Greene Light

Redefining My Life

2012-01-24T21:03:00.000-08:00

Almost 8 years ago my life changed forever when I was told 4 simple words; "It looks like leukemia". Two years ago my life was forever changed again when I decided to embark on a two year long journey back into the walls of Kosair Children's Hospital, a place that forever haunts and engages my memory on a daily basis.

I wrote this blog originally as a response to my friend Elizabeth Lauer's very sweet review of my exhibit and well me as a person. No matter how many times I have fallen she has always been there for me. I love her so much. And I am so proud to call her my friend.

When I began to write this, it wasn't going to be such a long blog post, but then as I was writing I started to remember more and more of my own personal accounts working on the project. As Liz gave a brief summary of what I personally did as a photographer to work on it, I relived many of the life changes that happened as a result of the project. Life moments that I had to face in order to execute it. Personal pains of a very real truth, people die. The hurdles I had to jump through during this project all the while learning to cope with my diagnosis of bi-polar disorder. Not understanding how important is was to take care of myself, and what happened to me when I didn't. The things I learned as a result of failing over and over again while working on the project and in fact my life in general over the last 22 years. And all the while noting how I wouldn't have been able to pull myself back up over and over again if it wasn't for the people who helped me along the way. Whether it was failing to shoot a story properly at first, personal life, or financial situations…this was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.

I choose to be so detailed about it all because for one, I know that means less people will read it, leaving me the confidence to know I can be as honest and open as I want too. Not just that, this was two whole years of my life, something I rearranged my entire life around to finish. I also know that if you were to continue reading till the very end, you had questions and hopefully I answered. And writing the response to Liz turned into a personal recollection of everything I learned and went through to learn it. I reached back in my memories to the time frame in which I met Miss Lauer, in college at WKU, where the photo bug dug deep into my skin. I reached back even further, this was four years in the making before I ever got to Western. I knew I was going to do something I was passionate about when I got to college. Looking back on the project, it's practically a miracle I was able to pull this off.

But back to the story Elizabeth wrote about.

I think when I threw that word leukemia around it was really the word cancer, which is a lot more jarring than saying leukemia. It was to shock people because I know what that word means to everyone else. To other friends I was much closer with in college were conversations that were in no way using the cancer word carelessly. Shocking people was a defense mechanism. By using the word carelessly to act like having cancer was 'No B.D.' made me feel less vulnerable to any emotions about that time in my life.

I was still very much so, up until I actually returned as a former patient, a disgruntled cancer patient who was no longer physically sick. It was after all the only reason I decided I wanted to be a journalist and later a photographer.

Back then, I arrogantly thought it was somewhat humorous when people had talked about doing stories on people with cancer. However, I do want to note it was only referring to the kinds of stories that had no range of emotion that were just stories about kids with cancer. No other story than just a kid who is sick.

Cancer is a journey, a beautiful and tragic journey. The range of emotions you experience and powerful life moments of triumph and truth. The lessons in life are profound. Cancer is a gift to the survivors who let it be one. Cancer is tragic, people die. Yes they do. And that is a sad truth. However, the amazing truth is that are more kids that are surviving than who aren't. The new thing is that kids are now surviving. I've been cancer free for almost eight years, others so much as 25 and 30.I wanted people to see all of that. I wanted to include the story that goes along with having the disease. Thing is that's so fascinating, everyone's experience is so different, yet the same.

I do have to thank someone or a group of people shooting from a different perspective than I saw things. Each serves their purpose, even I'm willing to agree that sometimes we (those speaking on behalf of fighting cancer) have to tug at people's heartstrings in order to get people to really care and urgently help. Those stories that made me uneasy as a patient helped form the ideas in my head about what I felt was something I could add to the discussion.

As I'm writing this I realize that there is no right or wrong way to shoot cancer, because there are so many ways to tell it. Everyone sees it in their own way, and there are so many things you can choose to focus on.

I think a lot of the frustration when I was a patient and seeing things on TV that I felt was merely highlighting all the bad aspects. It has to do with how desperate I was to never feel weak during treatment. Anything that was aimed at continual images of the pain, it made me angry. It was a reminder when I was sick how serious it all was, that it was cancer. I was too afraid of being scared that I never wanted to think about how serious anything was, I made jokes about it.

Shaved my hair into a mohawk, I don't have the picture anymore because I gave it to a former nurse, but there is a picture of me out there where I'm literally smiling when my hair was being shaved off.

For example, when I was told I was supposed to be having a transplant (something we had already known 3 family friends to die from) I said, "So….where's my xbox?" It was a joke because I had been asking for an x box for about a month casually. I didn't actually expect one when I asked him this, it was just my way of joking about the fact it was such bad news that an expensive present should be expected. My whole family laughed, and that made me happy. We had been doing this whole deal for about 7 months; we had to just learn to roll with the punches. I didn't want them to see me panic. The idea of transplant was terrifying. Luckily, I ended up having an appendicitis, a very rare complication of chemo. I know hearing the words lucky with complication sounds like an oxymoron statement but that is so far from the truth. Because of that complication, which I didn't realize how big of a deal it was until I went in for my last surgery to remove the line from church, the guy looking over my chart saw that and says, "Oh that was you, I remember hearing about that." Because we got so lucky that I made it through that they didn't want to go through with a transplant until I relapsed. Pretty much everyone thought it was inevitable, went to the doctor once a month for a couple of years. My doctor said that the extra round of chemo would fix how my chromosome grew back in an awkward way and it did. I have yet to relapse since. And the odds of my survival were about 50%. I'm not too worried about a relapse these days as I'm about to hit my 8 year mark. Every time I get sick though, which hardly ever happens, I am always oober cautious about any sign that I might relapse. It doesn't cause a massive break down of fear anymore. I think I've come to terms with the fact that if I ever do have cancer again, I see no reason any more to fear relapsing. If it happens, it happens.

Crazzzyyyyy stuff.

However, as Dr. B (Bertaloni) has said, "Every time a child is diagnosed they want to know the percentages of survival rates. Is it 40%, 60%...my response is always this. No one is ever 40 or 60 percent alive".

The way I shot something as a former patient though is merely a slice of a slew of people's version of the story, each adding to the discussion of the topic. Mine just happens to be that of a survivors perspective.

As I said in my speech during my artist talk at the Kentucky Museum of Arts and Crafts where the show was being displayed; I can tell you about: thick needles being inserted into my spine, painful muscle shots with extremely long needles in my thigh, losing all my hair, passing out in the elevator because I was being hard ass and refused a wheelchair that day, my skin becoming so cracked and dry from chemo therapy that it made it hurt to stand on my feet and even bleed, not being able to taste food properly because my taste buds disintegrated, how awful and lonely spending even just 6 hours in a hospital room by yourself is, how frustrating it gets at a certain point when you're living in the hospital for months at a time, spending weeks without eating anything so much as saltine crackers and sprite because I literally couldn't eat anything else without puking and even so I still puked, how humiliating it is to have to wake your father up in the middle of the night to change your sheets because you're getting so many fluids that you wet the bed, how uncomfortable it is to have a fever of 104 and have your nurse make you pull the covers off and get down to your sports bra and shorts, turn the thermostat down to 60 degrees and then cover your entire body in cold wet rags. The list goes on.HOWEVER, when I look back on those moments I use it as motivation for what I've gone through to overcome the next big challenge I face.

“Suffering, I was beginning to think, was essential to a good life, and as inextricable from such a life as bliss. It’s a great enhancer. It might last a minute, but eventually it subsides, and when it does, something else takes its place, and maybe that thing is a great space. For happiness. Each time I encountered suffering, I believed that I grew, and further defined my capacities – not just my physical ones, but my interior ones as well, for contentment, friendship, or any other human experience.” -Lance Armstrong

When I talk about Kosair Children's Hospital I mention my nurses and my doctors and how amazing they are first foremost before any of that other stuff. Who remarkably are still there for me. I talk about the support from my family. I talk about the pranks that were played, late night cosmopolitan quizzes, watching movies with my nurse Paige at 1am, wheelchair races, the families you meet and lean on, nurses that will stop at nothing to get you to smile and let you know they love you. My loud and crazy end of chemo party complete with whip cream and squirt gun fights, haven't in the last two years seen an end of chemo party that Kosair throw like mine.

(my former nurse Nicola, an amazing human being and the biggest sweetheart I know)

Moment's like those are so powerful when going through something so tragic that they outweighed the bad, at least for me. And that was a big thing I wanted to offer when I came back in the way it was for me. And I wanted other people to see what the staff and I see, so that they could possibly not be afraid to be around them and provide the same.

Liz is definitely not the first person to challenge me on whether I had cancer or not because of the way I've chosen to lead it in the last 7 years after I was done with chemotherapy. I mean how many of you all actually know children who've had cancer. It's not THAT common, but still is the leading cause of deaths in children next to car accidents. However, I've still met hundreds of survivors, literally over a hundred childhood cancer survivors. Each one leads their life in very different ways after having cancer.

Quite a bit of us who are survivors, in my experience, laugh at the expectations people hold near and dear to their hearts about what someone chooses to do after they survive. Hate to disappoint you, but it didn't make me an angel. I resented having cancer for a while because of that actually. Resented those who felt they had the right to critique ME on how I choose to live MY life after SURVIVING a disease I had NO CHOICE in getting and NO CHOICE on whether or not I survived. Admittedly I resented myself too, I felt so guilty about being alive. That photo below is my fuck cancer photo. I was fresh out of chemo for about 3 months when this was taken.

Ha and I'm sure that me saying that in the photo lab was also my crazy 18 yr old way of saying, 'I got this' when it came to doing tough things (photo) and still having fun (partying). WKU was more excitement and energy and fun than I had ever experienced before that. In high school I was the one who was known as a teacher's pet and always had the right answers to questions in class. Friday nights were spent working on Biology homework.

