An artist's life is altered forever by the discovery of ovarian cancer.

You suddenly look at yourself in the mirror and you become a different person.

The disease intrudes upon body, mind, and soul.

We're dealing with some of the most private, intimate aspects of a woman's life.

Medical treatment is as potentially damaging as the cancer itself.

The next 10 days, you would watch her deteriorate to where on the 10th day, she was almost a zombie, I guess I would say.

I think, uh, one, um, can't face chemo without seeing the fact that yes, things could go wrong.

What you're counting on to save you can also destroy you.

Yes, A relentless cycle of chemotherapy and recovery turns patient into prisoner.

I felt that my existence was dependent on everybody else.

I think we all want to be in control of our own lives.

Eventually, relief is found beyond traditional medicine.

I think the reasons that her art is so powerful, because the anger, the intensity of the emotion went onto the paper.

It didn't occur to me to care whether they were good paintings or not.

The story of one cancer patient struggle for identity and freedom.

Next on the chemo paintings, Funding for the chemo paintings has been provided by the Medical College of Ohio Foundation from its campus in Toledo, Ohio.

MCO is training the next generation of medical nursing and allied health professionals committed to excellence in patient care, research and education.

Mom grew up in a generation.

She grew up in a family that staying hidden, felt comfortable and safe.

You somehow think of it as the Ozzy and Harriet view of, of life where dad got up in the morning and went off to work and mom took care of the house.

And we went to school and, and, um, life kind of went on.

I was very pleased and, uh, happy to be in the background of the family life.

Um, I thought my husband was doing well, and he was a very verbal person.

My children were very verbal children, and I was very happy to sit back and let them have the light and the shine.

And I thought that was wonderful.

I expected to spend the rest of my life doing that.

We were given a very dire prognosis.

After her surgery.

We were told by her doctor that, um, she had a very advanced form of cancer, that there was actually a fairly small percentage chance that she would survive it, that the chemotherapy would take in her circumstance.

I can remember in my haze, um, thinking to myself now, if nobody says to me, Dorothy, you, you are fine.

You do not have cancer, then I will know that I have cancer.

And nobody said to me, you don't have cancer.

So I can remember drifting back to sleep thinking, well, yes, Dorothy, you have cancer.

It was that a piece of our family was wounded, and that was just very difficult because we'd always been a very strong family unit group.

I think it was a, a test for our family, the kind of test that our family hadn't gone through before.

There were days when, uh, I felt so out of control that I wondered would I ever be in control again?

Would I ever feel good again?

And I really believe that she felt that life was changing her or perhaps God was changing her Through an illness.

I became a person who discovered that, um, I needed people.

For me, it was total blackness.

And I figured that now I don't have to be afraid of dying, that it, it, it's nothing.

I've been there.

But during that whole year, why you just almost like in limbo, you know, something was wrong, but you didn't know what, and then when they tell you you've got cancer, it's like a kick in the head.

You know, I just, it's hard to take, You know, the doctors like, when I, when I found out, it just rolled out of his mouth.

Like it was nothing.

They see, they, they, they deal with it every day.

Yeah, but we don't deal with it every day.

Tha..

So, yeah.

They, they don't, it is impersonal because they, they deal with it every day.

And the nurses deal with like, giving you that stuff without explaining.

Yeah.

You know, it's like, well, tell me because I don't see it every day, or I'm not told this every day.

When one's not used to crying, it's a very strange feeling, isn't it?

Go to movies to cry.

You don't cry at home.

And I guess they thought that I was invincible and that they were too.

And it did.

Cancer patients coming together to talk about their personal experiences, it's a communal act, both supportive and therapeutic.

It was painted before I knew I was ill On this night.

The discussion is led by Dorothy Bryan, artist and cancer survivor.

She has brought with her a set of paintings created during the time of her own illness and therapy.

Collectively, she calls them the chemo paintings for others in the room.

Each painting offers a canvas on which to focus their own thoughts and feelings.

