SURVIVAL | DE/RE-FACING UNFATHOMABLY INFANDOUS ODDS!
In early October 2007, I was discovered by the San Francisco Fire Department & my Ellis Street Apartments Property Manager -- unconscious & half-dead, laying in a pool of my own blood & urine; my teeth falling out. I had been comatose, near dead to the world for what doctors eventually surmised to have been between 10 to 12 days of isolated degradation. Infected with AIDS-related PCP Pneumonia and a severe polymicrobial necrotizing bacterial infection of the face, my poor, unsightly visage was blackened by corrosive decomposition.
Once found and urgently rushed to the hospital, I remained under forced sedation for four weeks, during which time doctors at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital and UCSF Medical Center tried to cure the pneumonia and defeat the microbial infection. In curbing the life-draining effects of the PCP Pneumonia, the specialist at both hospitals together were with reasonable speed and surety on the winning team. As for the facial necrosis, they were, however, unsuccessful.
In a last-resort effort to save my life, surgeons were forced to perform an emergency debridement surgery on the greater lower left portion of my face, in order to remove the infected skin and bone of my once gorgeous grimace. In effect, a large chunk of my upper jaw, mouth and nose were amputated; leaving a unfathomably wide, cavernous and gaping, grotesque hole in the middle of my face.
Such is the image I saw looking back at me in the mirror, when I awoke from a powerful six week sedation and was told of my illness & injury by my surgical team interns, residents and attending surgeons...
RECONSTRUCTIONS | IN POIGNANT, PUGNACIOUS DETAILS!
I remained in the hospital for two more months, until I was transferred to acute rehabilitative residency at Laguna Honda Hospital & Rehabilitation Center. On January 30, 2008, I was sent for a two-week surgical stay at San Francisco General Hospital; during which time, plastic surgeons performed the first of what should have amounted to between nineteen to twenty-two ongoing maxillo/craniofacial reconstructions.
During this first most extensive and invasive reconstructive operation, my plastic surgery team replaced the missing portion of my upper mouth and jaw with a graft of skin and bone from my lower left leg. A 8"x16" slab of flesh: eight layers deep, was severed from my lower left leg, then sutured and sewn inside and over the opening in my face. But only, after a seven and a half inch portion of my left fibula was sawed off, surgically contoured and reshapened, and then screwed flat to the remaining portions of my upper jaw – forever destroying the natural curvatures of my nose, mouth, facial profile and smile...
Subsequent operations were to follow. My second surgery: "a revision of the flap," was held on April 23, 2008. Still, then without a nose for nearly a year, I waited five months until my third surgery: "a first-stage nasal reconstruction of forehead flap to nose," which was held on September 14, 2008.
By February 18, 2011, I found myself successfully rounding out the first full phase of reconstructions, with my twelfth operation: "the sealing & suturing of a tracheotomy stoma." As of August 01, 2011, I remain committed to healing and mending my psychiatric health, so that I am well-prepared for a second phase of eight-to-ten more grueling transformations. The psycho-social and emotional healing I thought would have been a reasonably easy milestone to surmount, has sadly turned into a difficult, cumbersome and quite challenging ordeal, due to the caustic and devastating obstacles of severe isolation and lack of interpersonal relations of understanding, compassion and enduring care and support.
THE MASKS I BEAR. THE MASKS I WEAR... NO MORE! BUT, WHEN?
During the first extended period of stasis and rehabilitation in isolation that darkened the long, multi-year ordeal of the literal, as well as figurative "de/(re)-facement of my quintessentially cute and charismatic queer kid character," I chose often nearly always to wear hospital-issue surgical or procedural masks when away from the solitude, sanctity and solace of my "squarely sparse and sterile, single-room studio" apartment [attrib. +MATTHEWBLANCHARD from "CONSTRUCT" (dir. Daniel Cardone), feat. STILL AROUND (Outcast Films: USA 2011, 82 mins.)].
For nearly half-a-decade since losing my former face, I chose to wear medical-grade sanitary masks to hide my monstrous face from such curious, yet insensitive scrutiny of the indiscriminately dispassionate and cruel public: incl. countless belligerent bystanders, scathing spectators; even quite a few invariably voracious & vicious voyeurs.
WILL I EVER SMILE AGAIN? REPLY: DEAD-IN-THE-EYE SILENCE...