When I got to WKU I immediately got distracted from every goal I set out for when I went there. And with my enthusiasm for life and new things, I like to soak up as much of it as possible. Pushing my body and myself to the max in effort for fun. Me like so many other cancer survivor friends, we take having fun very seriously. Not all, but a lot of us party like there's no tomorrow because for us the reality that their very well may NOT be a tomorrow, is unbelievably real. So shoot let's have fun! I'm more articulate these days about explaining this to people. Luckily partying has a different definition for me today and binge drinking (even if so up until recently) are not my only means for fun. Particularly as I get older, and hangovers more severe.

I think there was a reason more than just my priority of partying, but the way I used to treat my body and not take care of myself, that made Liz suspicious to cancer being real in my life. If your given a second chance at life why wouldn't you take extra care of your body. It's a fair enough question. I would stay awake for days at a time, spending unhealthy late nights in the lab. I think a lot of people thought I was goofing off, and admittedly I was a lot of times. In between though I soaked up more information in three semesters and created enough of a foundation to learn to teach myself. If there was a photojournalism program in Louisville I would've done that, but it wasn't possible for me to continue the project and go to school in Bowling Green. Except for late at night, there still was always something going on (even if it was less than there used to be). I liked sleeping in the lab because I would wake up thinking about photography. I started to become obsessed my second semester of school with photography. I was still doing both though and that's what was wrecking my body even more. I would work hard in photo then I would party harder and going out taking pictures at the same time. That was when Brian Masck, my basic photo teacher, finally stepped in and let me know his concerns. Before I was to finish my freshman year he would tell me something on the last night of teaching at WKU that shook me. He said to me, "Paige, if you keep living the way you are and how you are. You're going to end up killing yourself. I mean if you're wanting to get to the serious truth, that is whats going to happen to you." The summer after that conversation was when I started to work very hard, the first time, to make some solid changes in how I treated my body. Then I started to get the ball rolling on getting access at Kosair.

I'll never forget that conversation Liz and I had at McDonalds over pancakes. I wanted to know why she was dressed so fancy for it being in the morning and she wanted to know why I was not taking pictures. Liz has high expectations of people. "It's OK to take a semester off to save for a car or whatever. But it's not OK to just sit around all semester and pick your nose." She continued on about the importance of me going back to Kosair because not everyone can just walk into Kosair and get a story.

That's not exactly how I got access, it definitely was something I had to earn and be crafty about. I approached the child life specialist the summer after my first year at WKU when I didn't get the internship I wanted. The idea was to shoot something there about it and she said she would talk to the art therapist. I never heard back.

I had a back-up plan. I was going back to my old cancer camp anyways to volunteer, and I would find a story there. It happened by chance really. I had been hanging out with the nurses at the nurse's station to get some medical photos. The nurses station is where they administer drugs, chemo, or take care of any patient that needs attention when going to camp. During what is called "horizontal time" where every camper is to take a nap as a break from all the activities that happens each day. I happened to be hanging out there and Abby, one of the nurses and I decided to take naps there.

We had both been drifting off to sleep when the phone started ringing. Neither of us wanted to answer the phone when it started ringing so we both heard the answering machine message from one of the camper's mother. She left a message saying there was a family death and she would be picking him up early to leave. It was a mother who I had been introduced to by one of the nurses as a former camper to ease the parents nerves as their child was only 6 and going to be away from home for a week.

Every year there is one absolutely adorable 6 or 7 year old that captures the heart of everyone. And this year it was little Shawn Bowen. He reminded me of a little boy who I was friends with when I was sick, his name was Sean as well and he was six years old as well. Sadly he died during a stem-cell transplant due to complications. Later that night, I was hanging out again with them and I was there to hear one of the nurses Nancy talking on the phone to his mother. She was telling him what a BLAST he was having at camp. The goal of the camp is to have a non-stop day of fun for every child who is a camper there. You can go back as a camper as many years as you want, even after your no longer sick, until you're 16. That place is amazing.

I then heard the change of heart his mother had. She would be picking him up on Sunday at the end of camp instead of getting him early. She wanted him to have fun before he started chemo on Monday.

I immediately shot up and said to Abby, "That's my story!" Sunday at the bus stop where the parents pick up the kids I went up to Shawn's mother and offered to drop photos off of Shawn from camp that week. Meet them at the hospital to give it to them. I hung out with them and talked for a while. I had my camera in my backpack but never actually taking any photos or even brining it up. At least not until when we were parting ways I mentioned showing up tomorrow and taking pictures of treatment. She agreed enthusiastically and the next day I showed up camera ready.

On the last day of camp I had said to the nurses, "You know, I think I'm ready. Ready to be involved in the cancer community again. You know I'm not that kid with cancer anymore. It's time to put it to use."

On the first day I started shooting I'd run into an old friend from when I was patient. Lizzie Wells, someone whom I always looked up to when I was sick. She was so strong, appointed, and loved. I also knew one other thing, she rarely had family stay with her when she was in the hospital. A place she practically lived in and out of her whole life. It didn't take me long to figure out that he days were numbered. After the first day of running into her I hung out with her for a month up until her last waking moment before she passed on August 29^th 2009.

It was a profund moment in my life. Never in my life have I experienced a friendship as I had with Lizzie. I had the priviledge to hold her hand during her last waking moments, to tell her how much she meant to my life to say goodbye. On the way to the funeral I was given a paper she had written on the reflection of her life at 18yrs old. She talked incessantly about wanting and deserving and having the right to be treated normally. The right to be treated like everyone else. She also noted that she felt like it may never have happened. It was in those thoughts, one's that I could relate to, that provided the inspiration for what direction I would take the project in when I would come back in 6 months.

In the time spent with Lizzie I met an entirely new staff, along with reuniting with old nurses and staff. I grew to know that it was more exhausting staying with a patient than when I was actually a patient. And when I went back to WKU that semester I eventually came to decide I would take a semester off to save for a car that you need to take the next photo class I was scheduled. Don't listen to Liz, you need a car. I also felt that I needed to take advantage of the fact that I had access now, and a more direct idea of what I wanted to do.

I didn't think it was ballsy, it just seemed logical. I had access and had no idea how long it would last, and it was a huge opportunity to tell a story. I talked with friends about my plans and dreams. It was going to happen, I had envisioned doing something like this since I was 15 years old, it never occurred to me that it wouldn't happen. I knew it was going to happen, but I did not know how hard it would be on me to actually execute.

Starting all of this was what I needed a push on. Liz was right about it needing to be done. She said that people needed to know about it, she suggested do a short portrait series and freelance it to the Courier Journal and write a short story about each kid. I already had notes and notes and notes about what I wanted to do at Kosair during my semester off, it was just actually making the commitment to it that scared me. Who's to say I was going to do it right? Nevertheless I started despite my fears because Liz told me so and Liz used to scare me. She'll put you in your place if necessary and everything she writes about me and how I was is true. How we've both grown to accept one another over the years and have her cheer me on was something I would never have imagined my freshman year of college. We have come to know one another and understand where one another comes from, accepting each difference at face value. And the story of our friendship is rare and hard to come by.

The art therapist, Emily Johnson, I never heard back from I ended up meeting when I was with my friend. On the last day I was there before I went back to WKU. Emily gave me a Tibetan healing bracelet and her business card. She said to call her if I needed anything. I remember when I finally contacted her and started brainstorming with her about what was going to happen. I came up with the idea to shoot something that would be in effort to bridge the gap between those who have never been through cancer and those who had. I had all kinds of doubts and fears. I found this quote from my hero Christine Amanpour, "There are certain stories you do and they make you think again about what you are doing and why you are doing it. And they make you realize this is serious and important and you by the way you cover a story or tell a story define the way the world sees that story. So you BETTER do it right! You better know what you're doing!"

Yet again, I couldn't help but think who's to say I was going to do this right? I told her my doubts over and over again and she finally one day stopped me and said, "You are one of the most self-critical people I have ever met in my life. I need you to trust in the process. Don't you think we can learn about this as we go along?"

I still thought no because you only get one chance and there was no learning as you go along in my head. I just started shooting, hoping and praying that the photos looked cool and that I wasn't screwing the whole thing up. It's actually how I felt the entire two years working on it. This is why I almost gave up on so many times. I managed to continue only because of how amazing the people of Kosair truly are and being so passionate about letting people know about this place.

I decided to follow around an amazing 10 year old boy named Noah Mancuso. I bonded immediately with him over discussions of music. He had such sophisticated taste for a ten year old. I decided he was the coolest 10 year old ever. Meeting them was what changed my original idea of a portrait series to follow them around. I thought the exhibit was going to open in October of that year and I figured this was enough time to do a photo story on him. Plus, I felt like it was important for people to see a story of what happens too. He was also hilarious. I immediately clicked with the family. The Mancuso's embraced my presence and the cause of doing the story. I loved being around that family, I cherished every moment. The moments like going to the ball park to watch Noah play out in Henry County, getting to know the community had to be favorite memories from 2010. It was such a blessing each moment of normalcy I got to see Noah experience. I love that kid in a bigger than life size way. Spending 8 months taking part in witnessing his journey through cancer builds a relationship with your photo subject in ways I wasn't prepared for.