I saw that picture before, and I tell you what I think about it.

It's like, um, when I was going through chemo and I was, um, my stomach, it seems like what's in my stomach when I was heaving and all those things that you go through, that's what it seems like to me.

It seems like something's getting ready to come out.

There's the other side of it.

Um, maybe I felt that I was going to be gone.

Even in an age of miracle drugs and high technology communication remains a medicine of immeasurable value.

And when dealing with a life-threatening illness, treatment is sometimes incomplete without addressing the simplest of questions.

Why?

I've always wondered, you know, you feel kind of guilty.

Maybe I did something wrong, that's why I've Got cancer.

I think there's a lot to that.

Maybe.

Do we, did we all feel a little guilty?

Was I that bad?

Did I gotta suffer this much?

Or what did I do wrong in my lifetime that, did I eat right or did I do this wrong or Do that even?

Um, in between every so often I would have this feeling of my body that I was like I was before and just like, well, if you're gonna be all right.

So I just keep it up.

Think positive.

It is sort of a lonely world out there, and you like to feel that somebody else is feeling ... emotion that you're feeling.

I now find that that's what I am most interested in, is communicating, uh, how I feel through my art or how I can reach other people.

I don't know that I'm always successful at it, but that's really what I want to do.

Creating the chemo paintings help Dorothy Bryan find meaning from her own disease.

It was a way to reaffirm her humanity and a world full of hospitals, machines, and chemicals.

A world most cancer patients know well, Yes, it is an impersonal atmosphere that you're in, though they try very hard not to make it that way.

But there's nothing very personal about a needle.

There's nothing personal about a, uh, a room that's sterilized for your benefit.

There's nothing personal about rubber gloves.

There's nothing personal about, um, mechanical wheeled, uh, machines that whirl and digitally tell you what's going on.

Uh, it's very impersonal.

And though they try very hard, uh, in their way to go beyond that, for you, it's impossible.

A lack of control, a sense of mortality, a loss of identity and lifestyle.

Dorothy answered these challenges by absorbing ... of diagnosis and the stress of treatment into her art.

The result was a visual diary of what it felt like to be a cancer patient.

And though she never intended to show these images outside her studio, they have become her most influential work.

The title is called Knowing, trying to Hold Onto the Old.

This was, But the Greatest Influence has been on Dorothy herself, galvanized by her illness.

She now uses the chemo paintings as a means to connect with other cancer victims.

It is a connection that only those who have faced death can truly understand.

Like my sister, I watched my sister die, but, and my aunts and my uncle, um, you, you know, they're dying and, but you don't know how they're feeling.

But now I know how they're feeling.

So no, that you can't, people that don't have cancer or know they're gonna die, they don't know how, what you're feeling or how you're feeling.

They can help you and you'll talk, you know, they don't understand.

'cause I never understood it.

But now I do.

When I go up to my studio quote, I say, I'm going up to heaven.

I love the feeling of going up there and, um, moving about and being physical and being tired when I'm through.

It's a, it's a good feeling, a feeling of, uh, transporting myself into a different sphere in a way, because I become very involved in what I'm doing.

The sanctuary of an artist studio where thoughts and feelings merge freely into one here, visions blend together while expression brings release.

I do feel that in some of my work, uh, I start a painting and then my inner self takes over and sometimes completes the painting In her studio.

Dorothy Bryan communicates more by intuition than design, filtering impression from her daily life into emotional blends of color and light.

It was while in her studio that Dorothy first had a sense of cancer in her body and elusive awareness that something was different.

She responded by creating what she now calls premonition in mark contrast to her typical work.

It was neither joyful nor encouraging yet for Dorothy.

It seemed somehow relevant.

Premonition occurred before I knew I was ill, and I, uh, remember putting black paint on the whole canvas, which was very different for me.

And I, I still don't know why.

I have suddenly decided that that was what I ought to be doing.

