D. Lee Jackson

Words and Music

Two Commissions and a Surgery

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The time for my cervical spine (a.k.a. neck) surgery rapidly approached, so I took advantage of it and made swift progress on two commissions, finishing both. That said, I would like to thank the two commissioners, Nick Robalik (“b-minor Breakdown”) and Steven Trinkl, Jr. (“Mike Alfa Charlie”) for engaging my services. I appreciate both of them very much!

Nick Robalik (Twitter: @PixelMetal) has given me permission to post a short excerpt of his commissioned work on this blog entry, so without further ado, here is a 34 second excerpt of his commissioned work, the “b-minor Breakdown”:

 

Now, not all of you may have been aware that I was going to undergo cervical spine surgery at the end of February. I did, for some very painful reasons, down my arms and into my hands. The surgery went off without any problems, but I’ve had a slew of post-op issues. The worst, which may have been hospital-inflicted (not sure), is a set of sores around both ankles. I’m having home health come in and do wound care on me three times a week to deal with them. They’re that bad.

Fortunately, none of my post-op issues are interfering with me working on commissions. I am being slowed a bit by my neck brace, though. It’s a bit difficult to compose when you’re being slowed down by a horse collar (my name for it) and you’d normally need to flick your head around to see the screen. Still, I’m getting used to it, so progress will continue. If you’re interested in commissioning me, please visit my commissions page and read over what I offer. Thank you!

Commissions, and a Fall in Winter

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Montrose.is/gamesTime to report on another completed commission! While nowhere near as complex as the Ereis Overture commission, this one was difficult on a completely different level. It involved rock & roll that mixed a 70s sound with modern electronic drumming at breakneck speed. Not an easy pair of sonic textures to blend, but in the end the client was happy with the result. (I can’t share the result, unfortunately, because it is for a game that is still under development. Sorry.)

Speaking of the client, I would like to extend my gratitude to the husband and wife team behind Montrose.is for commissioning me to write this piece! They have been the best pair of folks that I’ve worked with in a long, long time. I wish to thank them for putting up with my hit-or-miss compositional process in the start: I take a while to get rolling, but once I do, watch out! 🙂  Please pay their website a visit, and if you have some free time on Saturday nights at 9pm Eastern Time, please head on over to Montrose.is/chatting for some good talk and some livestreamed art! (warning: can occasionally be NSFW).

Now for some other news. You may have noticed me missing from a lot of the usual places on the internet lately (Facebook, Twitter, Scribophile, etc.). That’s because I had a rather nasty fall on February 5th, the Saturday after the big ice storm hit the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. This was during the melting phase. I thought I’d heard rushing water outside our house, so I put on my shoes and jacket and went outside to investigate. I didn’t make it one step out before I slipped on black ice on our concrete patio. I fell forward and landed face first, hard. I had no phone with me, and I was in one of those, “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up” scenarios (I’m old, plus my knees hurt), so I crawled from the patio into the house and then onward to the living room to get my cell phone. I had to have Google call 911 for me because my glasses were so badly bent and scraped/gouged that I couldn’t see to dial the number (I’ve got a Google Pixel 6, so thank the maker for “Hey, Google!” built-in). To make a long story short, I wasn’t badly injured aside from some soft tissue damage, but my glasses were almost totaled. I’m lucky they didn’t shatter, but I can barely see through what’s left of them.

I managed to pull everything together and do work on my commission for Montrose.is, but that’s about all I was able to handle without getting a major headache. I’m still on hiatus from everything else, save for this blog entry (and for the next commission, on which I’ve already started work). Once my $400 lenses (you read that right – $400) come in, I’ll be fully back online. Until then, I’d appreciate it if you’d spread the word about this blog post for me across the social networks. Thanks in advance for your help!

Of Toes, Recovery, and Flying to Las Vegas

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Las Vegas SignTo pick up where I left off in the last update, I did indeed have a Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) in my left arm below the PICC line. As a result, I’m going to be on a medication called Eliquis for about the next 6 months or so. Eliquis is a blood thinner, so I have to be careful not to do anything that might cause myself to bleed. What a pain.

