2003-09-25 - 1:26 a.m.
Worrying Wondering

Just reading an article on a woman who had breat cancer, and asked her husband to photo-document her treatment.

A breast with a scar where they removed the tumour, stitches and bruising contrasting with her comparatively normal left breast.

Hair lying in curls on a wooden floor, cut into a short uneven crop by her husband one week before Christmas.
Lying in a hospital bed exhausted after a session of chemotherapy, short hair and no hair - another symbol of her womanhood distorted.

Dwarfed by the machinery as she lies on her back with her arm above her head, a thin bright line the only evidence of the radiation penetrating her body.

"Tracy had never sunbathed topless, but, she mused, this must be what it would feel like to get a really, really bad sunburn on her chest. She was in the third phase of her treatment, six-and-a-half weeks of daily radiation, and her right breast looked like it had been oven-roasted; it was blistering, red and raw."

I wonder what I have left my dad to, me all the way over here and him having to have chemotherapy without my support. Everyone else was still there, but I'm not.
His cancer is officially in remission now (Yay).
Well for a while now. I don't really know how serious things were, maybe they weren't, maybe they didn't want to worry me too much, but I know if they were really bad they would have asked me to come home.

Finding a lump can be worrying but thankfully it doesn't always turn out badly.