I’ve been fight­ing some debil­i­tat­ing pain in my neck, shoul­der and paint­ing arm for quite some time. Over the past year, physic, mas­sage and finally surgery just a few weeks back seem to have all been the voodoo I needed to take a step in the right direc­tion. I’ll be hon­est. It’s been really frus­trat­ing not to be able to paint my heart and soul out as quickly as I would like to, and it has been wor­ri­some build­ing up to the surgery.

Ten years ago, I had a small cyst on the back of my neck removed. Wouldn’t you know it — I’m in that rare 1–2% of “yep…it can grow back”. Ten years later, this nasty thing decided to make a return appear­ance but in a larger form, and it has been caus­ing a lot of health issues. We have all been a bit wor­ried about how it would go…doing every­thing to make it as easy as pos­si­ble and hope for the best after surgery. There’s been a lot of men around this house pre­tend­ing they are Arnold…“It’s just a too-mah!”