La Mirada #16-Wraith

-self portrait, photo-

Bad news: My Thyrogen test shows that my thyroid cancer marker went up-they say I'm in the group of people for whom 1 radioactive iodine treatment after thyroidectomy does not get all the bad guys. Still, since my ultrasound was clear and my marker-values stay okay while suppressed, they will wait&see what happens ... So, I'm in the 'wait&see' mode from now on. There's something there, my blood says so, though we can't locate it (yet?) ...

September is Thyroid Cancer Awareness Month. I'm painfully aware again myself. But I also know it's important to spread the word. Next week, I'm doing a special post for the Dear Thyroid Blog Tour joining in to raise awareness. Dear Thyroid is a thyroid literary support site. It's written by thyroid patients, for thyroid patients. They invite patients with all kinds of thyroid ailments to write a letter to their thyroid as a way of healing and coping and releasing fear and irritation and other upsetting emotions.

Last night while I lay awake, I felt one bubbling up:

Dear Thyroid,

I was very sorry to hear yesterday that we did not completely eradicate you by excising you and bombarding you with radioactive iodine of 100mCurie.
As a young girl, I admired Mme Curie a lot, so I imagined she'd be a great ally while we were trying to nuke you out of my system. On the other hand and in some distorted way, it all makes sense. You're a part of me. You're feisty.
Still, I wouldn't get too confident if I were you.
Don't even think for one second that you got it made -wherever you are.

I'm way bigger than you.
And I'm a hell of a lot feistier!

Regards,
Ria

Summer Break!

Next month I'll take a break from painting2cancers.
I'll be back tho, with a new series femininity, that's in the making :)
In the meanwhile, thank you all so much for visiting and leaving your comments and feedback.
They're very supportive and I love reading them!
See ya!

La Mirada #15-Questions

self portrait, photo.

Next month I'll be taking another Thyrogen Test to measure my (thyroid) cancer marker. I had two of those before-one smack between two breast cancer surgeries, ugh. The marker went from 2,5 to 1,5. It should be unmeasurable, that is, under 1. The second time, they said I had nothing to worry about though, as the marker had gone down. If there had been cancer residue left, it would have gone up. Makes sense. So I was quite surprised that they'd want to repeat it now, after 5 years ... Normally-but what's that?-they don't, unless there are problems. There aren't any, except the damn thing was 1,5 and not 1 or under. As the doctor said the words "we suggest to repeat the Thyrogen test," I felt the wave rising ...
It tells me that I (still?) can't really 'control' my emotions in that moment, when docs go there, even if I've had the experience of two cancers. I'm guessing that, if they'd say, it's back or you have a third cancer, the wave would rise and I'd be overwhelmed again, though I'm certainly stronger in coping with treatment strategies, acceptance, the not knowing that accompanies the cancer, any cancer. That moment, in which they go there, the wave rises and I('ll) have no defense.

The Book of Torsos #3-Gladiator

ballpoint and watercolor on paper, 4 by 6.

Lately I've come to think that my strength is also my weakness. In a crisis-and I don't mean just the cancer context though they give me an added feeling of urgency-let's say in life in general I am so used to mobilize all my power, to give it everything I got, that I forget or don't acknowledge that that actually costs me ... I'm tired.

It's funny how some pieces of music can reveal my (that) way of living to me ... At least, it's a lingo I seem to understand. Yesterday I listened to a track from the Motorcycle Diaries. The melody itself struck a chord. There are pieces that can tell you exactly: this is what you are now, this is your energy now and how you're 'traveling' ... weathered, determined, melancholic at times and lonesome ... on la poderosa-the mighty one, my bike ;) I guess that's like Buddhist compassion in action across time and across context.

La Mirada #14-Kali Ma

-My Invocation to Kali-

acrylics on a photo, 4by6 inches,

fragment of a page from an artist book on Kali (ongoing).
The book is a collab with Susan Shulman and Bill Evertson.
Also visit Seeking Kali for artist call&more info on the project.

Kali is the Hindu goddess associated with eternal energy, destruction and-paradoxically-creation. She inspired my ngo I created as a Gestalt therapist, in which I used to work with clients trying to bring about life changes ...

Of course having cancer is an onset of great change, physical, emotional, spiritual. So, she was around ... Knowing of her vast powers and some Jungian theory, I didn't/don't mind invoking her now and again ... I mean, as the article author I linked to says so picturesquely, 'she will lop off your inflated ego in no time flat if you ask her, and she offers no guarantees that the process will be painless.' What's not to like? I'd rather have her with me.