There are a lot regrets about shooting the story on Noah that I had to come to learn to forgive myself. I was 20 yrs old when I started working on it and as time went on, I kept thinking more and more what I wasn't doing right. I became so close to the family that it became harder for me to notice the important things, or figure out a way to shoot the story authentically without having affected the situation. I still stuck it out until his end of chemo party celebration but internally my heart was screaming for me to stop. There were I believe 4 children who I came to know at one point in time, even if the conversation we had was a handful of times, had passed away. It all continued to wear on me. I was reliving my experience again. And even so following someone around who is leading their own life and me merely taking pictures of it, you don't get to live your own. I was done with it, I couldn't take it. I took another semester off from school, decided I didn't want to be a photographer anymore, and thought hey I can be a nurse. Because despite all that pain I did relish in being able to be there for the families. However before that was to begin and go back to school I was going to have one more semester to blow off some steam and rage hard. Liz and I lost communication; I had pushed her far from being in my life. I had always had the impression that Liz was not just bossy but judgmental and so I wanted nothing to do with her being in my life.

I started binge drinking every night of the week once I turned 21 in September of that year, the car I bought in May of 2010 was now instead of being used to work on the project or see Noah was now spent riding my car 20 minutes from my parents house to the opposite side of town to hit the bars. It's amazing how being drunk makes everything seem OK. I was waking up in my car during freezing weather with the spare blanket I kept in my car because I knew every time I went out drinking I was going to be too drunk to drive. I'd wake up in places that I didn't know where I was with instructions on how to get back to my car. I even woke up to find I was being taken advantage of. Inventing things with drinking buddies known as 'Black out Tuesdays' where you literally drink until you blackout. Not to mention the difficult task of getting kicked out of bars for being too drunk. That car I bought got wrecked because I was driving home from a friend's house in an ice storm at 5am the weekend before school started, just being plain reckless, I wanted to go out one last time before school started. It's ironic that the reason the roads were so bad was because I was waiting around until I sobered up.

Interestingly enough I started to bring my camera with me during this time and documented my life. When I started doing that I grew to shoot what I personally liked. Why the hell should I care whether these photos are up to par with standards of others if I don't want to be a professional? My personal style of shooting actually grew the most in that time.

I say all of this not because I'm at all proud, but because it was the reality for the 2^nd semester I took off from school. The reality of how incredibly lost I was, the reality of what giving up looks like. And during this time I slowly started to forget to take the medication I'm prescribed to treat bi-polar disorder on a regular basis, which makes it ineffective. I didn't understand the seriousness of needing to take care of myself, nor did I understand how key taking my medication was in order to do this. And alcohol abuse is a very common side effect.

These days I am very adamant about remembering to take it every day, knowing the consequences of doing otherwise. Just a year ago, I was completely clueless. Photo had also defined my life and was the only thing I had ever wanted, and what was I to do without it? And who the hell do I deserve to be in life if I can't complete that project? What kind of person like me even deserves to be a part of these kids' lives? I just stopped caring, I hated myself.

I did what I did before, party like there was no tomorrow. However this time it wasn't partying; it was numbing every bit of heartache I didn't want to deal with. I'd check in with Emily via email telling her I hadn't forgot about the project, that I was just taking a break but I honestly didn't think it was going to happen. I would say it would be finished but never actually did anything in that time.

Frankly by December my depression became so severe that I didn't even want there to be a tomorrow. My Dad finally confronted me about my behavior, asked me if I was taking my medication. I said, no. He asked why. I said, I don't know. He said, OK good answer. He finally said that if I was going to be a party girl then I'd have to start paying rent, that there would be no point of taking out all of these student loans to get an education if I was just going to continue to party.I note such a personal conversation because bi-polar disorder is an added struggle in my life on top of being a survivor. Learning to deal with it takes time and practice once you become aware of it. I had only been diagnosed earlier that year.

It's interesting, I threw any notion of religion or faith out the window when I was sick. Abandoned all thoughts of prayers and devotion, I knew no amount of praying was going to take it away. Instead I started asking questions. The main one being, why in the world did I survive? Subconsciously I refused any sort of faith until I would find the answer.

I came close to dieing a couple of different times, I didn't even need the transplant. Why did I make it through and my friends didn't?

I finally found it when I returned to Kosair and stayed with Lizzie. I felt God for the first time in my life. Everything that happened in my life to not only make being present possible but also prepared to carry the burden of pain in exchange of friendship, it all just seemed meant to be. It made me see and trust that everything happens for a reason. Knowing that is where I found faith.

Upon my trudge back to reality I ran to different nurses and staff members I respected and trusted who understood me and what I was going through and asked for advice. One of the first conversations was with my former nurse who no longer worked on 7 west but still worked at Kosair. Every once in a while we'd have lunch when I started going back to school. JCTC is two blocks away from Kosair Children's Hospital. One afternoon I just kept saying how I, "didn't care". The sadness of my voice was practically dripping from my mouth. She just looks at me curiously concerned and says, "Are you taking anything for that?" See the thing is that it's not uncommon for patients and staff members who work there to be put on anti-depressants. She continued on with how she understood about how hard it is to be up there, after all she doesn't work on that unit anymore for the same reason. After a while most people can't take the sadness that does still happen up there. I think that's also why I'm not ashamed to say I take medication to help keep my life together.

I just poured my heart out to her for an hour and a half, telling every detail of what was going on. About how miserable I was, she listened and listened. Then talked and talked and advised and encouraged. I later wrote her a letter about sincerely taking care of myself and thanking her for that time she took to help. I'll never forget the response back when I asked her about how bad things seemed to her, "Well, honestly things sounded not great. You didn't really appear to care if you lived or died that day. You were consumed by drinking... It appeared that you were just okay living in a cardboard box. You also didn't give yourself any credit when it came to your potential in regards to school and your photography. So I am glad to hear that you are much more reasonable and logical now. Thank goodness for medications--you need to take care of yourself. Be all that you can be--you have amazing potential and also are on the same wavelength as a very needing population. You can and I am sure will make a huge difference in the lives of others. Keep up the good work!!"

I share this just to show how strong the bonds between me and the people who used to take care of me are. It was this support on such a personal level that kept me coming back to the commitment I made. Emily really went out on a limb and trusted this would all come together. She was there in the same way. If I was going through something, and a lot of times it'd be issue outside of the project or was sad about something or even mad, she would sit and listen before each shooting day that I needed it. Then pull me back and say, "Alright, now let's get to work". As I look back on this support, there was no way the project would have happened. There would have been no motivation, because I was so young when I started it. I needed support not in shooting pictures, I can do that, but I needed help dealing with how projects affect your personal life if you let it. As Abe Lincoln said, "I am success today because I had a friend that believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let them down".

It still took about 3 months before that to get my feet on the ground. To start taking school seriously and taking my life seriously again. I went to live with a friend for a month sleeping on his couch because I also couldn't stand living at home anymore. I started to search for a job out in the highlands that would be within a comfortable distance from home that I wouldn't need a car. I got a job and then I took the money I got from the wreck and my tax return money and put a down payment on an apt.

Liz and I finally communicated again after I wrote a blog post about the day I was diagnosed in honor of my 7 year anniversary and posted it on facebook. I came to find out she was not judgmental at all, just very concerned. She told me she was impressed by how well written and detailed it was. And then she asked, "So how's the project going?" I told her I had been brainstorming, which at that point was true. I started going back to Kosair at that point, meeting new families learning about their experience while goofing around during arts and crafts. We finally met for coffee to make an initial effort, before the countless effort she made on her own after I gave her the photos to edit the story from last year to send to the printer and have that set in stone.

I remember another conversation this time at Qdoba after we were done looking at photos and I was finishing my meal. I had just been fired from the job I got out in the highlands (a week after I signed the lease for my apartment). They told me there were too many little things I was doing wrong and the only reason they ignored them for 3 weeks because I had been working so hard. And so they let me go.

I was so fed up with loosing another job because I wasn't cut out for it and in desperation to do something I was at least decent at and get paid for I said, "Alright look I understand I am a HOT MESS right now, but what would it take for you to hire me." Her response, "Well is this like you do normally saying you want to get better then you do for a little bit and then you go back to your old ways and then get better. And continuing this cycle of behavior you have. And if it isn't then I'm not saying it's impossible but you've got a lot of work to do. For one, you have to keep a job for a year. Stop swearing you sound stupid when you do and I sound stupid when I do. You have to make the effort to dress more together, I'm not saying you have to J. Crew it up but you should at least appear to be clean. And you have to learn how to put the people you are shooting first above everything else. Basically you need to grow up and act like an adult."

I didn't necessarily start to change to get a job with Lizzie Loo photography, I changed because I wanted to start doing things right for once in my life. I knew that doing all of those things would help keep me at a job. I was also scared for my life. I remembered that conversation Brian and I had the night before he left WKU.

I was at the brink where I could either step left to safety or step right and go over the edge. I had always considered myself self-destructive but this time the reality of it and the consequence for doing so was frightening.

It took me a few more weeks to actually let it all sink in and that's when I started to finally make big, big, big changes. I realized I had to stop dealing with life at the bottom of a bottle, I couldn't continue to work on this project and have it be successful otherwise. There are only so many times you can grab a bottle of rum to make yourself feel better about a child dying. I mean I came to do a project knowing that this is what happens, and I had to learn to cope with it. Not just that, but those kids who are there look up to me in ways that I was immaturely unaware of. They noticed when I wasn't there.

Liz invited me to church with her on Easter and so I agreed. Partly the reason why I agreed to go to Church with Liz was because I was desperate to try anything that was different from what I was doing. I found some sort of solace in the time spent there. A desire and compulsion to do better for myself came about, a calming feeling that everything was going to be OK. And this Church, The Avenue, was nothing like I had experienced with a church before. They encourage before any denomination to follow Christ. The practices of his life and teaching love and compassion. Teaching forgiveness, which I needed for myself. It was just such a free spirited approach to worship, and if you've ever met me you know free-spirit is the right approach I need. I work on Sundays now and the time to go doesn't fit in with my schedule but going there was in effort to do something different. And something different worked for me.

