Cancer recurrence in April 2023
Posted on Aug 29, 2024Why did I make this solo performance?
In April 2023 it was discovered that I had a recurrence of Triple Negative breast cancer that was first diagnosed in April 2020. To my great good fortune the cancer had stayed contained within the lymph nodes in my right arm pit. A CT scan showed no signs of metastatic cancer anywhere else in my body, and it was deemed treatable.
The fact the cancer had stayed contained in my lymph nodes is a minor miracle given the aggressive nature of the Triple Negative cancer. I believe it is because I had spent the last 3 years since returning to Wales in 2020, working with my Integrative Health Dr to keep as healthy as possible. I transformed my diet under her guidance and had regular blood tests looking for any imbalances in any of the systems of my body which she (Dr Nina Fuller-Shavel) addressed with various supplements. I have no doubt that because of her meticulous care I have been given a second chance.
After coming through surgery to remove the lymph nodes in my right armpit followed by a gruesome course of chemotherapy which, according to my oncologist, I have come through with flying colours, I decided to create a solo mapping my cancer journey. I have written a short piece about why I decided to make this performance……..
I have added photos from the performance at Rise Festival 2024.
Photo credit: Alexander Williamson
Why did I create this performance about my cancer journey?
Is it to document a crucially important event in my life?
Is it to elicit sympathy from my audience?
Is it to prove my own resilience at coming through the intensity of the past 3-years?
The Rise Festival Artistic Director Karl Jay-Lewin asked me if I would like to present a second solo performance in the universal hall Findhorn, in May 2024. At the previous year’s festival I had performed my piece entitled:
AIRE
Solo for my Mother
This solo was created to honor my mother who passed away in 2012.
When she died, I imagined her spirit rising up to fly freely with the red kites, magnificent birds that are native in her country of Wales.
My mother inspired in me the desire to seek freedom in my life.
This solo is my way of expressing gratitude to all the women who have fought hard for the rights of women.
This solo is an expression of my desire for all women to be free.
Aire evolved over the course of the 6 years that I performed it, incorporating new sections and perspectives as my life evolved. It included the beginnings of my cancer journey in 2020, and the discovery that I was BRCA2, carrying a gene mutation making me susceptible to breast and ovarian cancer that had been passed down to me through the generations. Curiously this fact has created a sense of connection with my ancestors that I have never felt in any real way before, most especially the female lineage, though the BRCA gene mutation can also be passed through the male lineage. Sharing this information in the performance of Aire seemed to provide an important culmination for the solo that honored my mother, which included ironically the fact that it was through her that I had become a BRCA2 person of interest within the cancer world.
Having now come through a re occurrence of breast cancer and the recommended medical treatments that ended in January 2024, I realized that this second performance could be a conduit for sharing the insights I have had about life, death, illness, and wellness over the course of these last few years.
I therefore accepted Karl’s generous invitation and decided to create a follow up performance – Part II, in which I wanted to share the totality of my cancer journey. My motivation for doing so has been to claim my illness, not as an aberration of life, but as a deeply lived, felt celebration of what is a ‘part of life’, albeit a challenging one. I wanted to deepen the investigation through speaking directly to the heart of the issues, cancer, and what it’s like to face a life-threatening illness, which until relatively recently has been a stigmatized and taboo subject, one which continues to create discomfort and fear for many people. I hoped that through sharing my own experience of the life-giving and liberated energy this event has gifted me with, it could be helpful for others, as inevitably we will all have to face the challenges of an ailing body and death as part of our lives. No one is exempt from this.
What kickstarted this investigation was the great surprise I felt when I was first diagnosed with cancer, and through the intensity of the subsequent reoccurrence. Despite the challenging surgeries and follow up treatments I have undergone, I discovered that fundamentally I did not change. I am the same person today that I was before getting cancer. This does not tally with any of the ideas I had previously held about what it means to get sick, be sick, or about people who are ‘sick’.
This was shocking to me and has generated many insights relating to commonly held beliefs about illness which only serve to cause division, suffering, a sense of isolation, and a great deal of fear. I have a hunch that it is one of the main reasons we tend to ‘disappear’ when we get sick and are not heard of again until we reappear miraculously ‘healed’, or via the unsettling news that a person has passed away. This can create an aura around sickness as something that happens outside normal life, generating fertile ground for fearful speculation and avoidance. It can create a sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’.
