Artist & Author Finds a Kidney

Writer and sculptor Persimmon Blackbridge of Hornby Island, B.C. is looking for a kidney donation. This wonderful human and brilliant, edgy artist has written her request below. Please have a look, and look into her art, as well.

(The day after I posted this Persimmon's
medical team confirmed they have found a
match for her. YAY!!!)

Hello,

I don't know how to write this. I don't like group emails, especially not ones going to everyone from my best friends to people I barely know. I don't like asking for big big giant humongous outrageous favours, and this is just about the biggest.

I'm looking for a kidney. Blood type O.

Two years ago, a false positive on a diabetes test led to the discovery that my kidneys were failing - not from diabetes but from a hyperactive parathyroid gland flooding my system with calcium for the past 10 years or more. It was a lucky accident that it was discovered, but it had already damaged my kidneys to the point of no return, and I will need dialysis or a kidney transplant in the next year or so.

My brother and sister both stepped forward immediately, and it was a huge disappointment to learn that they are both the wrong blood type.

Now a couple of friends are beginning the testing process to see if they might be potential donors. The transplant social worker advised me to find more potential donors if I can, as most people turn out to be incompatible or are eliminated for health reasons. So now I'm asking you and everyone I've ever known if this is something you would be willing to look into.

It's a big decision; it's not right for everyone. I don't expect an answer and I'm never going to ask you again.

All I ask now is that you think about it for a minute. Is this something you might do?

Obviously you would have questions or concerns about how being a donor would affect your health or lifestyle or finances. There are many places you can ask questions and get real, accurate information. There are websites by and for living donors ( http://www.livingdonorsonline.org is one). There is a nurse at St. Paul 's Hospital in Vancouver who works only with prospective donors - her job is to look out for the interests of potential donors, and she keeps strict patient confidentiality (her phone number is at the end of this email).

The bottom line is: screening for donors is very thorough. If you have any health problems, they will find them. If donating poses any health risk, you will be turned down. If you pass the health tests, there are still tissue compatibility tests that could eliminate you as a donor. I know people who have had ten potential donors step up for them, only to have them all eliminated. That's why I have to ask everyone. That's why I'm asking you.

Right now I have only one kidney left, and it's quite damaged, operating at 20-25% of normal function, down from 30-35% last year (whereas one healthy kidney provides 80% of the function of two). When I hit 10-15%, I'll need a transplant or dialysis to stay alive. At that point, if I don't have a compatible live donor, I'll go on dialysis and be put on the waiting list for a deceased donor transplant. In BC, there is an average wait of 5-10 years on the deceased donor list. People like me with type O blood usually wait approx. 10 years. Many people die waiting for a transplant.

Dialysis is no walk in the park and I'm not talking about the needles, the travel restrictions, the time spent tethered to a machine. Dialysis doesn't cure kidney failure, it's just life support. Over time, it brings a host of life-threatening medical complications. People who get a transplant instead live an average of twice as long after their own kidneys fail.

Being on dialysis, even for a year, also increases the chance of organ rejection when you do get a transplant. If I can find a compatible living donor before my kidney completely fails, I may be able to have a transplant without ever going on dialysis. This would be by far the best scenario for me.

At best, dialysis can provide only 10-15% of normal kidney function. What 10-15% means in terms of day-to-day symptoms differs from person to person. For me, even now at 20-25% normal function, I have frequent periods of extreme fatigue when I can't write or do artwork or much of anything else. So it's unlikely that dialysis will let me continue working as an artist or writer. Those of you who know me well can probably imagine what that would mean to me.

Ok, that's a lot of complaining. I'm not wanting to pressure you. Donation is not something everyone can or would want to do. You may have medical or personal considerations that I know nothing about, or you might just not want to. It's your call. I'm only hoping you might consider it. If it's not right for you, do you know someone else who might be up for this adventure? If you do, please forward them this email. People decide to donate for all kinds of reasons, and for some people with kidney failure, it's a total stranger who comes through for them in the end.

I'd be happy to answer any questions or help you find more information.

Thanks for reading this,

Persimmon Blackbridge

Mike Coney Interview Published

Strange Horizons has published my interview of the late SF writer Mike Coney. Check this link to read it.

Mike Coney Interview

happily, my interview of Mike Coney, completed shortly before his death on 4 november 2005, has been accepted for publication by Strange Horizons. i will update this notice with the publication date and url when the time comes.

