BlueBead
F*ck AI Art
Boy, I sure love how after spending hours getting my gallery up to speed after the Twitter apocalypse, DA decides to shoot themselves in the foot by making AI art theft opt-out instead of opt-in. /massive sarcasm. I have nearly 600 submissions from 16 years on this site, there's no way I'm opting out of them all individually.
I'm considering deleting a lot of my old stuff. Like everything before 2016 or something. But now, like Twitter, I'm considering just wiping my account outright. Which sucks! I have so much history here! But this site-endorsed art theft is something I take massive offense to. Once again... I'm mostly active on Tumblr. My art blog is BlueBeads-Art (https://bluebeads-art.tumblr.com/) and my main is just BlueBead (https://bluebead.tumblr.com/)
An Update
If anyone wonders why I've been quiet here, then it's because I've been doing a bunch of fun and silly stuff in the Hyper Light Drifter fandom over on Tumblr. I'm on a quest to draw what everyone in the fandom thinks the protagonists (who have most of their faces covered) look like without their headgear on.
I'll post them all in a massive montage to here when I'm done, but for now most of my activity is on Tumblr.
My art tag on Tumblr can be visited [here]!
Tying Up Loose Ends
In these [two] [journals] I explained the issues my pet African Pygmy hedgehog Hiccup was having and the somewhat unexpected death of my dog Dakota on March 5th. Then, on March 9th, I posted [this picture] that kind of announced that Hiccup had passed away as well.
How things went down with Hiccup were that I took him to the vet Wednesday morning as planned. I had dropped him off in the morning to be anesthetized and x-rayed. When I came in to pick him up around noon the vet showed me some of the x-rays, and even to my untrained eye they looked bad. I knew Hiccup had had an arthritic back for almost two years now, but this time the vet was saying that there was something else going on with his back. Something about little bridges of bone that kind of impede the flexibility of the vertebra or something... I don't know, I wasn't entirely paying attention at that point. The much more concerning area, however, was his jaw. There were areas where the bone had degraded so badly that he pretty much didn't even have a jaw bone in those places. He also had a bone tumor right at the tip of his lower jaw, which is where that swelling was.
Then the vet talked to me about things that could be done to help him. I could have taken him to a more specialized animal hospital that can do chemo therapy stuff, but like what my dog's vet had said just a few days prior, that only buys him a few more painful months of life. The other option was to try a sort of "heavy duty" painkiller that isn't even guaranteed to work well on him. (It sounded pretty experimental to me.) However, my Mom and I talked it over, and our biggest concern was that Hiccup was just not going to be able to eat with those considerable portions of his jaw missing, and that he was going to end up starving to death or having to be force-fed with a syringe. Both of those plans were considerably below the figurative line in the sand I had drawn in terms of Hiccup's quality of life. Hiccup's biggest joys in life were food, running in his wheel, and sleeping, but with his ailments he couldn't enjoy any of those. We decided it would be best to have him euthanized... I got to see him awake one last time to say goodbye, and then I had to leave him because the euthanasia process is a little more difficult in small animals than in cats and dogs, so it's not exactly ideal for me to watch.
My Mom and I came back a while later to pick up Hiccup's body to bring him home. On March 12th, we buried him in our backyard. I found a spot where we had this lone little pine tree at the edge of the forest behind our house, and I figured a prickly tree for a prickly hedgehog was a nice place for him to be. It's also a quiet and shaded place, so I think Hiccup would have liked it. I buried him with his handling fleece, since he always really loved his fleece.
This just seems to be the Year of Cancer for my family. First, my Grandfather got diagnosed with Leukemia either really late last year or really early this year, but thankfully he's been doing pretty well on chemo. Then my dog Dakota had to be euthanized for a large tumor next to his liver, and then my hedgehog Hiccup was euthanized for a bone tumor in his jaw... Crummy year. Not quite as bad as 2014 for me yet, but still a really shitty draw.
Overall, I've been doing okay. I've gone from an "active" sad that involved a lot of crying and thinking about all this crummy stuff to more of a "passive" sad where I'm just kind of deadened and unmotivated... I've been trying to get back to eating better to continue my weight loss trend, but my parents have been making that really fucking difficult. Our dishwasher broke, so their solution to not have to do loads of dishes by hand is to eat out at restaurants or get take-out like every single night. The only way I could still stay within my diet plan under these circumstances is to fast all day and be freaking starving by time dinner rolls around, or to just eat the healthiest stuff on the menu, which for most restaurants would probably still require me to do a lot of fasting earlier in the day. I don't have the will power for either of those plans at the moment, since I'm still struggling with slowly training myself out of binge eating in light of the recent string of tragedies. My parents are going out to dinner again tonight, but I'm refusing to go at this point. I've gained like 2-3 pounds in this past week alone, despite working out 50% longer than I usually would every day to try to compensate. It's kind of shitty that I'm skipping out on my Mom's birthday dinner, but I've been warning them about all this food stuff for like the past 3 days, so it shouldn't come as a surprise.