And I then discovered that it was fun to put, uh, these light colored, um, in undefined, um, markings on this black canvas.

And very quickly it seemed to come together to say something.

And I wasn't even sure what it was saying.

In fact, it didn't take too long to complete the canvas.

And I then I set it aside.

She first came to me, uh, with the diagnosis of a pelvic mass.

The first, uh, reaction of a patient, I think upon hearing the diagnosis of cancer is,... fear, disbelief.

Why me?

God, I've been so, I've been so good.

I haven't done anything wrong.

No one ever believes that they really have it to begin with.

And so you have to sort of intellectually just sort... for a while until it's sort of suddenly comes to you when they say, yes, you will have a major operation.

I use words like, you've got a fighting chance.

You've got a great chance, you got a terrific chance.

We're gonna go all the way.

Or we're fighting an uphill battle.

I think you can use words and expressions and body language and smiles and facial expressions to get the po...

I would say it was the first major thing that had come along that caused the whole family to think of death as a possibility of one of ...

They're gonna hang it out.

In the months preceding her diagnosis, Dorothy's life seemed normal.

She and her husband, aha, were looking forward to their retirement years, to doing all those things.

There never is enough time for like traveling and visiting family.

But increasingly, Dorothy noticed physical changes in her body, a feeling of fullness in her lower abdomen, unusual problems with indigestion.

When she reported these symptoms to her doctor, tests confirmed the unthinkable.

Dorothy had cancer, ovarian cancer.

You get sort of caught up in all of what's happening to you, and you sort of don't have time to panic exactly though inside, you know that your life has changed forever because you don't face something like this without, without your family changing and without you changing.

But then that's part of life too, is change.

We made recommendations for an operation.

She accepted those recommendations, of course, and we went ahead and performed a cancer operation, an operation where we knew going in that we probably wouldn't be able to remove all of the cancer.

Our hope was that we'd remove a lot.

We call that debulking or maximal surgical effort.

You are certainly struck immediately with the, the glaring lights, the large drowned lights, the doctors that are all smocked and with their masks on and peering at you.

The experience on the body of an operation is usually very considerable.

I don't think it's any breach of privacy to say that Mrs. Bryan's cancer had spread through a considerable difference in her peritoneal cavity that is in her abdomen.

We were unable to remove all of that cancer.

We took out the great volume of it.

We cut across lots of tissue spaces.

And when you do that, there's a lot of oozing of limp and protein.

So that it is a major physiologic event as well as a, there's a very big psychologic event.

Of course, I had come back from my surgery and I was kind of weak and, uh, wondering what was going to happen to me, and went to the studio and decided that I would do what I usually do.

And that started painting and go forth with it.

Well, it was different this time.

It was, uh, I was perhaps didn't have the facility to do what I had done in the past, not because maybe my fingers wouldn't, I couldn't control 'em the same way.

I think I also brought with it a different feeling inside of myself.

So I, I really feel that I would never be quite the same again.

And I think that this painting of knowing, trying to hold onto the old is a good painting to show that I, it was changing.

Many people talk about how life's difficulty can bring families together.

And, and I really felt we did do that during that period of time.

If nothing else, we were physically together, which we are not often physically together.

Um, but it, it certainly created dialogue among our family that hadn't been there before because we were all busy doing our own thing.

As Dorothy Recuperated from surgery, her family rallied to her side.

Their expectations were optimistic, but the prognosis was grim.

Because of the advanced stage of her cancer, all of Dorothy's reproductive organs had to be removed.

And she would soon begin a grueling regimen...

Yet for a while, it was enough to come together with family and friends to feel the healing effect of their comfort and support.

But even acts of kindness foreshadowed the struggle, which awaited her.

This one particular day, I got a gorgeous bouquet of flowers, and I, uh, took it into the studio and I thought, well, I will paint this bouquet of flowers.

It's so beautiful.

Well, as so often happens, you begin a painting and you lose your train of thought and you have to go lie down, or you're not feeling quite well that day.

