Reinventing Myself: my steps through cancer

In April 2021, I lived in the chemo rehab clinic in Freiburg, Germany. It was a life changing experience that course corrected the life I would follow after cancer. I know that I am stronger because of what I learned while there.

I cannot imagine being able to recover from cancer, chemo and surgery (a mastectomy) without that month in rehabilitation. Anyone who knows me even peripherally knows that I love to paint and draw, but it was in Freiburg where I had Art Therapy for the first time.

The painting above was a result of my playing around with the paints and the paper, to familiarize myself with what I could do. It was my first time using gouache. If you‘ve never tried gouache before, it‘s a paint that behaves somewhat in the middle of acrylic and watercolor. I enjoyed the texture and versatility very much.

My Art Therapist was Andrea Pfeiffer, a terrific lady who is in her own right an artist. In addition to helping people at the chemo rehab center, she runs her own art therapy studios in the beautiful city of Freiburg. Her insightful and quietly pointed questions about the images she prompted me to produce often had me in tears.

Every time, it was a complete surprise to me. I thought I was just painting, but she would ask me a question about a certain detail, and the answer that I would provide all on my own would shatter me. It was revelatory and heartbreaking, but absolutely necessary for me and ultimately, cathartic.

My 1st Assignment

Pfeiffer came up and first covered the left half of the painting. She asked me what I saw there.

Then she covered the other side and asked the same question. She helped me realize that the two sides portrayed different emotions that I was trying to manage.

I really didn‘t know what to expect, but had mostly in mind that I‘d be able to play with paints and talk about my feelings. That really wasn‘t it at all. What transpired was considerably more structured than that. I was guided every step of the way, while still feeling as though I was creatively free there.

“What is that?“

I answered, without even thinking about it, “Flying Nipples in Space.“ Obviously.

I found this particularly interesting, because I didn‘t realize how much the mastectomy I‘d had was so present in my mind. Clearly, it was, and beyond the simple, “Ouch, my scar hurts,“ kind of thing.

It was good for me to see that. I said goodbye to my breast on that day in therapy, and was given the space and time I needed to properly mourn that loss.

The art therapy experience was very hard work, highly emotional, and I wasn‘t the only one in the room. Even with social distancing due to covid precautions, there were typically 4-5 patients in the studio. But I also wasn‘t the only one in tears. Everyone in that room had a lot of emotional baggage and plenty of hurt to heal.

Color and WORDS

Once she realized that I write, Pfeiffer encouraged me to incorporate words into some of my paintings, using pastels. This was for me another first.

There are several layers of words, written directly on top of each other.

It isn‘t meant to be legible. It‘s meant to be an outlet.

Pfeiffer prompted me to write down the words I would want to share with someone who hurt me deeply, but at different points in time: the past, right now, and the far future.

I won‘t go into the nitty gritty of what my therapist asked me at various stages of the painting process, or what all she helped me to unveil through creating. No kidding, that would fill a volume. But you can get an idea of how cleansing and transformative the experience was for me based on the images I‘m sharing here.

This represents about half of what I created.

For me, there are some images that are even now hard for me to look at because I can see the pain there, and recall the words that Andrea Pfeiffer and I exchanged. Those are not included here.

My Pegasus Future

This was one of the later paintings I did for art therapy. I was thinking about my future, and started with a simple line across the page. It‘s the line of bright yellow. Nothing else.

I continued, and added stuff instinctively. I didn‘t have anything in mind other than My Future. It was kind of bugging me that a horse seemed to be developing. I don‘t ride. “Why am I painting this?“

Then I realized that the squiggles above weren‘t random (to me). They were suggesting wings. I kept going with that, playing with it.

Suddenly I stopped and realized what was significant to me. The first line I had drawn was a story plot line, a simple graph line for what a story should be. Every writer knows that shape.

Ride. Fly. Go forward. WRITE stories, create, and be the story you would want to read. In a time when I was feeling low and fragile, this was critical for me.

I don‘t know that anything of what I created in Art Therapy can really be considered art, but it is imagery. The images that came out of the process of creating, prompted by my therapist, were enlightening to me on a deeply personal level. I was surprised every time with the revelations the process revealed.

And it wasn‘t some flakey make-believe woo-woo, either. It was serious, it was hard core therapy, and it was essential to my healing process.

If you‘re considering art therapy but aren‘t sure, I would say set those reservations aside. Just do it. The only thing you have to lose is fear and pain. You will feel those things, intensely, but then you‘ll be able to identify them and let them go, too.

SHOW K.C. YOUR SUPPORT. GIVE HER SOME STARS AND LEAVE HER A COMMENT BELOW!

