How do you envision your cancer?

When I was in chemo, I would think of the chemo drugs as Pac Man icons going along eating up all the bad cancer cooties in my system. The cancer itself was some dark looming elephant in the room. Well not an elephant but a big looming grim reaper with the scythe running all over from the good guys.

I always thought that on a slide in the lab, they would be big and black. Always ugly, never pretty. Never able to become pretty.

It looks like I was wrong.

"A University of British Columbia professor designed and created 10 dresses inspired by microscopic lab photos of cancer cells and other body systems for a project called "Fashioning Cancer: The Correlation between Destruction and Beauty." Designer Jacqueline Firkins, an assistant professor in the university's Department of Theatre and Film, says she hopes this merger of fashion with science will help create a platform where people feel comfortable discussing "a disease we are all one step removed from.""

 

This is an '...image of astrocytes in the brain [which] work to keep neurons healthy. Green dye outlines the cells' cytoskeleton, while the red dye highlights specific membrane channels. The blue dye shows the cell nuclei. Watching the structural changes that cells undergo help scientists better understand cancer.' It also inspired this dress.

"Mercedes de la Zerda, a University of British Columbia acting student, models a black organza cap sleeve dress with a sheer top and diagonal multicolor organza trim. With this dress, Firkins says she hoped to express that cancer patients and survivors may want to hide parts of their body and showcase others. "You can see through one layer into another. You can show your skin but hide it in another way," she says."

You can see all the images here. The one which comes closest to what I envisioned are the brain tumor images.... Big and black and ugly and looming....

Your life online

In this digital era, we all have an online presence. And it will follow us for the rest of our lives. Once something is posted online, its hard to erase it. You can delete it but if anyone has copied it, it is completely out of your hands.

When I first started blogging I was somewhat concerned with privacy and how open I would be about my personal life. Now I am also on Linked In, Facebook, and more online communities that I can remember. The concern if I ever wanted to look for a job and what if they found my blog and how (un)healthy I really am and would never hire me due to the fear that cancer cooties are contagious or that I might drop dead at my desk?

That never happened. I did look for a job at one point and got it and they still don't know all about my health (and I have not dropped dead at my desk) so I think I am safe.

However, I am careful on line. I do not blast my political opinions at everyone on Facebook. I do not spew profanity laced, misspelled tweets. I try to write articulately so I make sense in my blog posts.

Sometimes I wonder about people who do these things ever wonder about the impression they are leaving with outsiders? I am personally turned off by some diatribes online that I unfriend people or leave groups. I do this also if there are too many unprintable words or enough misspellings that warrants a trip back to high school English class.

This morning I found a good example of this where college seniors are being forced to clean their online profiles so they do not impinge on job hopes. The advice given is don't write anything you wouldn't want a parent or employer to see.

Well I don't really do that because I wouldn't be too happy if my boss read my blog post as I like to keep my personal and business lives separate. But I do write with the knowledge that what wouldn't my mother want to see - she reads my blog and follows me on Facebook - so its really true for me. But it does keep me in line and help keep the profanity level low.