Life Sentence, Death Sentence, and a Happy New Year.

Hello, my friends. I’m sorry for all the time I’ve been away, and now for a post that is, again, perhaps more personal than useful, not to mention longer than I'd planned...again. And yet I know that so many of my readers are dealing with some of the same issues I have been grappling with during these last months. And I know that I've been kind of AWOL, leaving friends online and off to wonder how and what I'm doing. Well, like so many of us, I've been battling this winter... some of these battles are the ongoing hurdles of the “incurable”, yet seen through a(n hour)glass darkly, since my diagnosis of Aortic Stenosis with the “6-months to 2 years” lifespan issued so bluntly and irrevocably by my friendly neighbourhood cardiologist. I've always been the kind of person who would rather have the hardest truth than the prettiest lie, but this news was just, so hard.

Ever get some news you really didn't want to hear?

It threw me… having a concrete seeming deadline, with the emphasis on “dead”… but why? I had my first anaphylactic reaction at one week of age, have had literally hundreds since, and each one might be the last one (and not likely because of a miraculous healing…). In a way I’ve been living under a death sentence since day one, and I’ve been “coded” more than once, yet here I am still kicking… which, I guess, is part of the problem. In a way, though living with the more life threatening aspects of this runaway train called Mast Cell Disease that’s been such a potent part of my life has given me a “ride to remember”, it has also given me a false sense of invulnerability… while being so ludicrously vulnerable in the “normal” world. Sounds convoluted, but to simplify; despite all the crazy challenges, I’ve always made it through. I’ve many times joked about the “fact” that I’m “pretty hard to kill”, but on some level I think I believed it. My body and spirit share a stubborn will to live that has always beat the most determined swing of the scythe.

And despite a lifetime of health challenges, including serious life threatening struggles on a regular basis and numerous life-time sentences, from Ehlers Danlos to Systemic Mast Cell Disease (and all the many splendoured expressions of acute systemic inflammation from those frisky, feckless mast-cells, that led to a wealth of previous diagnoses for each part of the “elephant”), to RSD/CRPS (maybe another of the above?), each of these maintained to be “incurable”, I just “kept on ticking”. Those of us who live with incurable chronic disease are used to the concept of a Life Sentence. A Death Sentence is another kind of beast. Having the message brought home to me that there was some sort of inescapable, do-not-pass-go, “time to die” (now, not in the far off future) sort of situation just… flattened me. I’ve been going around in a blur… struggled with extreme sleeplessness, horrid nightmares, fear, angst over all that would be left undone, worry for my family, fear again… and over-weaning, impenetrable fatigue.

The fear has probably been contributed to by the unknowable aspects to the future that is looming before me. It's unknowable in a few ways;  Because aortic stenosis is a disease very strongly linked with aging, I shouldn't even have it at my age at all. As a horrible coincidence, my 89 year old mother has also just recently been diagnosed with it, and she's exactly the "right" age for it. It also shouldn't be progressing as fast as it has... when I was first diagnosed with it 2 years ago, it was classified as "mild" and I was told that I shouldn't have to deal with it for many, many years to come. But here we are, just 2 short years later, and it has progressed to "at least moderate to severe", and I appear to be symptomatic. Though the cardiologist gave me a 6 month to 2 year life span, the fact is there is no model with which to gauge my situation, because it's just so completely outside any norms. They say it may be due to the systemic inflammation which is so apparent in the acute mast cell disease and wide spread neuropathic pain throughout my body, but really who knows how this will play out? The docs obviously don't.

"Naomi's Sword" copyright S.L.Wilde 2014, all rights reserved. (My first real attempt at resuming painting after 15 years lost to the ravages of RSD/CRPS).

And then there's death itself. The great unknowable for sure, but there are many stories, and fact is, despite the fact that I'm open to all possibilities, I don't like any of them. Having been brought up in a virulently dysfunctional Christian household, the Christian mythologies hold little comfort for me. My mother is a "true believer", and her faith offers her great comfort at this time. She can "leave it in the hands of the Lord". I've never found that leaving anything up to anyone else did me any good at all. And though I appreciate the poetry of many religions, as is clearly reflected in my work, I don't really have a specific deity that I actually call "mine". My life experiences have led me to acknowledge and believe in the power of "prayer" in all its many forms, but my prayers tend to have a certain "to whom it may concern" flavour. So.... Nothingness? Couldn't possibly be less appealing! Becoming one with the cosmos? That just sounds like the dissolution of self, which is probably one of my greatest fears. Despite the fact that I'd gladly do a trade-in with my body (let's face it, I really did get a lemon!), I'm quite attached to who I am. I've never wanted to be anyone but me. My life experiences, especially with my mate, my children, my kindred spirits and the animals in my life have also led me to believe in reincarnation more strongly than most other options, but I don't want another life. I want this one. I want to be me. With these people, in this world, despite all the challenges. Staying with the body through the hideous composting reality? Horrors! Floating around disincarnate and unable to communicate or do anything useful but still here? No thanks. I don't know... I just don't want any of it. I just want to stay...

