Off-topic: How would you visualize your cancer?

SisterSledge
SisterSledge Member Posts: 332 Member
in Colorectal Cancer #1
I'm thinking about painting something relating to my cancer, based upon one of my CT scan images (I haven't decided which one). I'm wondering, if you could see your cancer tumors, how do you imagine they look? What color(s) do you think you would see realistically or symbolically?

Comments

  • pete43lost_at_sea
    pete43lost_at_sea Member Posts: 3,900 Member
    #2
    very mean and ugly
    I have a full colour photo, it used to be on the fridge so i knew what exactly i was to beat. the advantages of modern science.
  • SisterSledge
    SisterSledge Member Posts: 332 Member
    #3
    pete43lost_at_sea said:

    very mean and ugly
    I have a full colour photo, it used to be on the fridge so i knew what exactly i was to beat. the advantages of modern science.

    I wanna see
    Can you scan your color photo and post it or email? I'd love to see it! Otherwise, please be as descriptive as you can regarding what the image looks like?
  • John23
    John23 Member Posts: 2,122 Member
    #4
    Can I touch it?

    Wanna see mine? I'll show you mine, if you show me yours!

    (I feel soooooo kinky)

    PMP and SMS

    Stay well !!

    John
  • jjaj133
    jjaj133 Member Posts: 867 Member
    #5
    When mom was dying from
    When mom was dying from uterine cancer, she told me she felt there were little monsters inside of her eating her life away."You know", she said, "like pacman with horns!". Wouldn't make a great painting, but we both cracked up.
    Can't wait to see what you come up with.
    Hugs,
    Judy
  • PGLGreg
    PGLGreg Member Posts: 731
    #6
    A sleeping little puppy, not
    A sleeping little puppy, not intrinsically bad, but who got into an unfortunate place.

    --Greg
  • ketziah35
    ketziah35 Member Posts: 1,145
    #7
    My mom uses the
    My mom uses the visualization that her good cells are packman and they are eating the cancer cells up. We tried to use the visualization of cancer cells exploding, but we preferred packman. It was less violent.
  • maglets
    maglets Member Posts: 2,576 Member
    #8
    ketziah35 said:

    My mom uses the
    My mom uses the visualization that her good cells are packman and they are eating the cancer cells up. We tried to use the visualization of cancer cells exploding, but we preferred packman. It was less violent.

    bear
    my visualization is the Canadian polar bear.....I don't actually see the cancer as much as I see my defenses.....it is the lovely white bear.....

    the bear just eats cancer cells munch munch yumm yumm...a voracious bear

    she is doing such a good job....my ursus maritimus

    mags
  • lisa42
    lisa42 Member Posts: 3,625 Member
    #9
    visualizing
    Hi,

    I love the word "apoptosis" that refers to cancer cells dying off. I literally say the word "apoptosis" and picture little cancer cells popping/exploding open like popcorn popping.
    I have seen pictures of my PET scans on DVD and since mine are all lighting up, they all appear yellowish-red & are round blobs in my lungs and liver. The visual of my red lung tumors pops into my head often & then I just think "apoptosis"- the cells popping and killing the tumor off!

    Lisa
  • maglets
    maglets Member Posts: 2,576 Member
    #10
    lisa42 said:

    visualizing
    Hi,

    I love the word "apoptosis" that refers to cancer cells dying off. I literally say the word "apoptosis" and picture little cancer cells popping/exploding open like popcorn popping.
    I have seen pictures of my PET scans on DVD and since mine are all lighting up, they all appear yellowish-red & are round blobs in my lungs and liver. The visual of my red lung tumors pops into my head often & then I just think "apoptosis"- the cells popping and killing the tumor off!

    Lisa

    love it
    oh Lisa I love that.....good for you

    mags
  • SisterSledge
    SisterSledge Member Posts: 332 Member
    #11
    great visuals
    Thank you all for sharing your thoughts on visualizing cancer :) I especially like Lisa's thoughts on apoptosis and the colors she saw on PET. Hoping more will share here their visuals as I'm still working out how my painting will proceed.
    Janine
  • Buckwirth
    Buckwirth Member Posts: 1,258 Member
    #12
    SisterSledge said:

    great visuals
    Thank you all for sharing your thoughts on visualizing cancer :) I especially like Lisa's thoughts on apoptosis and the colors she saw on PET. Hoping more will share here their visuals as I'm still working out how my painting will proceed.
    Janine

    Doppelgänger
    Galen referred to Cancer as an abundance of Black Bile, back when western medicine focused on balance of the four humors.

