Cook without a Kitchen

An artist without a studio is like a cook without a kitchen.

I was just outside photographing my work and racing against the thunder and rain. I think I got most of them thankfully because the coming weather is all rain rain rain!

Fearful Friday

Friday was such an immense day of stress. I had been anticipating my September 10th oncology appointment for the last month after I realized something is wrong with my hip.

I have creaky and sore joints all of the time and one hip was always a little worse than the other. I have a very high pain threshold so I just lived with it, not putting much weight to it. There are always so many problems to be working out with my body since the transplant. My biggest concern has always been my inability to sleep.

Try a week without sleeping and you start to lose it. Everything is unmanageable at that point and the brain goes into crisis mode.

So I felt almost physically ill when it was time for me to actually head to my oncologist. As I biked the short distance there I felt like I couldn't breathe. My chest was constricting and it had little to do with the small hill I was ascending. I could have cried in that moment and I would have felt some sweet release but as I've mentioned so many times before, my tear ducts don't work. It's odd that we take such small things for granted that actually have a huge impact on our lives. Like tears.

As I reached the building managing to put off a full blown panic attack, I locked up my bike. Never having been there before, I went to the front desk and asked where to go. I gagged down the anxiety, panic and fear that was trying to claw it's way out of me.

It occurred to me that as long and tedious traveling to my Vancouver appointments are, they at least gave me time to process and cope. I had a drive, a one and a half hour ferry ride, and then another hour of driving. I usually have more than one appointment booked for the day so I have a few hours to walk in between and then the entire trip back.

I guess that has been my time to decompress before I get back to my life again. It is a bit like having a partition separating the two. This is my post cancer, medical life and this is my, just me, life.

In Victoria I sat in the waiting room and then I sat in an examining room. I had time to take a series of anxiety propelled photos. A pharmacist came in to speak to me and was a huge help discussing my medications. She also was as personal as she was professional and I felt listened to. I guess I don't get enough of that day to day in my, just me, life.

I recognized the doctor when he came in and he recognized me. I felt such a relief seeing someone familiar. When you live with weird things wrong with you it makes you feel sane again to have someone understand. He listened and queried me about the joint pain and took me very seriously when I said the one hip feels different than the rest.

For me, seeing general practitioners can become frustrating (as I no doubt I am to them) because the leftover complications from a stem cell transplant are so unusual. I'm a complete curiosity to walk in clinic doctors. They always greet me wide eyed and ask odd questions. I am a scientific anomaly. A surgeon acquaintance once told my close friend that I am equal to a one night stand. I offer the curios thrill without all the responsibility and work needed to research my problems.

Friday's oncologist will be following up with all my joint complaints and is having me come back in a month. He also filled out the MRI papers right in front of me to get it in as fast as possible. He will also be calling whoever he needs to to put the pressure on to speed the process. At the end I left having to try and get myself home and together for the award ceremony where I won first place in the Naked Truth category for a nude self portrait I did.

When I left the Cancer Agency, I had complete confirmation that they are looking for avascular necrosis which is death of the bone in the hip. It eventually leads to a hip replacement. I was also given the security of knowing that they had no reason to suspect bone cancer at this point.

As I pedaled home again the fear of losing a hip after all I've been through just overwhelmed me. Again, I couldn't breathe.... I could barely comprehend what's possibly happening to my body, much less deal with the fact that my private struggle was now hanging in a gallery.

It's one thing to write about it but the photo is so raw and real. It's no interpretation, it's the stark reality. You can see the drips of water on my body, the leumens hanging from my chest and even the washcloth I used to make that terrible world disappear for a few moments. Just the relief of the water rushing over me once a day, kept me alive. It was almost a sacred little space and there I was supposed to go accept the prize in front of a gallery filled with people.

I was so thankful when my oldest son came in and stood by me in that moment. We had gone through that experience together and here we were in this surreal post trauma scenario. My naked self is tacked on a wall with people discussing it, getting in closer to inspect the details and having some sort of opinions about it.