The months since this wretched diagnosis have been so hard… and made harder by my harsh self-judgement. I’ve been ashamed of my fear and angst for one thing. Watching my mother, who has been tough and active and oh so mentally sharp all the last decade since my father's death, now become weak, short of breath, increasingly frail I am mourning in advance, and also know that I may be watching a preview of the changes that may be soon to overtake me... I always thought I was brave, but I don't feel very brave right now. And though I find myself inspired by  another family member, an in-law who I've loved and admired since I was a youngling, and who is struggling with a serious cancer situation with extreme strength, I just don't know how to find my own. She is just so brave, so strong, so positive… everything I have wanted to be. I am overwhelmed at her courage, and frustrated with myself. I wanted so badly to “do this right”, to be positive, to be creative, to make a miracle happen (!), and meanwhile to “get my house in order” and prepare for the ending of my life, if that was the way it went down, and either way to do it with love and with grace. But more and more with each passing week, I have felt that I was failing… at everything.

To be fair, it's been a brutal time, physically. The weather did some crazy arse highjinks that led to some of the worst, and most unremitting and prolonged pain flares I’ve experienced since finally finding a tolerated pain medication… I’m sure the stress hasn’t helped either! I am struggling to hang onto such mobility as I have, and one the one hand that’s been a win; for the first time in 15 years I maintained my outdoor weight bearing physio sessions through the winter weather! But on the other hand, between those glorious sessions of do-or-die and actually managing to do, weight bearing is mercilessly painful right now. Anyone seeing me struggling with transfers and all but passing out from the pain of standing briefly, well supported, to get pants on in the morning would never believe the sight of me mid-physio, and vise versa.

And with that wonderful link-up between the RSD/CRPS and Systemic Mast Cell Disease, my immune system is completely bonkers; my face looks like the a croaking bullfrog's more days than not, (and I don’t need to reminisce about being pregnant, I just need to look in the mirror!); I’m reacting to everything and anything. I’ve had multiple episodes of chest, arm and heart pain that felt like I might be having a heart attack (thankfully not, though I’m told it is almost certainly angina caused by the aortic stenosis, thus meaning that I am symptomatic and the clock is ticking… so, more scary stressful stuff to struggle through), and constant respiratory challenges… and the immune system flip side, my body’s not handling viruses, so multiple bouts of flu, and the most wretched, herpes 1 (the cold sore virus, not the STD) gone demented… blisters everywhere and a plethora of systemic impacts including high level neuropathic pain…on top of my oh yes, right, high level neuropathic pain, which is triggering the mast cell disease which is making this whole "cold sores from hell" thing happen which is….. yeah. Right. Between one thing and the other, the daily minimum realities of living is just SO. DARNED. HARD right now.

"Nick's Tree", copyright S.L.Wilde 2014, all rights reserved. (My second attempt with acrylics and my new, not improved, post RSD/CRPS hands and arms.)

Not my favourite look... and really better suited to the pond than to the mirror.

Still, I have not been without help. I am sooo grateful for my Magick Osteopath; I don't know how I'd have made it through all this without his treatments; they have been my mainstay through very difficult times, and my steadfast Pain Management Psychologist kept reminding me of the techniques she's taught me in the past, and devised some new ones to address these new challenges. (Speaking of which; I'll be getting there in upcoming posts, I hope, but a cranial trained osteopathic practitioner, along with an empathetic and well trained pain management psychologist, are at the absolute top of my list for highest recommended professional help for RSD/CRPS.) And of course, my fantabulously supportive family has stood by me as always... and I have incredible, loyal and loving friends online and off, old and new, so I've got no right to whinge the way I am. Nonetheless, aside from that one triumph (mixed though it’s been) of keeping more mobile throughout this horrible winter, I have been tormented by the demons of Procrastination, Avoidance, and Mental Laziness… at least that’s how I’ve seen it when I’ve been battering myself about the inordinate amount of time I’ve been spending being a hobbit in an online universe where I am oh-so-able and free to explore and to be, rather than getting down to the business of dealing with the all-too-real troubles I am facing in this world…

Off for a midnight ride in my lovely LOTRO land...

