Of Bobbins & Bosoms: A Mammogram Just Saved My Life

Late last year, I was thinking "I am at a creative impasse, I have no new inspiration, I am repeating myself in my art, and also in this long, tedious, redundant thought-sentence."

At which point my exasperated right breast said, "Hold my beer."

It proceeded to gift me with a Stage 1A breast cancer, and now I have SO much new creative inspiration!  Specifically, everything I see, own, make or have made, looks like a bosom. 

Many of my latest gel plate prints, made with doily-like stencils, look like this.

My newest rubber stamp

Random pieced improv triangle mandalas that happened to be on my design wall

My breast...er...best friend.

My surgery is next week -- just a lumpectomy. They'll pull out the cancer plus a safety margin, then rearrange my batting to fill in the gap (Just like trapunto!). I'll need a week or so of radiation, followed by five years of estrogen blockers. The cure rate is 95%. I am a little nervous about the surgery, but my overwhelming emotion is deep gratitude.

I found this stencil in a thrift shop and clearly it's for describing breast surgery options -- do you have another explanation?

Gratitude at my stunning unearned luck in getting one of the easiest-to-treat cancers. Gratitude for my annual mammogram (for which I routinely dragged my feet, so mine were more like every year-and-a-half. I will be more prompt in the future). Thank you, health insurance policy. Thank you, medical researchers who have made breast cancer so much more survivable.  Thank you Paula, angel, friend, and scientist, who swooped in at the height of my panic, in the awful waiting periods between procedures and results. She coaxed me down from the ledge of terror, onto the more spacious ledge of science. One of the many things she said that I clutched onto is that cancers caught within a year are far less likely to be life-threatening than those that go longer. (Yes, I often need angelic Ph.D's to state the obvious to my face.)

So in conclusion, if you have one or more breasts, this is my reminder to you -- and to me -- that the miseries of mammography, waiting, callbacks, biopsy, genetic tests, and more waiting -- all that is minor compared to the relief you’ll feel if something bad is caught early (or even late, but less late).

An annual mammogram just saved my life. And for sure it has changed the way I look at the world. 

Another gel plate print, potentially titled "Festive breast"

This yarmulke and all the others that I've made: Totally mammarian. 

Stencil: Paisley? Or breast side view? 

I truly don't feel I need thoughts and prayers, but if you have any to spare, please forward them to the heroic women (possibly including you, dear reader), who have gone through, are going through, will go through so much more challenging treatments. 

P.S. My quilt ideas are evolving. Have you made a breast cancer quilt?