I was diagnosed with breast cancer on November 19, 2004, six days before Thanksgiving. Two weeks later I had my breast removed and immediately reconstructed with a temporary implant... At the time I wasn..t sure what those two weeks represented but I began to document each and every appointment: the barium drink, the chest x-ray, the bone scan, the cancer surgeon, the oncologist, the plastic surgeon, and even the signing of the surgery papers... Every technician, doctor, nurse and patient in the waiting room seemed more than willing to be a part of the documentation process. Three days before the mastectomy I finally had the time to post an image of ..Mr. Spots,.. who marked the spot on my breast during the MRI... Mr. Spots denoted where my cancer lived.


While going through the process of recorvery, I documentated of the process of survivorship on my blog http://www.softservegirl.com/survivor.html... Taking photographs and journaling my thoughts allowed me to step back and observe myself during the journey to recovery... Sometimes the expression of cancer became too difficult to comprehend, if not for myself, definitely for those who loved and cared for me... Documenting those thoughts and feelings allowed me a place to exist without being embedded in the difficulty of the disease... By having a cyber-home in which to journal my experiences, I found that I wrote not only for myself, but for others as well... I documented an expression of a particular experience that so many could, and still can, understand empathetically... This book is by-product of that time... It has become the archive of my breast cancer survivorship... It is the end of a beginning, and the beginning of a new me..survivor and reconstructed self..who shares these images and words so that my history can be more than a personal reminder.

I have since then published a book of this very journal: ARCHIVE OF A BREAST CANCER SURVIVOR. All proceedes from the sale of the book go to the AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY.

please visit my book at http://www.softservegirl.com/book
..
Adriene Hughes
2006