I finally decided to stop drinking bout three church visits later and really started to reflect on my life and try to grow. Trying to look at my life and see what went wrong and why it went wrong. I had to figure out why I wasn't succeeding, because every time I had taken a step in the previous 5 months I fell on my face. I found another job about two weeks after I decided to quit drinking. I am so thankful that Dittos gave me a chance to grow as a server and employee. And I spent the summer of 2011 "in sobriety", completely focusing on myself and working on myself, learning about myself. No dating either. Learning about what MY part was in my problems and resentments in life and then finding a solution. It was a key part of what I learned in sobriety, to always take inventory of my own actions. That was what helped me the most I think.

I'm no longer "in sobriety" but I make much better decisions these days when it comes to my personal health and keeping commitments. I still have the same job, and now I'm on my 3^rd semester of school and have almost raised my GPA a letter grade from when I was at WKU. In the remaining time of 2011 up until October I set aside every Wednesday or at least just about every Wednesday afternoon to volunteer and to take pictures. There were times when I was shooting the portraits where I felt as if they were awesome and then others I was like, WTH am I doing. Nonetheless I continued to work on it and Emily continued to encourage me and introduce me to families. I'll be honest at times I did not want to be there. But I was going to finish this and I was going to do the best I could.

Not just that, but even when I was frustrated there would be something a child would do that was so endearing, so joyful and funny that I couldn't help but smile. Something so frustrating as a child who was only willing to pose for six photos before she absolutely refused to take pictures. I'd take a moment, step outside and cool off before coming back in. I'd be greeted by the same little girl jumping in my arms, and nuzzling her cute tiny bald head into my neck and telling me she loved me. How could I stay mad? While I didn't get to take as many pictures of her as I wanted, I spent the rest of the afternoon helping do something she wanted to do, painting.
I luckily got one out of the six that was useable before she ran off.

I'd have to constantly remind myself to have patience. Working with children takes a lot of patience. See as the baby of my family I never grew up having younger kids look up to me. So being around a child as an adult I had to learn that I need to be a good role model for them. That by choosing to volunteer my time and being a part of their lives I have an obligation to them as an adult to be a good influence in their lives. And if you are unwilling to do otherwise, then you really don't deserve to be around them.

Liz also taught me that it didn't matter how tired you are or how much you don't want to do something because you're tired, you have to work through it. It was frustrating, my equipment was starting to crap out because I didn't/don't have funds to up keep my equipment as this was all done out of charity for awareness. I made a commitment though, not just to any place but to Kosair Children's Hospital, a place where I would advocate for and donate a million dollars every year if I could. I can't articulate in words how much the support I received as a patient meant in my life. How genuine and sincere my doctors were when I was in treatment. When I deeply reflect on it, it brings tears to my eyes. Cancer would not have been a gift without the support Kosair Children's Hospital gave me. They believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let them down. That's honestly the main drive that kept me going.

Otherwise, I was just a photographer running around like a chicken with their head cut off. I had no help really for the most part from other photographers. I'd get critiques here and there but I never sent it to anyone. I couldn't keep a job. I was 20 and 21 years old working on the project while still trying to lead the typical social life people my age do.

So many of them were so honest about how concerned they were for me and so many of them helped me carry on. Each person providing me with different tools that I will continue to use in future projects. I'm going to take time in my remaining years of college shooting stories and hopefully learning to shoot more story telling pictures. And hopefully learning from the pitfalls and mistakes I made this time to not repeat them.

On the day of the opening exhibit there were estimated to be over a 100 people who attended. I know the majority of them were people I have gotten to know and love from the cancer community. And all of them helped shape and influence my life in ways that I'm sure they're aware of.

I did get through it and I did finish it.

And when I say it's practically a miracle I finished it, I mean that. If it wasn't for me being a former patient and having such strong bonds with everyone involved with that project (Emily, Liz, the nurses, Shannon the Chaplin, the parents and the kids who needed me just as much as I needed them) there would have been no way a very young, stereotypical "twenty-something," such as me would've had a two year project completed. My love for Kosair Children's Hospital spans into the depths of the ocean and sears through my veins as it pumps from my heart.

If it wasn't for me finally growing up or at least starting to make solid efforts to do so, finding enough clarity to bring me back to what cancer taught me, it wouldn't have been a success. As Liz writes at the bottom of her much shorter blog post, "It saved my life, made me believe I could do anything I wanted to. Made me care about my future and then made me not worry about the future because I have ultimately no control. And made me appreciate being alive."

Redefining Normal was an epic roller coaster adventure just as chemotherapy was. I rearranged my entire life around it, and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else in my life than where I am. I share all of this with you all to speak for myself in the most honest way possible. Admit my faults and to hopefully help those to understand me better. I am by no means perfect. I am not a poster child for cancer survivors nor do I think it's possible for one to exist. I've fallen on my face more times than I can count. Liz is right when she says my life hasn't been easy, but I love it.

And I share such personal moments as an honest reflection of my life in what it took to make it happen and where I need to say thanks. I also think there are a lot of things from the past mistakes I made that hopefully others can learn from. I am who I am, and I feel like if people are going to throw around that hero word you better know everything.

My love for photography happened by shooting on a digital camera my junior year of high school. This was when my curiosity began to grow for pressing the shutter button. I started to practice using manual mode on new digital cameras that were bought for the yearbook staff. I read books and surfed the web in order to learn about what f-stops, aperture, ISO and shutter speeds meant. All I wanted to do was be able to take indoor sports photos of volleyball and dark outside football photos. I've never taken film class, or taken a photo on a film camera. What can I say, I like the instant gratification of seeing a photo and learning from it immediately. I never took an art class in high school. All I did was shoot and look for where the action was. I didn't know anything about composition, I just liked being able to capture moments. Turns out when I came to WKU that's a huge part of photojournalism. I later learned about the art of composing images and learning how to make them beautiful. I spent only three semesters at WKU before I started the project. I was only planning on taking one semester off, it took a year to find the space and after we found it we had to wait another year for the space to open up.

I have a long way to go in terms of where I want to be as a photographer, and this was just the first of many projects I want to do in my life.

EKU Dance Recital

2011-11-20T20:24:00.000-08:00

Afternoon In the Highlands

2011-11-02T20:59:00.000-07:00

Wednesday is my freebie day to get things taken care of around the house, do homework, or take care of whatever else is going on. Well today was pretty tame so I went for a walk around the Highlands, the area of Louisville I live, and started taking pictures. Along the way I ran into a friend (actually she chased me down the street to get my attention because I had my headphones on)and ended up hanging out with her for a bit. Anyways, it was a good day and the weather was amazing. Let's see how long this last, anyone who lives in Kentucky knows that the weather here is NEVER consistent.

My Neighborhood

2011-10-30T01:58:00.000-07:00

Halloween 2011

2011-10-30T01:54:00.000-07:00

Maggie and Bella

2011-10-30T01:45:00.000-07:00

Jackson

2011-08-28T18:05:00.000-07:00

Rehearsal Dinner with the Klapheke's

2011-08-17T23:56:00.000-07:00

Wind Damage in the Highlands

2011-08-13T21:53:00.000-07:00

I was walking home from work after the power went out, and I soon discovered why the power was out all over Bardstown Road.

This was exactly across the street from my apartment (fortunately I have power) and so does my neighbor. However this happened all over my neighborhood.

This was at the bar right around the corner from apartment that happened to be unaffected by the storm.

I ran into this guy who was sitting outside the bar, he was really cool and in good light, so I snapped some portraits of him.

Good People

2011-06-15T01:26:00.000-07:00

Friends :-)

May/June

2011-06-12T03:19:00.000-07:00

Appalachian Wedding

2011-04-23T12:56:00.000-07:00

Last year I took pictures at my sisters wedding and I realized that I had never posted these. She decided she wanted the wedding to be in the Appalachian Mountains, in Pineville, KY to be specific, where my Dad's side of the family is from. The mountains were beautiful and it was a very cute small wedding. Here are some of my favorites from the day.

Ferngully Night @ Highlands Taproom

2011-04-20T08:16:00.001-07:00

My friend Sheila is a bartendar at this amazing little divebar in Louisville called The Taproom and she put on a Ferngully themed night(do you remember the movie ferngully?) gathering. Well yesterday afternoon she asked me if I wanted to take pictures and I was totally down for the cause. I took it further though and I came up with the idea, knowing there was a costume contest, to do portraits. I finally fixed my gear and was super stoaked to start playing with lights again. It was about as much fun as I thought it'd be, probably wouldn't have been if the regulars here weren't so freakin awesome! Not everyone was in costume, but who cares, this was all in good fun. Here are some of my favorites that I thought I'd share, hope they put a smile on your face:

For Anyone Who's Ever Wanted To Know: March 10th, 2004

2011-03-10T01:00:00.000-08:00

About 2 weeks after I was diagnosed. That's my mohawk, and yes that's me smiling.

Every year around this time I always get REALLY excited, overwhelmed with a fuzzy feeling of excitement that starts on the first day of March. It builds with each day that comes closer to today, March 10th, a day that it doesn’t matter what is going on. I’m always really happy because quite simply, I am alive.