Very early on during my tumultuously "trans-mutative re-(con)/figuration(s)," San Francisco's leading Public Health Sector Plastics & Reconstruction surgeons told me flat-out, very clinically and blunt, "You will never look normal again."
When I asked them if I'd ever be able to smile, they responded with a long, awkward silence; and then, the attending doctor replied, "You WILL be able to express happiness;..." As if that were any conciliation!!
Truth be told: I would so much rather count on cracking a dim-witted, half-notched, queerly crooked and somewhat corrupted, yet still "pseudo/neo-(para)/quizzically" cute and charismatic "White-bred Euro-mutt/slut All-American Gay Boy" smile; anytime and always, from this present moment and well forthwhile... All for the sake of proclaiming my deeply savored and self-assuring "un-shamed claim to beauty in the face of invisibility" (attrib. @SINSINVALID, cf. http://bit.ly/ResidentALIEN ; etc.) – Hell'z YEAH!!
http://youtu.be/KpLVYec0iTM (acc, 14 October 2014)
Up until and well-past today, I will continue to recover from and plan patiently for numerous supplemental reconstruction surgeries. Up until and well-past today, I will continue to survive, day-to-day. However, my survival plays out such now with quite considerably less disquieting disarray, discomfort, disgust, or even difficulty than it so may have done, only some few years passed...
EXCRUCIATINGLY AFRAID! STILL, PROMISED PROMETHEAN END...
Unfathomably frightened by my new and changing face! Scared far-too soul-scathingly stiff to crack even a half-dimpled, cockeyed smile!! For far-too long awhile, I was nowhere close to surely certain, as to whether if or when the in-exacerbating chaos and turmoil of my tragic, yet triumphant epic saga would ever – if ever!? surely, not anytime soon! – come close to "Its Promised Promethean End...!!?"
Clearly, my face is grotesque and disfigured, as one could easily observe in my selection of portrait photography & illustrations, linked to this Google+ Profile (e.g., accessible; via "photos," above; etc.)... While, as my first foray through this misadventured misery, my clinical depression was severely exacerbated by my experience surviving a disfiguring facial injury, I am finally rebounding steadily more towards exultant resilience, through my effortful focus on recovery, rehabilitation, and yes... Even, lasting redemption!!
I HAVE LOST FACE. I HAVE NOT YET LOST HOPE...
Nevertheless, I still stubbornly hold out a most hopeful curiosity and commitment – both hell-bent, yet heaven-sent! – towards envisioning, empowering and ultimately enabling "my elaborate beautification and solemn self-betterment" [attrib. +MATTHEWBLANCHARD from "CONSTRUCT" (dir. Daniel Cardone), feat. STILL AROUND (Outcast Films: USA 2011, 82 mins.)]:
http://youtu.be/Vg6PiUbx_7g (acc. 14 Oct 2014)
I have lost face, literally. But, I have not lost hope! Tragically, tenaciously, and despite great sufferance, I am learning to accept my new face and its continuing transformations. It has been an endlessly difficult experience living through this harrowing disfigurement, but I maintain hope and grace, courage and pride, and damned near death-defying determination in life, so that I may live – once; again, at last! – in purely unabashed beauty: "Beauty eternal! Beauty internal!" [attrib. +MATTHEWBLANCHARD from "IT GETS BETTER?" (ed. Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore), feat. WHY ARE FAGGOTS SO AFRAID OF FAGGOTS? (AKPress & Distribution: USA 2012, 234 pgs.)]:
THE MASKS I SWEAR TO TEAR AWAY - HOW SO? IN SHARING!
I have begun to tear away my masks. My participation on a creative level with many artistic types, as well as my enduring efforts to create & covet some genuine sense of transparency vis-à-vis my stupendously challenging experiences with disfigurement, have led me to reveal myself progressively via the ebbing rhythms and flow of cyber-waves, printed pages, stage acts and screen playings.
Since early 2008, when I sat down at a computer for the first time with a gaping hole in my face, I've committed myself to the development and maintenance of my own very intimately visible and accessible Web 2.0/Social Media presence, via the Internet.
By endeavoring to chronicle my transformations through creative expression and the arts, I have become involved in ideo-artistic collaborations with numerous professional artists, authors, film/theater directors, designers, producers and performers in the San Francisco Bay Area, and beyond. Consequently, I have come to claim with courage and confidence my own uniquely surmised yet universally relevant and accessible set of strategies: coined "The 'Self/Survivor' Storytelling" Application(s)...
