“This image is just a simple collage of three photos of my eyelashes growing back after chemotherapy earlier this year, and their negatives, which make the lashes look like bright beams (representing my excitement in their return)!  Just 48 days passed between the first and third photo. Compared to a mastectomy, the loss of eye lashes is a ‘little thing’, but these little things still matter and affect the way we feel about ourselves. The fact I photographed them at all is perhaps testament of their significance to me in my body recovering from the chemotherapy drugs.”

Using art to address the emotional impact of cancer
Getting cancer is not something I ever thought much about. In my mid-thirties, near perfect health, little family history, healthy lifestyle. I was focused on my career, relationships, travel plans, my hobbies, and what I want to do next in my life. Yet in July 2016 I got thrown headfirst into the cancer world. I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was grade 2 (quite aggressive), large (a whopping 10cm), and had spread to a lot of my lymph nodes. It was stage 3C, one stage before the incurable stage.

It was a whirlwind – hospital appointments galore, tests, new terminology, information. I started chemotherapy nine days after diagnosis. I had a mastectomy and temporary implant reconstruction. I had my implant inflated. I had radiotherapy. I’m also on hormone therapy and in temporary menopause. I’ve no idea if I can have children. Bone infusions were on my list of new experiences. And my chances of getting metastatic breast cancer within five years is an unsavoury 30-40%.

It doesn’t take a genius to conclude that this all takes an emotional toll, as well as a physical one. I am pretty resilient – positive and defiant is probably how my friends would describe me. Yet now I am coming out the other side of the ‘big stuff’, I find myself an emotional yoyo. Preparation for the emotional aftermath didn’t help – it came anyway. The tears. ‘The Fear’. The great paradox of the meaning and meaninglessness of life. I don’t like to admit it, but I’m finding it a little tough.

Yet out of bad can come good, and for me, one of those goods is my rediscovery of art and my creativity. It had always been there, hidden away, neglected as I pursued a career in sciences and never made time for it. Then I was invited to be part of a cancer arts project for Cardiff University led by Sofia Vougiokalou, and it was just the carrot I needed. With the help of an arts mentor, I created my first ever painting where I truly expressed myself. The whole experience was cathartic, I cried and smiled as my feelings and experiences started appearing on the canvas in front of me.

https://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/cancerservicesresearch/art/

Even if it ended right there with that one painting, I’d be grateful for this outlet. But it’s taken a little life of its own, and inspired me to set up the Breast Cancer Art Project, an online platform for those who have or had breast cancer to express themselves through the power of art.

Adriana Ford, 2017