Ahhh, perfectly able in a nearly perfect world... (and hey, ain't my hobbit self cute?)

Behind all that getting-nothing-done-in-a-hurry, I’ve been through a tumbler of emotion, but most overwhelmingly felt just… stuck… trapped, lead-footed in the “slough of despond”. My wonderful Pain Management Psychologist suggested post traumatic shock (and that I should be more compassionate with myself) when I complained about the lead footed immobility I now seem to be struggling against, frustrated beyond words that here I was knowing that my time was short and being the least productive I could ever remember being, in my life as a compulsive maker and do-er. Now that my time is so short, I’ve been wasting it!

I told myself that I had to get back to it (to all of it) after the winter holidays, which I intended to enjoy with all my will, reveling in the time with my family, and in every little pleasure, from loving all the lights to finding the perfect hat to frame each of my darlings’ much loved faces, to licking home-made organic butterscotch off my fingers during our Christmas Eve “cookie smorgasbord” (an idea that everyone loved so much it’s going to be our new tradition). It was almost entirely grand… though fraught with moments of angst and fear, most of which I managed to keep to myself.

My darlings in their holiday hats... and Nick gave me one too, so it was hats all around!

But then came January.

If I had images of myself leaping into action, effortlessly and energetically doing all the things that had seemed so impossible to manage in the preceding months… well, I was mistaken. It’s been a slow-ish process, but progress is happening… most notably, I am actually painting pretty regularly again, at long last. I am more thankful than words can express to have regained the use of my hands and arms after more than a decade of being unable to pick up a brush reliably... mainly through use of the therapies and techniques I have been working to share through Taming the Beast.  I made my first attempts last year, not long before my trip to Portland for surgery, doing pieces as gifts to leave for my daughter and son ("Naomi's Sword", and "Nick's Tree", above a ways). But since the “Deadly Diagnosis”, I'd been frozen there, too. So I finally got myself geared up to get back to the work I thought I'd lost the ability to do. And though that’s been fraught with frustration as I learn to use a new medium with my old skills very, very rusty after the loss of 15 years, it’s been pretty wonderful, too.

The first post DX painting came spontaneously; I let the brush do what it would. And surprise surprise, the topic seemed to be… Death. As it took shape beneath my hands, I worried if it might upset my family, but I should have known better. My wonderful artistic daughter Naomi took one look and said “Ohhhhh! It’s beauuuutiful!” and went on about the use of colour and the glow of the skin. My lovely supportive husband, Terry, and equally so son, Nick, were nothing but… supportive! (Surprised?) This piece had a wonderful side effect. It got me past the first immobilizing brunt of fear. Don’t ask me why, but the nightmares backed off, I was able to sleep with the lights out, and things got a little bit better.

"Cold Comfort" copyright S.L.Wilde 2014, all rights reserved.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last. Right before Christmas, I made the mistake of trying a new (to me) alternative technique, and it back-fired, stirred things up and left me shaking and filled with fear again. This technique was EFT, or Emotional Freedom Technique, and it’s one that I’ve heard great things about; my friend Marianne, who left this life a year ago just before Christmas, used it extensively in her quest for a better life with terrible acute systemic mast cell disease. However, as I always say, one person’s tea is another’s toxic waste, and this technique was obviously not the right one for me. My Pain Management Psychologist believes it to be a technique that can stimulate the sympathetic nervous system and as such considers it to be iffy for RSD/CRPS. In any event, I believe it contributed to challenges of the holidays (always a hard time as it comes in the wake of the anniversary of the accident that caused my adult RSD/CRPS, and this year so much harder as the anniversary of Marianne’s death made that grief fresh again), when I had so badly wanted it to be a time of joy and peace.