And so another day goes by and you do a little bit to it and a little bit more.

And then maybe, uh, days go by and you don't get back in the studio the next time you go back in to really paint seriously.

Uh, it's turned wilted and black.

So I though the painting, in a way is a colorful painting and a happy painting.

It was also a sad painting for me because it had turned black and I had been unable to achieve what I wanted.

And so I took the black marker pen and filled in the black to, to say that, yes, um, having cancer is a sad thing, but it is also a thing that strengthens one Chemotherapy is treating cancerous disease with chemicals.

It's not just a chemical, it's a series of chemicals.

And physicians try to match the chemicals up with the disease.

We're always trying to just figure out what dose we can give to get the maximum response, and yet not creating side effects so severe that the treatment is worse than the disease.

The best way to kill the cancer is with a very aggressive, uh, chemo, which means that, uh, they don't wanna kill you with it, but they're going to poison you pretty badly so that they can kill it off very quickly.

Whatever, uh, cancer cells are still left after the operation.

It was a hot surging feeling through me.

Her chemo was through the night.

She was alone in the room.

The mechanism that held the chemo was truly robot-like, but the nurses that worked through the night changing the chemo were not warm and caring.

They were cold, efficient robot-like We'd come home and usually at that point, she was still in a pretty good frame of mind as well as felt okay physically, the next 10 days you would watch her deteriorate to where on the 10th day she was almost a zombie.

I guess I would say She would be violently ill, but the medication for the nausea would be almost as bad as the nausea.

So she'd put it off as long as she could, and then she'd have to deal with the effects of being kinetic, just hypertensive.

She quake, she quivered, she was weak.

And so we got into a procedure right on the first time that, uh, I would give her a sleeping pill and lay down with her in bed 'cause she was freezing cold.

And, uh, my body warmth and with the blankets and all, why, then you could just feel the whole body relax as she went under with the help of the sleeping pill and went to sleep.

And it was most interesting because when she woke up from that, she was a different person.

I just can't imagine how difficult it had to be to walk into that room knowing that you were gonna have this awful drug go in your body that was gonna make you feel awful for at least a week period of time.

Time.

She did share an experience with me that at one time when she came into the hospital, literally into the lobby, she threw up knowing what was coming ahead of her Receiving monthly chemotherapy trapped Dorothy in a frustrating cycle of sickness and recovery, but visualizing the chemo's lethal effect on your cancer helped make the discomfort bearable.

There were those who believed that while you were getting chemo, it was important for you to mentally feel that this chemo was attacking the cancer cells and that this was a good thing, and that mentally you could help it by thinking positively about it and can actually see, uh, the chemo attacking the, um, cancer cells and killing them.

You know, you, you try anything that you can to facilitate how you feel and to make yourself feel better about what's going on With its spastic energy, penetrated bears Dorothy's outrage at the double violation on her body, done first by her cancer, and then by the medical procedures meant to cure her before her chemotherapy was through the intrusion would be even more personal.

I had gone to my hairdressers to have my hair done, and that same day she washed my hair, uh, also.

And that's when it was coming out with, uh, in handfuls.

That's the first thing they always tell you.

When, uh, you're a cancer patient and you lose your hair, yes, not to worry it will grow back.

You don't really believe them.

Sometimes you think, well, I'll be the one that doesn't grow back.

I see myself stripped of all pretense of all, uh, the facade that we all try to build about ourselves.

And that's just plain old naked me.

And it's hard sometimes to look at that.

And then I smiled at myself and I'd say, well, that's good though.

It's good sometimes to strip ourselves of all the facade and just be ourselves.

And I was very sincere in the fact I thought she looked very, very attractive with it, uh, pixie hair as I called it.

And that, uh, it was really quite attractive.

And that, uh, there was never any time that, uh, anything that she was going through that in the terms of today turned me off or anything of that nature.

Uh, really, I found that it brought us, uh, closer together because I kept telling her, I said, uh, you know, you look darling.

