I was totally floored to find out that my friend Josh over at the art website www.creepmachine.com went and wrangled up my friends, family, and collectors to donate money for one of these amazing and luxurious canes for me.
Thank you all who donated! Seriously! I still don’t know exactly what color of animal I’m getting, but it will have a sword inside (yeah-yeah I’ll detach it when I fly) and I’m assuming will be a feline of sorts, like this…
www.borispalatnik.com is located not far from here in Cleveland and does some amazing pieces. My friend Paulius actually has one with a frog head, it was gorgeous. Truthfully when I joked about getting one of these I thought the need for a cane would be a very temporary thing, but recently I was told I’d probably need one for real, always. So hey, if I’m going to have a cane the rest of my life, might as well be a fancy one. Pair it with my black trench coat, and I’ll look very Edwardian while being mildly dangerous. I promised Josh I wouldn’t leave in the back of a taxi cab.
So now for the bad news. After the thigh was removed and reconstructed, there was a close margin that was questionable: I need MORE radiation. Not as much as I had been getting, but still. There is also a chance that cancer cells already escaped into my blood stream and are hiding out in or near my lungs. I was given a 50/50 chance of the cancer coming back in my lungs over my lifetime. Frankly, I had a feeling this was true all along.
I also need to undergo a procedure where I am put to sleep while doctors bend my knee for me and crack it. It appears that if I were awake, the pain would be too awful and traumatic. Right now 45 degree angle is as much as I can barely do. So yay, another hospital stay overnight just for that, plus a machine I’ll need to take home. Who knew this would all turn into such a production? None of this will happen for three weeks for my skin might literally rip open. Three more weeks of sitting in bed and unable to walk or drive. I’m mad I’ll be missing a lot of events and my favorite time of year — I even had to turn down a teaching gig — but my main goal is to be better enough to travel to North Carolina in December. If I miss that, I will be very mad indeed.
Arty Farty 
What an awesomely cool gift to you indeed!! The cane you picture here is incredible, what terrific work.
Take one day at a time and get through your next hospital stay and try not worry about the 50/50 deal. There are no guarantees in life for any of us. Live each day to the fullest as best you can.
By the way, I can in-vision you in a trench and holding this… very vampiric, too and totally cool.