Stories of Our Life

i feel like a dope when i claim to like--and even write--speculative fiction, and then i am asked, "which authors do you like?" and i stumble a bit.

the problem is that i read more short fiction than long, generally in magazines, though sometimes in anthologies, very seldom single author collections, and unless i have met the person or have read several stories by them--which can take a while using this random method--then both the authors' and the stories' names tend to dribble out my brain, despite my trying to keep them in. it's frustrating because when i come across a story that i just love, and i want to remember so that i can catch that author again, and so i can let people know about them.

so i am going to jot down a couple of the stories from that last couple of years of reading that i have liked and which i still have on my shelf (problem two--i pass on my magazines when i am done with them, thus giving each writer several more readers to a piece--which means i can't thumb through and remind myself of their names), as well as a couple that have lodged themselves in my head long term.

one of the best stories i have ever read is by the very amazingly NOT prolific ted chiang(yay ted!)--"The Story of Your Life"--which i first read in a hartwell "best" anthology, nestled in a chilly cabin in rural b.c. a year or two back. ted has gathered together several other of his peculiar and fascinating stories in his collection The Stories of Your Life and Others. a couple of those stand out, too, in particular the one about building the tower of babylon.

a story i got a kick out of in one of those "best" anthologies in that (by then hopefully warmed up) room was "Craphound", by cory doctorow. this one still brings a smile.

barth anderson's Magnifico the Crimson won my heart in "Lark Till Dawn, Princess", from Mojo: Conjure Stories, ed. nalo hopkinson.

from F & SF in 2004, i most enjoyed daryl gregory's "The Continuing Adventures of Rocket Boy", george guthridge's "Nine Whispered Opinions Regarding the Alaskan Succession, robert reed's "The Condor's Green-Eyed Child", and most especially alex irvine's "A Peacable Man". (i know because i kept the 2004 index when i passed on the magazines. good plan, that.) although i have to say that my interest in F & SF is flagging, as the bulk of its stories don't hugely grab me and i miss there being more women's voices in the mix.

Tesseracts 9, which i read with great interest, for obvious reasons, had a number of stories i liked. the two that really stand out are dan rubin's "The Singing" and alette willis' "Thought & Memory".

two examples of stories in Neo-Opsis that i have enjoyed: "Thirty-Three", by tom brennan & "The Rain Queen", by barbara davies.

a story in Asimov's september issue that i really liked was another by daryl gregory--"Second Person, Present Tense." so i am glad i wrote this list. it lets me know that of the stories i have read in the last year or so, two favourites are by the same guy. A Name To Watch For.

finally, the story i just finished reading that inspired me to write this posting today is from an old issue of On Spec (spring 1997), and is "Chad", by kate riedel. just lovely.

so now i know what to say when asked who i like. "well, in addition to certain novelists i enjoy, eileen kernaghan, mike coney, nalo hopkinson, to name a few, there is some great short work by writers like daryl gregory and ted chiang, kate riedel and robert reed, dan rubin and alette willis... why, i could just go on and on..."

cheers.

cjw

Hello, Mike--Goodbye...

Mike Coney died this morning at about 4 a.m.. Thankfully, it was not as painful and difficult a process as had been feared. Science Fiction has lost an intelligent and lively writer.

A few weeks before he died, I interviewed Mike--that interview is currently with a publisher awaiting acceptance. For the moment I will offer this small excerpt here.

Mike: The whole matter of the Celestial Steam Locomotive arose out of boredom with standard SF, which up to that point, I had written. It was an attempt to write a story in which absolutely anything could and did happen, driven only by the mentalities of the people involved. I felt it succeeded in these terms but I don’t consider it an easy book to read and I have had a few adverse comments on it from people who simply don’t know what I was getting at. This was why I went on to write Fang, which I knew would be much easier for the reader to follow. I think it’s very easy for a writer to get too clever for his own damn good and to forget that his business is to entertain his readers. I’ve seen it happen to many other writers and now I could see it happening to myself. It was not what I wanted. The subsequent story on the website, The Flower of Goronwy is an attempt to return to the style and characters of my earlier books including Susanna and adding a touch of spice by the use of a truly horrifying heroine, Mistrale.

Casey: If you were to write a novel now, what would it look like? What theme, what setting, what mood would it strike?

