I started this blog 3 years ago after an unsettling assignment I did for the paper. Go check out my very first post. so, happy three years to me. Back then I had to cover the funeral of an 18 year old. His story was as tragic as a super nice everybody's friend kid every body loved 18 year old dying of some previously undetected heart defect coud be. And he was an only child. Even worse.
I had just read about mommy bloggers (but I don't we were called that yet) in a NY Times article. Needing an outlet for what I had just experienced at the funeral I fished out the article to figure out what to do/how to do it and started my blog. At the time I thought this funeral was the beginning of more and more sad heart breaking stories for me and I wanted an outlet to write about my life as a full time mom and part time photojournalist. Which is pretty funny if you ever see my paper because besides a whole lot of high school sports it's all pretty much babies and kittens for me to photograph. So my idea of this blog being an outlet for me as a working mom went by the way side and the blog just became my outlet for every day life. I mention work occasionally, but honesty, I love my job, my real editor is like a second mother/friend to me, (no comment on the sports editor who keeps sending me to cancelled games) and the only funeral I shot after that boy's one was an unremarkable older guy that just didn't bother me.
Tonight however, I shot the first meeting of the group that is organizing a local Relay For Life event here. In case you don't know it is a fund raiser for the American Cancer Society. I kept thinking about my parents. I was fine for a while, shooting photos and thinking that people were there mostly in support of old people who had cancer, but as I shot the people and asked them their names and some background for the photo caption I have to submit with my photo, I realized that most of the people there were in fact survivors. And they all looked like they could be me. Or at least they looked like they could be sititng in the next SUV in the pick up line at any of my kids school's. And then I remembered that I still have that procedure scheduled for the 25th.
Now I am not sure where I fit in in this world. Obviously I am a supporter of my parents. But am I a survivor? Or will I be a survivor? It seems like an exageration to say "me too" to cancer. I mean, one more small procedure and I assume I am going to be just fine. No hospital stay, no seriously long and painful recovery, no dreadful chemo, no hair loss. Just a slice and a boo boo and the only after effect of this for me is going to be obsessive mirror looking. Because I am always going to be worried and looking. So even though I had to run out of there crying when the middle school kid started telling about her mother's fight with cancer, I am not sure if I am just the daughter of people with cancer or if I could possibly be or if I really am one of them.
Ah hell, just get a tattoo and incorporate the scar in it somehow.
It would be nice to have a *little* bit of a hospital stay or something tho wouldn't it?
Posted by: danelle | February 11, 2008 at 10:04 PM
As someone who had chemo, radiation, and tattoo dots to boot, I think just having a cancer diagnose is in a class of its own. For sure chemo and radiation sucks REALLY bad, seriously, it was effin hell. But just because the cancer was removed by surgery should not be undermined. The emotional aftermaths of the diagnose is just as real, just as harsh, and just as difficult to come to terms with.
You are a survivor. Cocktail mixes or not.
Posted by: Jennic | February 12, 2008 at 01:23 AM