Untitled Document

Sara's Impromptu Art Therapy

"Since earliest times, visual images have helped us connect with our inner and outer realities. Images help us tell our stories. Seeing is a basic and powerful process of thinking that can have the effects of focusing, clarifying, energizing, and calming. Art therapy helps us to experience the act of seeing and offers a non-verbal means of expressing feelings and concers that are often difficult to put into words."

One day, at the end of a particularly long couple weeks (after Sara's surgery and fourth chemo treatment and before her fifth) Sara was having a hard time. She couldn't shake the negative images that were coming into her head. Then, the weekend before she was to go back into chemo she drew the following pictures . . ..

The first one was a picture of what her last experience of the clinic had been. It was a picture full of sadness and discomfort.

After she drew it she showed it to me. Now this was at a time when we were trying to get Sara's positive energy back so she could go back to the clinic, fight the cancer and heal. So I immediately asked her to draw a picture of what things would look like if she were there comfortable and relaxed. Then I asked her to write on the back of both the pages what images and thoughts came to her mind.

The result of this drawing and writting was that she now had some positive images to draw upon and she had found a way to get the negative images out - out somewhere other than her head.

The pictures Sara drew are both below along with the words and feelings she found a way to express after she drew them:

FEAR PAGE

- the whir of the pump

- the beep-beep of the machines fading into darkness surrounded by family, holding my hand waiting, waiting, waiting.

- the food tray:

the smell of food

the inaccessability of food I like

-throwing up

-muzzy head

. . .stingy face

. . .and tight tongue

. . . indegestion.

-measuring my pee and smelling it going to the bathroom in the dark.

- flushing my Hickman-line

- hearing bad news

- getting a fever - getting sick

- aggitated boredom

COMFORT PAGE

- crackers

- Mom, Dad, Brad, Karen, Mikey, Jenny

- foot rubs, hand holds

- Garnet (R.N. @ BCCA)
- Shelly (R.N. @ BCCA)
- Arlin (R.N. @ BCCA)
- Trace (R.N. @ BCCA)
- Barb (R.N. @ BCCA)
- Tracy (R.N. @ BCCA)

- My own toast

- oatmeal

-Therapeutic Touch

- Sarah Sample (BCCA councillor)

- GH (General Hospital)

- Rosie (R.N. @ BCCA)

- My paper and pens

- Pachabel
- Vangelis
- John Denver
- Stan (Rogers) and "45 Years"

- Gypsy (Sara's pony)

This impromptu event also opened Sara up to trying some more healing visualization and image work to go along with her chemotherapy treatments. She had been finding it hard to find an image that she felt safe with after the tumour was removed. While the tumour was there she could imagine the tumour shriking and the colours of the chemo-drugs attacking like little red "pac-men". Two of the visalizations she learned were two qigong meditations and can be found here.