So now I'm just... either emotionally dead inside or perpetually grumpy, but I still think I'm doing better overall than I would have two or more years ago. I've been making some major improvements in terms of mood, coping skills, and self-confidence this year. However, this whole scenario is one I think anyone would struggle with. I still feel kind of screwed over more than my other family members though, since Hiccup was kind of only my pet. (He was really shy and only tolerated me.) While everyone else in my family lost a beloved dog and that's shitty enough, I lost a beloved dog AND a beloved hedgehog not even a week apart. So now I'm pretty much just bitter. Sad, numb, disgruntled, and bitter, but coping and not wanting to hurt myself, so I'd say that's a win in the whole scheme of things.
Just... blegh. TL;DR: Blegh.
Life Update
I think it’s time for me to finally talk about what’s been going on in my life for the past few days since I’ve been surprisingly composed today. I only cried for a cumulative 2 hours today unlike yesterday’s 5 to 6. Beware some really sad topics if you want to read this wall of text.
I’ll begin with Hiccup, since I’ve already shared a bit about his problems this past week in [this journal]. Picking up where I left off with him, he went to the vet this morning. He was a very brave potato today. He even let the vet see his face so he could look at his jaw. The first thing the vet said he was worried about was how uniform and symmetrical Hiccup’s jaw swelling was. If it was just an infected tooth or something, then it would be one-sided. Next he mentioned he didn’t want to sedate and x-ray Hiccup like he planned because he didn’t want to risk sedating him when he’s malnourished from not eating enough for a few nights. That, and he didn’t have the equipment he wanted at that location.
Then the vet talked to me for a while about what he thinks the problem could be. Note, that none of this is certain yet. Hiccup does go back to the vet for proper x-rays this upcoming Wednesday assuming he does well up until then. Hiccup does have some painkillers and an antibiotic to help him in the meantime, but I’m getting ahead of myself here. Back to the potential issue. So, the vet believes Hiccup is having some problems with his kidneys. Something about how the kidneys produce and enzyme that lets calcium be absorbed into the body (I’m too preoccupied to fact check right now). So if Hiccup’s kidneys aren’t producing that enzyme, then he’s not getting any calcium despite eating a normal amount. In desperation, the body starts to eat away at the bones to get the calcium it needs. This calcium deficiency would explain why his teeth are falling out, why he’s been gradually losing weight since November, and I’m not sure how but it also relates to the swelling in his jaw and his darker urine. I’m not sure what a kidney problem could mean for Hiccup in the long term, but for now I’m just focusing on getting him his medication and keeping him fed. He did eat some of the special wet cat food he was sent home with too, so that’s excellent. He hated the fuck out of the antibiotic, though. I can’t blame the guy. The stuff smells like ass. He’s been a little trooper today, though. I’m proud of him.
Oh, and there was also the kind of shitty car ride to the vet. I am like… the most nervous driver you’ll ever meet. I also suffer from some sleep issues, and the number of times I’ve almost fallen asleep behind the wheel is alarming. Y’know those rumble strips they put along the sides of some highways that make a loud noise when you drive over them so you know you’re going off the road? Yeah, those are nice. I had to use those today. It went from that to white-knuckle driving when I got into a more populated area. I panicked and turned too early, and then my nav was basically like, “You’re on your own here, buddy,” because it was like NO HELP from that point on. That area is a fucking mess. I wish my Mom could have driven me, but she couldn’t leave my dog alone for soon-to-be-mentioned reasons. However, I made it. I was shaking, crying, and in the middle of a mild panic attack, but I made it. I also actually kind of felt like an independent, functioning adult because I managed to calm down and handle Hiccup’s vet appointment and everything all my myself. Like… y’know… a neurotypical person with actual, functioning coping skills. So if there’s one good thing I can take from these past few days, I guess that’s it.
So… now on to the bad part. Yesterday, March 3rd, another problem came and walloped my family and me out of the blue. My Mom and I rushed my dog Dakota to the emergency vet with what we thought was Bloat (Gastric Dilatation and/or Volvulus). If you’re not in the know, Gastric Volvulus is the mother of all “holy fuck your dog is going to die if you don’t get them to the vet and into surgery in under an hour” emergencies. It’s basically where the stomach swells up and then twists on itself. The twist blocks off blood flow, and it can cause internal bleeding, disrupted blood flow throughout the body, etc. Even with swift treatment, there’s like a 33% chance of death.
