Today is the birthday of one of my characters from Gesso Squad. It’s not the birthday I had assigned the character, but instead, the day I finished the character design which included clothing used in public and costumes worn while having adventures with friends. I haven’t illustrated or written a graphic novel in almost a year. I miss my characters and I’m working on revisiting them again. I enjoy drawing and painting their interactions with the world and each other.  The one thing which takes so much time in writing these books is that I’m doing the work of several people: writing, illustrating, painting backgrounds, editing, drawing layouts, creating new character designs, props, storyboarding, and book layout in InDesign. To find out which character has a birthday today books are available at: www.gessosquad.com.

At 1:30am this morning I was awake because I had shunt, scalp and abdominal throbbing and pain. I was up until 5am with my cat, Stella as we watched some early morning television. I went to sleep around 5am and the was up again at 7am for breakfast. Took a nap from 12pm-2pm and awoke with the same forehead, shunt and abdominal pains I’ve had off and on since 2014.

I had a much anticipated Shunt Series of X-Rays done after my appointment with the neurologist on Thursday. I received a phone call yesterday from the neurologist and she gave me the results. She had said the shunt system is in tack, except she noticed something: Pieces of my old shunt are still inside my neck behind my right ear and in my abdomen. I wasn’t exactly happy to hear about this, as I thought these pieces had been removed from the inside of my neck during the surgery I had in March 2014. Not sure what the new neurosurgeon will say about this when I see him later this month.  Does it mean I will have another surgery again to remove these pieces?

In the meantime, I’ve looked at the different type of programmable shunts based on the one I have and there are different types besides the proGav one which I have. Wondering whether or not I can get switched to either a non programmable valve or to an Aescula shunt which doesn’t have an anti-siphon device. The anti-siphon device is suppose to stop the shunt from over draining. It was doing this when it was on the wrong side of my brain from 2009-2014. It wasn’t over draining when it was on the right side of my brain. Therefore, I don’t believe I even need a shunt which is both a programmable and anti-siphon.  The anti-siphon device could be the cause of the shunt pain I have. The abdominal throbbing and pains could be from both the shunt and the fragments of the old one….