DoVA, Clay Sale, New Work, Last Chemo & Preparing for Surgery

Department of Visual Arts Student & Faculty Exhibition

Back of the DoVA postcard featuring ceramic dragon by Eli Ortega

Next Tuesday, May 3 from 5-7 is the opening reception for the Department of Visual Arts Student and Faculty Exhibition. This show features work from students in Yakima Valley College's online and on-campus art and photography classes from the past year (or maybe two). This year's show includes lots of ceramics and photographpy, as well as drawing, painting, and design work.

front of the DoVA postcard, featuring photography by Hingry Mendez

The art program has had an intensely strange time since the last DoVA student exhibition at Larson Gallery. The Spring 2020 show was cancelled because of the pandemic. The Spring/Summer 2021 show was online, though some work was in the gallery, making it a bit of a hybrid show. This year's show is our first "regular" show since Spring 2019 and our first "regular" show in the new Larson Gallery.

my most recent work, AC Cactus, featured in the DoVA exhibition

I'm calling the show "regular" in quotation marks because it still doesn't feel quite normal. We've been moving our classes slowly back to campus, but I only taught on campus in fall. I've been on medical leave since January, so I feel unusually detached from the goings-on in the department. Additionally, both our drawing and painting instructor, John Bissonette, and our drawing and design instructor, Meghan Flynn have accepted full-time positions out of state and are no longer living in Yakima. Of the four full-time faculty who were teaching for YVC in Fall, only our Photograph instructor, Chris Otten, is still working full-time for YVC this Spring (though I plan to be back in Fall).

New Work

I like how this sculpture looks different from different angles

I finished a couple of sculptures this week. The one I have at Larson Gallery for the student show was started and finished during my chemo treatment. I started building it in January, while I was doing the AC infusions. I glazed and fired it during the taxol infusions and finished putting it together before my 12th and final Taxol infusion. This sculpture isn't about cancer or chemo, like some the work I started building since, but it feels chemo-y to me because of when I worked on it.

thought not all the angles work as well as each other

This sculpture is actually based on the form of an old sculpture (now broken) from college. This version is much smaller, brighter, and with a very different surface, but when I built it I wanted to revisit the old form or shape of the broken sculpture. 

I used another sculpture in progress to hold up this one as the epoxy set.

I knocked off the top section while building this sculptuure and decided it would be stronger if I didn't try to reattach the wet clay at that stage. Instead, I kept the sculpture in two pieces until after glazing and firing. This week I joined the two together using epoxy.

This sculpture was fun to build, to show some techniques for moving the weight of the sculpture out away from it's starting point, but I'm not sure I'm as happy with the finished effect.

I also finished glazing and firing a second sculpture. This one I started building back around June of 2021 when I made a series of time lapse videos of my could building process to use in my clay classes (you can check out those videos at the link). I have more work waiting to be glazed, fired and finished, including a whole bunch of port-a-cath bulbs.

a plethora of port-a-cath bulbs getting their first underglaze coats

Clay Sale

The Spring clay sale was yesterday, April 28, from 11-6 outside of the Palmer Martin building (20). The date for the sale had to be moved up because of YVC's computer system transition to CTCLink that will be happening in May. I lost track of the sale a bit because I am not teaching this quarter. I also couldn't attend yesterday because I was in Seattle getting an MRI and meeting with my surgeon.  I'm looking forward to being there for our next sale in the Fall.

clay sale poster for Spring 2022

Last Chemo & Preparing for Surgery

My last chemo infusion was this past Wednesday! I am very happy to be done and I'm very ready for feeling good next week and having an immune system I don't need to worry about for a while. I was surprised that both my oncology nurse and my surgeon said that I should be basically done being immune compromised as soon as next week, though my nurse reminded me that I can still catch COVID the same as anyone else.