It was around this time back in 2004 that even in the days leading up to the diagnosis were pains and personal humiliation that I had never experienced in my life. I felt like I should finally put it out there what exactly happened. Over the years after every time I’ve said I had cancer there are people who eventually feel comfortable enough to ask how I found out. It’s not something that makes me uncomfortable but it’s a rather long story that I simply sum up in a few words. It keeps the sympathy low and time saved. I haven’t really sat down to write it and reflect on it before. I relive it quiet often around this time but never really share it, to be quiet frank I was on the verge in a matter of a week or two of not making it. However, if I’m doing an entire project where I want others to open up about their battles with cancer, I figure I should do the same. Not because I want sympathy or think I’m some grand role model as a poster child for surviving cancer (it’s something I somewhat loathe) but because I think people need to understand cancer better, maybe even me. Not only that it’s my anniversary and I want you all to understand, after you read all of this, why despite the terribleness of what I went through why I celebrate this day as opposed to the day I finished.
The story of the excitement I feel today began like this…

I guess the symptoms I remember can be traced back to around the beginning of Feb. that year when my period started. It was a noticeably heavier one, but there wasn’t much I thought about it. I was 14 and had only been having them for about a year. Well with that said, it was also around this time that I came down with what looked like strep throat because my glands were incredibly swollen and hurt to swallow anything. I remember this because it was Valentines weekend and I had a boyfriend at the time who I wanted to go to the movies with and my Dad said no because I was sick. In attempts to try prove him wrong I said, “No see look dad I’m fine”. Proceeded to eat and swallow a Hershey’s chocolate kiss only to be forced into making the face of someone who might have just put a sour head candy in their mouth. He laughed and said, “Riiight”. Then mocked the facial expression I made.

We went to the doctor to see if I had strep and they concluded after the tests that it wasn’t strep just simply a sinus infection. I was given pills to take and a few days later the pain had stopped. My glands were still swollen but it no longer hurt so I didn’t really pay attention to the other part and figured it would go away soon.

Fast forward the rest of the month, my period was still there only spotting, which isn’t really that big of a deal for most girls. It lasted all the way through my Dad’s wedding, the week I spent at my friends house while he was on his honey moon, up until my period was due to start again. And boy did it start again. I remember when it started going to the super market with my dad and picking up super jumbo sized tampons and saying to my Dad, “Yea I learned my lesson last time.”

Well to give any sort of a clue as to how bad things were about to become in the next week, I went through the box of twenty of those in about three days.
As things progressed that week, I was losing more and more blood. It was a mess really. I was diagnosed on a Wed and things started to get noticeably worse the Thursday of the previous week. I was having to get up about every two hours. With each passing day it got worse. I don’t remember much up until that Sunday when I had to miss church because of “the mess” that was starting to happen (we have yet to go to church every Sunday as a routine since I was diagnosed). I remember this because I had been sitting on the couch with my Dad and Denise (my step-mother) discussing my period. It had become a topic of discussion in my family, as I discussed with my step-mom just recently she thought it was strange to be missing church because of a period. Well then my Dad explained that I couldn’t really get off the couch and I was getting light-headed .

Here’s the thing, I was a 14 yr old girl being raised by mostly my father, he didn’t know what was normal or not from this.

All in the meanwhile my stepmom behind my back had urged my Dad to send me to a Doctor, that none of this was normal for periods and even so that I was losing a lot of blood and that needed to be taken care of. My step-mom was talking to me on the phone that night (they hadn’t even moved in together yet because they were still waiting for word back on the house they wanted to buy) and said that I was weak because I was anemic and needed iron. I had just ended basketball season so I wasn’t used to not exercising everyday anymore. That I needed to start taking one-a-day multi-vitamins to get more iron. I’m not sure how I got the advice of exercising because that wasn’t what she told me from this discussion but somehow I got into my head that exercise would be a good idea.

OK, I’ll follow this advice maybe it will get better, so I went down to the basement and ran back and forth a few times. Dear GOD was that a horrible idea. All of the sudden after a running back and forth twice, my heart began beating really fast. My heart felt like it was about to explode out of my chest and became light headed as I went upstairs. I went to the bathroom because I felt like I was going to puke. As soon as I got to the bathroom the light headedness turned to dizziness and I started to fall into the wall of the bathroom, I put my hands against the wall to stop myself and then my knees gave out and I fell to the floor. I started to sob helplessly. I was so frustrated, I slammed the floor and said out loud to myself through sobs, “What the hell is wrong with me?”

I’m sure you guys are all wondering, why I hadn’t gone to the doctor by then or at least the ER. You know why, because I was 14 and no one but me knew how I was feeling. Furthermore, things surely couldn’t have been as bad as they really were, I was just being dramatic. I would get these certain episodes, and then I’d be fine. See because as long as I would rest or sit down for the most part I was fine. And since little movements caused undesired messes, I stayed seated for the most part. We are trained as teenagers to think we’re dramatic, and we train ourselves to believe that we’re invincible. I had missed school several times in middle school, I think my first year of 8th grade I racked up about 15 days from being “sick”. However, 75% of the time I was faking it because I dreaded going to school. I really had no idea what was going on either because this was due to a period. I had only been having them a year, and surely I couldn’t be that sick from just a period I thought. I knew I was losing a lot of blood but I didn’t know the amount of blood that I was losing was putting my life in danger.

I was right on one count, I wasn’t sick because of my period. My period and the bleeding was just the side effect of what unknowingly at the time the process of immature white blood cells growing uncontrollably in my blood crowding the room for the red blood cells that carry oxygen to have the ability to produce. At least it’s something like that, I’m not a medical professional, just know there weren’t enough red blood cells and way too many white blood cells. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

I remember the first day I stayed home from school on that Monday. I was sleeping on the couch until noon. I hadn’t been doing much moving and was SO EXHAUSTED at that point. Nonetheless, I was hungry and I was a big fan of egg salad sandwiches and decided I needed to eat something, so I got up put the water in the pan and to save me a trip put the eggs in the water before it started to boil. I then laid back down to wait for them to boil, as soon as I closed my eyes I passed out for another hour and woke up to the sound of water over-boiling. SHIT! I got up quickly and took the eggs off the pan. The eggs were still good so I then went to grab the stuff to make it. I remember I was feeling light-headed as I walked around the kitchen to get the ingredients to make the salad. I grabbed them and brought them with me to the couch and put them on the coffee table in front of the couch so as I made it I could sit down. The process of grabbing the miracle whip and adding it to the cut eggs, adding the paprika and salt and pepper and stirring it all up caused me to feel so weak that I started to cry. I was starting to feel desperate. I got up and because I realized standing was too much, I crawled to my room (which wasn’t too far away because at the time we lived in a ranch house), and grasped for the phone that was on the floor. I picked it up and dialed my Dads work number. I just started to cry and plea.

“Dad, please just get me a doctor’s appointment. I need to see a doctor, there’s something wrong with me:”

You could hear the sympathy in his voice at this point, “Alright, I’ll try to get you one as soon as possible.”

He called the doctor and explained what was going on; the next available time that Dr. Abrams my pediatrician/gynecologist was scheduled to be in was that Wednesday. I found out recently as I’ve tried to collect information about what exactly happened, that my step-mother was worried that we were even going to be waiting until Wednesday because of the rate at which I was losing blood.

I retreated to the couch imagining what they were going to say at the doctor’s appointment. I imagined myself in a hospital gown being feeble and using a walker to get around. Ha, but that was crazy talk, I wasn’t THAT sick. Normal people like me didn’t get that sick. Only people on T.V. in those cheesy lifetime movies get that sick. I knew absolutely nothing about cancer, about blood disorders, about ANYTHING really that could be wrong. I just knew I felt like shit. As I write all of these things now with perspective, I wonder to myself why I didn’t go to the doctor sooner, but as your going through something like that, the actual process, you really don’t put the pieces together on the whole picture of things. Things don’t become 20/20 until after you can look at it as a whole.

Then in the middle of the night I awoke to lying in an entire couch cushion soaked in my own blood. How humiliating I thought to myself, I quickly got up and grabbed paper towels and dampened them a little to clean it up, dabbing at it until it all was eventually gone. The next day my Dad looked in the trash and saw the paper towels because I told him what happened. He noticed that the blood was a funny color but he wasn’t sure if it was pink because it had been deluded but he also didn’t see the actual mess. He had no idea how much there was, and I’m pretty sure since he’s a boy I’m sure he wasn’t exactly comfortable with asking how much. I think because he didn’t see it and it was so easily removed from the couch though that it probably wasn’t that bad, because blood does not easily clean itself normally from fabric.

Wednesday morning came by and the bleeding from my period had subsided considerably, at least from memory. It all varied by the hour of the day really and we went to the doctor before noon. I thought maybe today I was going to get to go back to school and all of this nonsense would end. However, something new was wrong, as soon as I even so much as sat up my heart began to beat really fast. I wasn’t even moving, just sitting up. Had to of been going at least 150 beats a minute. I went to my dad and asked him what he thought. It was much like anything else that had started to become weird ever since my period started to get noticeably out of whack. I ran to my dad to ask him what he thought.

“Dad, feel my pulse, my hearts beating REALLY fast”.
His face became perplexed. “Hmm.”

These were all faces he kept making ever since I noticed other things wrong, things that were “different”. I started to notice when I looked in the mirror that my glands were still swollen from what doctors told me a month before was just a sinus infection.

“Dad, do my glands look swollen to you?”
“Hmmm, a little, yea’.

My face also seemed to me to look somewhat paler; I got a second opinion from my Dad again.

“Dad, does my skin look a little funny to you?”
“Hmm, a little yea”.

I can’t remember his reaction at the time but he’s told me that I looked really sick. And that I looked incredibly pale. Nonetheless I asked him if I would be OK to go to school, because my period in the morning was better.

“Ahhh, well I mean you’ve already got the Doctors appointment scheduled, why don’t you just stay home and we’ll get this sorted out then,” he said.
“Alright”.

