Closure

I had a wonderful art gallery/custom picture frame shop in the downtown Indianapolis neighborhood of Fountain Square. It's an eclectic and bohemian artist area with terrific Indypendent restaurants and night life. The shop was well-known and successful, although not particularly profitable.

But something was afoot. Something unavoidable and terrifying. I was loosing my eyesight.

A picture framer and art dealer can be deaf, mute, have no sense of smell, even no common sense, but she MUST be able to see. In fact, it's quite handy to be able to see 1/64". That's pretty small. But as time went on, I was not even able to see 1/4" reliably. I couldn't go on doing what I do, and I was heartbroken.

There was an easy solution, go on a short hiatus and take care of the problem, right?. Then the prognosis came in.

Brian and I had met with the neuro-surgeon from IU Med Center on IUPUI campus downtown. Dr. Paul Nelson (you'll have an opportunity to read more about him). A jovial and deeply thoughtful man, when asked what my chances of regaining all my eyesight after surgery replied with something I didn't want to hear.

You see, I had known about my brain tumor for a very long time. And Dr. Nelson said I may have had it all my life. So there was a possibility of some long term damage to my optic nerves. The official prognosis was: "you will have a 2/3 chance of getting 'some improvement' in your eyesight." It was said with a smile, as though that would be good enough to continue my line of work. Very sadly, it was not good enough. I had a 33% chance that absolutely nothing would change. And if it did, there were no guarantees of how much it would improve.

I didn't show it in the meeting, but I was devastated by that news. I had to close the shop. It would make no fiscal sense to go through the surgery and recovery not knowing if I would ever be able to frame pictures again--the one constant in my professional life since 1991.

I devised a way to tell everyone without divulging my own personal medical issue (though I'm prepared to write in detail about it now that it's over). I would make the art gallery "virtual"--all the shows would be on my website, on line! I thought it was an intriguing idea, and so did the Indianapolis Star, which wrote an extensive article on it. I would also make the frame shop "mobile"--I come pick-up and drop-off framing projects and work on them at a remote location. This part was purely hopeful. But if I didn't get my eyesight back, I had trusted colleagues I could refer.

So here is my apology for being slightly misleading about my closure. I am sorry. It had to be done and I felt it had to be done that way.

Sarah