Odds Bodkin Countdown to a New Knee—June 2026
Small doings, Big doings…
Hello friends and supporters of my GoFundMe fundraiser (https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-odds-bodkins-recovery-journey)
For better or worse, all my bodily parts are original issue—bones, ears, eyes, heart, lungs, even these old teeth—and so to contemplate something other than my original parts installed inside me makes me squirm a little. All my life I’ve been blessed with good health; the worst has been flus in winter. And so it’s as if fate saved up every life-threatening condition destined for me and packed them into a narrow forty-day timeframe over this past December. A lifetime of illnesses passed through me during that dream-like period in the hospital. I won’t bore you with the maladies list, but I can say I had a total of forty doctors attend to me. Good grief, it sounds Biblical, doesn’t it? And it rained doctors for forty days. The maw of death closed around me, but kept deciding to spit me out, I guess, not quite ready to chew that hard. Thank you, doctors at Concord Hospital. You saved my life. I’ve had to wait for this new body part because sepsis caused all this and the doctors won’t open me up until six months have passed.
So, if all goes well, on July 20th I’ll enter surgery for a new knee. Three months after that, I’ll be walking again. It’s been a long wait.
Meanwhile I’m stuck in my recliner in the living room, as I have been since I came home from the hospital in January. Missed Christmas. Missed New Years. Missed my darling wife Mil who almost expired from worry herself. Can’t walk, and so can’t go out and do shows, my lifelong bread and butter. Since I rely on basic Medicare, a constant fallout of unwelcome medical bills lands in my mailbox every other day.
One good thing: I’ve lost thirty pounds, which makes me happy. I was getting a bit plump. Another good thing. Jenny, my son Christopher’s wife, just gave us a second granddaughter a week ago: Guinevere McKenzie Bodkin. She’s healthy and beautiful and our fourth grandchild.
Yet another good thing: Gavin my son and I are still making steady progress toward completing the illustrated Rowan Canticles, my epic fantasy in verse, with full audio. 11 hours long in three books, or canticles. Although all the verse and voices are completely human-made by yours truly, I have learned to use ChatGPT to create the illustrations. It’s really fun, like having a genius painter by your side who accepts your directions and creates a fresh painting in about a minute. These sorts of images will be among them.
Here, for instance, is Skarnagvidelf, a noble tree ogre, looking down at his friend Devlin, who has been absorbed into a rogue Rowan tree; it is eating Devlin’s power in order to grow gigantic.
Next is my heroine, Gudrunlod, shocked that an old fish seller seems to know her, but instead is mistaking her for her murdered mother from two decades ago.
Lastly is Devlin, powering Gudrunlod’s spells once they’ve discovered their confluence of energies.
You get the idea. We hope to publish by the Holidays.
So, that’s my progress report for this month. Again, thank you for donating to my fund. Some of you have been incredibly generous. Please let a friend know and if you can, help me keep going, finish the Canticles, and get back on the road with stories once again. Every little bit helps.
Best,
Odds Bodkin Storyteller, Musician, Poet Bradford, New Hampshire
https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-odds-bodkins-recovery-journey
PS: I can also recommend my storytelling recordings at: https://www.oddsbodkin.net/shop/