Guest Comic By Lee Bretschneider

Reading about my continuing health problems, HE reader and super fancy illustrator Lee Bretschneider sent me this fantastic guest comic without me even having to ask. Check out his portfolio at AdventuringCompany.com, and his comic “Wheelchair Romeo.” Also check him out getting his back waxed at RIGHT HERE. It’s awful.

Normally I would ask a potential guest-comicer to clear their intentions with me first, but Lee had the foresight to be incredibly talented which precludes the need for artist clearance. I’m very grateful for the helping hand seeing as how I spent 12 hours in the emergency room yesterday.

If you want to play catch-up on my most recent medical misadventures you can do so on the Twitters starting from here.

Longest-possible-story-ever-short:

Thought I had an aneurysm [9/24]
CT Scan and Spinal Tap proved I was OK
$1400 bill
Spinal Tap didn’t heal correctly so my brain didn’t have enough brain juice to float in causing 24 hour migraines/nausea for 7 days
migraines got out of control, chest and neck pain started, vision started going wonky
Wet to ER at “poor folks” hospital downtown [9/30]
They wanted to treat me with pain meds and send me on my way
10 hours later they agreed to to the blood patch I needed to repair my spinal fluid leak
12 hours total and $1600 later I went home and slept for almost 24 hours

Now that my medical bills have topped $3000, I am considering some kind of donation drive or limited print sale to help take care of them. If you have ideas, let me know. Otherwise I will think about it and post something next week.

BOOK UPDATE: The books should be here on Monday [10/5/09]. I leave for Baltimore Comic-Con a few days later so there probably won’t be any books shipped until I get back. I may do some live streaming of the book signings/sketchings on Ustream.

Thank you all for your continued support and kind words through what has been one of the crappiest months of my life.

GYFB

~Joel

Malpractice Makes Perfect

Panel one is the actual exchange I had with the ER doc that did my spinal tap just after the needle went “pop.” If you have never experienced what it is to have a device manipulating around in your spinal column, let me just say that I A) DO NOT RECOMMEND IT and B) can’t stress enough how wrong it feels.

HEALTH UPDATE: I feel worse today than I did yesterday. This does not bode well for my trip to Baltimore in roughly a week. If I don’t feel better by Sunday I’m going to have to go back to the hospital.

BOOK UPDATE: The books officially exist and are shipping from the frozen wilderness of Canada today. The bad news is the print run went over by 100 books which cost me another $600 (this is apparently something that happens when you print books). So ORDER THOSE BOOKS!!! Order 100 of them!

Special thanks to you Fancy Bastards that have donated towards my medical bills. You’ve covered over $500 in the last week. I appreciate your generosity more than I know how to express.

If An F-Bomb Drops In The Woods

…and no one is still watching SNL, does anyone give a crap?

After my spinal tap on Thursday, I am on day 4 of “24 hour migraine explosion time.” Looks like I won’t be able to get a blood patch to potentially cure the “spinal headaches,” so I am banking on bed rest, fluids and complaining (the healing triad).

If you are keeping track at home, I spent the first few weeks of September on the couch with horrible back pain due to a bulging disk. Now I get to spend the rest of if on the same couch with nausea, light sensitivity and the feeling that my brain is swelling to the size of… larger than it should be. It’s hard to think of funny analogies when your brain hurts. I’m sharing all this not to garner your pity, but to help you realize under what strain and difficulty this comic was produced. If it isn’t funny or up to snuff, cut me some slack and hope for LOLier pastures later in the week. I’m not even sure what characters I drew. I made this comic while squinting through the visual cacophony of blinding white hate-flashes you people call “light.” It burns us. Burns our eyes and our minds.

With this comic completed I will begin to seal myself up into a darkened cocoon fashioned from mud, twigs and my own secretions. I will either emerge a beautiful healed butterfly, or dead. OK, maybe I am fishing for some pity. It’s been a shitty month.

Guest Comic By Save Hiatus

UPDATE 9/28/09: The spinal headaches from the lumbar puncture have gotten worse. It’s like a 24 hour migraine at this point, so I can’t draw [or do anything else that isn’t lying flat on my back]. Comics will resume when my health allows. ~Joel

Big giant geeky thanks to Chris and Adam from Save Hiatus [the comic is actually on hiatus so follow @lexigeek and @cabridges for updates] for volunteering this guest strip. They managed to make light of my recent medical issues [read below] while still remaining topical with Flashforward reference. Flashforward premiered on ABC last night. I still haven’t watched it, but I’ve heard good things.

