Art, Art Therapy, and Prostate Cancer

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Comment by Jean-Jacques MERMOD on December 18, 2009 at 7:32am

Midnight fishing:
I used to bleed a lot from the bladder (due to a bruising pig tail). At times it would coagulate and clog. I would then call my urologits in the middle of the night for an emergency 'poissons rouges' fishing party.

After a few nights he found a tumour that he excised rapidly. Since then I bless him with a joyful painless colourless, flow.

jj

Comment by Jim Skrypek on November 23, 2009 at 6:16pm

Jean-Jacques,

The gifted imagery that you extract from your situation is stunning and magnetic.
It drifts back to me when the stress of this disease reaches those overload
points that all of us know all too well. I'm a high risk Gleason 9 guy currently
enrolled in a high risk clinical trial. I intend to fight this adversary with every
resource available. This is not the time to let your troops relax. Cancer cannot
steal the smile from your face nor the fight from your heart unless you give it
permission. Sometimes history and art are not good partners. Start every day with a blank canvas.

Jim

Comment by George A. Brown on November 22, 2009 at 1:47pm

Dear Jean-Jacques,
I want to thank you for your drawings as they have given me a window into your sole and a glimpse into my inner self as well. I cannot visually illustrate as wonderfully as you do but I can say "now that shows how I feel or that is the way I see and describe by cancer" You express it for me better than I can. For this gift to me I offer you my gratitude. The path you are taking is a lonely path only fully understood by those who have traveled it. I have yet to travel that road. But, as you travel it, I want to be as near to your side as I can be. The hope that I shall give to you is the hope that you feel my presence with you. I can't physically take on your pain but I CAN let you know that I have experienced pain in my life and understand its loneliness. I bear it beside you, through you and pray that it subsides. I am sorry that I have been absent for several months and have been unable to view and assimulate your most recent drawings but I have been battleing my own windmills of depression, pain and lonliness. I am regaining strength. Keep on attacking it, do not give it even one quarter or rest, keep up your drawings and you have my every hour of support.

George

Comment by Jean-Jacques MERMOD on November 22, 2009 at 6:18am

Tomorrow I start chemo:
Aftrer 7 years of gentle cohabittion with PCa and 3 years of silencing with ADT. PCa has changed drastically: it moved into lymph nodes, bladder, vertebrae and a few ribs. It set our dialogue on the tone of pain. It gave me no option: on top of meditationand visualisation it will give him chemotherpy (texatere).
I hope this will shut him up, your support will also help. jj

Comment by Jean-Jacques MERMOD on May 29, 2009 at 4:55am

Hope: I realized recently that hope was not part of my vocabulary.
Don't worry all of you who are lucky to have hope I am working on it.
Why is it that it feels safer to expect the worst get prepared for it rather than define a reachable hope.
I am a too rational person and hope is somewhat irrational to my narrow brain.
I am also a perfectionist and hoping for the best may leave me in a position of imperfection.
Any way I live on small hopes:hope to be able to see my children and grand children.
Hope that the current radiotherapy will have more than negative side effects.
But the biggest of all allowed hopes is to enter in the next clinical study of Abiraterone. That's my hope it is reachable and rational.

Comment by Jean-Jacques MERMOD on May 23, 2009 at 1:00pm

Thanks Mike
that's a great comment, Yes I want to "retire" and start what you suggest with the loacal patient association.

One note of caution to others: I initially chose my urologist doctor because he was a friend from childhood (small town) and was sure to trust him.
Later during the course of treatment which was not going well I learn't we were not communicating well and he behaved so "guiltyly" that in then end I lost most trust in him and went to another doctor.
I now have a good trustful relationship with an oncologist I chose, We are partnering in managing this PCa.

My lesson: friendship can blind us

Comment by E. Michael D. ("Mike") Scott on May 23, 2009 at 7:15am

So Jean-Jacques:

Trust in one's doctors is a critical part of cancer treatment. Without that trust, you are right, it is only human nature to question the effectiveness of the care provided, and then the insecurity factor has the ability to impact one's immune system!

The base problem you are referring to is thast most people, when intially diagnosed with cancer, know so little about what is really happening, and their primary reaction is "I just want you to get rid of it." So they end up getting treated by the first doctor they see, assuming that whatever he/she tells them to do is the RIGHT thing to do.

Later, of course, they then discover it may NOT have been the right thing to do.

I try to make sure I tell every newly diagnosed cancer patient ... "Find a doctor you really, really trust to talk to." He or she may not be the doctor you want to treat you, but he or she will be the one you go back to all the time to ask, what do you think would be the right thing to try next (if I have to). That way one has one solid physician to trust who may have no interest financially or emotionally in treating you, but who can be solely focused on helping you to get the very best treatment and monitoring your condition.

Here in the USA (and also in other countries like Australia), there ARE helplines that you can call for support and assistance. These may not exist yet in Switzerland. If they don't, I would have thought your employer could have a major role in stimulating their development. Tell them that if they give you a big enough grant you will retire and set up the Swiss national cancer hot line service!

:O)

Comment by Jean-Jacques MERMOD on May 22, 2009 at 3:11pm

Therapeutic choices:
All along our life with PCa we and our doctors are facing therapeutic choices.
For me it was exactly once a year for 7 years.
The problem was receiving information from only one person and not having at the time an alternative source of impartial and valid information, we now have this site.
We desperately need some sort of help line or tumor board.
But how can we do this without taking away from the trust we need to have in our doctors: I fear that if we trust less our doctors the treatments will be less efficacious. What do you think?

Comment by Jim Skrypek on May 16, 2009 at 8:24pm

Jean-Jacques

Your work is truly compelling. Science educates us and affords us a common ground, but art make us one.
Seeing this scary disease through a gifted artist's eyes makes me wonder why we never sent an artist to the moon.
Imagine that perspective.
Love your stuff ...keep on hangin' bangin' and sketchin'.

Jim

Comment by E. Michael D. ("Mike") Scott on May 14, 2009 at 5:00pm

Jen-Jacques:

These drawings are great! You should be exhibiting these somewhere! I bet the European Association of Urologists would love to exhibit them with your story lines at their annual meeting. Go tell the Zometa director of marketing about them!

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