Extraneous information for the idly
and morbidly curious ...  

Know that support groups are available.

Oh, about me. Well, it started slow... and didn't deviate! .

After an early life dedicated to dereliction and drifting (the squandered youth of saga), I found out that I like education, so I collected a few degrees.

After attending night classes while working full-time and commuting by bus to Denver and back to Boulder each day, sometime in my late thirties I finally copped the bachelor of art.

That was fun, so more seemed like a good idea. I would be immersing myself in psychology Theoretically, of course. , a subject I enjoy, and enhancing my chances of future work. I would be exercising my flaccid mind. And, most importantly, leaving for graduate school would afford me (not in any financial sense, of course) a way out of my despised work at the law farm.

So away to Fort Collins I moved, in pursuit of the elusive and eventually obtained piece-of-doctor-paper.

But not before a hiatus. In the midst of psychology I took a leave of absence, joining the Department of Anatomy and earning a graduate degree in anatomy, specialization medical illustration and communications.  

I trained in biomedical illustration at Colorado State University, which at the time offered one of six graduate courses in medical illustration available in the country.   While I was a student in the program, it became officially accredited by the American Medical Association.   This was the only accreditation to be granted a graduate program in medical illustration in 33 years. 

My class consisted of three students counting myself.  We did enjoy one-on-one attention and teaching by biomedical illustrators muy importante y famoso. I had classes in disorders of the human brain, forensic anthropology, neuroscience, and gross human anatomy (not the movie), in addition to the art and publishing courses you might expect as part of such a program.  During and after the program I worked with a cancer researcher at the CSU College of Veterinary Medicine, Greg Ogilvie.  

Dr. Ogilvie, who frequently speaks to professional and lay audiences around the world, needed a way to convey to his audiences, quickly and vividly, the arcane molecular processes with which he worked.   I began creating what we called visual analogies, a method of metaphorical communication through art that became my graduate thesis. 

Unfortunately, a graduate program consisting of three students is difficult to justify financially.  CSU terminated the biomedical illustration program just three years after it had been accredited and one year after I obtained the degree, and as of 1999 the number of schools offering such a graduate program in this country was down to five.

There. Wasn't that illuminating?