i turned my breast cancer scans into art
the case for delusion in hard times
After I received my breast cancer diagnosis in 2021, it took my oncology team three months before I was told what kind of treatment plan I would be on. You see, the thing was that while my cancer wasn’t so bad that I needed to be rushed through chemotherapy, it also wasn’t so good that they were entirely clear they could rule it out. So from July to October, I went through various tests to see what the best plan of action would be.
For three months I waited.
During that time I had my first experience as a frequent hospital patient. I’d been lucky up until that point and had never broken a bone, never suffered any major injuries or illnesses. I’ve lived a very cautious and fortunate life. So at age 35, I was going through my first mammogram, first MRI, first surgery, first CT scan, first experience laying on a bed and having half a dozen clinicians talk about my body. My first time talking to a doctor about my fertility and watching him draw a chart with a dramatic downward slope showing how all of this was going to make it more difficult to have a baby over time. So, so many firsts.
My first time talking, in the bluntest of ways, about survival rates. My survival rate.
Now, I knew I wasn’t going to die. The logic said so. The kind of breast cancer I had was completely treatable, the most common kind. “A good thing!” they say. Which is why I flinched any time someone would use a phrase like “facing immortality” in an attempt to validate my anxiety around the whole experience. “Of course, it’s scary. You were faced with your own immortality!” While I’ve learned no one responds perfectly when you tell them you have cancer, this phrase in particular always made me uncomfortable. Because it wasn’t that I was afraid to die. At least not consciously.
I think during all that waiting, I was most afraid of the not knowing — good or bad. The uncertainty was crushing me. What if I threw myself into an emotional tornado (which is what I really wanted to do) and then found out it wasn’t as bad I thought? I’d feel so much shame for being dramatic while other patients I met were actually dying. On the flip side, what if I maintained my positive attitude and got blindsided by something far worse than expected? I could have spent more time being prepared instead of being so damn optimistic.
If I could just know, then maybe I could start finding peace with it all. If they could just tell me, then maybe I’d have proof I was really as strong as everyone told me I was. But until then, how could I be sure?
During that time, I nearly convinced myself that if I studied hard enough, I could expedite my test results. That if I somehow knew all the weird words the doctors were saying, I could help them figure out what treatment to give me. Oh, you sweet delusional girl.
I watched hours of the Breast Cancer School for Patients YouTube channel. I read dozens of articles and journals. I obsessively logged into my MyChart records. You know, all the typical things you’d expect from a young person mentally-spiraling from a cancer diagnosis.
And the pendulum would swing and I’d throw myself into helping other people. I posted Instagram stories about transformation and how to cope. I hosted creative writing workshops. I started a Moon Club where we talked about how trust ourself for 30 days and created art from it. I started a podcast for Christ’s sake. When people asked about my cancer, I’d eagerly turn it around with phrases like, “well we are all going through something hard."
I’d like to say it was my deep sense of compassion that drove me to say things like this, but really I think I just didn’t want to be alone in my suffering. Maybe both are true. Maybe we’re all just walking around with a million versions of ourselves that surface when the time is right. Regardless, I held onto that mindset for as long as I could through the waiting. And for those three months, I enacted my own treatment plan — constant creative expression.
Last week, I was reminded of something I created during that time. A month after my diagnosis and shortly before surgery, I logged into my MyChart and saw my MRI results. I was living with a couple friends at the time, and they were out for the night so there was no one there to stop the obsessive spiral. I sat there in the dark, alone, rolling my cursor back and forth over the images. I watched how different parts of my internal world crept in and out of the darkness. I was mesmerized.
And then, in another distraction fury, I decided I needed to make something with this. I learned how to screen capture the images and turn them into videos. I spent four hours piecing them all together and turned them into this…
I’m not sure what I was really thinking at the time. I do remember my friends coming home that night and me being very excited to show them my cool boob art. And them being sweet and a little cautious in their response. Admittedly it is a bit strange to be as giddy as I was about scans that show a cancer growing inside my body. It is totally possible I was on some manic crusade at the time to do anything I could to distract myself from admitting I was scared.
Was I delusional? Probably! I decided to make art out of it anyway.
I guess that’s where I’m going with all this. To make art anyway. When you’re lost and confused and in possible denial about how “bad” things are… express it anyway. Even if you think you’ll regret it or that it may not be true or that you will feel differently later so what’s the point, do it.
Write a poem. Sketch a comic. Call a friend and make conversation art. Sign up for an open mic night. Create a weird MRI scan video piece. Generate something in any way. Don’t share if you don’t want to. Don’t call it art if you don’t want to. But if it is honest and it is captured, I think it is art.
I recently found a voice note I left myself three days after my diagnosis. It was a 6-minute recording. I was sitting in the backyard of my friend’s house naming all the things I saw — butterflies, ants, bees, etc. There were big gaps of silence, where I would just sigh. And then I would continue on in a pained, quiet cry about how I wish I paid closer attention to all of these things. How I feel like we’re all missing so much of what’s rich in our life. How I want more time to see it all.
It wasn’t until the moment I listened back to this recording that I realized — I was in fact afraid of dying. And not in a metaphorical or psychic sense, but in a I-will-never-see-butterflies-again kind of way. I didn’t know I felt that way so deeply, but two years later here I am listening to some version of myself confess her fear of never feeling the sun again. In truth, it was a poem that I’ll likely never share with anyone else.
And thank god I captured it.
Last week, I was walking around that same backyard with my friends’ 18-month-old child, who hadn’t even breathed air at the time I left myself that voice memo. We were looking at all the little forms of life on the ground. We were inspecting the trees up close, rubbing leaves on our faces and giggling. We swung in the hammock and stared at the sky. And then I would point at something and whisper “wow wow.” And he would look at the thing and whisper “wow wow” right back. Then he’d run off and I’d hold my breath as he chased our dogs and kissed their faces. He was excited and scared. He was involuntarily compelled to throw himself into a new sensation, to touch everything, to look at everything. He was possessed by the sense of awe around him, despite his little body not doing what he always wanted it to do. He feared it, but he also wanted to experience it.
I think that’s how I felt while making this video. It’s surely how I felt leaving that voice note. And it is how I feel every time I sit down to write this newsletter for you, dear reader. Because while we’re in agony waiting—for news, for test results, for validation, for our little legs to grow and do what we want them to—there’s a part of us that is in awe of what we’re going through, despite how painful it all can be.
So if you are worried, if you are unsure of what’s to come, see if you can tap into that and make art, be in awe of your own ability to feel alive and to transcend it through something you create. If we follow that sense of delusional wonder, if we throw ourselves into what scares us, who knows what we may find while we wait.
I love you.
xoxo,
— B.
✨Join me in the thread…
What if sharing a comment was art? Let’s use this as an exercise and if you’d like, respond to one of the following prompts:
What is one thing you are waiting on?
Where do you feel the sensation of “waiting” in your body?
What are you creating to process the waiting period?
What is something you are scared and in awe of these days?
Breena, this was the most beautiful thing I've read in some time. There's a excerpt from Pablo Neruda that popped in my mind at the conclusion of your e-mail:
"That time was like never, and like always.
So we go there, where nothing is waiting;
we find everything waiting there."
May we all follow the sense of delusional wonder! Thanks for sharing all this. <3
I love how the you that left that voicenote uncovered what was still in you - the you who wrote this - all the awe, the wonder, the fear, the gratitude, the mortality. Everything that's in us all the time. ❤️ Thank you for sharing this, B! I felt like I was with you and the little boy in the backyard. Sun on our faces, in the hammock, alive. ❤️