The Migraine Sisters

This is the one and only piece of visual art I have ever created. When I was in Memorial Sloane Kettering Hospital battling cancer, I took an art class ("Using the Right Side of Your Brain to Paint") and this was the result (done in colored charcoal).  Since I was suffering from migraines at the time I entitled this "The Migraine Sisters." 

Being diagnosed with stage four non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma was probably the most frightening moment of my life.  I had just lost Charlie (my life-long companion of 28 years) to cancer, and this disease had claimed my mother and brother.  Now I was facing that same hard path. 

Here’s how it went by the numbers:

•     2 major surgeries
•     166 days in the hospital
•     7 trips to the emergency room
•     7 spinal taps
•     8 weeks of chemo
•     4 weeks of radiation.

 There’s painful truth in the cancer cliché that the cure can be worse than the disease. My side effects included:

•     blood clots in the stomach
•     sub-dural hematoma (bleeding on the brain)
•     multiple infections
•     fevers spiking up to 104 degrees
•     colitis
•     kidney failure
•     pneumonia
•     13 hernias
•     Kaposi’s Sarcoma.

I fought hard and with the tremendous support of my close friends, I am alive today.  I broke the statistics of what was to be expected....dying  of cancer at an early age.