“Camille Leone. She is a strung out female who is trying to reach the top at all costs. Trying to shoot up the gold that represents success, fame and fortune won’t do her any good. She hides behind her plastic face to make sure she is exactly what society says deems as beautiful. On her throne but in the gutter. My Camille Leon was spawned from my(jeff Cinco’s) imagination and brought to life through the collaborative effort of myself and the photo stylings of Bobby Nottke.”

And it couldn’t have worked out better. We were way under budget and overjoyed with the end result. From the mind of jeffCinco.com and the camera in my hand, we turned Ms. Jennifer H. into the *perfect* mystery girl.

It was pretty much an entire days work to pull this off the way we did. From stuffing that chair into the backseat of my car, among other personal issues attempting to do so, to scoping a good location, to protect her from looking as if she was for sale, to making that pretty young thing finally look the way we wanted to, it was a long and challenging,  but fun day! The only rules we had to follow were make her a “mystery girl” incorporating the colors red, green and gold into the piece.

The Show was at The Ritz in Ybor City, FL last night. The turnout was huge. I hear they usually do pretty well, though. Our piece was one of twenty pieces submitted for the theme show, and then there was about 80 artists total that had art on display.

There’s not much more to say about this project other than I’m ready for the next!

All of the edited pictures from the shoot: http://photo.nottke.com/main.php?g2_itemId=103252

The 4 images chosen for the frame were 5162, 5218, 5232, 5329 in that order.

The butt thing started off as a “mass” that I felt in the shower a couple weeks ago. It freaked me out, as it would anyone in my shoes. There was a doctor that had a look at it a week or so ago at Moffitt that originally thought it was a hemorrhoid. After further review, he didn’t think it was and I was pushed along to someone more experienced in that… area… which set up the first colonoscopy of my life. Exciting!

The dad thing, we just won’t go there. Not publicly.

I wasn’t scared or weirded out about this camera going up my butt, but more anxious to find out what the hell it was and what the quickest way to get over this next hill was.

Morning came way too early, but not early enough. I woke up with an empty stomach going on 36 hours without food, not to mention the interesting night in the bathroom the night before. I had some water on the way to the hospital, which upset the anesthesiologist and delayed this next experience by a few hours.

Waking up with a colon that probably resembled some sort of clown’s balloon animal was not what I expected, but that’s basically what it was. I guess it’s part of the procedure. I was told to “let it go”, but of course I laughed about it for a couple minutes in my twisted, nitrous-influenced state of mind before I could. I guess it’s a normal thing in the endoscopy clinic, so there it went. There it went and went for no less than 10 minutes.

Nearing the end of this day, I can’t imagine how well I’ll sleep tonight. It’s going to be nice. Tomorrow will be another weird day for the reason mentioned above.

Again, life goes on. Another day, another bump in the road. My suspension is really started to get broken in now, I can feel it.

I get to Moffitt, thinking I was going to be there for a half hour or so. I jumped up on the table for the doctor to have a look. The whole surgery site was now hot AND pink. Wonderful.

The problem ends up being a huge list of possible infections, causing a couple of days of 103 degree fevers. I’m still not sure what kind of infection it was. All I know is, it kept me at Moffitt for the next eight days. I end up sitting in Moffitt’s emergency room deal all day until about 7pm. I guess that Friday was a busy day in C world. The room I ended up getting wasn’t nearly as classy as the first time around, but still.. you know.. *nice*.

I spent a few days on antibiotics not knowing the cause of this disaster and not knowing how long I would be in the joint. On Tuesday, I get some news that I’ll be getting another dose of surgery to clean up this devil in my leg. I was excited! Not only that, I have to get, what’s called, a PICC line in me to administor the drugs. It’s a tube that was put in a vein that starts in the under side of my bicep and works its merry way up my arm to the top side of my heart. The next twenty minutes I spent crying while they put it in was another memorable moment of my stay. Anyway, they used the same incision line from my first surgery, so I don’t get to wear any new scars. I was hoping for a cross, an arrow shape or something when this was all said and done.

I met quite a few good people this time and was coherent long enough to hold a real conversion with them. I was so drugged up the last time that I don’t remember being able to talk for more than a couple minutes. ALL of the nurses were awesome, but there was definitely something special about a few of them.

A few good friends made the trek to north Tampa to come visit. It was good to see familiar faces and it passed the time better than soap operas and sports highlights. There was one face I was begging to see, but her lifestyle was probably more important.

For the next six weeks or so, I have the PICC line in me for the in-home antibiotics. Talk about a HUGE pain in the ass! Oh well, life goes on.

I planned on going to a Model Mayhem meet and greet, so I whipped up a business card real fast. I used a picture of Jessica that everyone seemed to like. It’s quick, simple and packs a punch.

I finally went to a primary care doctor after a couple months and that was pretty much a waste of my time. They gave me some anti-inflammatory and antibiotic drugs to see if it would help. I was 100% sure that there was something going on inside there that these drugs would not help, but who the hell am I to argue?

After weeks of dealing with these inbreeds and not being able to get a referral to go see someone who knows more than the first doctors, I switched primary care to a reputable primary care chain of clinics. I had an MRI and was immediately sent to a sports medicine/orthopaedic guy nearby. He gathered from the report and films that it was some sort of fluid filled cyst and tried to drain it - no luck. I was sent to another orthopaedic guy nearby that was a specialist in bumps and stuff located near joints. He looked at it for less than 5 minutes and that set up my first appointment at Moffitt.

Moffitt’s first course of action was another MRI, with contrast this time. Contrast is something they put in your blood that makes anything vascular sort of ‘light up’ in an MRI. The bump on my knee lit up like a light bulb. This was not good news. They took a sample of the tissue with this sort of hole punch that it seems they use pretty often with a number of different types of tumors. Within the next half hour, I would hear the scariest thing I had ever heard in my entire life. I had cancer. They were not 100% certain that it was malignant, but everything that the tumor was doing and how it looked under a microscope was pointing towards malignancy.

I had a second surgical biopsy that took a bigger chunk of the tissue. This time, they went all the way down to the bone to see if it had effected it at all. More bad news. This set up the huge operation the following week.

The operation consisted of removing the bone(top front part of the tibia) that the tumor attached itself to and the tumor at the same time as to not ’spill’ any cancerous cells into the rest of my body. Easier said than done, but the pictures might help understand if you can stand to look at them. The bone and tendons sitting on the tables are not mine, that was the donor bone. They were ready to replace that much of my tibia/knee.

My condition is weaksauce compared to most of the people in this hospital and I’ve seen some of it with my own eyes. I feel sort of guilty for how healthy I feel after seeing what I have.

All I can do is thank everyone around me for the support and be thankful that it wasn’t worse. It’s gone now and the road to recovery has begun. The drugs are kind of fun, but the pain is not. The pain is pretty reassuring, though, because I know it could’ve been a lot worse and I know I’m still alive.

Pictures from my experience can be seen here, but be warned, they’re not pretty.