Thankfully, during the car ride to the vet, Dakota managed to vomit. Which is like the best freaking thing you can see a dog you think has bloat do because it means there’s no Gastric Volvulus. Took him to the vet anyways, obviously. Dakota stayed most of the day because they wanted to get an ultrasound, x-rays, blood work, the whole shebang. The news was not good. Not good in the least.
It turns out Dakota has a sizable tumor next to his liver. It’s not operable, and chemotherapy would only buy him a painful three months of life. We believe it has been the cause of some of various issues over the past year. The big one being his digestion issues. There were several times throughout the last year or more where he would throw up food and medication from hours and hours ago. He just wasn’t digesting. He also suffered from anemia from time to time. His health was just all over the place. One day he’d be fine and then the next he’d look terrible. We thought it was all to blame on his autoimmune disorder, but now we know that it’s probably because of this tumor. It pressing on the bottom of his stomach and not allowing food to pass through causes the digestion stuff and the tumor occasionally rupturing explains the anemia and the hit-and-miss health.
We were told yesterday that it would be best to have Dakota euthanized soon. We might have even done it that day if not for my Dad being out of town for a week. He came home a few hours ago. It was nice that he got to see Dakota again, but Dakota has still been in bad shape. We’re scheduled to go to the vet with him tomorrow morning to help him move on comfortably.
It’s been hard, because this is the first pet I’ve ever had to live with for a day knowing that you can basically count down the last few hours of his life. My dog Ginger had to be euthanized in an emergency, and she looked so accepting. She was ready to move on. My cat Snickers also died in an emergency. Both of them just took us by storm, so there wasn’t a lot of build-up or anticipation. Now with Dakota… it’s been a struggle. Just knowing. Just knowing that he himself might not even know. That maybe he doesn’t want to go yet. But he’s suffering, and we hate to see him like this. He still looks uncomfortable even with the pain medication. However, I’m happy he got to see his Daddy again. That he got one more night of getting rotisserie chicken from us for dinner and to see his happy smile when my Dad came home and gave him a bunch of hugs.
Just… fuck. Funny how life can just give you these long breaks where you feel like everything’s looking great, and you’re making plans for the future, making good progress towards your goals… Then wham. Like life is like, “Hey, I hope you enjoyed your vacation. Here’s all the tragedies and hardships you missed while you were gone. I’ll just drop off all these with you now so you can deal with them all at once.”
I’m coping pretty well overall. It still sucks. My eyes are constantly burning from crying, and being weepy with the remnants of a head cold don’t go well together. I’ve been getting shaky a lot lately, and I can’t tell if it’s just from stress or from something else. But I’ll get through it… It might take a while, but I’ll be okay. It’s just one foot in front of the other for now. I should probably go to sleep. I need to be up early tomorrow morning to give Hiccup his morning dose of antibiotic and to see Dakota off.
Pet Problems [Update]
Within a week, I’ve seen him deteriorate as quickly as I’ve ever seen and get as bad as I’ve ever seen. He hasn’t eaten anything in 2 days, and it looks like he didn’t even leave his bed last night. He’s had some chronic health problems for a good portion of his life that his vet and I just didn’t know what to do about. I’m worried that maybe whatever it is has started to eat up the rest of Hiccup’s time.
As bad as it sounds, I don’t think I’m going to take him to the vet. My reasoning being that if he is dying, then I don’t want to subject him to that much stress in his final days. Another reason is I’m not sure what could even be done for him if I do take him. He’s been to the vet several times for his various problems, and each time there’s never been anything really conclusive. Even if this current ailment can be treated, I’m not sure if there’s much to gain. Hiccup’s within the average range of domestic hedgehog life expectancy. He’s had chronic arthritis, jaw problems, and possible stomach ulcers for years now, he doesn’t enjoy eating meal worms anymore, he doesn’t run much, he doesn’t play with his cardboard tubes… I’m not sure if he’s enjoying life anymore. I don’t want to make that worse by needing to stress him out with medication or surgery or whatever else. So… I think I’m just going to cross my fingers and hope for the best. I’ll offer him some special treats tonight to see if he wants them, but he just really hasn’t shown any interest in food in a long time.
Just… wanted to say something so people know what’s going on if I suddenly go kind of quiet. I still plan to get to the various art requests people have asked me for, but they might take a while if things go sour.
Wish Hiccup luck for me.
Update
I got Hiccup out for cuddle time, and I noticed that his chin and lower jaw look terribly swollen… He was retching a bit too. He looks miserable, the poor thing… :’(
I might be taking him to the vet after all since this is no longer just like all the nondescript chronic problems he tends to have. This is an obvious visual thing that’s rapidly gotten worse. Still, I’m worried about possible outcome of all this… He’s old and hasn’t been in the best health for a lot of his life. If he needs surgery, would he even be able to survive through it?
I’m worried… I’m at the point where I’m already preparing for the worst and coming to terms with what might have to happen, but I hate seeing him suffer like this…