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In December of 2005 I was diagnosed with Stage IV Follicular Lymphoma, which I have been in remission from since May of 2008. This piece represents my experience with the initial diagnosis and the ongoing bloodwork I expect to do annually for the rest of my life.
I have represented the tumors with foam balls of three different sizes, of which there are 80 because P.E.T. scans revealed 80 tumors in me. The two smaller sizes are not accurate to the literal size of the tumors, most of the tumors were smaller, but the two largest foam balls are a literal representation of the size of the two largest tumors detected. I placed the 2 largest foam balls in the figure in the approximate location of where the liver and the heart would be because these were the locations of the two large tumors. I painted the foam balls dark blue to represent the thoughts of dying and death I consistently had for several months.
I printed results of blood work I have gotten over the past decade on sheets of red, blue, and purple paper, cut them into thin strips, and pasted them to each foam ball to tie in the ongoing bloodwork as vein-like structures in the figure.
I covered the figure with a thin layer of wax to provide a skin-like surface that is translucent so that the overall piece can elicit feelings of a body that also reveals the problems that can happen underneath the skin.