Anyway, my antibiotics eventually ran their course, my toe pain subsided, my PICC line was pulled, and I was discharged from Kindred. Way to wrap things up, eh? I came home on the 9th of August – a grand total stay of about a month across two hospitals. It took at least a week for me to re-adjust to life at home. I’ve since learned that almost all the gains I made in physical therapy for my left knee replacement have been lost. But, at least I’m no longer in a hospital.

This moves me along to the next portion of my update: a trip to Las Vegas to see the taping of the BattleBots tournament for the Discovery channel!

I did my best to keep my health in stable shape in the time between the hospital and our departure date, September 1st, 2021. I had to deal with a bout of Premature Ventricular Contractions (PVCs) in my heart, but my doctor put me on a medication that reeled them in. On the packing side, we hemmed and hawed over whether we were going to bring my monster i9-10850K laptop, since it and its packing case just barely met Spirit Airlines’ extreme outer dimensions (we did, and Spirit complained nary a bit).

The flight out was uneventful, although getting to it was anything but (pun intended). You see, I have learned that my butt sets off the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA’s) bomb-sniffing booth at the security checkpoint. (It did this both going out and coming back.) I had to submit to a pat-down search – a rather personal one, at that – before I could go on to the boarding gate.

Arrival at Las Vegas was similarly uneventful, but then there was the walk from the gate to the exit. Ye gods, what a walk! If you’ll remember from above, I’ve lost all my physical therapy gains in my left knee replacement, and my feet complained similarly, not being used to such a grand distance nowadays. By the time we reached the taxi stands, I was thoroughly worn out and ready for some air conditioned seating on the road to our destination, Bally’s Las Vegas Hotel and Casino.

Of course, once we arrived there, there was more interminable walking just to find our way through the casino maze to the well-hidden elevators. Everything seemed to be spread out for proverbial miles in Las Vegas.

When I continue in my next installment, I’ll cover the rest of the trip, including what I can of the reason I went – the BattleBots tournament!

Boy, Have I Got A Toe Story For You

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Big ToeFolks, once again, I am in the hospital. This time, I’m in for a painful infection in the big toe of my left foot. The backstory is too long to post here on the main page, and if you’ve been following my posts on Facebook and elsewhere, you already know it. In the event you don’t, you can read my post, called The Ballad of Big Toe.

Here’s my situation as of Thursday, July 29th, 2021:

This morning was pretty normal, as far as a stay in a Long-Term Acute Care (LTAC) hospital can be. My wife showed up early, and we resumed the “Sorry!” Partnership tournament. (Note: she would go on to trounce me 3-0 during the day.) Late in the morning, we were paid a visit by my case manager, a physical therapist, a nurse, and a wound care nurse, together at one time. They discussed my case with my wife and me, giving me a tentative release date of August 14th. I’m hoping I’ll be out earlier than that, but you never know, especially with the way this cellulitis has progressed.

Shortly after noon, my son and his wife arrived. My son had his new viola case with him. Quite impressive, it was – unless I’m mistaken, it was built out of blue fiberglass and fashioned like a sturdy cello case, with latches all over the place. He’s quite proud of it, and I believe his wife (a violinist with a regular-style, more expensive case) is a tad bit jealous. Anyway, they stayed for a couple of hours and made life more enjoyable.

Late in the afternoon, I developed a bit of a problem in my left arm, just below my PICC line. A rather startling lump formed on the right side of the inner crook of my left elbow. The timing of it is rather suspect, because it formed as I was receiving my last IV of antibiotics (at least, I noticed it as the IV line was being disconnected from my PICC line). The lump is about an inch-and-a-half long by three-quarters-of-an-inch wide, and I think it sits right above a blood vessel. The night nurse looked at it and decided to give my case doctor a call: he ordered a venous ultrasound for tomorrow to find out what’s going on inside.

You know, just for once I wish something would act the way it’s supposed to with this hospital stay. Just once.