    From Wiki:

    *****

    Essentially, this theory held that the human body was filled with four basic substances, called four humors, which are in balance when a person is healthy. All diseases and disabilities resulted from an excess or deficit of one of these four humors. These deficits could be caused by vapors that were inhaled or absorbed by the body. The four humors were black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood. Greeks and Romans, and the later Muslim and Western European medical establishments that adopted and adapted classical medical philosophy, believed that each of these humors would wax and wane in the body, depending on diet and activity. When a patient was suffering from a surplus or imbalance of one fluid, then his or her personality and physical health would be affected. This theory was closely related to the theory of the four elements: earth, fire, water and air; earth predominantly present in the black bile, fire in the yellow bile, water in the phlegm, and all four elements present in the blood.

    ********

    So you could think of cancer as just bad humor (yes, that was a bad joke).

    I also use Doppelgänger, which just means evil twin. After all, the cancer is a copy of our healthy cells, now programmed to do very unhealthy things.

    Lastly I have referred to it as a fiend who is shopping for a house, with the lymph system the roads that are used to travel from organ to organ, looking for a nice place to set up housekeeping.
  • scouty
    scouty Member Posts: 1,965 Member
    #13
    Saw one of mine
    on the screen getting a flex sigmoidoscopy. I had a colostomy bag at the time and they could see my tumor with a flex sig. You're not sedated for it either. It was my primary rectal tumor and since it was an almost complete blockage the wand keep hitting it. They even changed to a child sized wand to try to get past it to "stage me" but they couldn't. That durn thing was on the screen for a long time.

    It was scarlet and that really deep red color that almost looks brown, much deeper in red than the healthier pink just down from it. It was gnarly with some mucous around all the uneven bumps. I used to have dreams about it quite often but not so much these days. If you've even seen one of the tubular plants like irises where they grow new lumps and every couple of years you dig them up and split them, that was the shape, different sizes of many, many lumps. The rest of the area was that sleek pink color and so different. I remember thinking that it didn't look like it belonged and that it seemed like it could just be "pooped out". I didn't like looking at it.

    Ironically now when I get a colonoscopy I don't get sedated and love to see everything all pink and healthy looking. I've also enjoyed seeing how my resection scar has healed almost to the point you can't see it anymore.

    I did the visualization "stuff" too. Mine was pacman also (shows my age) and I would rub the areas of my mets and tell it to "get the f*&$ out of my body, you are not welcome"! My dog and cat hated it when I did that every night.

    I can't wait to see what you come up with Sister Sledge!

    Lisa P.
  • SisterSledge
    SisterSledge Member Posts: 332 Member
    #14
    lisa42 said:

    visualizing
    Hi,

    I love the word "apoptosis" that refers to cancer cells dying off. I literally say the word "apoptosis" and picture little cancer cells popping/exploding open like popcorn popping.
    I have seen pictures of my PET scans on DVD and since mine are all lighting up, they all appear yellowish-red & are round blobs in my lungs and liver. The visual of my red lung tumors pops into my head often & then I just think "apoptosis"- the cells popping and killing the tumor off!

    Lisa

    Hi Lisa
    I've never had a PET scan so I am clueless as to how they look. In the view where you see yellow-red and round blobs, what does the surrounding tissue look like? Is it colored normally or is this a black/white image except for the light-ups?
  • tootsie1
    tootsie1 Member Posts: 5,044 Member
    #15
    Out!
    I don't know how it would look, but I know I would tell it, "Out damned spot, out!"

    *hugs*
    Gail
  • herdizziness
    herdizziness Member Posts: 3,624 Member
    #16
    visualize
    I'm not much of a new age thinker,(I know so very Un-Santa Cruz of me, but we've got enough of them here without adding myself to the pot) so I've never "visualized" it, I saw it during the colonoscopy, it was pretty much what I had read about.
  • lisa42
    lisa42 Member Posts: 3,625 Member
    #17
    SisterSledge said:

    Hi Lisa
    I've never had a PET scan so I am clueless as to how they look. In the view where you see yellow-red and round blobs, what does the surrounding tissue look like? Is it colored normally or is this a black/white image except for the light-ups?

    yellow-red blobs
    Hi,

    The yellow-red blobs (mostly with yellow in the center, becoming red as it moves outward) were not surrounded by any visual tissue- just blackness. If the lungs had been "all clear" on the PET, I believe it would have all just been black. I get PET/CT scans, where they merge the lit up areas of the PET with the solid masses of the CT.
  • pete43lost_at_sea
    pete43lost_at_sea Member Posts: 3,900 Member
    #18
    SisterSledge said:

    I wanna see
    Can you scan your color photo and post it or email? I'd love to see it! Otherwise, please be as descriptive as you can regarding what the image looks like?

    if your brave look in my expressions
    sorry in advance but you asked and I thought what the heck, its not often a cute babe asks to see my butt. the ugly little sucker is living in a jar of preservitive now.

    hugs,
    pete

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