My Invocation to Kali:

Ma Kali, look at me,

I'm suffering to the bone.

Ma Kali, come and dance,

On my ashes, on my bones,

Ma Kali, come and dance,

Bring them back to Life,

Ma Kali, come and dance,

Bring me back to Life.

Ma Kali, can't you see?

I wear your colors,

I carry your mark.

© ria vanden eynde

A Book About Death-Omaha

I used my piece doctors, for my postcard for the Omaha Chapter of A Book About Death.

Call&Info are on the abookaboutdeathomaha-blog. Deadline is July 20th. 2010.

So there's still plenty of time should you be thinking about submitting ...

Impact. Make One.

Curtis Brown collaboration with NC Komen RACE FOR THE CURE.

The Book of Torsos #2-New Normal

The Book of Torsos, with its new entry, acrylics on paper, 4 by6 inches

In the bathroom, coming out of the shower, all action grasping for towel and underwear, I often catch a glimpse of my new body in the mirror. The skin of my new breasts is of very dense texture and a little paler than the surrounding chest skin ... It's my new normal, my new day-to-day. I like to think I have alabaster skin. It sounds very feminine and chic.

Small Torso Series #1-Deconstruction

Acrylics on a postcard, 4 by 6inches.

This piece kicks off a new series: The Book of Torsos, #1 is in a private collection via an art-exchange project.

My Doctors 'Mail Art'-ified

Diagnosis

Doctors

Last week I found a terrific Mail Art Call:

Call for Mail Art: "Your Doctor Mail-Art-ified!"

How do you see your doctor, and what can he/she learn from your Art?!
All entries will be published on the blog, and a selection of the mail art will be part of an exhibition in the Netherlands in a location where doctors have access to, probably October 2010 (deadline is August 17th 2010).

Seriously, how could I not answer this call? ;) I chose 'Doctors' and 'Diagnosis' from my pieces (I linked to the blog-posts in the captions) and sent in a print. Browsing through all my material was a bit of a process by itself ... It feels as if there's more distance, as if I was getting re-acquainted with all of the experiences and feelings I had along the treatment trajectory, along the blogging trajectory, along the pieces I made ... They're getting to be more like (art) pieces I look at, from an inner distance to the actual experiences I guess is the best way to put it. 5 years after ThyCa now and 4,5 after Breast Cancer.

So, if any of my readers feel like adding something to that 'My Doctor'-topic, please DO!

All info on that blog:

yourdoctorinmailart

Isolation is in MoMA Wales!

The postcard I sent to the UK version-curated by Sonja Benskin Mesher-of the "A Book About Death" project which was originally started by Mathew Rose in NYC. I used my drawing 'Isolation.' Here's a gallery of the postcards, mine is on string 12 about three quarters to the right.

Discouragement

Drawing on paper, pastel crayon, graphite and Chinese ink, 8by8 inches.

My friend Bill Evertson went to the MoMA exhibit of William Kentridge. I got jealous looking at Kentridge's drawings in Bill's blogpost ... but I also got a boost, got completely inspired and made this. Discouragement. It drags you down. People find it difficult to deal with, in themselves as well as in others. When they call you after an exam, they want to hear you be positive. But, in fact, discouragement and a cancer treatment trajectory go hand in hand ... and I won't deny my feelings of discouragement. Ever. They tend to come back multiplied and haunt you if you do ...

Discouragement is now on show in Italy for FEMMINE, at FABBRICAIMMAGINE lab via dei tre pupazzi 5/a Roma Italyopen 31-12-2010 closed 28-12-2011 (one year). Here's a photo from that show, Discouragement hangs bottom right:

(Let's All) Stand Up To Cancer!

The CBS television show Ghost Whisperer is teaming up with the organization Stand Up to Cancer in the hope to bring together the best and the brightest in the cancer community, encouraging collaboration instead of competition. Their digital media team found painting2cancers---Wow! :)---and invited me to join them to bring awareness to Stand Up To Cancer by posting some of the assets they created for the organization. I said, 'sure, I can do that.' So I'm posting video's here and a link to launch a star to honor someone you might know with cancer while making a donation to Stand Up To Cancer.

Hell, I'm standing up to cancer alright!

Let's all!

-I love what Minka Kelly says about how being confronted with cancer can make you wise and compassionate ... I hope that's what it's doing for me, I'd love that ...-

-Well, this video touches upon something I've been struggling with: there should be ways to treat the patient with the cancer and not just the cancer-

Clicking the image above will bring you to the SU2C Constellation on the Stand Up To Cancer site, which is a unique and personalized tribute space to honor anyone who has received a cancer diagnosis. For as little as $1, users can launch a star in honor of a loved one.

