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Sarah
Webster-Eastman
Woman Artist With Breast Cancer
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I have a personal site where I feature my art and talk a LOT about breast cancer. I
consider myself first an artist and somewhere along the line, a breast cancer patient
who's doing very well and looking forward to more of the same. Immediately following
my dx and during treatment, I wanted to paint and sculpt and "play" with other
mediums more than I can tell you, but I was creatively paralyzed for some reason.
When I finally asked my doc about my lack of creative urges, she suggested that it was
probably a Tamoxifen side-effect. I also couldn't use my hands as I had before. They
quivered; probably a side-effect as well. Both problems have gradually faded away and I'm
"creating" again.
I also have never been more at peace and content in my life since I dropped out of the rat race and into the life of the artiste.
This flow painting, along with the others that you'll find on my site, were born of sadness and loss, and my need for escape from that sadness. They are the expression of the beauty and tranquility that always lie just beneath the pain.
My site is dedicated to every artist who has ever lived. A diagnosis of breast cancer in November of 1998 gave me a reality check of mega proportions. I can think of other catch phrases that are just as applicable, if trite. It was a wake-up call... a warning shot... a reminder that life is/can be short and that there are no guarantees in life. There is, after such a eye-opening (there's another trite one) event, a sudden surge of enlightenment. The truth is that those things for which we work so hard are worth nothing compared to the things that we shove aside in our quest for money, position, power and things. There are some cultures that know and practice that truth and have for eons, and other cultures who had the same values but who were forcibly removed from their culture either on their home shores or on the usurper's when they were invaded by so-called civilized man. but that's another story.
I began my series of flow paintings that you will find in the Galleries. It was something new to try and I buried myself in the learning process and in the beauty that presented itself to me when those Dr. Martin's inks flowed across the water color paper. By the way, I helped it sometimes with a few delicate passes of my blow dryer. I don't see my pain in them at all. Rather, I can see the healing that was occurring as they appeared. At some point I decided to play with some of them after they were dry and you'll see examples of that in many of them. I'm working now on perfecting the translucent effect that happened in several of them, so look for more additions to the gallery, as well as some examples of my work in other media. And maybe I'll load some pictures of my interior design projects too.
I was diagnosed with stage one infiltrating ductile carcinoma, or breast cancer, in November of 1998. NEVER would I have expected that warning to concern breast cancer. I knew of only one relative who had gotten breast cancer, a great-aunt who was diagnosed in her late eighties. That surely didn't forebode a family preponderance to the disease. I had my children in my twenties, breast fed them, had never had an abortion, didn't smoke (quit in 1987), drank only lightly and on rare occasions, and had cut way back on the consumption of red meat and high-fat foods. I even tried a vegetarian diet without dairy, but found that it didn't suit my body. The proteins I thought I was obtaining from legumes, other veggies and cantaloupe didn't support my needs and I soon had connective tissue trouble. I reintroduced some meats and dairy back into my diet.
I had, however, taken birth control pills in the mid-sixties when they were so very strong and I did smoke at that time. I wish researchers would pay more attention to the estrogens that we all are ingesting when we consume meat that has been fed hormones and vegetables that are sprayed with pesticides that convert to estrogens in the body. I really believe they may play an even larger role in the increase in breast cancer and other cancers than those things in the pamphlets and commercials.
If we believe that all that is necessary to prevent cancer is to follow the guidelines set forth by the cancer association, does it then follow that it is our "fault" that we have breast cancer if we admit to having "failed" at one or more? How cruel is it to place the blame on the cancer patient when the fact is that no one REALLY knows what causes or cures cancer? In reality, there are probably a multitude of overlapping and convoluted factors involved in cancer cells beginning to grow. Couple that probability with the fact that body chemistries differ widely, making one person's cancer killing potion totally ineffective for another. An honest doctor once called cancer treatment a crap shoot.
If I've learned one thing on this journey it's that there are no absolutes nor are there any guarantees. Most cancer patients come to that same conclusion at some point in their own journey, and that's a good thing. With that realization comes a great deal of peace.