To the doctor we went, I was actually kind of excited to go, because I wanted to get better. I felt relatively OK again, but still was happy to finally get to a doctor. I was hoping though that I wasn’t in my head being dramatic, no one likes to hear that they were over reacting. I however, was not excited when we got there and had to wait 40 minutes to be seen. Finally my name was called and we went back to have the normal prep work procedures done. They took my temperature first, it read a 100 degrees. That was odd I thought, but then again after everything that was going wrong it didn’t really shock me. Then they gave me a finger print, the most painful finger print of my life mind you. When you prick someone’s finger the blood is suppose to come out no problem. It’s thick and dark red, with a few short squeezes usually getting the job done for the samples they need.

The nurses took my finger. SQUEEZE. She was putting quite a bit of pressure behind it. There was slight drop. SQUEEZZ. Another slight drop. “Whew,” she said examining the blood. It was weird red color and rather thin. She squeezed again, this time putting her body behind it. She got a few more drops and she was done. Thank god. She examined the blood before she left and gave a concerned look, I thought nothing of it, and then left.

“Doctor Abrams will be with you in just a minute,” she said before she left.
Sure enough Dr. Abrams came in not long after. My dad left the room and she gave me the standard feet in the stirrups exam that you get. This was my first experience with a gynecology visit and well it was about as awkward as you’d imagine for a 14 yr old. She was soon finished and I don’t really remember what she said. I just remember as I sat up she noticed these huge bruises were on my knees and other tiny bruises scattered up and down my legs. She asked what they were from, I presumed basketball.

“Does it hurt when I touch them,” she asked.
“No, not really,” I responded.
“Hmm.”

She began to run her finger along my leg. From experience I now know she was looking at marks on my legs that are known as patechiae, and touching the marks to see if she felt any bumps. It’s usually flat to the touch, pinpoint, round spots that appear on the skin as a result of bleeding under the skin. According research I’m doing on this (while Wikipedia is not official, it will do for facebook), “While not always serious, they are however the hallmark sign of other potentially serious illnesses including leukemia”.

Poor thing, looking back on it she was trying her best not to panic, she wasn’t sure but I know she was already suspecting Leukemia. She had me get dressed, then came back in and did the other normal procedures such as check my breathing, shine the flashlight in my eyes and in the back of my mouth, and lay down and feel my stomach. She noticed the same thing I had earlier, that my glands were still swollen then felt my glands. I know the next thing she did, now that I know its procedure, was to feel my stomach, more particularly my spleen to know that it was enlarged. According to Livestrong.com, “People with leukemia have an overproduction of abnormal white blood cells. The spleen must filter and collect these excessive numbers of cancerous cells. This causes it to enlarge.”

My dad was brought back into the room and Dr. Abrams said she’d be back shortly. And by shortly she meant and hour later. First thing she said upon return was that I was anemic and lacked iron like Denise had said and that was why I was feeling so tired. The next thing was that my white blood cell count was too high for the machines there to count, that the machines there only counted up to 60,000 white blood cells. She started speaking rather fast now, letting us know that it could possibly be mono. The poor thing had no idea how to break it to us what she really though it was. She continued to say that I needed to get to the hospital as soon as possible to get a blood transfusion and that I was facing a number of things that could happen, including passing out in school and potentially hurting myself. She had called Dr. Raj, a doctor at Kosair Children’s Hospital (she failed to mention on purpose that his specialty was pediatric oncology), and they had scheduled a work up of some sort and got me a room scheduled and that she would come tomorrow morning to check on me (also not something a doctor would do for mono).

Just recently my Dad admitted that he didn’t really start to worry until he had heard that my white blood cell count was too high for the machines to count. He said he spent the half hour drive up to Kosair convincing himself that it wasn’t Leukemia.

Hospital? Well at least I wasn’t over reacting about how sick I had felt, and mono seemed like a reasonable thing to me since I had known someone not too long ago at school who had said they had mono. I had never been to a hospital in my entire life, not even a broken bone, so when we got there and the nurse directing us to the “express waiting room” had asked if we had brought luggage me and my Dad looked at each other confused. “Well sometimes patients bring luggage with them,” she explained. “No we just found out that we were supposed to come,” my Dad said. I think she asked this though because she saw I was waiting to be directed to a room on 7 West, the peds onocology unit. Now, being less naïve getting an express waiting room in a hospital is NOT a good sign and should raise several red flags. I personally at the time was just happy that I was getting a bed and cable TV to watch while I was waiting.

As we waited over the next few hours we made several phone calls, including to both of my sisters and to my step mother who had just gotten back from making the down payment on the house her and my Dad were buying together. I left a message on our home answering machine, “Hey Haley, we’re at the hospital right now, Candy’s going to come by and pick you up.” Candy and Haley are both my older sisters. In the meantime before everyone showed up, Julie, my angelic sweet resident doctor had showed up to give me the lowdown as to what we were going to do. She immediately struck me as cool because my chuck taylor shoes at the time which were completely covered in different colored markers laughed and said, “Ha, I used to do that when I was your age”. I remember she had said I was going to get a blood transfusion and making a joke as I grabbed my arm saying I was a Jehovah Witness and didn’t believe in getting blood transfusions because needles still scared me back then. But first they would need to draw my blood again. Thus they did, and Julie came back with the results that my blood cell count was 120,000.

I didn't know it at the time but that’s bad, really, really bad. Your normal blood cell count should be between 8,000 and 12,000 at the MOST. At the most, It was still 12x higher than what it should’ve been. It had only been Julies first week working on 7 West. She told me months later after coming to visit me when she was no longer my resident that when she read the charts it was the first time she saw it and thought, “Oh my God, this is real”.

When Haley got there she said, “Yea, you’re never allowed to leave an answering machine message like that ever again, I thought something had happened to Grandpa”. Haley, who’s only one year older than me, had no clue that I was as sick as I was either.

“Oh come on, you’re not that sick. Look sees, your fine,” Haley said. She wasn’t trying to be insensitive but unless you were paying attention to the color of my skin, I didn’t look that bad I don’t think. I was sitting up for a while and laughing and talking.

However, not long after she came in every time I sat up I started to get the chills and felt immediately warm as soon as I had lain down again. My other sister Candace was not as optimistic. I went to the restroom and I remember coming back in to hear her saying to my Dad that blood cell counts of 120,000 were bad. Not something he didn’t already know. I also remember Denise finally getting there after she had already visited where my room was scheduled to be, rm. 737. In the halls she had seen a sign that had said End of Chemo party and then coming down and talking about that.

All of the details became fuzzy up until I met Dr. Raj, one the pediatric oncology doctors of Kosair Children’s Hospital. He took my parents out the room and I don’t remember if Haley and Candy were asked to leave at the same time or before. I just know that the next thing I remember was everyone coming back in the room slowly. Denise was wiping her eyes; my Dad was sad, Dr.Raj very serious and somber, and Julie’s eyes red from crying continually after she saw my blood cell count.

I was watching TV and it was interrupted for this speech and I thought everyone was being a tad dramatic themselves. I was in the hospital but come on. I know of all the things you’ve heard I should’ve been scared but after each bad episode and symptom that I’ve told you about, I was actually beginning to feel better that night, minus the cold chills from every time I sat up. My Dad came over to the bed I was laying on and started to hold my head as Dr. Raj started speaking. He was using all of these really big words and I gave up on trying to keep up. I started to try and pay attention to what was on TV, it was Kings of Queens, and then I noticed in the background the words, cancer of the blood, my ears perked up at this point. I still hadn’t made the connection that this is what I had; he continued on with his big fancy medical terminology and then finally ended his speech with a pause and short sigh and said, “It looks like Leukemia”.

With one giant gasp, I looked up at my Dad in absolute disbelief and terror, Leukemia. It was word that held an entirely different meaning in my family, I had no idea what the fuck leukemia was, all I’d ever heard about leukemia was that it killed my fathers sister when he was a kid. I didn’t even know it was cancer.
“Dad,” I said through a cracked voice. He knew what was going through my head.
“I know,” he said as he slowly nodded his head. I could see the red in his eyes as he was doing his best not to break down too. I looked away and in a matter of seconds all the images in my head of what the funeral was like. The things I heard about my grandmother and the breakdown she had when she threw herself on her coffin as she was about to be buried. The looks I had imagined on my father and aunts and uncles, the absolute sadness of it all.

I looked away shaking my head, and through a raspy voice said, “I don’t want to die”. My life didn’t flash before my eyes, all of the things in life it was possible for me to do did. Then all of the sudden blackness came over these thoughts, as if a time line was being cut off. All I could think was, holy shit I could literally die. I didn’t think that I was going to for sure but I just knew that it was the reality of what was possible.

Dr. Raj, I guess sympathizing with my fear said, “Now, it may not be leukemia, we’ll have to do further testing but as of right now it looks like leukemia”.
There was a joke one time that I remember seeing on scrubs when John was supposed to tell the patient bad news. Then because he panicked gave him some possible hope, despite that it would be on some magical medical marvel that it was going to be different. And as he came out of the patients room Bob is standing there very stern and telling him that he did wrong. He said you see how happy that patient is now, you tell one little good thing and they hold onto. It’s very true; when he said this I was relieved to some extent. You know bad things happen to people but you never believe they could happen to you. At least teenagers don’t because we train ourselves at that age we are invincible. That little relief made a difference for the first couple of nights though.

The door opened and my sisters were finally let in the room. My step-mother Denise through tears said, “Paige has leukemia”. Everything went in slow motion from there, my sisters both just burst into tears and they all clung to each other as my Dad stayed by my bedside. I got antsy and thought, wait he said there’s a possibility it’s not leukemia. Don’t say it as if its’ true yet, we don’t know for sure yet I thought. However, the reality was that I had every single hallmark sign that it was leukemia and that they had move fast to fix what was wrong. 120, 000 white blood cell count is bad, very bad. Actually it used to be back in the day that anything over 100, 000 was considered terminal. And when I was diagnosed they gave my about a 40% chance of making it, it changed after 2 weeks when the chemo started working but at that moment I had a 40% chance.

