Where Did Ushbus Come From?

Ushbus is featured in a large portion of my artwork. New viewers of my art work can get pretty confused, who is Ushbus? What is she? What does she stand for? It is actually a rather long story and I tend to just skip to the short explanation: She is a pink cat that wears a gas-mask that represents wellness is chronic illness. But for those interested in whole story, it is pretty complicated and personal, so get comfy.

Diagnosis

My quality of life up until the end of high-school hasn't been the greatest. Since I was two I suffered from debilitating migraines and car sickness. I got used to living this way and didn't question it until things got worse for me when I started high-school. I went to a very competitive high-school and was involved in highly competitive marching band also. I was very active before high-school, but I wasn't used to 7am-5pm days, half of that time spent outside in the heat of Houston weather. During the first semester, I became very ill. Almost every day I was getting debilitating migraines. Medicine wasn't helping and the only way to get them to go away was to go to sleep. Everything I ate made me feel sick, and eating with a migraine was nearly impossible. My high-school life turned into a vicious cycle of school, marching practice, and then sleep. I was unable to do my homework because I was in so much pain and I started failing all of my classes and lost a significant amount of weight. I had one teacher who went as far as to tell my mother "There is nothing wrong with your daughter, your daughter doesn't care about school."

My parents were very concerned after going to the pediatricians and him telling us it was nothing and I was just having regular migraines. We all knew this wasn't true because all of my other problems were worsening as well such as car sickness and feeling faint. My mother decided to take things into her own hands and she got in touch with a Neurologist and a Cardiologist that typically worked together. This began my frequent time in the hospital chapter. I had to go through so many test. EKG's, Brain Scans, Lumbar punctures, and the worst test of all...the Tilt Table Test. After ruling out several things that could be causing my migraines my doctors had a good idea what was going on with me, but they still wanted to be sure by doing the Tilt Table Test. This test wasn't directly connected to my migraines(but still connected and I'll explain why later), but they noticed I had pretty bad Tachycardia(racing heart) when doing some other test.

I had my lumbar puncture and tilt table test on the same day, because I have already missed so many days of school to go to the doctors. I thought the lumbar puncture was going to bad but it wasn't at all in comparison to the tilt table test. I got strapped to a table and the doctors carefully stuck wires all over me to read all my vital signs through the test. After all was ready, they made my mother leave the room and slowly tilted me up in the table to standing position. So whats the point of this test? Well, a normal person would take 15-45 minutes to have their blood pressure drop or not at all and the test is done. In somebody who has an obvious problem, their blood pressure will drop before that. I was tilted all the way up, 2 minutes had passed and I started to feel sick to my stomach. My ears started ringing, my eyes started blacking out, I was passing out, and I was going quick. My blood pressure and heart rate were completely abnormal and the doctors quickly laid me back down so I could recover. It was a severely positive reaction, and connecting all my problems together I was diagnosed with POTS/Dysautonomia.

Dysautonomia is an umbrella term for any dysfunction of the Autonomic Nervous System. The Autonomic Nervous System is in charge of everything we don't have to think about to control such as blood pressure, breathing, stomach functions, heart rate, circulation, and much more. After being diagnosed I passed out the next day at school and I had many more incidents after that as well. So what about the headaches? The doctors said it was common that people with Dysuatonomia to also be born with holes/or a hole in their heart. Depending on where this hole is, I could be susceptible for early strokes. To diagnose this we did a simple test, where I drank bubbles and they watched where they went through an MRI. Not only did we find a hole, we found the reason for my migraines! Because of the hole in my heart, not enough oxygenated blood was getting to my brain causing intense migraines. This made a lot of sense because after physical activity my headaches would be worse. My heart could not pump fast enough to get enough oxygen to my brain because of the hole, so it was working double time. I was put on an antidepressant that also was used to block migraines until we could schedule surgery for my hole to be patched. 