Should Ghost Whisperer-fans fly by here, their digital media team also developed an, exclusive to this particular campaign, Stand Up To Cancer interactive memory game:

La Mirada #13-The Left Side of My Face

acrylics and collage on canvas, 8 by 12 inches.

A while ago, I took a picture in which my right side came out overexposed. I took a while to examine the left side of my face while my (extremely dominant) right side was, well, out of the picture ;) My left eye is lazy (amblyopia) and when I'm tired, charmingly turns inwards just a little. I'm deaf in my left ear where I have an eardrum and 2 ear bones (hammer and anvil) I got from a donor. My thyroid tumor was in the left lobe, about 2 inches large and my left breast was the first to go because of 2 tumors. The 1 tumor in my right breast was of a different type ... some crazy list.

Inner Landscape #10-Dante's Gate

-Radiation Bunker-

Acrylics&collage on canvas, 7,5 by 10 inches.

When I went to my pre-RAI-consultation (for my Radioactive Iodine Ablation treatment), I drove by car to the Radiation Department. It's at the furthest end of the campus, they said. They let you drive in immediately, no problems. It's free parking there for patients ... They were building more parking space, part of the area was set off by fences. More ... Many cars, no people. You go into this building, and descend down to the basement, the deep vaults of the hospital. Cold, sterile, isolated, lonely, lost. I remember a marvelous colorful, large painting at the reception. I went to see up close who the artist was. I forgot. Maybe it wasn't signed. Maybe I dreamt. I didn't go back after.

La Mirada #12-Grounding

-the unbearable lightness of being 'post' cancer (is there such a state?)-

self-portrait, photo.

I read it yesterday in a post by Caroline, a fellowess cancer blogger; 'there is no magic wand for cancer':

People shouldn't consider themselves cured after treatment for early stage cancer. Once you have it, there is no cure. They can treat it until there is no sign of cancer to be found through surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and other therapies. They can run out of tests to find it. They can tell you that you are done with treatment. They can tell you that you have a good prognosis. But they can't tell you, you don't have any cancer cells left in your body.

Once you have a cancer diagnosis, early stage or not, you can't assume that you are safe once treatment is done. You have to be vigilant and get follow up tests and treatments. You can live a normal life but you can't escape the fact that it was in your body once and they didn't cure it - they removed any signs of it and can't find any more - but they have no way of knowing if they got it all.

Of course, I knew. Of course, you know. It's a thought doctors won't allow you to formulate out loud too much and friends will try to 'smother.' A thought you're completely alone with ... I lay awake at night yesterday, thinking about it. I lay awake again like I did right after being dxd. Just staring on my pillow, no muscle tensed at all ... the unbearable lightness of being, (so said ) 'post' cancer.

La Mirada #11-Medusa

-my name, nothing is the same ...

And I won't go back the way I came ... (Lhasa)-

self-portrait, photo.

These days, it's been 5 years since my thyroid cancer. It's my 5th thycancerversary. 5! Friends and docs say I look well. I am well. They say I look like the old Ria. That's a mistake. I'll never be the same again. I have no thyroid and I'm forever on pills. I'll be at risk for lymphedema for the rest of my life. Lines are drawn all over my body and my future is governed by statistics. I don't know how it will be 10 years form now-God willing-but I still walk into a room conscious of all the cancer business, conscious of my changed body. There are times I appear to be very visible to men. I think, amused, 'you should know what's under this top, I wonder how fast you'd run?'-mind you, I might be surprised myself ;) It's weird to meet new people while having cancer in the back of your head. People say you should move on. They have no idea.

