Statement post-creation - Around the start of this year (2024) I started to get really terrible headaches almost daily. Gross! Those headaches turned into aural migraines 2-4 times a week.

They would last hours but usually would go into the next day. Super gross! I'd feel exhausted because I couldn't sleep until I was crashing, and when I did sleep, it was never enough. I would feel nauseated with no relief at all and I couldn't focus on anything ever. In the midst of a migraine, I could see, but things were blurry, too bright, and I had weird orbs floating around. It felt like my sinuses were on fire but freezing cold at the same time, my eyeballs were squeezing against their cavities, and like there was a spiked ball lodged into the center of my head. When it got really bad, I just wanted to squeeze my skull until I couldn't squeeze it anymore. No pressure was enough. I would constantly go into fits of pain where I couldn’t even move enough to curl up into a ball. There were even a couple times where I would drive my friends and I somewhere just to get a migraine and be fully unable to drive us back. The only accessible medication that would even put a dent in the pain were mystery meds from my dad’s stash. And those would put me out for the next 20 hours.

After taking tests that cost an inhumane amount of money, I found that there really wasn't anything wrong with my bloodwork results that could cause something like this. After finding out that I would need a CT scan to rule out brain cancer, that I could not afford, and receiving a prescription for medication that went for anywhere between $75-$800 a bottle, I felt obviously very stressed and lost. I couldn't do the work I wanted to do. I was either in pain or knocked out completely by the only (not prescribed) medication that made it go away.

My doctor mentioning brain cancer, and me being fully unable to know if I had it or not, especially bothered me. Even if I did have brain cancer..., in THIS economy?? At a certain point I had a random sense of peace about everything. If I can't know, I can't know.

Being upset about possible impending doom doesn't change anything at all, and beyond that, we all have to die sometime!

At the end of that semester, my classmates and I were presented with the opportunity to make a screenprint with unconventional materials. I decided to do something a little personal for once, which I never do because I'm kind of in the “who gaf” crowd. I get it now guys. Kind of cathartic and whatever!

For some reason, a few weeks after I made this, the migraines started easing up. I rarely ever get anything worse than a regular headache now. A few weeks ago, I went to the optometrist, where the doctor there took photos of the inside of my eyes. That day I found out that you can usually tell if someone has a tumor in their brain based on the inside of their eyes.There's a certain visual thing that'll show up as pressure against the eyeball. I'm not really sure why everything that happened, happened.

Maybe I needed to come to terms with my own mortality?