Port-a-cath and Heart-a-cath Mugs

port-a-cath and heart-a-cath mugs

Studio Tour

The second annual Yakima Labor Day Artist's Studio Tour is coming up this weekend. This year I'll have new work, including dishes, mugs, bulbs, and sculpture. As I have been cleaning my studio and getting set up for the tour, I realize that a lot of the new work is explicity cancer-themed, including a small batch of mugs inspired by my horrified fascination with the port-a-cath that I had during chemo this year.

heart-a-cath mugs

Cancer Mugs

For those of you who haven't been obsessed with this item all year, or who haven't memorized everything from my many posts about my breast cancer experience over the past 10 months (I just looked it up, I've written 23 posts tagged "cancer"), a port-a-cath is a little device surgically implanted under the skin to deliver chemo. The Adriamycin ("Red Devil" or "Dreaded Red") in the A/C chemo, in particular, is hard on the veins if it is infused via an IV, so it is, instead, infused via a port in the chest. The port-a-cath makes it easier to access the vein for infusion (much more comfortable for me, the patient), and, as I understand it, having the chemo drugs enter nearer the heart means more turbulence in the vein so that the poison moves more quickly away from the infusion site.

port-a-cath mugs

In December, or maybe late November, I had surgery to get the port installed. In May, when I had my lumpectomy, the port was taken out and I asked to keep it because I had been making art based on it all year, but I didn't quite know what it looked like (disappointingly, my port-a-cath was a less interesting object than the ones I used for my clay molds--my friend Amy got one that looks like one I created).

port-a-cath mug

 

Starting in December, I spent 20 weeks hanging out with the folks in the Northstar infusion room for my chemotherapy treatments. The people working there were uniformly great, just wonderfully patient and kind and helpful. They made the experience just that much more tolerable with how they treated us patients. I went into the process scared and worried, and spent a chunk of that time feeling unwell, but they explained things and did their jobs in a way that reduced the stress and anxiety. For this reason, I started thinking about how I'd like to acknowledge their efforts, and the efforts of my surgeon and oncologist, with something I made after the experience.

port-a-cath bulbs

I had started making port-a-cath bulbs earlier in the year. They fit both my mood and anxiety, in incorporating the port-a-cath and the catheter line, as well as fitting the level of effort I felt I could sustain. I didn't want to make art that was all pink ribbons and needles, both because that seemed cliche, but also because that wasn't really my experience (the needle for the port is shaped differently than the kind for a vaccine). The physical object that seemed to capture some of the creepiness and anxiety and strangeness of cancer, and chemo especially, was this thing I could feel under my skin. So I recreated the port-a-cath and added the line of the catheter. As I worked more and more with this imagery, I started wrapping the lines around and through the bulbs themselves in a way meant to be suggestive of getting under the skin.

heart-a-cath mug before glazing

The bulbs were important to me in working through the ideas in winter, but I'm not sure how the nurses at Northstar or my doctors would react to this random art object. A mug seems more accessible, so I wanted to try it. When I was feeling up to throwing near the end of chemo, I threw some mugs with the idea of adding some ports as decoration. Quickly realizing that drinking coffee out of something that was implanted under the skin might be gross, I switched to heart shapes for most of the mugs.

heart-a-cath mugs with the new glaze inside

A long time passed between when I finished building these in May and when I got around to firing and glazing them in August. I'm feeling a bit ambivalent about some of them because I tried out some new glazes that didn't look exactly how I anticipated. Now I'm also feeling strange about whether any of this is something that would be appealing to people who aren't me.

the cat likes my mugs (during glazing)

This weekend's Artist Studio Tour should be a good time to show them and see what people think. Of course, the obvious catch is that if I show them for sale and people buy them, I won't have them to give as gifts to my medical teams, but if people don't like them, I won't want to give them as gifts.

The clay, in just this one mug dunted (bubbled) during glaze firing I don't know why because it should have been the same clay as the rest of these mugs and a whole bunch of other pieces I made with the same clay last year

I also only made eight mugs. It's not that mugs are that difficult to make, but all year I've had trouble with projects that require sustained energy levels within a short period of time. Press-molding bulbs can be done pretty quickly and with minimal effort, surface decoration can be suspended for a few days, and building small sculpture also can be done in fits and starts. But throwing requires a clean wheel, wedged clay, throwing, clean up, trimming at the right stage of drying, attaching handles and decoration at the right stage, and then more clean up. I've had relatively few pockets of time this year where I could rely on having a fully functioning body for long enough that I could commit to mugs.

heart-a-cath mug with new glaze inside, old glaze (that I've used before) outside

Radiation "Boost"

Of course I am hoping that the body problem will be over by the end of September. Today was my last whole breast and lymph node radiation treatment. Starting tomorrow I have a 5 day "boost" of radiation to the tumor bed or the hole where the tumor used to be. This smaller field of radiation should mean that my armpit, throat, and upper chest can start to heal (as long as I don't listen too closely to all the women who say that the two weeks after radiation are the worst). 

setting up port-a-cath bulbs in my studio for the Tour

My armpit is getting very red and irritated. I'd say it looks angry. The rest of my chest looks like a have a sunburn, as predicted, though it looks like I made very strange choices about what I would have been wearing to get this sunburn. Before radiation, a lot of people said "it's like a bad sunburn" and while this might be true, I have never before had a sunburn in this area. My back also has a bit of redness, though I wouldn't classify this as a "bad" sunburn (aside from the fact that all sunburns are bad).

postcard for the Labor Day weekend tour.

During the last radiation oncologist meeting, my doctor prescribed me some topical lidocaine to numb the most painful areas a bit. This helps me forget about the area until it starts to wear off. Unfortunately I am not allowed to put on lotion before radiation, so the morning is uncomfortable. With just 4 radiation days left before the Studio Tour, I'm starting to think that I should be feeling ok this weekend. 

brochure with locations for the 2022 Tour

I hope you consider coming to see me at my studio this weekend. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased at the door (of my house). Tickets get you into the whole tour, all 3 days and all 8 locations. The tour starts Saturday, September 3, from 10-4, continues Sunday 10-4, and again Monday, September 5, from 10-12. Chris Otten and Monika Lemmon will also be showing at my studio, 203 S. 8th Ave, in Yakima.