So, now I am left imagining myself trapped in a stuffy slow moving BART car mobbed body to body with rush hour passengers as I start fountaining blood from the eyes while everybody panics for fear that I may be gestating Cloverfield aliens or something. Pretty nightmarish. I'm still woozy a bit, having not yet made up the loss of over a liter of blood and would surely be better off staying under the blankets another week -- but adjuncts need to pay the bills and the hospital has seen to it that we have more than the usual bills to worry about now, and so here I go! Wish me luck!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I know that you hate the term, but I'll say it anyway. May God be with you. ---Katie L.

Dale Carrico said...

Thanks! I'm an atheist of many, many years but rather non-judgmental about it, especially since the way I feel about beauty and justice comes pretty close to faith on my part as well. I would never disdain a heartfelt statement of sympathy and support like yours.