Mike: If I wrote a novel now I think it would turn out to be like Flower of Goronwy. In fact, I think it has done.

Pallahaxi Mike

A long time ago an alien virus infected my brain and I gave up science fiction and got Serious. I didn't get serious and start reading Classical Literature, or improving my mind with CanLit. No, I got serious and stopped reading fiction altogether unless it was written by a friend or there was something specific I wanted to glean from it or—and it did happen from time to time—I fell off the wagon, took a holiday, grabbed some willing novel and read.

This is a frightening admission but it saves me pretending to be better read than I am, and it explains why it was only this summer that I realized I had never read a thing by Mike Coney and decided to do something about it. I went to his website to get a sense of where to begin, and discovered to my puzzled delight that he had made three novels and five short stories available there for free. I downloaded one, realized it was a sequel, got ahold of the original, and have since drunk with heady pleasure the fine wine of Michael's prose. What I have been missing!

The books are Pallahaxi Tide (first published in England as Hello Summer, Goodbye, and released in the United States as Rax) and I Remember Pallahaxi. Although they are related, they can be read separately and are fine and satisfying novels on their own. But for the greatest pleasure I recommend reading them both.

What to say about them, without giving too much away?

My first impression of Pallahaxi Tide was that it was a quirky fantasy novel set in a primitively industrial world that sounded a lot like my idea of England in earlier days. In fact, both books are solid and thoroughly-imagined science fiction. Yet the fantasy impression isn't entirely misplaced. There is a lushness to the world and an accessibility and occasional humour that seem to my poorly-read mind to be more common in fantasy than in sf. The humour in no way detracts from the seriousness of the story, but simply makes the narrators more endearing and keeps the SerCon* Virus at bay. It is a familiar, self-deprecating and dry humour that greatly appeals to me.

"I was sitting on the stern thwart, holding the tiller, while Wolff sat amidships grasping the mainsheet. We had reached the outer harbour and were running out of the shelter of the cliffs; the breeze was freshening, driving us briskly towards the lighthouse at the end of the breakwater. The water was a little choppy here and every so often a wave slopped over the low gunwales....

"...As I shifted position a river of icy water soaked my foot and cold fear ran up my leg. We were sinking. The water was freezing cold. I looked frantically around for help. We were many paces from the nearest boat, doomed to death from exposure preceded by the terrible onset of insanity as the coldness of the water gradually chilled our bodies and froze our brains.

"Having faced the worst I was able to devote my attention to more practical matters. "
pp.42-43

In Pallahaxi Tide, we meet Drove and Browneyes, young people from different villages and very different stations in life. Drove is the son of a low-ranking official who busies himself with secret machinations while the scornful son befriends the low-class daughter of local inkeepers. As the story unfolds, the scope of the threat facing the people of this place, an Earth-like planet caught in a complicated dance with a star and its gas giant partner, becomes clear to the young people involved, and the choices they must make cut deep and irrevocably. Coney has realized the characters and plot completely, and treated us throughout to visions of an alien seasonal round and life-forms that surprise and delight.

One thing only disappointed me, and this is more than rectified in the following book, I Remember Pallahaxi. That is, the nature of the lorin.

The lorin are gentle and silent creatures that drift along the back edges of existence in the first book, intruding only occasionally in unexpected ways, without ever being really explained. In book two it is all gradually revealed, and the second book, though very different than the first, is if anything even more satisfying.

So now that I am hooked, a confirmed Coney fan, what do I do?

Well, it's tricky. Mike has written a good number of books and short stories, but the height of his popularity was in the 70's. As with so many excellent writers, as the trends in publishing changed, it became harder for him to find publishers for his work, and as a result it is not so easy to find these days. A number of copies of some of his novels are available via the internet (BookFinder has a healthy listing: http://www.bookfinder.com/), and others may be found in libraries and used book stores. But again, being softcovers, those library copies do tend to wear out, and go astray—as I discovered when ordering the English version of book one from the Vancouver Library.

It's worth the effort to look. And there are those offerings at his site. I certainly intend to slurp them up:
http://www.members.shaw.ca/mconey/



*SerCon (or sercon): Serious & Constructive. Important & Good (but if you ask me, dangerous if taken in too great quantities.) Usually refers to Fannish Activity (fanac), but also to the literature itself. I have expanded somewhat on its meaning here.