My friend Kelly took me to my last chemo appointment, which made it more enjoyable

Yesterday's MRI showed significant decrease in my tumor size. In December, my last MRI showed the largest dimension of the tumor was 45 mm. That's a bit larger than a golf ball (I just looked it up, the diameter of a golf ball is 42.67mm). Now the largest dimension is just 12 mm, a bit smaller than the length of a peanut (because I had a peanut handy). The MRI also showed no visual evidence of cancer in my lymph nodes.

a peanut, measuring about 15mm, and a bottle of peppermint measuring about 45mm

After the MRI, I met with my surgeon who couldn't feel my lump (we didn't have the MRI results yet at that time). We discussed the surgery plan and there's more to it and it will take more time than I realized. And disappointingly, it also isn't scheduled yet, I'm waiting for a call on that, hopefully today.

my studio assistant, thinking about drinking the glaze water

The surgery will still be outpatient, but they want me in Seattle the day before to place a Savi scout (the thing they tried and failed to put in my lymph node back in February). Then they want me to stay in Seattle the night after my surgery in case there are any complications. The surgery will have two parts. My surgeon will remove the lump with the Savi scout and hopefully get clear margins, meaning there's no cancer at the end of what they remove. She'll also do a sentinel node biopsy, squirting dye into the tumor to and letting it go to the lymph nodes. Whichever lymph nodes have the dye, she'll then remove those as well. She thinks it will probably be three nodes. 

My studio assistant, wondering why I never let her drink the glaze water

After the surgery, the lump and the lymph nodes will be tested to see if the lump has clear margins. If there is cancer at the edge of the lump, they'll need to do a second lumpectomy and take more out. They'll also check the lymph nodes. If they are all clear of cancer, I'm done with that step, but if any of the nodes have cancer, they'll have to do a second surgery and take out more nodes. Apparently just 25% of of the time the chemo gets the cancer totally out of the lymph nodes. That number looks bad for my chances of having a second operation, but I've got two things going for me. First, the tumor shrank a lot and second, they couldn't see cancer in the lymph node all the way back when I had an ultrasound in February. Unfortuantely, we just won't know if I'll need a second surgery (for either reason) until after the first one. In general, there's a 10-20% chance I'll need more surgery on the lump and 75% chance I'll need more nodes out. If I do need a second surgery, it will be a second trip to Seattle (I had originally thought they would be able to test the node and lump the same day and extend my surgery or get me back in the same day).

port-a-cath bulbs, first coat of underglaze

There's yet more possible bad news. If they have to take out a lot of lymph nodes, my chances of lymphedema (chronic swelling in my arm) will increase significantly, by 20-30%. The surgeon recommends, if we do have to take out more lymph nodes, that I have a plastic surgeon do a procedure to reroute my lymph system. This procedure is apparently not covered by insurance, but does reduce my chance of lymphedema down to 5%. We don't need to decide on that now, and I'm going to start by hoping that I'm one of the lucky 25% who don't need to have more lymph nodes out. 

blue port-a-cath bulbs, first coat

The other thing that surprised me about the surgery is the timeline. I had, for some reason, though we were talking about 4-6 weeks between the end of chemo and the surgery, but it looks like it can be just 2.5 weeks after chemo ends. I'm anxiously waiting for a call from the scheduler, because I want to do it as soon as possible. It seems like leaving it alone just allows it to start growing again. I feel fine enough. Though I was kind of looking forward to exercising and taking it easy (and enjoying flavor again soon, hopefully) through the month of May, if given the choice, I'm anxious to move on to the next stage.

port-a-heart bulbs, first coat

I had three appointments in Seattle yesterday, the MRI, the surgery consult with the doctor, and a meeting with the nurse to go over stuff I need to do before and after the surgery. Of course I need to stop eating at a certain point and get a COVID test, but I was a bit surprised how restricted I would be for a week or two after the surgery. I thought the restrictions would be similar to those I had during chemo (no heavy weights, walk but maybe don't run, etc), but apparently they want me doing even less after surgery, no weights, no lifting, the nurse even warned about not moving my arms too much while walking (shrug).

the only glazed port-a-cath bulb

I did get confirmation that I will need radiation and probably 6 weeks of it. We still don't totally know whether we'll do it in Yakima or Seattle. Sean is very concerned that Seattle will have better technology, but we haven't met with the Yakima radiation people yet. It sounds like another set of meetings we need to schedule for May. This brings May's grand total of cancer related doctor appointments up in the range of 6-10 depending on the results of the surgery and when my oncologist wants to see me again (after surgery).