It’s easy to get overwhelmed by college when coming straight from high school. I can tell you this though. I am so glad I was as dedicated as I was during my sophomore and Jr. years because at the end of my Jr. year I was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer.
BOOM.
Sudden right, well that’s how it happened to me. It was a hella taxing experience I mean between surgery, chemo, the pain, and medications I thought I would have to drop out of college and just quit everything. It was a pretty bleak time for me. It all literally came to a head during the last few weeks of school. One of my best friends at the time had taken me to the hospital and tried her hardest to help me when she could. I didn’t have insurance and even when I told my symptoms to the doctor I went to see, he didn’t believe me. He Just swore I was probably having “crazy sex” that made me shat my insides out or was pregnant.
What a turd.
Once I wrapped up finals and made it home I fell to the couch. I couldn’t move. My mom came in from work and saw me balled up on the couch holding myself while sobbing on my second day home and knew whatever was hurting me was something bad. She rushed me to a different emergency room and they took everything I told them seriously and immediately started to run tests. The tests were awful but worth it. Because they ran everything they could think of. Thanks to that they eventually found the tumor and were able to get it out.
That’s the short and sweet. That’s how I thought it would all go down. I remember thinking that we are in the future and the surgery would be done through tiny tubes and robot hands. That’s definitely not what happened. I was split from under my chest to past my navel. When I woke up a few days after the surgery I had a franken-belly. Staples traveling down my torso, drainage tubes off the side, one in my mouth (the F*n worst) and a Colostomy bag. That last one was the kicker. I’m sure somewhere in my drugged up haze the doctors said something about cutting my colon up and pulling my intestines through my tummy and needing to go in a bag for a while, but it really doesn’t hit until you literally see it sitting there.
2009 was the hardest year I have ever lived through, but I did it. Thanks to my amazing friends who went out of there way to make me feel awesome and gave me all the support and humor a gal could ask for and a mom and sister who went above and beyond to take the best care of me and keep my spirits high. Above all else, I am grateful for the love and understanding I received from the college community, friends, and family #blessed. Last but not least I am thankful to me because I’m a trooper!
I finished college on time in 2010 after assuring the school I would be able to complete my work. My plan had always been to get all core classes done and take as many hours as I could from the start so that senior year I could art stress-free. Again, I’m glad I took most of my intensive writing and logic classes before senior year. I didn’t put out as much art as I wanted my senior year since I wound up spending huge chunks of time in dreamland escaping the ick that chemo gives, but I did complete what I needed to get done.
My art took a pretty decent turn for the dramatic I’ll say. I had most of the pieces I wanted to show for my Senior Gallery, but I needed a few more. I won’t say everything went smoother because it’s harder to say no to a student who is doing chemo while attending classes, but I was able to push through and get my digital works in my Senior Art Exhibit. The compromise was that I had to have some traditional pieces mixed in with the digital. I could do that. I just had to do some more traditional painting.
Instead of trying to find inspiration outside of myself, I looked towards my current situation. I started to paint my current situation. It was a raw experience that was pretty therapeutic actually. Before the surgery, I wouldn’t have dared showed my belly to anyone. After, I was like:
“Well dang, why not? Every doctor and trainee in the hospital has ripped my clothes off and seen me at this point.”
After having people literally see your insides, having someone look at the outside shell just didn’t seem as much of a big deal to me anymore. Don’t get it twisted though, I’m not flashing the goodies just because, but I’m more at peace with myself now.
Opening day the response was a bit surprising, but not entirely. I had all of these large Afrocentric ladies being beautiful and in the buff alongside these emotional pieces illustrating how I felt using oil paints in various techniques. (pics later). I was having a hard time learning to love what I looked like all over, so it took a lot of me to put myself out on display like that. It felt right though, and it got a lot of folks talking, so I took that as a win. Afterward, I gave a presentation on my work to a packed room and boom. Lady T. completed her four years and got her BFA.
I know that was a long detour to hit when talking about what it has to do with anything, but due to it, I was able to get to where I am now. That year of my life provided the biggest change in attitude I have had since I started middle school and decided that I was going to be more outgoing and outwardly confident.
During everything I went through that year I had large stretches of time to just think (well when I wasn’t on antidepressants [which made me kind of just zone out] or pain meds [which just knocked me out). I thought about everything I wanted to do and would do once I felt better and could do it. I thought about my mortality more intimately. I thought about what makes me happiest in life and how I could do it more often. Turns out the most important thing right after recovery was “me time”.
The following few years I spent my time focusing on myself and getting my priorities together. I tried some online dating, I went on more road trips, hung out with friends more, did temp work to try new things, and got caught up with video games again. Before I knew it I had entered “official” adulthood and had a stable job.
Almost dying totally sucked, but it also was an eye-opener. It made me realize what I wanted to do and what is most important to me. Not what I should be doing based on outside expectations. I’m grateful for that. Once I got the wanderlust out of my body I was ready to get back to doing what my heart yearned to do. DRAW!
Take time for yourself to be yourself.
-Lady T.
