BC/AD (before cancer / after diagnosis): A poetic timeline of illness for patients and healthcare professionals

In December 2005, I was diagnosed with aggressive, invasive breast cancer. A former competitive athlete, I was shocked but also relieved I was sane. I wasn’t dramatic or attention-seeking, a hypochondriac, or lonely, as my doctor had admonished for five years. I really was really sick. And to think it was my dog who had proven me right. Throughout 2006, I underwent two surgeries, a systemic infection, chemotherapy, and then radiation. I lost all my hair but missed my eyebrows the most. I ballooned like a blowfish. My eyeballs became sandpaper. I contracted a staph infection and was the ugliest Me I could’ve imagined. But I survived. This thesis is a poetic and verse self-narrative of 2006. Using theories of performance, art therapy, autoethnography, Arts Based and transdisciplinary research (among others), I chronicle the hardest days and nights I have ever known. I am surviving.