I just could not cope with it. As strong as I like to believe I am, as much as I explore my outer limits, as much as I push out into the world..... it was just too much.

Perhaps this is just a grieving point. As much as I tried to distance myself from what was happening to my body by putting the camera lens in between, I still see the decay, the dissasembly of everything it is to be me.

I stood closely to my towering son, keeping hold of his strength until I slipped in to accept the prize. Words were said, I didn't hear them, life went on around me, I hid. I stood away from my photo for fear that someone would say something unkind within earshot, ask me questions or even just talk to me. I was way out of the vacuum of safety. I was utterly exposed on that white wall.

I stood there surrounded by hundreds of beautiful photos, all beckoning to be admired with their colour, depth and optimism. My shades of grey were like a poison in that cheerful room.

I suppose I am just too close to the subject of me to see what anyone else would observe in that piece of paper with the image of me burned onto it.

My big son looked so handsome with his warm smile and his, Mad Men, style hat. A friend commented that it takes a loving, amazing, confident, secure young man to attend a gallery opening with his mom's naked self portrait.

The two of us standing there together felt like a solidarity of love and strength in the aftermath of a terrible incident. We had lived through it to different ends. He became a man and I still sift on, trying to find a place I can grasp onto and belong.

He is proud of me and let me know it with his smiles.

We are both survivors of cancer.

MRI Me, Baby!

I have my important gallery opening tonight where they're going to pat me on the back for my photo but all I can seem to do today is stress. I'm meeting some friends later and my son who are coming with me to the opening and I should be excited. I'm sure I'll have a lot of fun.

The problem is I have a long awaited appointment today with an oncologist. I've been doing well and had graduated from having to travel to Vancouver all of the time. This doctor is coming here because we don't have any bone marrow specialists here on the island. I'm lucky that I only have to have these appointments every 6 months now. Traveling to them before was such a huge chunk of my life and I had it all down to a fine science.

Seeing him/her here and the fact that it's someone I don't know is making me feel like a fish out of water. Especially because there are problems.

When I go see him/her I need to discuss the problems with my joints and let him know that I need an MRI asap. My GP is worried about my hip pain and so am I. It has eased off a little pain wise but it's still there. Because the x-ray was inconclusive they need to look inside of me to see what's going on.

MRI me baby.

Holy Wow -How My Naked Photo Got Plastered All Over the City

So how exactly does one accidentally get a private photo of their nude self printed and published for everyone to see?

First off you go through cancer and a bone marrow transplant. Being an artist who is unable to paint while incarcerated in the confines of a hospital room, you decide to explore photography. There is nothing to deal with or photograph in the 10' x 10' room but yourself.

Through all the chemotherapy you decide to document the changes to your body. The photos are taken while unhooked from the large wheeled IV machines (yes that's right, plural). The only moment of solitude is when in the bathroom shower...and the lighting isn't bad. You set up the shots for composition, lighting etc and let the moment be taken away, looked through from a creative perspective.

Documenting self was the only way to be outside of the horrific reality of what was happening. The photo was taken in a moment somewhere between being born alone and dying alone. A coming to grips if you will.

Going from having zero photos of yourself to taking nude photos is a big leap. No biggie. It's a private practice and not as if anyone will actually see them.

Flash forward to a few weeks ago. You see a newspaper ad for a photography contest and remember watching someone win something like that and getting a year of free downtown parking. Awesome!

So you think, "Heck, I'm sure I have something I could submit."

You start rifling through your hard drive and take some pretty but uneventful pics out. Along the way you wonder how one of the nudes would look in black and white and printed. Next morning you run around getting everything printed, packaged, forms filled and ready. It takes all day. You sit on your bed with 30 minutes until the deadline, madly trying to name the photos etc. and get everything in order. With 15 minutes left you shove it all carefully into a folder adding the nude one as well.