I I said, it's wonderful.

It's really, uh, not bad.

Uh, it's acute.

Uh, a lot of women wear their hair that way.

And I said, I think just as pretty as ever, and it, it hasn't taken away from you overall beauty.

So we got through it and it came back in curlier and nicer sooner than ever.

So she thought it was worthwhile.

I guess after that, Towards the end of the time that she was on chemo, I finally asked, I said, mom, I wanna see your hair.

And um, she one day took off the scarf.

I remember it was bedtime.

I think I was even literally in bed reading a book before I was gonna go to sleep.

And she came in and she took it off.

And it was wonderful.

'cause it was this soft, what what hair was remaining was this soft, um, thing.

And I remember rubbing her head and thinking that was really neat to do because it was nice that she let me in on that piece.

I think that was probably a hard thing for her to deal with all of us.

How does one respond to losing your hair?

Uh, you suddenly look at yourself in the mirror and you become a different person and you, uh, think of ways to cover it up or what you're going to do, or whether you put the wig on.

Does it look like you?

And then for me, that transferred itself into going to the studio and being a little angry.

Not a little angry, but a lot angry about the fact that I was now becoming, I wasn't myself again.

I was not in control.

I didn't have my hair.

So I picked out a wonderful big sheet of watercolor paper, and I got the black ink and I threw it on the paper.

And I had, it was a release to do that.

It was a release to say, now I can express to myself how I was feeling.

And as again, I didn't kick or throw things, but I, well, yes, I did throw things.

I threw ink.

Maybe the black did represent death to me, and maybe I was feeling I was, uh, going to cheat death some way.

And maybe that's what the blue does.

Uh, maybe that's what the color does.

Maybe it's maybe the painting's a fight, uh, between, uh, life and death and color.

When she was able, Dorothy continued painting throughout her treatment in her studio, she could deal with unfamiliar emotions on her own terms, allowing color to say what she could.

Not letting go of anger without having to scream, giving into fear, without having to cry.

My children would often say to me, well, why don't you cry mother?

Uh, why aren't you, um, miserable?

Why aren't you frustrated and angry about what's happening to you?

And I guess I was, but maybe I got rid of my frustration and anger.

By going to the art studio.

You drop all feeling of unhappiness, of misery, of not feeling good because you're so focused into what you're trying to do, that all else is gone for you.

And maybe an hour goes by and you suddenly realize that you have forgotten the fact that you don't feel well.

While cancer and chemotherapy restricted Dorothy's activities, art kept her inner voice free, allowing her a measure of control at a time when so much of her life was controlled by others.

Going to her studio became an act of faith that one day her life would come full circle and return to normal.

For Dorothy, the circle was hope and expectation.

The circle was her.

With each successive painting, Dorothy held on to hope and exercised the demons that threatened to bring her down.

Obviously, during the operation, much of the inside of my body was taken away from me.

Maybe that's what I was saying is that that's what was gone.

Maybe my life as I knew it, uh, before is gone.

Certainly changed.

Maybe gone is a strong word, but maybe I didn't know at the time that it wouldn't be gone in the hospital room.

One is at the mercy of, uh, everything else and mostly mechanical type things.

I think how a baby must feel, uh, how when they're that so dependent on the parent to give it life, The one mechanistic hell appeals to me the most because I could see the pulleys and the chains and that she has, uh, stylistically painted there.

And, uh, I think that speaks to me more than anything as a doctor about what we've asked the patients to go through.

I put that cross in the window and I said to myself that no matter how deep you go into depression or how much you really struggle through things, that there's always hope.

That really kind of set off the painting for me.

And then I felt very good about it.

The thing that I most remember my mother telling me about her experience in, in taking chemotherapy was the fact of being wired, of being, um, overly energetic, not being able to focus or to calm down.

And it was an experience that was, that physical experience that she disliked most about.

The, the, the chemotherapy.