In the picture above, you see me posing with a bronze statue of a woman’s torso. Its title is straight-up: “Torso.” No frills there. As a woman who’s had a mastectomy, it strikes me that it isn’t unusual to see statues of women without heads, without arms, without legs. So I posed with her. I let her borrow my head and arms, and she gave me her two perfect breasts.

I doubt very much that this was the artist’s intention, but it was a lot of fun for me. There are a slew of pictures of me with this torso statue. I enjoyed pretending that she, a work of art, and I were sharing our body parts. Pygmalion with a twist, a major twist.

Then my knees started to get sore from getting up onto the pedestal with her and it was time for us to part ways. I tell you what, I think I got the better deal.

As a woman who recently kicked cancer (still in antibody treatment stage), there is one question I’m asked the most.

Why have you chosen to not get a boob job?

Lots of reasons, actually. I strongly suspect that if people really knew what’s involved, and what the results would actually be, they’d probably say, “Well surely, you’re not going to get your breast rebuilt, are you?” Because the process is really painful and lengthy and the results, even the best possible results, are not that great. 

One of the – I think – most common misconceptions about a mastectomy is that it’s like plastic surgery. A lot of my friends were under the impression that getting a mastectomy was akin to getting a free boob job, and that the rebuilding of my breast would happen during the same surgery. But that isn’t what happens. 

There is absolutely no shame in having a misconception about something and breast surgery is no different. Before I got breast cancer, I knew almost nothing about it!

Most people understand that the mastectomy is really hard. And it is. It’s an amputation, which is physically painful all by itself, but it’s also the removal of a clear and significant symbol of my being a woman, so there’s this emotional aspect of having a breast taken away.

My Mastectomy Experience

The mastectomy requires being put under. Afterwards, you wear a tourniquet and have tubes for drainage coming out of you, and an IV drip for pain. It does require one to two weeks in the hospital, and while the external scar heals in a manner of weeks (about six for me), it takes several months for the internal tissues to heal (eight months, usually more).

I have to say, being put under was for me very frightening. I didn’t know if I’d ever wake up again. So it was very present in my mind that going to the hospital to have my breast removed might be the last thing I ever did. Once I just resigned myself to that possibility, it was actually easier for me to be calm. I was on the slab, being wheeled towards the bright lights, thinking, “This might be it.” Then the drugs kicked in and I was under.

If you’ve seen The Matrix, it’s much like when the mirror is running up his arm. I felt like something was sliding up my arm, to my brain and I was instinctively responding just as Neo does. I stretched my arm out and pulled my head back, trying to keep my brain away from it. The last thing I heard was one of the male nurses say (in German), “No, don’t fight it, just-.” That was it.

When I woke up, my doctor was behind my head, pushing my bed through a hallway, jostling my shoulder. “Wake up, now. It’s time to wake up.” I did not remember any dreams, but I did sense a passage of time. I felt the lost time, just as if I had been napping.

The recovery from surgery is no small feat. It’s quite painful and once you’re strong enough, it does require physical therapy so that you don’t develop other, new problems, like a hunchback or an atrophied arm, or limited movement that becomes permanent. 

Breast Reconstruction

The breast removal is one surgery, but to have the breast rebuilt, that process requires four more, even more painful surgeries. I would need to be put under four more times, I would need to live in the hospital four more times, go through physical therapy four more times.

One of the surgeries requires that part of your body is removed, so they can use that as material for your breast. Most often, they take part of the ass. Because I’m large breasted, it means my ass would have a large dent in it, a permanent one, and by the way – that Ass Dent is something that makes sitting uncomfortable for many women who get this surgery, and that pain lasts for the rest of their lives. 

I’m a writer and I doodle. Sitting is my THING. If I can’t sit and write, or sit and draw, I’m in serious trouble. I also sit and think, sit and eat, sit and talk, etc. I sit. I need to be able to do that without pain, without discomfort. I do not want to go through physical therapy just so I can sit and not need drugs to do it.

All that for a lump of flesh that will not look the same as a real breast, will not hang the same and it will not feel the same. It will be numb, with no sensation whatsoever. Not ever.

I don’t need any of that. Being put under isn’t good for the body, but it also isn’t good for the brain. I need my brain. 

My feeling here is that I need a fake breast about as much as I need a hole in my head. (Old American Saying, that one.) Maybe even less than, really, because I could use a little ventilation sometimes. Ahem.

How Passersby Respond to My ONE Breast

I have only one breast. I’m not afraid to show that. I don’t have a prosthetic breast either, because I feel silly with one, like a little girl padding her bra. Most of the time, people don’t even notice.

Truly, people do not see that I have only one breast, most of the time. I have a size E cup. That isn’t small.