You think, "Let's push the boundaries a little. They'll reject it anyway", imagining they're looking for pretty flowers and scenic shots. You feel secretly cheeky adding it in, visualizing the awkwardness when they sift through the stacks of flower entries. You also imagine how cool it would be to have a rejected photo. Forever more you could refer to the 'rejected photo' in conversation. As you drive and park in a panic with 10 minutes to the deadline it vaguely crosses your mind, "What if it doesn't get rejected? It's possible the photo may hang in some obscure gallery for a few weeks and my kids never speak to me again".

So you hesitantly hand the folder over the counter with 5 minutes until deadline and wonder how long it will take to get the, 'Sorry but we rejected you', call.

A week passed, no call.

Another week passes no call.

Ring, ring. It's the phone. The caller ID has the newspaper's name on it. A friend is there to see the grimace as you pick up the phone thinking, "Oh no, here it comes..." You wonder how bad the sting will be when they tell you to come get your rejected picture.

"Hi, I'm calling to let you know that your photo has won first place in 'The Naked Truth' category."

Mouth hangs open.

Friend sees the confused look and asks, "Are you OK?"

Hang up phone. Then wonder which photo it was not believing the whole scenario. Call them back. Confirm which photo it was.

As the haze of that settles over, you come to terms with the fact people will be seeing you naked in the gallery at the opening. Have small panic attacks and decide you are artist enough to deal with it.

Next day you go for a walk with another friend through town and sit down to eat a pastry outside in the sun. When done you walk past a table with the paper in someones hands. You wonder if your name is mentioned as a winner and grab a copy opening it up to the article,

WHICH HAS ALL THE WINNING PHOTOS PRINTED.

There you are... naked, all over the city. O M G

After a few hours when the wooziness and the glazed look passes, a new thought crosses your mind.

Perhaps I didn't think this through?

Fuck the Bad

I took my life into my own hands today by going in for bloodwork a week early. I refuse to be left to live in fear of a cancer recurrence. I might as well know what the hell my body is doing, right? Screw living with my head in the sand, if something bad(or not bad) is coming my way, I'll be facing it.

I'm sure this burden will be lifted when my results come back improved. So far I have had mini freak outs about;

*a paper cut,

*bloating

*Mrs.Monthly showing up for the first time in a year or two(not supposed to be having that at ALL),

*and heart burn.

Like every other person who has had cancer knows, these little things can really fuck up your day. I really don't show emotions about this stuff, the best I can do is write about it. I just know that living, feeling like there is a gun to your head in a sick game of Russian roulette is no way to exist. I know some people practice a fundamentalist form of denial but I just can't go there for a lot of reasons. I need to know.

On other topics, I took these photos to add to the Flikr Bloganista pool. I also took up a kind woman on her offer to do a psychic reading for me. It felt like overcoming a little hurdle for me. Pre cancer I had had opportunities to get physic readings for fun with friends but for no particular reason I had this deep underlying fear of someone saying that I was going to die or tell me I was going to get cancer. I always refused to go. This is probably directly related to some terrible personal experiences from my past that I hadn't gotten over. Whatever. I felt mostly confident that she wasn't going to tell me I was going to die. Imagine being her and seeing that though. What would you say to the person? *awkward!*

Despite all that I can't say I specifically believe in anything other than what I can empirically or scientifically prove but I do have an exceedingly open mind! This is what she sent me;

You're very dependable, trustworthy, and studious. You love nature. When you see something you like, you will go for it. You're sensual and charismatic.

Good things coming your way, but some travel plan might be delayed. You are where you are right now because of your hard work and you earned it. A time for success or prosperity is coming your way. There might even change in residence or moving to a new place.

When you face problems, try to use cleverness to turn tide in your favor :).

She only does readings out of personal interest when she has a little time and she never charges for it. I think it's a very kind gesture to do something like this for someone you don't even know. More evidence that people have wonderful hearts.

The great part is that the next evening I sold 4 paintings!

Photo Shoot

I'm having trouble shaking off the cervix scare. So, I tried to go for a walk and next thing you know I'm doing a mini photo shoot with the webcam on my mac.

All my previous photos are gone so I guess I'm starting again.



Now I'm going for a walk.