Wired was a painting that grew out of my mom's reaction to the medication that she took to contain the nausea.

She couldn't sit still, she couldn't concentrate on anything.

Nothing helped her to calm down.

I guess it is a negative message.

I guess maybe that's you, you've hit me up my sensitive spot.

Maybe as a doctor, I don't wanna deal with that because we're trying to think of all the good things we're doing to the people.

And maybe I don't want to look at this as, because that says very clearly, you're doing bad things to me.

Six months into her treatment, Dorothy's body could take no more.

The chemotherapy was stopped.

It was now Christmas.

A traditional time to share the joys of family and the promise of new life.

For the Bryans a chance to come together under happier circumstances in a short time, they would meet again in hopes of celebrating yet another new life.

Dorothy's recent tests had failed to detect any remaining traces of her cancer.

And an exploratory operation was scheduled to see if she were in fact cancer free.

Well, this was quite an emotional and exciting day really.

We were at the hospital, the whole family was here, and, uh, she'd had the operation and the doctor came down.

We happened to be in the lobby.

They were doing some construction.

The the poignant memory, though, is when the surgeon appeared, uh, upstairs on the balcony, um, and my father seeing him first and leaping up and bounding up the stairs, um, about three at a time to get to him and then to find out that she was miraculously cancer free.

It was, I'm, I'm getting chills as I sit here and talk about it.

It was just a wonderful time as we all just hugged and praised God for what had happened.

After two operations and six months of chemotherapy, Dorothy's cancer was in remission.

And finally there was time for healing.

So I went to the studio and I put together happiness is recovery, and I see that the circle is there, and the circle is a very lovely off-white circle.

I felt free being well is a freedom Only a few months later, Dorothy showed the chemo paintings for the first time not yet recovered herself.

She was already reaching out to others, sharing visions once thought too personal to be relevant for anyone else but seen together.

They offered a unique forum for reflection and dialogue.

I think any human being that has experienced joy and pain will always find themselves in any piece of art because whether or not they have gone through the exact experience that the artist is expressing, they can certainly identify with the range of feelings that's within a painting.

I think the ability to express oneself, whether it be through art or music or painting or public speaking, is extremely important to get all these negative thoughts out.

All these, these fears, all these devils that are in our minds, uh, when we're going through this frightening, potentially life ending disease.

I think the person who is articulate and verbal, the person who is able to express herself inevitably does better even when the cancer progresses.

I remember thinking that it's another example of my mother making lemonade out of lemons.

You know, hair's, um, possibly one of the worst things that you, you could have happen to you.

It just so happened that she probably created a series of paintings that will be the most meaningful thing that she may do in her career as an artist.

When I saw mom's chemo paintings, I was intensely moved.

There was more of my mother available to me in that artwork than had ever been available to me before.

Then.

My mother works very hard to stay upbeat.

We call her Miss Sunshine.

And for the first time, I could see the pain, the anger, the sadness, what my mother might call her dark side, the full range of her humanness and her vulnerability.

And it was a wonderful gift.

I think the cancer experience was wonderful for our family.

Um, I know that sounds awful and poor mother had to, to literally live through it, but I think it was a wonderful experience for us in terms of being closer together, understanding each other mo... learning how to depend on each other when maybe that hadn't been an issue before.

I've heard others talk about cancer, like it was a possession.

They say your cancer or their cancer, when all along it's really our cancer because in some ways cancer is harder on the caregivers and the families than it is on the patient.

They have to go through the agony of the illness right along with you wishing they could do something more, but knowing they can't.

So when I was found to be cancer free, it was time for all of us to rejoice.

We'd been through a lot and all of us were changed in some way.

How did cancer change me?

I can remember feeling how wonderful it was just to go out to the kitchen again and do the dishes or bake cookies or even sweep the floor.

Everything that seemed so mundane and trivial before now seemed like a privilege.

It was exciting to move freely.