When they do notice, it’s a very interesting thing for me to witness. The process of first observing and then coming to understand what they’re seeing is something I can read in their faces. They first glance and then – they take a second look, What did I just see there?

And in that double-take, and trying not to stare, they think, What the hell is that? -because there’s this strange lump on my body. So they take a longer look, and they realize that the strange lump on my body is actually a breast. The strange swollen protuberance is actually the normal part, it’s my breast. 

Then they realize that I have just one breast, and after another second or two they realize I must have had a mastectomy.

Then they realize that a mastectomy means I had breast cancer.

And then they look at my face again. They then see that my hair is super short, not quite long enough to have bangs, and they register that, and they see, truly, that I have recently gone through cancer treatment and that I am a cancer survivor.

And then they smile. 

And because I can see that thought process, what’s really clear to me is that – my NOT hiding my amputation is actually a good thing. We talk about breast cancer awareness and wear pink ribbons, but people aren’t aware, really. As I say, I was hugely ignorant before having my own experience with cancer.

I think a huge contributor of that is that too many of us choose to hide what we experience. Not just cancer or breast cancer, but just any negative or difficult life experience.

We don’t talk about it, most women DO get reconstructive surgery and according to my gynecologist, almost all regret it. For myself, I have yet to meet a single woman who felt that the reconstructive surgery was worth it. Every single one has said, “If I could go back and do it again? I wouldn’t.” 

Choosing to not have reconstructive surgery wasn’t something that came quickly or easily to me. Many doctors have asked me, “So when will you begin reconstructive surgery?” Not IF, but when. I think that’s significant, because the way we talk about a thing is a direct reflection of how we think about it. It’s part of us.

What My Husband Says

It was my husband who reminded me that the Amazon Warriors would cut off a breast in order to be better archers.

That idea appeals to me!

I’ve always wanted to learn archery. So as soon as I’m strong enough, I’m going to take that up. When I explained this to one of my psychologists, he said, “But you could learn archery with two breasts.” I wanted to kick him.

What My Gynecologist Says

There’s only been one doctor who was actually relieved when I told her I wasn’t going to do it. My gynecologist. 

When I told her my decision, she was downright joyous about it. She told me that she sees SO many women get it done and really, really regret it. It was her strong recommendation that I NOT do it. 

She also said that especially for any woman over fifty, which is of course most common as far as breast cancer patients go, the surgery leads to lifelong pain. Every time they sit. This really got my attention. 

But of course most people don’t know about all this because – really, where are all the one-breasted women? Where are they? We know that breast cancer is common. But where are all the women who have had a breast or both breasts amputated? They’re missing, vanished from our sight. Made invisible.

What My Friend Celeste Says

“Be kind to yourself.” These are words a dear friend of mine, Celeste Bradley, told me when my chemotherapy treatments began, and she continues to ding that bell for me whenever I need a reminder. It really helps me to keep this in mind, that I need to be patient and that I need to be kind to myself. 

There can be a lot of healing in simply sharing our personal stories with each other. We are, after all, very social animals. Talking is how we relate and build relationships.

June 2020, my life changed in a lot of ways, but really – I think that was the case for everyone. It was the midst of the first pandemic lockdown. I was going through a family crisis, one that remains unresolved and part of my daily life. But June was when I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

It’s a strange thing when you’re told for the first time that you have cancer. You take in the words, “I have bad news, I’m afraid. The mass of tissue we sampled is indeed a cancer, and it is a kind of cancer that could end your life. But we will do everything we can to…” and then you just don’t really hear words anymore. Vague echoes drift around your head, bounce off the walls and nothing touches you.

Deep down, I already knew I had it. The particular type of breast cancer I had was extremely rare and aggressive, so from the first gynecologist visit to the mammograms and almost immediate biopsy, I could feel the tumor growing. It was getting hotter and bigger. I could feel it grow from about an inch to well over three inches within weeks.

Time to Rethink

I think most people agree and nod and understand that facing death makes you reevaluate your life. There’s the accepted wisdom that ”you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone,” even if what’s going is your life.

When 2019 was coming to a close and I listed all my new year resolutions for 2020, a complete collapse of everything I had built in my life was just not on my radar. I didn’t see this level of pain coming. In fact, my overall health at that time was on the rise. I had big plans, lots of things on my list. A serious life smack down wasn’t a thing I could have foreseen, but it came.

I’m now 100% cancer free. I’m doing my physical therapy exercises most every day. I have my 10-minute antibody shot every third week and my hair is returning. The scar from my mastectomy healed all right and I’m training my body to recover from the internal damage caused by the surgery. It’s a long process. I still have chemo side effects, various things that I deal with every day, where I just do what I can to maintain and keep my chin up.