I was still clinging onto that hope though. I was about to be prepped for surgery to insert what’s called an apheresis catheter in a large vein in my groin area. This was what was going to allow for the procedure over the next 5-8 hours that would be removing all of the white blood cells from my body and injecting me with healthy red blood cells to replace all the ones I had lost.

Before the surgery another doctor arrived at the door, Dr. Cheerva, who showed up with a wheelchair and I’m not sure if she actually physically pushed my wheel chair because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a doctor do that, but I do remember getting a tour of 7 West and her telling me all about it and showing me the teen room. It wasn’t long after I got to my room that I was being wheeled out on bed to be taken to the surgery floor.

I woke up around 3am after the surgery to my step-mother at my bedside holding my hand in a hospital room and to my right my Dad passed out on the guest bed.
Well shit, this wasn’t a dream, awesome.

I sat up and was greeted by two nurses who were working on the procedure that was being done. One was a very enthusiastic blond woman who introduced herself. She introduced me to Debbie, the other woman who was next to her. I don’t remember how I got from being really upset about being in a hospital to laughing my ass off. Tracy had a knack for making you laugh in just about any situation and willing to do just about anything to get a kid to laugh, that was how she got her nickname “Crazy Tracy”. Somehow we all were laughing about the silliest things; I have no idea what about or anything. That’s the thing about the nurses of 7 West; they’re sensitive, sincere, and funny. They don’t treat you differently because you have cancer, they’ve seen it all and if they stick around long enough they know you’re not different.

Dr. Abrams showed up around 10 or 11 am. She slowly crept into my room fearing that I was going to be mad at her. I just looked her and saw that intimidation she had and said, “Welp, good news is its not mono, bad news its cancer”. She was still very slow with what she said. “Yeeea. Bad news is its cancer. Paige I’m sorry I didn’t tell you yesterday. I just didn’t want to say anything until I was sure.” I wasn’t mad at all, I was pretty thankful she said didn’t.
Over the next few days the phone calls were made to let friends and extended family and the school know what was going on. I told people I had leukemia but I didn’t really know of anything else that was going on, still hadn’t really sunk in what I was about to go through. I remember a specific night when I asked Denise, “If I really do have leukemia, is it full blown, like is there a chance we caught it early at all”. I had been telling people I had it, but I still wasn’t a 100% sure that this was real.

“Well first of all Paige, you do have leukemia. Second, we don’t know everything yet so we’re just going to take this one day at a time,” she said.

It wasn’t too long after that I remember in the middle of the night during the first or second week that I started to go over in my head who I had known that had cancer. I remembered my neighbor Josh who I used to play basketball with in his backyard every day talking about the neighbor who lived on the other side of my house. She had passed away the year before, “Man she was the coolest old lady. I remember one time my ball rolling out into the middle of the court while she was getting her mail and saying, “How do you like it, an old lady with a mohawk””. In reference to patches of hair she had lose resembling a mohawk. It was in that memory Josh had provided me that had fueled me in what attitude I eventually brought to cancer. I thought fuck it; if I go down I want the same thing to be said about me. I wanted people to be able to say that I was cool. I wanted people to have funny memories. From that story I also got the idea to shave my hair into a mohawk. If I was going to lose it anyway, why not right? I had originally planned to keep it for a day as a joke, but the reaction it got and the jaw drops that came from my nurses and doctors were too priceless not to keep it up.

My family kept asking me, “Are you sure? I mean there’s people who go through chemo who don’t lose their hair, you don’t if you will or not.” Yes I was sure. I shaved it even before my hair had the chance to start falling out, if I didn’t get to have a say in having to do chemo, I was going to control what I could. I was going to shave it and beat cancer to the point. I was NOT going to be one of those sad kids in the commercials. I was going to be a stubborn hard ass about it. I wasn’t some happy go lucky kid; I was already an angry kid who came from a turbulent childhood filled with abuse and neglect from my birth mother. It had only been a couple of years since custody was taken away from her and granted to my father. At 14 I was stealing my father’s cigarettes, smoked weed on school property and sneaking into his liquor cabinet (it all tasted disgusting at the time but doing something I was told not to was my M.O.).

It’s probably where the attitude came from, I was a pissed off kid to begin with. It helped though through it all though, with all the defiance I held towards authority, I had a defiance to never ever let cancer make me feel weak too. Cancer was not going to tell me how to live my life. Fuck cancer. Eventually after faking being brave and facing things head on, you get used to them. It's like ripping a band aid off in one swift motion instead of doing it slowly. It stings for a moment but then it’s over. And as that attitude came about the less I thought about death, I was going to fucking fight. Bring it on.

I think that’s also why I hated watching the St. Jude commercials, they were sad. I wasn’t going to be sad about having cancer, or at least not let anyone see this. Lance Armstrong wrote about in his book that the irony of cancer is that as a patient you’d think that it would be others who’d have to tell you that you’re going to be fine. However, that in a lot of cases, it’s the patient who tries to make sure everyone else around them doesn’t worry. In the beginning I remember my dad’s co workers came in and were enthusiastic and said they wanted me to get better, that they wanted to see him come to work happy. Ouch. He just shook his head yes and I saw him literally fighting not to cry, because not being happy meant the worst. I just looked at him as I saw this and said sympathetically, “Dad, I’m going to be fine”. I didn’t know what was going to happen but I knew that he needed to hear that.

However, don’t get this twisted when I say get used to, this is simply referring to the ability to endure. Cancer is pretty much as bad as you’d expect. I practically lived in Kosair, every time I went to the hospital for chemo I was there for at least a month, which is exhausting. There were painful procedures and sometimes nausea that got so bad that every time I sat up or ate anything I’d puke; sometimes 2 or 3 times a day. I sometimes went weeks only eating saltine crackers and ginger ale. And even when I was home I was constantly going to the doctor about every other week and having to receive platelets or blood. I had a giant tube sticking out of my chest and had to take all kinds of measures to make sure it didn’t get wet when I took a bath which is SO ANNOYING.

Not only that, you’re visibly sick to everyone around you and as a teenager that was something that was hard to get used too at first. While I was used to being bald, that didn’t mean everyone else was. That look of discomfort that comes across people’s faces, it hurts. I will never forget the first time I decided to leave 7 West for a scan that was on the first floor without my bandanna. I was being strolled past the E.R. where there was a row of parents waiting. There I was; completely bald, a green mask covering everything except my eyes with white hospital blankets keeping myself warm looking like something in a sad lifetime movie. I remember the first man on the end saw me and crossed his arm, turned his head and looked away. I started to try and make eye contact with them, I wasn't "staring" but I was looking them in the eye, much like you do when your passing someone in a hallway. Usually you offer a smile right? Every single one of them literally turned their heads and looked the opposite direction.

These people were literally so uncomfortable by what I looked like that just looking at me was hard to do. It hurt but I was also pretty angry about them looking away too, I understand why they did, it’s natural if you’re not used to it but it didn’t change that I was angry about it. I think that’s why I made eye contact though; it was in a way to say yes this is going on. It was a statement. You know because while I had no hair, I was still a person. A person who loved music, watching comedy shows, played sports (while not that well) and video games, and stayed up all night like EVERY OTHER kid my age. I just also happened to be sick. However, because I was bald these people failed to see anything beyond that and looked away as if I didn't even fucking exist.

I’ll be honest though, the novelty of being brave wore off towards the end, and I was tired. If I didn’t feel well, you were going to know it. I was angry that my friends stopped coming to see me because I was in the hospital so long. I was angry that all the people who were there in the beginning weren’t there anymore. This is pretty common because people don’t realize how long fighting cancer can be sometimes and people move on. I stopped trusting people my own age; I didn’t trust that they were going to be there for me when things turned to shit. And cancer is probably one of the loneliest diseases out there because it’s something that’s hard for people to grasp their mind around and truly get it. I think that’s why I started what I did at Kosair, it was for the community to try and get it. That there is sadness yes because kids do die and no one wants to see a child suffer EVER, but see the gift in it and not be so afraid of cancer and to not let hearing the word be such a sting.

It wasn’t about getting money or even awareness. I’m pretty sure thanks to Lance Armstrong we’re all aware. There is lack of understanding though and there is a huge gap between those who have been through it and those who haven’t. Money is cool, yes it helps fund research and that’s crucial, but so many just put the money in the mail and fail to see the real kid.

Even yesterday I was telling someone about going to celebrate my 7 year anniversary, she was so happy for me. She adds, "You know sometimes I'll walk by Kosair and I'll see these kids who have no hair. And oh my god, it's just so awful. I sometimes can't even go over there at certain times of the day because it's just too sad". I contained myself when she said this but it proved my point, that this perception that exists out there about the kids at the hospital, it has GOT to change!

My best friend Lizzie, she spent her ENTIRE life from the time she was 5 until the age I am now at 21 years old fighting cancer. The one thing she wanted more than anything in life was to be treated like a normal kid, to not be different, for people to stop being nice to her because they felt sorry for her. (understand and sympathize but don’t feel sorry for them) And as sad as that seems, she was so thankful and her memory and spirit truly lives on. She affected more people’s lives in 21 years of life than some people can manage or dream to do in a lifetime of 70 to 80 years. I miss her but I’ve realized that all I can ever do for her is to enjoy life and not take it for granted.

When cancer was all said and done, I was a changed person, there’s no way you can’t be. You can’t just go through fighting for your life and meeting people who didn’t make it and not be changed. For awhile after the exhaustion of everything I was angry how shallow people in my high school were. They didn’t care about things that mattered (which I mean who really does at 15) they cared about how good their hair looked and I barely had 2 inches. I saw kids I really cared about and became friends with die. It took a couple of years for me to grasp the concept that while my pain was different, pain is pain and should always be sympathetic because everyone has burdens to bare in life. And also that everyone around me was in high school and that it’s pretty normal.