IMPENETRABLE FACADE OF MASKS (Philosophic, Poetic, Tangible; &/or, Otherwise)
Thenceforth, since the much-treasured and cherished arrival of my very own "pseudo/neo-(para)/transfigurative" "debutante cotillion," world premiere – when I proudly celebrated my coming out as a radical queer counterculture literary arts novice: a creative "self/survivor storytelling" actor, author/essayist, and artist/erudite, with integral contributions to the irreverently bright and radically brilliant anarchist faggotry that burns inflamed from within and out of the newly print-published pages of Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore's most recent anthology, entitled: WHY ARE FAGGOTS SO AFRAID OF FAGGOTS? : Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification and the Desire to Conform (Baltimore/Oakland: AK Press, 31 January 2012 ; ISBN 978-1849350884, 234 pgs.) – ne'er much more do I find a need to continue to hold up an impenetrable facade of masks (physically real, philosophic, poetic; and/or, otherwise; etc.) to veil the "de/(re)-facing trans/(con)figuration(s)" of such evermore pleasantly (or to the contrary, not but perturbingly) familiar, yet persistently shifting contours of my merely miraculous, yet unfairly disfigured, never-again near-to-normal, but quasi-living and thus fatefully friendly face....
With the debut launch/premieres of my numerous varied performances and publications, during mid-2010 to early-2012 – be they on stage, on screen, or in print! – I am making every effort to grow furthermore comfortable with myself, so as to be able to venture out into this world free of falsity, folly, and facade; free as well of ferocity, furor and fear...
FREELY TO FACE THE WORLD... ALL A'SMILES, AGAIN!
In each, every bit and all of my further earthly journeys and pursuits, I shall steadfastly strive to find what such faith in myself need be for me to endeavor freely to face the world smiling again; at last, while standing tall and proud, so as to bellow forth in resounding declaration my rightfully "un-shamed claim to beauty in the face of invisibility" (attrib. @SINSINVALID ; cf. http://www.sinsinvalid,org ; http://bit.ly/ResidentALIEN ; etc.).
Such "Beauty eternal! Beauty internal!" is that which I so desperately, so determinedly seek to salvage, sanctify, strengthen, and secure! In spite of the dreadfully disastrous, death-defying consequences of HIV/AIDS Disease, Major Depressive and Personality Disorders (e.g., Not Otherwise Specified; etc.), Addictive Co-Dependencies, Delinquencies, Despair, and Disfigurement – dealt altogether at once; thence by and hither forth, as the evermore tortuously tantamount maelstrom of my worst-most mind-flux or mayhem; otherwise thus perchance, as the utmost wicked torrents of my waywardly pernicious, waned and waxing, miserably woesome sorrows! – I solemnly pray that all of mankind may at its very best beg not be destroyed by such calamity and chaos; such as this: especially, not at its very worst... Aghast! BeGODS? Alas.
HOPE REMAINS, BUT ONLY AT GOD'S SPEED... GOD WILLING!
Plainly put and perfectly again proclaimed: "an un-shamed claim to beauty in the face of invisibility" is just what I myself am aimed towards, now with the fullest measure of my miraculously "hell-bent, yet heaven-sent" humanity!!
For, as I've already mentioned, "HOPE REMAINS!!" In fact, hope grows exponentially with each passing day! "But, only at God's speed... God willing!" [attrib. +MATTHEWBLANCHARD from "CONSTRUCT" (dir. Daniel Cardone), feat. STILL AROUND (Outcast Films: USA 2011, 82 mins.)].
T'is #QuaziMATTO Mary/ME!? (@QHEREKIDSF.COM)!?
Happily Healthy, Handsome, Home-Bodied Homo turns... Megalo-maniacal Misery, Monstrosity & Malcontent, as... @QHereKidSF at Tri-LIFE – Still striving to thrive! – ALIVE? I Try! – UMPH!? – to triumph ... At last!? Once more. Again!
Respectfully submitted:
+ MATTHEW BLANCHARD | @QHereKidSF
-- San Francisco, CA 94109-7835 USA
http://facebook.com/mblanchard79/about
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http://about.me/matthewblanchard
http://is.gd/quazimatto
