Extensive Alterations

After six years of chronic illness and seeing nearly thirty doctors, I was the 648th person to undergo a Total Pancreatectomy with Auto Islet Transplant at the University of Minnesota.  TPAIT (pioneered at the U of M) is an incredibly complex and innovative surgery where the pancreas is removed and processed to extract Islet cells that are then placed in the liver. 

When ill, one experiences the world in smaller increments of time that repeat. And repeat. During the many hospital stays, I experienced this collapse of time. Seconds turned into hours when getting a feeding tube installed through the nose into the jejunum. Days turned into weeks, defined by scheduled blood draws, vital sign checks, medications or even worse the waiting for test results. During this time, I found patterns on virtually all surfaces in the medical environment: hospital gowns, flooring, upholstery in waiting rooms, paper cups and even sterilizing equipment. They suspend one’s sense of time, not knowing where they begin and where they end. 

Through sequence and repetition, motifs that were intended to casually distract me, drifted ever so slightly to create a new vernacular. This body of work is a collection and examination of the physical and psychological patterns of this experience.