I struggled through, determinedly grasping all of both (joy and peace) that could be had, keeping as much of the struggle to myself as I could, and in January decided that it was time to get back to work. Though my list of “things to do” was painfully long and I’ve not touched most of it, I did get back to painting again. I’d been thinking a lot about the gifts and burdens of my life, and those who had helped and harmed me, and I decided it was time to honour my angels... those particular people who have come out of no-where at different junctures of my life and gave gifts that helped me to live, protected me, gave me the strength to fight, or fly through another day. I’ve always loved iconographic art, and actually, most of my artwork is iconographic in nature, but this lot of paintings coming down the pike are even more straightforwardly and traditionally so.

"Aanishnabe Sky" copyright S.L.Wilde 1998, all rights reserved.

Not the first in my life, by any means, but the first to come to me in a painting, was the angel who probably gave me the gift of 20 years’ remission from RSD. After a childhood filled with subluxations and dislocations, (thanks, Ehlers Danlos), at 17, my knees were finally injured beyond the point that they could repair on their own, or so I was told. I was hospitalized for a “Houser Procedure” wherein, after cleaning up the damage of a dozen dislocations, the chunk of bone to which the primary outside tendon was attached would be cut out and exchanged for a chunk several inches to the inside of the knee, and screwed into place, thus tightening the tendon and supposedly holding the kneecap in place. They “don’t do those anymore”, so every young medical or physio practitioner I’ve seen for the last 20 years has told me, and it’s me and a lot of old football players that bear the distinctive foot and a half long scars and legacy of arthritis pain and joint dysfunction of this now defunct procedure, but who knew? I was told it was the only way I’d walk again, and that I wouldn’t dislocate any more if I had it. My brother had had the same operation on one knee a couple of years earlier and been skiing by the second winter. None the less I was deeply afraid… I had a sense of terrible danger, and I was right.

I reacted to the anaesthetics (multiple) and nearly died. I reacted to the metals of the screws….(every kind they tried), I reacted to ½ a dozen drugs that “no one could react to” (thanks, Mast Cell Disease), they had to remove and replace the ankle-to-upper-thigh casts over and over again as my legs swelled more and more … the whole thing was a horror show, eventually turning into 7 procedures over the next year, leaving both legs monstrously swollen, purple and mis-shapen, covered with thick black hair where none had been before (I’d been a singularly un-hairy blonde) and burning burning burning with hellish electrical pain. I was in torment. Sound familiar, readers with RSD/CRPS? Yeah, you know it; I had RSD/CRPS, though the diagnosis was not made then (or if it was, they didn’t let me know about it), only forensically, many years later when I was diagnosed with the adult version. At that time, I was initially left to think I was going insane.

I had been hospitalized in a part of Toronto that was rife with drug abuse, and as a teen who dressed alternatively, had few family visitors, and was apparently living without parental supervision, several of the nurses in charge of my care decided that I was suspect. They were openly hateful, calling me a “little druggie slut”, and speaking to each other unkindly about me as if I weren’t there. I couldn’t understand their hatred; I tried to be friendly, polite, respectful, to win them over, but they embarked on a merciless program of cruelty and disdain, letting me suffer as much as they could, occasionally harming me outright. Meanwhile, the pain I was in grew more and more insane; of course, they thought I was faking, trying to “get drugs”. It was a nightmare. (For those of my readers who thought I was a little over the top in my accolades for Portland Providence, this is the type of hospital experience I have to compare with my exemplary care in Portland…)

"Frog in a Bottle...Waiting for (more)Surgery" copyright S.L.Wilde 1980, all rights reserved.

I was supposed to be on fairly heavy IV pain meds, but they left me to wait long past the prescribed time as a matter of course. I used every trick I could think of to wait out this horrible experience; there was thankfully a window in my room, and a little brown bird, a sparrow I think, made a common practice of sitting on my window ledge and preening in the sun, making swoops of joy and landing back on the sill again to fluff its feathers. I waited for its appearance each day, focusing all of my attention on it when it arrived, seeing each feather, each glint of its little eye, to the exclusion of everything else, forcing the pain from my consciousness to some other reality (usually the upper left corner of the room… “there’s pain in the room, but it isn’t mine” was one of my mantras…).

