illness...

Well... after a fun two weeks in Paris, April in Paris yet... looks like my gut reacted to the gluten in all the crepes and croissants, and reacted with an extreme Hashimoto's autoimmune attack on my thyroid gland, causing my system to take a nose dive. And looks like this has been developing gradually over several years, symptoms ignored by my med doc all this time, until I went outside the system and got my own advanced labs in late June. 

So I began thyroid meds in early July, but they're extremely slow-acting and during the months it takes for thyroid meds to normalize you, I've been in this flat, fatigued state, unable to maintain focus or really even feel anything for months. A functional doctor and a couple dozen advanced labs are getting at the source of all this as I wait for the thyroid med to take effect.

In the meantime, instead of doing art, I lounge on my couch and nap most afternoons... occasionally making it up to my studio to try simple things - tiny collages, expressive drawings in hopes of stimulating some feelings. But everything feels flat, lacking energy. Still, I've decided to include this because it's become part of my path. 

I did a series of tiny 5x5" collages during May and this is one of them, but the months of May-June were filled with a series of disastrous mistakes, lforgetting and losing critical things, my purse, my 16y old blind dog, nearly slicing off my thumb with a mat knife, even missing an exhibition reception that included my own work. Fortunately, I retrieved both my purse and my sweet old doggie, unharmed, and my thumb eventually healed, and the feeling returned. but omg.