Connie Willis
Earlier this month, while walking to a garage sale, Connie Willis fell in the driveway and fractured the floor of her eye socket; it will have to be surgically repaired.
She told readers of her blog on July 20 the eye muscle is trapped in the fracture —
…which sounds disgusting and is, though the eye surgeon seemed unfazed by it. (He called it a blowout fracture with entanglement and said the surgery has an almost one hundred percent chance of success.) I’m having it operated on on Wednesday, after which point I’ll hopefully be able to read–and write–again instead of just watching one-eyed television (you have no idea how many truly awful movies are on the Turner Classics channel) and not lifting, not bending over, and not blowing my nose, all of which are forbidden activities.
Meantime, Willis is wearing a black eyepatch.
The accident forced her to cancel teaching at Clarion West this year.
Willis suffered another medical misadventure in June when she was bitten by a bat. Willis endured the first round of rabies shots while waiting for test results that would determine if she’d be free to emcee the Locus Awards as planned.
Luckily, we caught the bat, which tested negative for rabies, and we got the test back just in time to keep me from having to have the second round of shots–and from having nightmares about that scene in To Kill a Mockingbird where they have to shoot the rabid dog. I was able to go off to the Locus Awards and do my emceeing (which was way fun), and the only thing I have to worry about from the experience is a sudden, overwhelming desire to read the Twilight novels.
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Bit…by a bat. Is she in competition with James Nicoll or something?
In any case, I’m glad the tests came back negative, and I hope the surgery goes well.
Get well soon Connie!
Bit by a bat, black eyepatch…..She understands that she’s supposed to write SF stroies right, not try and become the antagonist in them?
Regardless, all the best and speedy recoveries!
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
(seriously, very glad the prognosis is good and I hope she makes a full recovery)
Best wishes for a smooth operation and a speedy recovery. Even with the eye patch (Argg, avast the mizzen-mast), and mono-vision, she can write a humorous blog update. And the bat incident. Too say nothing of the dog! Hope all goes well, best to you, Connie!
Best wishes for a speedy recovery.
Sending out good wishes to Connie Willis, one of my favorite authors!
Yes, if you hit your face along the upper part of the cheekbone, that’s actually the lower orbital bones and a fracture can propagate into the socket. If you hit your brow ridge, that’s the upper part of the orbit, and a fracture can spread into the socket from there too. There’s six muscles that move the eye, so one of them’s bound to be affected in such an accident.
Well, I certainly hope her surgery goes well. I’m glad she doesn’t have to lie face down for weeks.
For various reasons I have ended up having to listen to Coast-to-Coast, Ground Zero, and other such late night radio talk shows, and was slightly unnerved to discover that one of them was hosted by Connie Willis. I guess I could call and ask how her eye is doing.
Ack! Hope she’s okay! And bit by a bat…lord.
Getting an eye muscle caught in your fractured socket, or being bitten by a bat and having rabies shots: it’s like a game of “Would you rather” except it’s all happening to one person!
Eep! Sounds like Connie Willis is having one of Those Years. Best wishes and get well soon, to her!
Ouch! Had to wear an eyepatch for a while as a kid. Not fun. I wish all the best for her surgery and speedy recovery. Maybe she can teach a parrot words of questionable virtue in Portugese. It will help pass the time and it’s better than a Kay Kyser marathon.
Somebody figure out who has the Connie Willis voodoo doll and take it away from them!
I hope all goes well with the surgery and that you have a speedy recovery.
She is a regular at Bubonicon. Always fun. I saw her a few yeas ago at Bubonicon I saw one of her books (paperback) for sale in Costco. She jumped up and hugged me!. I was gob-smacked!
She told us about the story of visiting the British Museum for research, when her husband came up and dragged her towards the museum cafe. She protested all of the way, until she learned he had met a bunch of nice old ladies who had been wardens during the Blitz. He immediately invited them to tea, on him, while he fetched Connie. He got a lot of husband points for that.
I asked her a bit later (in the book-signing line), how long the husband points lasted. I remarked I found them to have a steep decay rate. She just smiled….
We are all pulling for you to have a great recovery. Kick ass, Connie!
Bit…by a bat. Is she in competition with James Nicoll or something?
I’ve never been bit by a bat or had a rabies scare…
(I know someone who has, though. Woke up in bed to find a small bat had crawled in for the warmth, didn’t notice the bite until long after it fluttered off)
One note, the Connie Willis on Coast to Coast is not the Connie Willis we know. She has the domain conniewillis.com and has mainly been an infomercial host based in Florida who has gotten onto the UFO bandwagon (and previously submitted a audition video from SciFi’s Ghost Hunters).
I just posted a post-surgery update from Connie to the blog at http://azsf.net/cwblog/?p=139
Once had a bat fluttering around my living room, and the cats, heroes of many a one sided battle with mice, were afraid of the damned thing. With the combination of the cats being chicken and the woodwork being painted black, I had to chase it down with a badminton racket. Good times!