www.BrettDaniel.com

Every Friday, the Computer Science Graduate Student Organization puts on a fruit-and-donuts social event in Siebel Center called Friday Extravaganza. Yesterday's FE was the first Musical FE. Two musicians played: Danny Dig and myself.

Over the summer I bought a DigiTech JamMan looper pedal. It allows me to record riffs while performing, then solo over them. Also, I can upload backup tracks from the computer. Such a fun toy. To prepare for the event, I uploaded the drum and bass tracks for Orange and Hedgehogs and Fish.

Danny and I set up our equipment about 30 minutes before the FE was scheduled to start. I had my guitar, PODxt, and JamMan, which I plugged into the CS department's PA system. Danny's amazing setup was much more involved. He had two 4x12 speaker cabinets, a rackmount amplifier, an eight-button multi-effects pedal, a looper pedal, and a laptop.

A crowd had already gathered while we tuned our instruments and warmed up. By the start of the show, the entire atrium was full of people eating the free food. I did not expect such a good turnout; it was the largest crowd I have ever played for.

Danny and I alternated back and forth on four or five songs. Danny soloed over jazz standards, while I played some solo songs and jammed over my prepared backup. After three or four songs, a professor sang a love song dedicated to his wife, introducing it by saying, "computer scientists aren't all cold and analytical."

After we finished our prepared set, Danny and I jammed together. We have wanted to jam since meeting last year. This event gave us our first chance. Danny is graduating, so we will not get many more.

This event taught me a lot about how to prepare for a public performance and how to use the looper pedal. First, I realized I should have included more instruments than just drums and bass on my backup tracks. It was difficult to keep my place without the cues of other instruments. At one point while playing H&F, both the drums and bass cut out for a solo section that I was completely unprepared for. Second, I need to prepare several different phrases that I can seamlessly link when I am recording loops on the fly. Just one gets boring. Third, I need to balance loop and instrument levels before the show.

Between our prepared pieces and the jam session, we played for about an hour and half. Both of us felt the event was a success. Thanks to everyone who came.

Thanks to Alejandro Gutierrez for taking the pictures. The full set can be found here.

Yesterday marked the end of the most recent stage of the cancer/surgery odyssey. I got the surgical staples removed, got a new leg dressing from my prosthetist, and made the trip back to Champaign. Today I rejoined academic life.

Dad accompanied me to the surgeon's office early in the morning. We placed bets on how many staples the nurse would have to remove. He guessed 50 and I, 40. I counted 35.

We met Sue at the prosthetist's office. She got a show-and-tell similar to the one Dad and I got on the last visit. The prosthetist gave me a silicone compression liner that I will eventually use in the fake leg. Interestingly, I need to wash it every night with hand soap and disinfect it twice a week with unflavored mouthwash. It seems strange to clean an expensive engineered silicone medical implement with random bathroom products.

Since the last visit I have had painful phantom sensations in my missing leg. Sometimes it feels like the leg is trying to "wake up" from being asleep. Other times it feels like something is gouging the sole or heel of my foot. Really, my brain is trying to rewire itself to handle the missing or confusing signals from the remaining nerves in my leg. My prosthetist recommended patting the sides of the stump. My surgeon prescribed gabapentin and suggested that hypnosis may help. I have not gotten to the point of trying hypnosis, but the other two approaches seem to help temporarily. The pain should decrease with time as my brain and nerves adjust.

After grabbing a quick lunch, the three of us departed for Champaign; Dad in his SUV and me riding with Sue in my car. They took me grocery shopping and helped me carry things up the two flights of stairs to my apartment. I am not looking forward to traveling up and down those stairs with crutches every day. Fortunately, I will get a temporary prosthetic in a month or two that should make the trip easier.

Today I attended classes. I kept up with homework while I was gone, so my transition back to academic life should be pretty easy.

Thanks to everyone who sent good wishes over the past two weeks.

After a week of websurfing, reading, watching TV, and attempting to catch up with my schoolwork, I finally had a productive day today. I got the enormous surgical dressing removed, met a prosthetist, and got handicap placards from the BMV.

The nurse removed the dressing using sturdy fabric shears. By my father's count, he removed seven layers, mostly thick cotton batting. He gingerly folded back the final layer of stretchy gauze, revealing the surprisingly small stump of my lower leg capped with a neat row of surgical staples. (No, I won't post a picture.) I was very relieved to get the massive weight of gauze and cotton off of my leg. I could move my knee again! And scratch the itch below my kneecap that had bothered me all week! Heaven!

My surgeon took a quick glance at the staples and decided they should stay in for another week. Fortunately, they did not require another dressing, but my surgeon recommended that I wear an ominously-named "stump shrinker". Essentially, it is an elastic tube, closed with a plastic ring at the bottom, that is worn to reduce swelling. The nurse fashioned a temporary stump shrinker, then sent us across town to a prosthetist for a more robust one.

The prosthetist, a jolly-looking bearded man with a slight limp, gave me a white stump shrinker that was functionally identical to the brown one I got at my surgeon's office. Then, he brought in four fake legs for "show and tell". The technology is amazing. The prostheses are held onto the stump with a silicone sleeve that has a toothed pin at the bottom. No straps, velcro, or buttons. The pin locks into a hard shell attached to the aluminum and carbon fiber foot. The ankle, heel, and ball of the foot are all articulated to simulate the pull of muscles.

They work better than the leg I lost!

The plan goes like this: in a few weeks, once the swelling goes down, a technician will take a casting of my leg. That will be used to create a temporary prosthesis with which I can practice walking while my leg shrinks further. After a few months, they will take another casting for the permanent prosthesis. Once I get used to that, they will enclose the shell in carbon fiber and, optionally, fake flesh. I, of course, plan to leave the carbon fiber exposed. So cool.

Next stop was the BMV. First, I wanted to get a handicap placard for my car. The second reason requires some backstory: two summers ago, I completed a two-week-long motorcycle training course offered by the state. (I never wrote about the course, so I unfortunately do not have a weblog link.) I got a certificate that would give me my motorcycle endorsement if I simply presented it at any BMV. I never did, so the certificate remained in my wallet until today when I decided to cash it in.

The BMV employee laughed when I gave her my unique request. I, a young man on crutches and missing part of his leg, wanted both a handicap placard and a license to drive a motorcycle.

It only took only a week for my doctors to diagnose the tumor in my ankle and decide to amputate below the knee. It seems appropriate that the surgery itself was just as rapid. I arrived at the hospital at 7 AM last Tuesday, entered the surgical room at 8:30, and was awake by 11. My surgeon said the operation took just 45 minutes.

I woke in a wood-paneled hospital room with what remained of my left leg wrapped in three inches of cotton gauze. Even with the heavy dressing, my leg was noticeably lighter. For the rest of the day I swam in and out of the morphine. A physical therapist arrived around 3:00 and asked me to crutch between the bed and a chair. He returned the next morning and had me travel around the recovery floor. It took me a while to get used to the asymmetric weight distribution.

My surgeon visited a little while later. I had decreased my morphine intake overnight, and he felt that pills could take care of any remaining pain. That meant I could go home if I wanted. By the time my parents arrived, I was already dressed, and the nurse was finishing the discharge papers. I was home by 3:00, just 30 hours after major surgery.

Pretty amazing.

Since then, I have monopolized my parents' recliner.