Feeling Cancer

Each person's "cancer journey" is their own, but I am hoping to share my experience, through my thoughts and the images I have been compelled to create, to attempt to give others a glimpse of feeling cancer.

There are many forms of serious, chronic illness that are not understood by those who have not experienced them. Cancer is one that everyone has heard of, and everyone fears. There are many kinds of cancer, each with several possible outcomes. One commonality that I have heard from many cancer patients is that no one, who has not gone through it, "gets it". No caregiver, family member, doctor (including oncologists), nurse, social worker, friend: no one understands it except another cancer patient. I suspect that this is true of other serious and difficult medical conditions. I can only share my experience, which is cancer, but these feelings may be recognized by other patients as well.

I am a photographer and digital artist. I have always felt drawn to nature and have been able to indulge that through typical experiences of camping and hiking as a child and as an adult. I have shared much of my life with a husband and daughter who also relished these experiences in the "great outdoors". I live in an area where I have easy access to nature while living in a semi-rural suburb. I created this image prior to my cancer diagnosis as part of a series of nature images.

Initially, my nature photography was primarily documentary. Eventually, I started to appreciate abstraction as a tool to suggest alternative interpretations and feelings evoked by an image. I would usually use a more subtle approach, but my cancer experience brought out a different way of expressing myself.

I am a retired healthcare professional. I spent over 40 years of my life working in a hospital laboratory, and in the realm of public health. That did not prepare me to be a cancer patient. That background has helped me understand and deal with many other health issues, but cancer is different. I was my husband's caregiver when he suffered and died from cancer. That did not prepare me to be a cancer patient.

When I first experienced symptoms they were not alarming. But they persisted and progressed, and I eventually knew they were serious. My thoughts and worries had me in turmoil. I strongly suspected cancer but I was surprised at the ultimate diagnosis. These two images came out of my frustrations at the time, while working on getting appointments and testing.

I had learned several years earlier that I possessed a BRCA1 gene mutation that predisposed me to breast and ovarian cancers. I had consulted with a genetic oncologist and was doing everything I could to lower my risks. I knew that at least four women in my family had experienced ovarian cancer, so I had surgery to remove my ovaries and fallopian tubes. This surgery reduced my risk to 1%. It wasn't enough.

My diagnosis was ovarian cancer.

I found it interesting that I was using a lot of blue for these images. It is a color that I do use and relate to in general. According to color theory, the positive attributes associated with the color blue are "cool, logical, efficient, calm", which I do think describe me generally. The negative attributes are "cold, detached, stoic". Red is associated with anxiety and pain. I was subconsciously applying those colors as I dealt with my diagnosis.

When I was first diagnosed, I didn't know what to expect about treatment and prognosis. Although I had the resources of my oncologist, the nurse coordinator, and the rest of the team (including a physician's assistant, a social worker, a pharmacist, and a dietician/nutritionist), I had endless questions and fears and anxiety. These feelings would come and go with varying intensity throughout treatment. Chemotherapy drugs, surgery, and radiation cause pain, and other side-effects, that can be very debilitating for cancer patients. Other drugs are needed to help control these difficult issues. It can take a year, after the end of treatment, for the effects of all of these drugs to dissipate. Some changes to the body are permanent and affect how the patient perceives themself. The brain and the emotions also have to adjust.

I continued to combine the nature themes and the color blue to express what I was compelled to create. I wasn't able to lose myself in the flow of creating the images that I loved, that had previously come so easily to me, inspired by the beauty and complexity of nature and my fascination with it. That had been my joy before cancer. I still needed that comfort and solace, but it wasn't there. Instead, I was driven to express what I was feeling, which was cancer. I have never been comfortable with self-portraits. I rarely even took selfies. But the cancer required me to understand that this illness was now my life, and that it changed even my relationship to nature. To express that change, I was now required to use images of myself.

As time and treatment went on, I learned more about my potential prognosis and the variables I was dealing with, but which I had limited control over. I did research, using my medical knowledge to help me filter everything I was hearing and seeing about my type of cancer. I joined support groups and met other cancer patients, who had many different personal histories with various types of cancer and many recurrences of cancer.

In general, knowledge helps calm me. The periodic lab tests, CT scans, and meetings with my oncologist have provided encouragement (so far). These two images reflect how my thoughts and mood fluctuate. I am constantly reconsidering, as I encounter more potential versions of my cancer journey and I try to plan for the future. Before cancer, I didn't feel the urgency of a future over which I knew I had limited control. Cancer has shifted my focus.

As I allowed myself to consider hope as an option, I was very cautious. Part of me believes that a positive attitude will improve my mental health and also how my body deals with the onslaught of cancer cells. At the same time, anxiety has a hair trigger. The slightest unexplained change in my body will launch fear and a need to find out if this change portends a cancer recurrence. So vigilance cannot be relaxed, even while trying to be positive and optimistic. Late stage ovarian cancer does not come with good statistics.

The cancer patients I know don't use words like "cure", or "remission" or "survivor". The preferred terminology is NED, for No Evidence of Disease. That is a "for now" designation. It is not a promise for the future. Perhaps there will be more comfort, and less anxiety, as NED time increases. I am not far enough out to know that yet, and I suspect it is different for each person. But, I was compelled to bring back some color for this image. It is interesting to me that both the Diagnosis image and the NED image have more color. To me, that indicates that I am more comfortable when I can apply the facts of lab tests, exams, and scans to my situation. The various colors are required to help express my more defined emotional state. All of the more muted shades of blue are the "cold, detached, stoic" me trying to figure out how to feel.

My need to put my thoughts and images together for this blog post has helped me make sense of why my creative energies have been driven in this way. This started even before my illness was known to me and defined as cancer. I created a few of these images while participating in an online photography workshop on Self-Portraiture taught by Leanne Trivett S. I was very reticent at first, but gained confidence when I used my connections with nature to express myself. This was about six months before my diagnosis. Is there a link? A foreshadowing? I will never know that for sure, but it has prompted me to look differently at all of my creative work, and has led to my use of these blog posts to reflect on my images and why I create them. I have found that making art can promote healing by helping to sort out, own, and understand emotions.