Health Issues Force Retirement

I regret to announce that due to continuing health challenges, I am stepping down from my duties as Associate Publisher of the Metaverse Messenger.

Having co-founded the M2 with Katt Kongo in August of 2005 was one of the highlights of my time in Second Life. It's allowed me to meet, work with, and interview some of the brightest stars in SL over the last 3-1/2 years, as well as reporting on some of its saddest and most difficult times.

Many of you will recall the news about my close call in August of 2008, when I came close to death and was hospitalized for about six weeks due to acute kidney failure. I have had to undergo dialysis treatments three times weekly since then.

It’s hell, frankly. Most of the time, at best, I feel like I’ve just finished running a marathon or something. At times, however, things get a little more challenging.

Low blood pressure is a fairly common side effect of dialysis treatments, and can be life-threatening in and of itself.

The symptoms vary a lot, but some of the more common signs are dizziness, muscle cramps, and, in more severe cases, non-responsiveness, chest pain, and loss of consciousness. The cause is the same: a drop in blood pressure due to the amount of waste fluid which must be removed during treatment as the dialysis machine attempts to duplicate the function of the natural kidneys.

Unfortunately, dialysis tries to do in three or four hours what the human kidneys normally do 24/7. As the body tries to keep a balance between the fluid in the bloodstream and the body’s other tissues, it can make your pressure drop if there’s not enough fluid in the tissues, or if it can’t happen fast enough.

It gets weird sometimes. It's not unusual for me to experience strange visual effects that let me know what's happening long before the nurses are even aware of it. The machine will set off an alarm if it checks my BP and it’s low, but it only checks it every so often. So I’ll be calling out to the nurses, letting them know what’s happening… it’s pretty much a pain in the ass. Sometimes everything I see begins to look overexposed and washed out, like a really bad photograph.

After something like that, which usually happens at least once a week, I'm even more exhausted than usual. I’ll get home about noon and go straight to bed, and sleep three or four hours, and still not feel refreshed. It sucks.

I still hope to be able to contribute an occasional piece to the M2 as I am able, and I am still available for hire as a graphic designer (SL or RL stuff). My wife Sansarya Caligari (who is the best thing I gained from my time in SL) and I will still be here -- we're not leaving SL, by any means. We plan to continue to enjoy visiting with all our friends in SL, as well as enjoying the SL live music scene we love so much.

Thanks so much to everyone who gave so generously to help Sans with her expenses when I was so ill.

P2