There are so many unquestioned and vague notions around sickness: sickness seen as a form of weakness; bad karma; failure; bad luck; something to be feared and avoided at all costs. Sick people are seen as no longer able to contribute to the fast-paced societies we now live in. They demand for us to slow down, be patient and, most challenging, they remind us that health is something none of us can take for granted. They bring a painful and disturbing reality into our active lives, which few want to be reminded about.
When I was first diagnosed with cancer, as odd as this may sound, I felt a sense of relief. Upon reflection I realized this was because I had been living with a nagging fear about illness and death that had been my constant albeit unconscious companion. Once I received my diagnosis, through having to face directly into the disease, something tangible that I had to grapple with, the weight of the constant undercurrent of fear I had been living with lifted from my shoulders. In its place I have discovered a well of liberated energy and sense of purpose that has equipped me to undertake this life-threatening challenge.
I believe others might be able to relate to this experience, especially given what we now know about the prevalence of cancer and other diseases, and the poisoned environment in which we exist.
When I was first diagnosed with cancer, I sensed I was betraying others who had viewed me as a role model for my success as a dance improviser, the epitome of health and life-affirming energy. I felt OK about assuming this role and remember the pleasure and confidence I felt inhabiting a strong body and healthy lifestyle. That moment in 2020 when I received the life-changing news I had to deal not only with my own shock and sense of dread as I faced my own mortality, I also had to bear other people’s fears, projections, and ideas around sickness and health. This added to the intensity of the situation, though I understood it to be a manifestation of the unhealthy ways in which we generally view sickness and death in our societies within the western world.
My response from the beginning of this cancer journey therefore has been to speak candidly about my experience through all the stages of my illness and healing, sharing this recent life event just as I would any other part of my life. I have not held back in conversations with family and friends, as well as casual acquaintances and people I am meeting for the first time. It has happened quite spontaneously with a feeling that I have nothing to hide.
What has been so uplifting is that almost unanimously I have encountered a genuine expression of caring from all, as well as a desire to know more about a subject that is rarely discussed directly, more often is mentioned in hushed tones and in relation to ‘someone else’.
These heart-to-heart sharing’s are transforming my narrative around sickness and health, and this is what I want to convey through my work.
The questions I am now asking are:
What are the people that are less able through sickness and other so called ‘limiting factors’ giving to us all? What are they showing us? Isn’t the knowledge they carry crucial at this time when life is clearly showing us that we need to embrace a radically different relationship to life if we are going to survive as a species?
I have been deeply humbled going through this cancer crisis. I don’t know where it is leading me, but I can say unequivocally that it has and is continuing to transform and deepen my relationship with life. I have had the great good fortune to meet many others on this path who have been through or are facing similar life-threatening illnesses and are expressing a kind of joy-filled vulnerability and determination to live that is profoundly moving, and nothing less than heroic. Many are embracing positive life-transformations through dealing with their health crisis’s.
In the light of all of this, my perspective on life has been turned on its head and I am truly grateful for the learning I have been afforded through encountering this disease. It is now my lived experience that I am free of the fear that I had not realised was holding me back from living fully. Holding me back from realizing the full potential of what it means to be a human being who has been graced with the sacredness of life on this miraculous planet.
It is for this reason that I have created this solo performance; to share with others my newly discovered understanding that sickness and death are part of life’s rich learning, which has empowered me/us to embrace this unavoidable part of life with courage and clarity. I am hoping it might help others to do the same, so we can reach beyond the powerful narratives we carry that undermine our capacities to live full and satisfying lives together, through all the many challenges that life throws at us.
Quotes from audience members who saw Subterranéa performed at the Rise Festival May 2024:
It was a delight and honour to present this extraordinary work at Dance North Scotland Rise festival in May. The conversations it stimulated are still going strong. See it if you can.
Karl Jay-Lewin
I saw this in Scotland, and it made me cry with joy for being alive
Rachel Latitia Deadman