I had hoped to do a follow up to yesterday’s Roddenberry-MacBorg comic, but the best laid plans of mice and men are all turned to shit when you think you just had an aneurysm at 1am and rush yourself to the emergency room for a CT scan.

Those of you that follow me on Twitter were privy to the onslaught of unwelcome excitement that started in the wee hours of Thursday morning. Long/horrible story short: I had what is known as a “thunderclap headache” which means that out of nowhere you feel the worst headache you’ve ever felt in your life. It knocked me on the floor, blinded with pain and screaming. Some quick paranoid Googling later and I learned it could either be nothing at all, or the sign that I’d just had an aneurysm and could possibly be about to die. This freaked me out (read: terri-fucking-fied) me enough to go to the 24hr emergency hospital near my house despite not having insurance or any money. My wife and I decided that I would rather be broke than dead.

The doc told me that while I shouldn’t be scared by every medical thing I read on Google, I was actually right and I could very well have had a subarachnoid hemorrhage (brain bleed). He ordered a CT scan and a lumbar puncture. The CT scan showed nothing unusual but the doc expected as much. The LP was going to be the real indicator. So he shoved a giant needle in my spine and drained out several viles of the juice my brain floats in. This also showed that I was fine, but had the annoying side effect of leaving my brain with a dearth of juice to float in and a leak in it’s juice reservoir. This causes “spinal headaches” or tiny migraines behind your eyes every time you try to lift your head up or walk or do anything but lay flat on your back. So the only reason I feel like shit and can’t move is because of the test that broke my bank and told me I was fine.

The whole ordeal cost me over a grand (so much for no credit card debt), but afforded me a great deal of peace of mind. I really couldn’t just ignore something as serious as a potential brain hemorrhage. Despite how terrible I feel now, I’m actually quite relieved and at ease. I also got to make a handful of “Spinal Tap” and “House” jokes which I am grateful for.

Thanks you all of your that kept me company on Twitter and sent your kind words of support and well wishes. I was there for 6 hours so you certainly helped me keep my mind off things. A few of your have sent generous donations to help with my medical bills. I honestly can’t express properly what that means to me so I’ll just say thanks.

Now I’m going to watch Flashforward on the DVR. If you’ve already seen it, feel free to give your spoiler-free review in the comments.

Apples And Roddenberries

Hey, look! Here’s a comic about buying a computer that used to belong to the guy that created Star Trek. I’m too tired to make funny words to go with it, but it will probably be a two-parter so check back Friday for the conclusion [unless I decide to do something else].

Gene Roddenberry’s Mac to be auctioned

I know the comics schedule has been crazy unpredictable lately, and for that I’m sorry. Believe me that I am the person MOST frustrated by the situation. Finishing the book and getting ready for my first real con has taken up nearly every ounce of my focus for the last month. Today was my wife’s birthday and I spent the whole day making a comic. The comic was late so that makes me a crappy husband AND a crappy cartoonist.

Speaking of cons, please check out my post about my upcoming appearances in Baltimore, MD and Austin, TX. I am getting super excited (read: extraordinarily worried) about graduating from “faceless internet person of slight interest” to a “hey look there’s an internet person sitting behind that table let’s go poke him” person. I’ve been frantically practicing drawing on REAL paper (something I haven’t done regularly in almost a decade) in anticipation of doing con sketches. Follow me on Twitter to see the sketches I’ve been doing lately.

I hope to be doing a handful of cons next year. These first few outings are really just practice. For instance, I dropped a cashwad on shirts for Baltimore not knowing if it’s even the sort of con where people buy shirts. Expect a fire sale after the con if they sell poorly at the show. I’ll also be debuting a 4 pack of HE buttons and, of course, the book.

BOOK NOTE FOR MARYLAND PEOPLES: If you ordered the book already, or if you order it between now and Oct. 1st and you are going to be at Baltimore Comic-Con AND you want to pick up your book there please email store (At) hijinksensue(dot)com.

SPECIAL THANKS: to the server samurai at Infinistorm for the ridiculously smooth transition to my new souped up server. I have never worked with more accessible, reliable and honest server geeks. They specialize in custom app development, web design and VPS hosting. If you live in Indianapolis they will meet with you and buy you a puppy.