Some people try to look me in the eye, curious about what is in there after surviving 2 cancers. Big mistake. They're never unaffected ... Some people should not look me in the eye, period. For their sake. I'm sure there are worlds of strength and hope there, there is a lot of darkness too. Darkness from dealing with apathy, indifference, disinterest, ignorance and impotence. From dealing with people's limitations and my own. A friend, whom I explained about z times that I have a life-long risk for lymphedema, continues to say "you won't get it anymore if you didn't get it after surgery, yoú should see so-and-so's arm" ... as if I don't know what I'm scared of ... Or the one who said "you have such a great figure, won't you give me some of your pills "... An aunt asked my sister if what I had was really that serious, since she saw me on my bike ... Cancer put a magnifying glass on dysfunctions in (both) our families. Some people tell me-well, they try-I got cancer for a reason and now that it's over (?) and I'm doing well and worked to get everything I could out of the experience, I won't get a recurrence, I've learned my lessons you see, lessons they themselves probably knew at birth ...
Some people project their fear of cancer onto me. Like the acquaintance who asked-right after I was dxd with my 2nd cancer-if I now was going to kill myself. Honestly, I didn't know whether to rage in anger or burst out laughing.
People will avoid contact too-pardon the jargon, I'm a Gestaltist, we're trained to notice contact avoidance mechanisms and guard contact quality, cancer only sharpened the sensitivity. Of course it comes as a shock if someone in your circles gets cancer, I understand it's a learning process to deal with that and with me, but if you're going to run away from that-for your own reasons-then, do not look me in the eye. I understand it is hard, I do not understand that you ignore me.
There's so much frustration in my eyes, about the struggle in my doctor contacts-better if I don't get going too much on that. I just don't see the logic in approaching me like they do (textbook)Mrs. X when I so obviously am not her, let alone that she exists. Apparently it's hard for (some) docs to ask how something is for me and then listen to my answer. Although that might spare them time in the long run. Some are afraid I'll cry. Well, I have done, but I stopped too. It only takes a minute, that's even been researched. Isn't it crazy how I know that? Lhasa's words cover the quality of those contacts well. She sings, things just get further and further apart. The head from the hands and the hands from the heart.

There's anger in my eyes too. Writing about this awakens my anger. I'm angry for all of us who are confronted with cancer. Those who live to tell, those who live with cancer and those who passed away.

So, if all of this unsettles you. If you find it confronting. If you find me confronting. Then, for your sake as well as my own, do not look me in the eye.

Inner Landscape#9-Shapes&Shadows

-breast portraits-

Lately, I'm doing a lot of photography-stuff. I've been admiring the work of Moira Antonello, her vague black&white shots in her series Cuerpos, are so movingly beautiful. And there's Marianne Mueller's The Sleeper, I discovered after I bought her book A Part of My Life, in a second hand store. I've been taking quite some photos-these were 'accidents'-of myself for Clarity Haynes' Breast Portrait Project. Clarity usually works with a live model, but as we're on other sides of the ocean, she agreed to do my Breast Portrait using photos. She writes in one of her emails that she finds my torso to be graceful and elegant and describes the artistic process of observation necessary to make the drawing as one of discovery and delight. I know what she's talking about, as an artist I too can take that outlook ... As my eyes caress the depths, crevasses, shapes and shadows of this new body I have since the thyroidectomy, the scars and the new breasts, I cannot help but find it beautiful!

Modigliani*

-modified picture of Modigliani "Nu assis," 1910-

I think she's beautiful! It could have been my portrait, after my first mastectomy. I had to have another surgery after that, because the margins of the right lumpectomy weren't cancer free. My oncologists advised another amputation, rather than re-excision and radiation. They suggested to reconstruct (DIEP-flap) during the same surgery ... I remember sitting on the couch with my husband the evening we were told. I had no doubts about amputation, but I felt very weary of the reconstruction at the same time. Plus, I only had about three months to decide ... I slid sighing against my husband on the couch as I voiced my concern: "of course I want them to amputate, but why reconstruct, is it that important?" Terrible question to ask a husband ... He was silent for a long while and then said: "but, why wouldn't you have them reconstruct?" with an intonation that suggested he really wanted to ask why I was being so "hard" for myself ... at least that's what I read in it ... my husband knows me well ... It's true, had I chosen for re-excision, I would probably have gone back for a reconstruction. During the three months of recovery after my left amputation I watched my scar heal and felt the new shape and asymmetry of my (new) torso didn't look right, from an aesthetic viewpoint, maybe even from my artist's viewpoint. It didn't feel right either, from the inside-out ... I do know of women who just go for the double amputation-scar-look and I do admire their strong torso-photos on The Scar Project. They're awesome! But it wouldn't have been (for) me ... When I look at my new breasts, I know I would have felt it to be cold and hard (for me) ...

Moth is in Brazil!

Well, not the painting "Moth," but one of the cards I had printed using the image. The Brazilian spin-off of the 2009 NYC "A Book About Death"-project by Matthew Rose opened February 3rd in MuBE, São Paulo, Brazil. In the video curator Angela Ferrara shortly explains the project "Um Livro Sobre A Morte," in Portuguese and then we can look around the "wall," covered in cards, with the visitors to the opening. My card made it into the movie, hehe- I'd say, if you're in the hood 3-28th February ... ;) And now extended till March 28th.

Participating artist Mary Bogdan made a great post about the exhibit on her blog.