I loath the word “journey”

In late 2020 I went to have a routine mammogram through breast screen NSW in Queanbeyan. I didn’t think anything of it. Other than it was something on my to do list. When I got to call a couple of days later saying that I needed to go back in and have a biopsy, that’s when I became quite shocked. Getting callbacks happen to other people not me. In a previous life I was a Radiographer, so I did start to panic. I desperately wanted to know what the doctor had seen on on the mammogram. When I went back for the biopsy and they told me there was microcalcifications, I knew.

There is absolutely no cancer in our family. We do dementia very well, but not cancer.

Anyway, I had to wait a week for the results and that was a hellish time. I went into major panic mode. So to try and reduce my feelings of despair I started doing self portraits ( because it’s all about me! )

I did one every day that week and it was such a therapeutic and cathartic thing to do. It’s a bit like playing golf. When you’re on the course you’re thinking about connecting with that ball to get it in the hall. When I was in the studio I was thinking technically and logistically to get the shot I needed. At times it was hilarious and very silly…..

So I got the results and it was a large 4.5 cm ductal carcinoma in situ… according to Sum this is not breast cancer. The reason for this is that it hasn’t spread outside the ducts, for which I’m truly grateful. But it left me conflicted and something I’d actually struggled with over the next several months through surgery and radiotherapy. Here was me being treated like I have breast cancer and yet being told by the surgeon that Irani classifies as breast cancer once it has left the duct.

The radiation nurses called it breast cancer, the oncologist who is a cancer specialist called it a tumor, and a large one at that. The wonderful cancer psychologist I saw during my treatment called it cancer. 

Cancer cancer cancer blah blah blah…

Anyway it’s now been almost a year since I had the mammogram so I thought I would post these self portraits here in the hope that if others suffering the ‘journey’ we will be inspired or at least get a laugh out of them. Some of them were re-creating old paintings or famous photographs, some were…well just silly…