But through it all, the nurses’ program of cruelty continued. Two things finally happened to force change. Firstly, two adult friends who were my main source of support as a young, homeless artist had been coming in daily, bringing gifts of falafel, cabbage roll, tofu with snow peas and cashews and other real food to supplement the horrible fare a 1980’s hospital had to offer a vegetarian. One day, they happened to walk in the room in time to see one of the nurses berating me for “making extra work” by asking for something to keep the brutally painful weight of the blankets from my legs, and raising the steel bar of the blanket support that had just been delivered up into the air and down with force onto my knees. I screamed out in agony, and one of my friends (the less circumspect… or should I say, less sane ? ) grabbed her by the throat and slammed her up against the wall, telling her that if he ever saw her walk into my room again he would kill her. I was almost as shocked by that as I’d been by her act (he was ever a wild card, but not normally violent), but it was effective; I never saw her again, for which I was incredibly grateful.

But it didn’t stop her cohorts. Though outright acts of violence stopped, the medication with-holding became near continuous. My pain levels became intolerable, and a few nights later I honestly thought that the pain was going to kill me, that my heart would stop from the intensity. I screamed and screamed but no one came. In some ways, finally giving into it probably intensified the pain as my central nervous system went out of control and I truly felt all that I had been trying to hold back, but I was beyond thought, beyond logic and certainly beyond voluntary control. Suddenly, at the height of my agony, a cool hand touched my forehead and a musical, beautiful voice asked, “What is happening my dear? Tell me, and I will help you.” I opened my eyes to see the most inhumanely lovely woman I had ever seen. She had coal dark skin and long, graceful limbs, and eyes of infinite kindness. The tears in my eyes blurred the light behind her, which seemed to sweep up in glorious wings; all the mythology of my Christian upbringing came back to me… I thought that I had died, and she was an angel…seriously. I really did. No holds barred I told her what I had been going through. She left me, came back, administered IV medication and held me until it took me down from the height of my distress into a place of utterly exhausted peace.

Turned out she was the private nurse of a rich man down the hall. I don’t know how she had the power to do it, but because of her, I never saw any of my tormenters again. Because of her, my surgeon brought in physiotherapists, occupational therapists and pharmacologists who devised a program of intense rehabilitation and proactive, almost aggressive pain management; exactly what we now know is best for adolescent RSD/CRPS. It took two years of serious full time full out hard work and an awful lot of heavy duty meds, but eventually, thanks especially to water physio, I was walking (albeit with two canes) and back to “my real life”. I was in remission. This angel bought me 20 years of freedom from neuropathic pain. 20 years in which to create artwork, have two beautiful babies, to travel, to find my mate and build a home and make a life. I never saw her again. I will never stop being grateful.

"Nurse Angel" copyright S.L.Wilde 2015, all rights reserved.

This piece was pretty challenging. I am just learning to work with acrylics, a medium I’ve disdained much of my life as “too plastic”. However, oils are too toxic, and watercolours, which are the medium with which I painted the best work of my life, are too labour intensive. One full sized painting with my own special techniques of multi-layered glazes, give and take of colour with water colours is a work of 3-4 months. Being told I may not have many months left and having still a great deal of hand and arm pain to work around, that kind of time for one work seems like poor economy. An acrylic painting of the same size takes a week or maybe two… so I am struggling to make plastic… fantastic (Teehee, that’s bad but I couldn’t help it!) It’s not an easy medium; where oils have a sensuous swill on the brush and watercolour washes a luscious life of their own, acrylics fight me… they refuse to adhere to the surface, the colours won’t play nicely together… it’s just a battle ground… but I think I’m getting somewhere. Ironically, (given the subject matter of the last painting) I think my current work in acrylics looks much like my work as a teenager or young adult. (See below.) Which is hard to see at this point in my life. But I’m trying to be patient (ha! I’ve been patience incarnate with the babies and hurt animals and loved ones in my life but it ain’t my strongsuit when it comes to myself!), accepting my limitations (again, ha!), and seeing things, including the work I am able to produce at this time, in the most forgiving light I can. My beloved Pain Management Psychologist should be proud of me, yes?