Again, I like the painting and I don't think it's really an ugly painting, but the greatest change in my life has come with a continued opportunity to share my experiences with cancer and chemotherapy.

With my other work.

I've always been content to let my art speak for me.

And my family can tell you that I've never been one for public speaking, but in this case, I make an exception because I believe what I have to say is important.

It's important for cancer patients to be able to t... what they're going through with someone who understands someone who's been there.

I had the shunt in my chest and there was about six bags hanging on the thing.

And lady comes in and says, time to make your bed.

So Together we share stories that are sometimes tragic and sometimes inspirational because being ill isn't just about sadness.

There are joyful moments and even funny moments too.

And what do I get in return?

I am re-energized by what they find in the paintings through their eyes.

I always learn something new about myself.

So in that sense, the series remains a work in progress, but that's what life is really a work in progress.

I have said, and believe truly, that once you're a cancer patient, you're always a cancer patient.

Uh, the chances of my cancer reoccurring is great.

Um, but it also, uh, with that knowledge, um, gives you a euphoria for waking up in the morning and feeling wonderful and you treasure each day that you have this because you are, you know, that, um, some one day you could wake up and, and you might say, sure, yes, I take that blood test.

And guess what it shows.

It shows that the cancer is back.

So, uh, it's not an all bad thing.

In some ways it adds zest to life in the sense that it allows you to be very grateful for feeling good, uh, when you feel good.

As we were nearing the end of this documentary, the day came that I knew might but hoped wouldn't.

A blood test indicated that something was wrong in my body.

I'd been well for almost seven years.

Further tests showed that my spleen had been invaded by cancer, and there was a chance that even more can... behind the spleen undetected by the scans.

And we were both here.

And I took the phone call and was very cool and said, he said, well, you know, Dorothy, yes, we have the results.

And he called it out.

I don't know what it was, but he didn't use the word cancer.

And I said, well, do I have cancer?

And he said, yes.

And, um, so, um, then we very quickly, uh, discussed what we would do next.

And I hung up and Isha sort of looked at me and said, oh, honey.

And I said, honey.

And we went over and hugged each other and, and, uh, we sort of both knew what was going to happen next.

And, um, we both understand what it's all about.

I do think the thing that was hard for me in the fact that when people would come up to me and I would, and knew that I needed to tell them, that somehow I felt guilty about the fact that I was a cancer patient again, because I felt that I let people down.

That, uh, they had looked at me as a survivor and I had talked about being a survivor, which I guess I was in a sense, but that does did cross my, does cross my mind when I see people that I feel sort of somewhat guilty that I'm A cancer.

Oh, I gotta give you a lecture on that one, because if your cancer patients .. they're not gonna be out there supporting other cancer patients.

Well, I suppose That's true, and that support that you give those patients, uh, is extremely important.

So I think, uh, one has to face it and, and not feel guilty about what's happening.

Not at all.

I'm in charge of my life and I'm going to decide whether I wanna have this operation or whether I don't wanna have this operation, whether I want to, uh, go through chemo again, or I don't want to go through chemo again, and I have to stop and think, uh, it is going to be a chore.

It's going to, uh, take time out of my life.

I think all people have a right to make choices in how, how they wanna live their lives and how they wanna die, because essentially, um, that's what it's all about is you have the excitement of being born and you have the excitement of dying.

I think it's the last really exciting things that happen to anybody.

And so, uh, um, hel and I have discussed many times how we feel about life and how we face death.

And I think we've, I think people have to talk about that death is a word that a lot of people don't wanna talk about.

Those first few days after surgery, you're in and out of medication, you're very weak and your body is sore.

There is a definite sense of relief, but I wouldn't say that I was all that happy.

You're just kind of numb for a while.

It's wonderful to have the medical support I had available to me, but, you know, lives are saved in hospitals.

They aren't lived there.

I think you saved your real happiness for when you go home.

The prognosis, uh, for my cancer and recovery, I would say is pretty good.

Uh, I can't give you any statistics as to, uh, the numbers exactly.

