I Am Alive

I AM ALIVE is a deeply personal work born from the experience of a stage 3 cervical cancer diagnosis, featuring 200 pages of drawings and reflections. It chronicles a 14-year journey through the challenges of radiation treatment, the depths of depression and PTSD, and the gradual, courageous process of reclaiming a fulfilling Life.

I AM ALIVE offers a message of solidarity and hope, demonstrating that healing is possible even in the darkest moments. It also shows the importance of art in the healing process and serves as an important resource for caregivers and medical professionals, shedding light on the emotional and psychological dimensions of long-term recovery that often go unrecognized in clinical settings. Through its intimate exploration of the human experience, this book reveals the enduring potential to find light, rediscover joy, and embrace a meaningful life, regardless of the adversity faced.

Introduction

The doctor clicks her pen, looks down at the worn carpet where her feet follow the swivel of the chair. She doesn’t look me in the eye, “You’ve got stage 3 cervical cancer.”

Then she tells me, in a matter-of-fact manner, “We don’t know if the cancer has spread to your lymph nodes yet, if it has, the survival rate is low.”

I can no longer feel the chair beneath me.

What else is she saying?

A roaring silence fills me.

I am free-falling through the sky.

No parachute. Nothing to hold onto. Is this it? I am 39 years old.

CHAPTER 7

BEFORE

I am alone in the radiation room the night before surgery, (very early the following morning, I have a general anaesthetic to insert the radiation rod inside me). My only companion is the strange persecutor: the silent radiation machine, cumbersome, sharing my room like an unwelcome guest. Its huge yellow & black radiation sticker on its side keeps catching my eye. I wait as the night deepens with my persecutor, alone in this torture chamber. I have to fast. I am filled with dread.

This is it. There is no turning back. I have to go through this.

I sit on my bed, with my legs dangling on the side and draw on my sennelier drawing pad with the oil pastels that I have with me. This is the first time I have ever drawn with oil pastels. I can feel the connection of the act of drawing to the deep terror wading through the flooding waters of my core.

Another hour passes by. And then another hour. I begin to address my soul and declare that, There is no way I can go through this as a physical being. This is just too horrific to be burnt alive 24 hours a day, stuck to a bed for a week. The only way I can go through this is as a spiritual being. From that moment, I decide to see everything as Divine. The tree outside the small window of the radiation room is Divine. The radiation machine is Divine. The radiation is Divine. My tumor is Divine. Anyone who comes through the door is the Divine. All is One. All is Nature. All is God. This is the only way I can go into the burning.

To my persecutor, the silent unwelcome guest, the radiation machine.

You are my greatest terror and nightmare.

Yet I have no choice but to befriend you as your radiation burning will heal me.

For the duration of the treatment, I will take you on as a spiritual being. I will see you as Divine.

It will feel like you are torturing me, every hour, 24 hours a day.

I shall not sleep.

I shall not eat.

You will burn me alive.

I will feel the insides of my body cook.

My body will wait for that dreaded « click».

The click that begins the internal burning.

It will take five years for the sense of a looming death sentence over me, to lift.

Seven years later, I will see a drawing of Sita sitting on a pyre, being burnt alive and I will confidently say that I know that very experience.

For the next 14 years, every time I return to Paris, (a city I once so loved ) will be in dread and fear because the city will be the reminder of my place of torture with you.

Yet in this room, the night before radiation begins. It is ever so quiet. Just you and I. A vigil for us both, before the reckoning.

I will need to see you as the Divine, I will need to see this all playing out as the Divine otherwise I simply won’t get through this.

My mother will tell my brother that when she visits me, my room smells of burnt flesh.

Then when the week is over, your radiation/burning will devastate me completely.

I will lose my mind, my peace, my vitality and my joy.

It will take me years to recover.

However, ultimately, you will save my life.

You will burn away this deadly tumor.

And you will also burn my entire pelvis area and the organs within.

It is because of you that I will have an extension of this life.

For a year after your radiation, I will not be able to fall asleep peacefully.

In the dark of the night, my body will feel that you are there, beside me.

I will want to run

I will be pinned down

There will be no escape

This is it.

You will be my torturer, my grace, my saviour.

We will be one. We are Divine.

I will come out of this alive.

This is my process of surrender.