Page 173

I’m not dead! (Not quite yet anyway…)

36 Comments

Yay! How are you doing?

Still not doing too well, but it varies from day to day. Right now I got no pain at all in my shoulder, but just two days ago it was unbearable. Tomorrow it might suck again.

My extreme sympathies and long distance hugs!

NO! NO! NO! NO!.. How you doing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viRPVgR5Luw

Delightful! Also it’s good you’re not dead.

I was definitely hoping that rumors of your demise were greatly exaggerated, good to see it proved! Also: Yaaaaaay, new page! 😉

I’m happy to see you posting! =)

Mina’s face…

On a side note, yay, an update! I hope this means you’re feeling better, and if it does, I hope it lasts a long while!

Glad to hear you have one foot (or shoulder) out of the grave, and another fantastic page. Looking forward to more whenever your health doesn’t suck.

Poor Mina!

I’m glad to see this back. This comic is one of my favorites. I hope your own “alien hand syndrome” lets up a little, it’s no fun to hurt all the time. Any idea what the issue is? Rotator cuff? Tendinitis?

Oh, and I should have asked, do you have a little banner I can throw up in my favorite links page? :3

I’ll probably know more about what’s ailing me next month. And no I don’t really have a banner or anything.

Well, here’s to hoping it’s nothing too serious! c:

A new page is nice, but I was beginning to worry that you had given up on drawing altogether Drake. Good to hear that your shoulder isn’t giving you constant pain.

I love your work and I’ve never commented on it before, but I just wanted you to know that I understand what you’re going through (somewhat). My mom’s been living with severe chronic pain from a variety of sources including a brain tumor and severe nerve damage, and is also an artist so I completely understand if you take a while to produce pages. Take your time and I hope you get better. I don’t mean to be a downer, but my mom hasn’t gotten better in three years. I hope you do better.

Yow. I had severe nerve damage to the extent that I couldn’t move my legs – the nerve conduction was THAT bad. There were days I’d wake up and then pass back out from the pain. Fade to black… Like those videos where they simulate the vision of a person being shot up with bullets.

What helped me was not a painkiller but a drug called Soma. It’s a CNS suppressant. Ironically, despite being a suppressant, it allowed my nerves to heal enough that the recovery process finally started, so I regained my feeling and the pain went away. Now I can walk and even run.

I know that won’t help the brain tumor, but, you could always try massaging the neck and upper back. Part of the reason the body creates tumors is because the CNS cannot recognize the tumor as a problem, but stimulating the nerves in the area can sometimes cause the body to “wake up” and see the issue. I know because, while I didn’t have cancer, I had a ton of benign cysts on my legs until I started to massage my lower back.

The body uses something called cytokine signalling to recognize tumor cells, and when the nerves are damaged, the body can sometimes fail to deal with normal injuries. For example, a cut on a diabetic’s leg more easily gets infected than normal. Thus, massaging the area will cause the cytokines to spread out to areas where the nerves are functional, which leads to the body creating an immune response.

I know you’ve probably heard things like this a million times before, but since I was successful in recovering from what I thought was certainly a death sentence, I just want to share and hopefully help someone else.

Haha, love the look on the guy’s face in the first panel. Hope you feel better soon!

I enjoy how, officially, he is still “Some Guy”

Heh. Yeah, he does have a name, but I guess “Some Guy” is how Erin still thinks of him.

i believe that one is “nick” actually. i think the other guy is “dan” and that’s really weird, because that’s my older brother’s and my names, respectively. if there’s a “sam” in the organization, i’m gunna be really creeped out.

(sam is the younger brother)

Glad to see another page and hope you feel better.

You’re not alone. It seems like half the webcomic artists I follow are in a constant state of “only mostly dead” 😛

Ha ha! LEXX reference!

Did you know that LEXX effectively killed Babylon 5? The guy that was writing B5 refused to put in gratuitous sex scenes, which the network wanted, to compete with LEXX. So they cancelled the show. Writers with vision and minds of their own are not welcome.

Whoops! I meant Crusade, not B5. Being a direct sequel, I tend to think of them as the same show.

I just stumbled across this comic and love it a lot.

Then I looked at your posts and you sound depressed. Don’t be a weak pussy who lets his life be ruined by bad times. I have made that mistake in the past, many people do. I went through some really really shitty times for many years and when I finally managed to get out of it, I was completely amazed by how things turned around. Life is full of unused opportunities. If you are unhappy with your life you need to shake things up.

Also, I have been doing weightlifting and other sports since I was a kid, primarily for psychological reasons. It has seriously saved my life and has made me a much stronger person not just physically but especially mentally. Anyway, during that time I have injured pretty much everything, especially my shoulders. However, I could overcome them all. I have met people who had herniated discs and even worse, who looked like they would be crippled for life and yet they recovered and afterwards were stronger than ever. What I am trying to say is that it is amazing what the human body can recover from.

Take it easy, change things up, take care of yourself and, if you aren’t already, work out. I hope you won’t stop drawing because you are amazing.

I’m glad things worked out for you, Anon, but telling depressed people to snap out of it is a pointless and insensitive exercise. We don’t know what stress Drake is experiencing, nor to what extent – if any – that contributes to the physiological problems. Moreover, it’s none of our business.
I understand you wish to share what worked for you . . . but for most people, pretending their problems don’t exist does NOT work.

Have to toss in a comment on this:

“Snap out of it” DOES NOT WORK. All it does is display the general level of ignorance of the speaker.

I’m not being personal, Anon, I’m addressing a recurrent theme which I have been firing back at since being diagnosed as chronically depressed in 1992 (condition extant since at least 1965.)

Regardless of the root cause of the depression (either genetic, or situational,) there is a resultant chemical imbalance in the brain. Either way, “Snap out of it” does nothing more than reinforce the depression.

PLEASE, never try to counsel a depressed person by saying something anywhere along the lines of “snap out of it,” because all you accomplish with that sentiment is to increase their level of stress. What gets heard, regardless of your intent, is some variant of “You aren’t worth much, maybe?”

Been reading a while and gotta say I love this comic. Honestly it’s been a bit hard finding a good webcomic I can stick with since Errant story ended, Goblins went and pulled a “Give us money and we will update regularly only to do the exact opposite”, and By the Book became generic anime filler. All I gotta say is take your time, and keep putting out the quality work. People have no right to demand you to update and honestly I prefer a higher quality story than more updates. Keep up the good work and I hope you start feeling better soon.

Another reader here sincerely hoping to see your life on the up soon – even if we don’t see new story posted. Health difficulties can grind at the soul, but don’t forget that you have done something good here, and whatever comes there are folk thinking of you.