I paint when I can, draw and design when I can, and now that I’m off chemo, I can write again. Really write, the fiction writing that requires the kind of focus you just can’t pull together when you’re on chemo. Not all chemo cocktails are the same, but the stuff I was on made me feel stupid a lot of the time.

Turning it Around at Chemo Rehab

After the chemo and surgery, I was able to stay one month (April 2021) at the chemo rehab clinic in Freiburg. It changed my life. I learned a lot about what my body needs in order to heal. I learned to train repairing muscles without hurting myself. Very importantly, I made new friends in the incredible fellow cancer survivors I met there. These ladies are all quite different from me and from each other, but we just love each other and support each other (a few of the gals are pictured here). It’s great and their friendship means a lot to me.

All of us cancer survivors living at the clinic had full days, thickly scheduled curricula based on whatever we needed. I had post-op arm therapy, balance therapy, nerve damage therapies, scar treatment, heat therapy, skin care consultations (chemo severely dries up everything), various sport therapies, Fango (hot clay) kneading, one on one psychotherapy, art therapy, diet consultations and all sorts of medical seminars.

I also had Autogenes Training, or what I call my “How-to-take-a-nap Class.” Learning tricks to help me sleep has been really invaluable. I can even use those methods to help me relax.

My time in rehab felt a lot like college, actually. We patients would meet up in the halls between classes, chat it up in the cafeteria, and stay up late talking and laughing up in our rooms. Everything was up, upwards and onwards, together.

It was exactly what I needed. It gave me time to get better, and it gave me the tools I previously didn’t have in order to recover, tip to toe.

Asking Myself Hard Questions

Easter weekend at that clinic is one I will never forget, because that’s when I realized, after everything I had been through, I had changed very profoundly. I asked myself some hard questions about my life and realized I needed to make some big and difficult changes. My life was exhausting and I knew that I had a lot more climbing uphill to do.

There is a literary agency who is interested in my work. They’ve given me a code to include in my emails so that anything I send them gets prioritized. But I have never taken advantage of that code, never sent them anything even though I could have.

I asked myself, “Why haven’t I sent anything to the agency?”

This was for me a very hard question, one I now know I had been avoiding for well over a year. I had worked very hard (read: very, very hard) to make that connection with that particular agency. It had been a long and hard won effort. But it didn’t matter.

I knew they weren’t the right agency for me and it wasn’t until I was at the chemo rehab center that I could face that. Creatively, I just didn’t jive with those particular agents, which meant a solid working relationship with them wasn’t really possible.

Instead of looking for another agent all over again, I had – simply – stalled. I stopped completely. The COVID pandemic hit, I was smacked with a family crisis, and then I got cancer. So sure, there were some serious, valid reasons for my writing to have stalled. No doubt. But I could have done something and I didn’t.

It was clear on Easter that the only thing I could do was search for another agent. Square One, all over again.

Another Big Truth

It was also clear to me that I had to seriously rework the manuscript for my novel. I had various manuscripts ready to show an agent, but only one novel, my first so far. I realized that there were inconsistencies in the story and that ultimately, it was because I wasn’t being true to myself.

There were whole swaths of the manuscript I had written for someone else, not for myself, and it caused this terrible lack of cohesion. I knew I needed to correct that and I knew it was going to be a monster sized correction. Basically, a rewrite. Again. As one fellow writer once remarked of this type of writing, “Not a new dress for the old doll, but a completely new doll. Maybe a teddy bear, in fact.”

What Happened Next

I couldn’t work on the manuscript while at the clinic. That was out. I didn’t have anything with me. So I did what I was able to do. I put on my face mask and went down to the clinic lobby, to the dark corner and four clunky computers with internet access. It was so empty my footfall echoed.

I disinfected the keyboard, then my hands, and started searching through literary agencies.

Incredibly, I found the profile picture and name of a literary agent I once met at the International Book Fair in Frankfurt, about one year before the pandemic broke. She was terrific. When we met, I told her about how I was going to fly to America, to meet this other agency who I thought was a perfect fit for my writing. She had a little time before her next meeting, so we talked about family, movies we like, authors we like and why. She recommended I read some books that weren’t yet on the market, certain titles to watch for and I’ve since read them all.

It was that moment, staring at a blinking monitor, my hands resting on a sticky keyboard on Easter Sunday that I realized she should be my agent. At least, she’s the agent who’s actually going to see my manuscript, the one I’m rewriting these days.

I hope she loves it, my novel. It’s my best writing to date. I hope she will feel as I do, that we would make a terrific team. If not, well. I’ll brush myself off and start from Square One again. What else?