"Free Diving" copyright S.L.Wilde 1983

Anyhow… that’s what I’ve been doing. I haven’t managed a fraction of the medical stuff I wanted to have figured out during these months, and as some of you might have noticed, I haven’t been working on book nor blog… I’ve barely been present online after such a dedicated couple of years of working with support groups and giving and receiving so much for and from so many of my sisters and brothers online. But testing new meds and medical protocols is incredibly challenging… I need to have Terry home. I know I can count on my wonderful young adult kids, they’ve been with me through so much. But all the years of their childhood I tried to protect them from the full brunt of seeing their mum in life and death struggles and that instinct is still strong… I don’t like to do testing without my main man, my support through almost 25 years of struggle… and he’s been working like a dog to keep us going. Long hours, and long weeks. And I need to be fairly stable to do testing and I’m just not. It’s been one struggle after another and testing when the system is unstable is both risky and hard to interpret. As for my writing and work in supporting others, I just couldn’t seem to get there. I’ve been a hibernating bear, a turtle in its shell… I’ve harangued myself about getting so little done, and yet now I’m writing about it, it seems a miracle I’ve even managed this much… I know what I would say to any other of my friends who are struggling to deal with chronic pain and complex illness…. I guess I do tend to be a little hard on myself…

So what’s next, now that I think I may be getting my sea legs for this new reality? Well, I hope I am finally starting to claw my way up through the sticky mud of shock, trying to devise a Plan of Action, and one aspect of that is getting back to Taming the Beast… the blog, and the book. So here I am. My family will laugh at me, because I said I knew that one key would be shorter posts, and here we go again. But this one was personal… and we had a lot to catch up on. I hope to be able to post at least 1-4 times/month with a few pup-o-grams thrown in; I’ll be focusing on the practical… more on my top 10 alternatives for chronic pain, some de-nuking protocols for my mast cell cohorts, some CNS stabilizing tricks and Houdini mind games for escaping the bonds of neuropathy, my fav homeopathics and other such topics. I’m certainly open to suggestion, too, so let me know what you’d like to see.

As for Taming the Beast, the book, I’m working on learning some new organizational skills on the computer, and trying to figure what parts I can get ready for publishing quickest, and what parts of the planned monster volume my fellow sufferers need the most… possibly breaking it down, so that if things don’t go as I would wish and I don’t have enough time to finish this thing I’ll at least leave the material, or pertinent parts of it, publishable by my family and still be able to be of use after I’m gone. After I’m gone….I type that so easily, when boy oh boy, I don’t want to go. That’s the other gift I’ve received from this wretched experience. Like so many of us who live in high level pain, I have struggled at times with suicidal ideation…. and this year, we’ve lost some really loved and special RSD/CRPS warriors to that terrible battle. But right now, in the wake of those heartbreaking losses, and with the scythe balanced just inches from my own neck, I know I still want to be here. Despite all the pain, despite the suffering and the unrelenting challenge, I WANT TO LIVE. I am not ready, not at all. I have unfinished business and I want the time to complete my work. Which is a pretty complex, multifaceted thing… so hear me, powers that be… I NEED TIME. LOTS, and LOTS OF TIME.

So to that end, yes, I am fiiiinally getting some of the anti-inflammatory protocols into place, and working on more (and working on not beating myself up too badly at how long it’s taking to get them to happen). I’ve completed my long missive to the Portland Valve Center; (you think this is long, you should see me trying to explain my situation to someone who might be slicing and dicing my heart! And they don’t get the purty pictures to break it up!) and I’m working on getting all of the auxiliary paperwork attached to send it, hopefully in the next week or so. I’m trying to get clarity on which of my symptoms are being caused by the heart and which are from the pre-existing conditions; I’m trying to get a handle on how bad it actually is. It’s an uphill battle because of the docs and medical system I’m dealing with, but I’ll get there. The squeaky wheel and all that… so… wish me luck. Please. And let me know how you’re doing and what you’d like me to publish on the blog… because I’m doing this for you. I have a body of knowledge that was hard won and I’d like it to be of use. You all are in my thoughts and prayers; please keep me in yours. This life may give us challenges but we will prevail. Please stick around. Don’t give in to your darker moments, we need you. We are stronger together. Until my next post, hang tough, savour each moment of this precious life, be as happy and well as you can be, and know that I am sending you love.

I searched for a photo to represent "love" and this is what I came up with; a photo of me and Angus, the little streetdog I rescued at age 9... his love got me through a heap of misery...which is what love does best.

PS> I’ve put an awful lot of artwork in this post! All artwork and personal photos herein (except for those few images that aren’t mine; the artworks are clearly marked) are bound fully by copyright law, all rights reserved. Please enjoy my work but respect those laws and my rights and my trust in you by NOT copying, publishing or using my work in any way without my express permission in writing. If you would like to use it, let me know for what purpose and we can talk.)

 

 

 

 

Author: Lili Wilde
Date Posted: 2015-02-04   Date Last Edited: 2015-02-10 13:32:51