On top of all of this I was also battling another health issue that led to much unnecessary "needle" trauma. I had an abscess under my armpit that would come back almost every 2 years. It was painful and I would just go get it cut open and drained. Nobody could figure out why or what it was and the would never numb the dang thing well enough before cutting into me. The last time it swelled up badly, I got an infection and had to have major deep surgery. The scar tissue made it super difficult to heal and I marched with a hole in more armpit for two years. Not only that, I was severely allergic to the sulfa-based medication I was given and spent 3 days in the hospital. None of this would of ever happened if we would of known what it was, but super mom took things into her own hands and reached out to a dermatologist. She recommended getting injections that are normally used for patients with hidradenitis suppurativa, which we are still unclear if I just have a mild case of it, but nobody cared because the injections worked! I never had to be cut open for all those years!

Now to the Ushbus stuff!

Even before I could speak I've been obsessed with cats, this becomes very apparent if you ever spend a good amount of time with me. My sister adopted a stray kitten while she was away for college (which was strictly forbidden in our household.) This kitten was named: Usher Raymond! (see where I am going here) My sister had to leave for an overseas college trip for a couple of months during my junior year of high-school. This meant Usher had to stay at my parents house...where he is forbidden. She couldn't find him a place to stay so he ended up staying with us anyways, but sadly he was confined to one room with me. At this time in school I was very depressed although I was feeling physically a lot better, a lot of anxiety and trauma had built up from the past years.  During this time I was also advancing artistically and had already made up my mind that I wanted to do art for the rest of my life so why not pursue it? Usher being with me was both great and terrible for my sanity at the time. I was obsessed. He was all I talked about, all I drew, and I would get home as quick as possible just to see Usher. Why? Because to me we were the same. Usher had abscesses and health problems just like me.

Gas Mask

During my time in high-school I also became obsessed with gas mask. At the time I thought it was just because of the way it looked, but now I know it goes way deeper than that. Gas mask to me were wellness. Everything I drew had gas mask, and one day I drew Usher in a gas mask. After that I drew more cats in gas mask until I was constantly drawing the same cat over and over again. This cat became Ushbus. Though back then, she was gray and also strongly connected to narcolepsy. I strongly believe the reason I was so interested in narcolepsy back then was because my own chronic illness took and still takes so much life out of me. I normally sleep 10-12 hours and sometimes a nap during the day!

Ushbus today has changed quite a lot. As soon as I entered college she became pink, and I started to look at her story in a more positive light. I don't really include most of the narcolepsy stuff anymore and I focus more on the concept of Ushbus and chronic illness alone. She is slowly becoming more abstract as I ease into the contemporary art world, but It has been over five years and I am still very passionate about it.

My Health Today

I still struggle with my Dysautonomia, sometimes new things will pop up, like aches due to circulation or intolerance to carbohydrates that make me feel sick. I just try to eat healthy and keep active and things get better. I no longer suffer from intense migraines and if I do its either related to sugar, caffeine, or tense muscles, but this rarely happens. The thing I have struggled the most with is just the exhaustion and my struggle with sleeping too much. Its hard on your mental health when you can't get everything done you want to in a day because you are constantly tired. It's even harder when you get shamed for it. I can go to sleep before 9am and still sleep until 12 in the afternoon but not everybody understands the exhaustion.

My Artwork/Themes Today

With time comes change and some themes and goals of my artwork have definitely changed. Having chronic illness has really taken a toll on my mental health and that has been a theme that has crept into my work, especially with mental health problems present in my family. Through out the past few years I have known a great amount of loss, and I continue to struggle with my mind as well;that has been showing in a lot of my current work such as my "Bad Photoshop" project. My themes have become a lot more positive and I want to work to bring others up rather than down. My taste and goal in art have also changed immensely. I used to be set on Ushbus being a comic or a film, but now I want the concept to exist in a more unexpected/challenging space such as in the contemporary art world. It is not a concept I want to be commercialized, and I want it to be taken seriously and not seriously depending of the context of the piece. Maybe a stop motion film will exist in the future, but I don't want that to be my main goal anymore. My goal is awareness, inspiring others with chronic illness, and exploring this concept in many different ways in art to be able to do that.