Um, they did remove my spleen and it was cancerous.

Um, I have been told that, uh, they have not found cancer anywhere else, but because, uh, we know my past history of ovarian cancer, of which this cancer is apart, um, they are planning, uh, to do chemo again, which I would have to say didn't come as a wonderful surprise.

But having experienced it has two sides to it.

One is that you know what's coming, which in some ways is a bit comfortable because I know that probably I'll be come to the hospital.

I know the routine.

I feel a little more comfortable about complaining.

If something isn't quite right, I feel more, a little bit more in command.

The other side of the coin is of course, that I know what I will be experiencing.

And, um, it's, um, it's something that you get a mind, you have to get your mindset to because you know it's going to be, it's gonna be tough.

Two weeks after my surgery, I felt well enough to sit and visit with another cancer survivor.

Only this time, it wasn't somebody I was meeting for the first time was my 27-year-old granddaught... who has been undergoing treatment for breast cancer.

Her diagnosis was devastating for the family, but then again, cancer is devastating under any circumstances.

I remember when I was first diagnosed with a cancer in this past November, not thinking that I was gonna die tomorrow from breast cancer, but being overwhelmed with having to live with it for the rest of my life, Cancer changes you immediately.

It's like The difference between day and night.

And it's not all bad and some of it is bad and it's like a love hate situation.

You know that it's agony and you know that it's going to be with you and you know that you have to face it time, maybe even time and again.

But it also opens your eyes to the beauty of the world, to the beauty of each day you wake up and you think, gosh, I've got another wonderful day ahead.

So I can't say that cancer has been all bad and, uh, it certainly has changed my lifestyle.

I went back, I've gone back twice actually, since I found out I had cancer and looked through my, through the chemo paintings that you had done before for me at the time.

They were, they were beautiful for works of art and that they were a part of you.

But I really didn't understand then, like I would now, what each one of those steps means and how it feels to me as well as to yourself.

Is there any one painting that really touches you?

One that before I didn't really like and I I really don't like it.

I still don't.

It's beautiful, but I just don't really like it all that much.

And that is mechanistic hell.

And because your doctors can be wonderful.

My, all my doctors are wonderful, but the process... and you are being poked and pricked and prodded all the time that it's really hard to look at the last painting in your series.

Happiness to Recovery.

I'm looking forward to knowing it's done, just being so joyful and happy and finding out who I am now versus who I was before.

Because even though it's only been six months, I probably have changed more in the six months than any other six months in my life.

And it's gonna be real fun and a joyous time to find out who I am and get back to what I wanna be.

How do I feel about happiness as recovery or recovery as happiness or whatever I wanted to say?

Because here I am again, uh, seeking for happiness is a recovery or happiness at the end of the second bout around.

And yes, I am.

I know that it's going to be, I'm going to get to that point again.

I'm looking forward to it myself.

Years ago I drew Missy and her brother Michael walking arm in arm holding onto each other.

I think that image says a lot to me now about what really matters in this world.

I see the end as a celebration of life.

One of the paintings that mom showed me today in her gallery is called Celebration.

And it's wild colors and it's, it, it's, it makes me think of banners being, um, waved by a huge crowd of people.

Um, and I, I really think that is the story is that that life can be difficult.

That there are certainly trials and tribulations that we all go through, but there can be good that comes out of it.

And that, um, you, you can succeed.

You, you made it through and, and came out the other side.

And, and it's, it's wonderful that life is good and that we should count the blessings that we have and, and work with what we have and, and celebrate.

Who do we become from what we were before?

Were they only dreams?

The things that we explored.

What are we to take from days too old to seeing the reason we are here, the reason we believe?

Will we ever know what each of us can do?

Will God allow us all to live and see it through?

What are we to show for all we've said and done?

Are these final scenes or have we just begun?

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Funding for the chemo paintings has been provided by the Medical College of Ohio Foundation from its campus in Toledo, Ohio.

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