However with all of this being said, through all the sadness and emotional lows and highs; when it comes down to it, I survived. Even when I'm pissed off, angry, or sad in every day life, I am always thankful. It's become a fabric of my everyday living. I have met some of the most amazing people you could think too and gained a second family that made experiencing cancer worth it. I am alive to do whatever I want and the realization of that, the true realization of that, frees up so many things. I am better because of it, I am stronger and fear no longer dictates what I do. It may seem cheesy but that scene in V for Vendetta when Natalie Portman character told V that she wanted to not be so afraid and he tortures her and shaves her head and puts her through hell.

That outcome you see, that scene in the rain, after "she faces her death" which free's her. That is literally what life feels like afterwards, and particularly on this day. I literally went through hell, but I would NEVER change it for anything.

Too many people try to complicate life, make it harder on them instead of molding into the circumstances their giving. People like to ask themselves if their happy. Asking yourself if you’re happy is a lot like asking yourself if you have a drinking problem, chances are if you have to ask something is wrong. Happiness is a state of being, there is not real pursuit to it. The pursuit is the fight we have every day to keep pushing on, life has burdens, but there is no way of getting to happiness. It’s a state of mind.

Fight for your life but don’t fight life. Of course there are injustices that you should fight for and you should never accept less for yourself than you’re capable of or want but that’s a part fighting for your life. Have goals, think about the future but don’t ever expect to turn out exactly as you plan because it won’t. Experience the lows with every fiber of your being and then LET IT GO, that’s what being alive is. Go out to a bar every once in awhile and abuse your liver and get crazy, smoke a cigarette (I need to obviously not make it habit but one will not kill you), be the first one on the dance floor (more than likely people will join in and if not they call you crazy and it won’t matter, you’re not hurting anyone), buy a hammock and sit out in the sun on a warm breezy day under the trees, go on a hike even if you hate nature because you can always say you tried it, take walks outside and look around you and notice how beautiful it all is, try weed at least once, pig out on ice cream and cake once in awhile, go bungee jumping or sky diving, crowd surf to say you did it, wear something outrageous and make people look at you funny, STOP caring about what everyone is thinking of you ALL the time (be considerate of others feelings but don’t fear judgment)...just fucking LIVE.

You start dying the day your born so have fun NOW, take something that can be seemingly boring and make it fun, appreciate everything that is around you now, take a moment each day to look around and appreciate it. Take time to see what’s going on in the rest of the world or even your community and see if there’s something you can do to help. My goal as a survivor is not to live until Im old and gray (I mean I want that, and you should def plan your life and finances based on this in case) but to live each day I can in the moment, I love life. Get to the realization that in the end no one gets out of alive and life starts becoming a lot more fun.

Happy Singles Awareness Day

2011-02-14T21:16:00.000-08:00

We celebrated with a girls night...

Winter Randomness

2011-01-18T20:18:00.000-08:00

My buddy Troy cookin' at Cahoots, he's good at doing stuff like that.

Theron, an extraordinary artist and friend.

Happy New Years

2011-01-01T21:20:00.000-08:00

she·nan·i·gans

2010-12-28T21:04:00.000-08:00

she·nan·i·gans/SHəˈnanəgənz/Noun

1. Secret or dishonest activity or maneuvering.
2. Silly or high-spirited behavior; mischief.

Oh the louisville bar scene...how much I love photographing our little encounters, a constant provider for my love of shooting moments...cheers to being young and in your 20's.

Bowling Green

2010-10-30T00:00:00.000-07:00

While this blog has not been updated much this year, I have been shooting away on a project that I have given clips of with my Noah post. However, I did want to post pictures of my recent visit to Bowling Green where I used to reside as a student at WKU. Life has changed a lot for me since I've left there but it makes me feel so good to know that whenever I return to Bowling Green, nothing has changed.

Spontaneous Fun

2010-08-17T07:06:00.000-07:00

Today was the day that life was getting us all down, and what do you do on days like this and with friends as amazing as these. Well naturally, decide to head to waterfront park in downtown Louisville, KY. And it's only fun if you decide on the spur of the moment to do it. This day was priceless. I laughed till I could barely breath, smiled so hard my cheeks hurt, and laughed so hard my stomach hurt. And on this day I was so thankful that I knew all of them.

Project Short

2010-06-06T08:17:00.000-07:00

This semester off I decided to do a project on someone going through chemotherapy. As a cancer survivor, I don't think there is enough healthy communication about cancer. Not only that, I don't think people pay attention to the kids in their own community, mine being Louisville, Ky., and the point of this project is to show the community what cancer is like. In my experience, either people speak about in terms of not wanting to discuss or when they do, they really don't understand exactly how much live's get put on hold in order to endure chemotherapy. Noah's been going through chemo since November and is scheduled to be done by the fall of this year. These photos are the reality of cancer.

There is a lot of bad, but there is also a lot of gifts that cancer can bring, and the point of this is to show that. This project is being done with the children's hospital foundation of Louisville, KY to bring cancer awareness. There will be a gallery exhibit sometime in the spring of next year as a means of bringing cancer awareness but here are a few clips from what I've been working on so far.

Home Sweet Home

2010-03-10T09:46:00.000-08:00

Here's some photos I've taken while being at home during my semester off.

Dee-Dee

2010-02-03T18:26:00.001-08:00

It's been awhile

2010-01-17T12:49:00.000-08:00

I have not been as immediate to update my blog over my little vacation...but here are photos of my family from christmas. Mostly just neices and nephews...

Two of my sisters Haley (left) and Candy (right).

And then some of my neice from when she was playing in the snow...

Swimmer: Portrait #5

2009-12-07T19:18:00.001-08:00

So this portrait of Claire I actually like as an introduction to her story.

Claire Action

2009-12-07T14:24:00.000-08:00

So I finally have a photo for my story of claire actually swimming...

Dreadlocks: Portrait #2

2009-12-04T17:40:00.000-08:00

Had an assignment to shoot dreadlocks for the Talisman and so here it is. I definitely had a ton of doing this assignment, and I'm starting to get more comfortable with my lights. This was the first thing I've really shot in the studio, I've become more comfortable with my strobes more so than in the actual studio, but both are becoming much easier than at the beginning of the semester. Hooray for the end of the year and having a final that shows I'm learning something in school.

Fashion Shoot: Portrait #1

2009-12-01T21:15:00.000-08:00

Here are my favorites...I shot this in the hallway of my dorm building....Paige Robert's did a good job and made my job soooo much easier.

Grandpa Greene

2009-11-30T22:48:00.000-08:00

I wanted to take a portrait of my Grandpa over Thanksgiving Break that emphasized his eyes. I'm gonna go back over Christmas Break and do one of my Grandpa and Grandma together, but I decided not to this time cause I hadn't had a set idea in mind about how I wanted it to look.

I found this.

2009-11-19T04:25:00.000-08:00

I was going through my pictures from the camp quality story I shot this summer and I found this photo...man I MISS THIS PLACE. Camp Quality is better than disneyland!

Some Features from the crowd

2009-11-07T14:55:00.000-08:00

and this photo was kind of inspired by a friend of mine's, mandy mchonaha....but it looked like a fun photo to shoot, so here it is, a little different.

Some more swimming

2009-11-07T13:30:00.000-08:00

Went and shot the swim meet from this afternoon, as a continuation of the story but also to maybe get some features in my portfolio...here are a few of my favorites.

So here are two that aren't from the story...

and this is my buddy adam, he's a pretty cool.

and here are the ones of Claire...

Swimmer Story

2009-11-06T14:57:00.001-08:00

This is the story I turned in for lighting, I chose to do a swimmer story, i've been wanting to do this story for a very long time. I can't think of any group of people as far as sports go that work harder than these guys and I wanted to document that. I want to shoot this more before I officially add it to my portfolio, and to get everything across about this story I plan to use multimedia. Right now this is it, but expect more updates on this later later in the semester.

Mountain Workshop

2009-10-26T14:58:00.000-07:00

Portrait Personality

2009-10-22T08:36:00.001-07:00

Oh my goodness, this was horrendous to shoot, but anyways...we had an assignment to do a portrait of someone showing their personality. Here it is,

Summer Cancer Story Revisted.

2009-10-17T13:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I decided I wanted massive balc and white prints from my shawn bowen story I did right before I left Louisville this summer. While rexamining it I realized I had a completed story, and even though it's not very long or even yet done, since he has 3 more years before his official end of chemo party. Right now I have a set of images that I am "happy" with.

Parent Portrait

2009-10-13T10:51:00.000-07:00

One of two portrait assignments in my lighting class was to do a portrait of a parent, I chose to do Jennifer Jones, who is 6 months pregnant while also taking class at western. Thank you so much Jake Stevens and Elizabeth Lauer for teaching me last night how to properly use my strobes. This portrait had to be environmental and we had to use two light sources. I chose for the first light to hit her face and then I wanted the second light to have rim light on her belly to make it stand out. I'm actually happy with this portrait, next stop artist portrait.

Bone Lair

2009-10-06T14:46:00.000-07:00

I had an assignment for the talisman to shoot the Biology Professor here, he collects bones and uses them to study animals. I wasn't sure how to make this assignment work, I wanted to do a portrait of him and use my strobes but I still haven't used them enough to be comfortable. I also shot some details of the bones in the room. I had some trouble with the low shutter speeds and it caused a problem with a a lot of the detail photos. But heres what I shot that I kind of sorta like.

International Festival

2009-09-26T17:42:00.000-07:00

Mayhem @ Tailgating

2009-09-21T21:31:00.000-07:00

Tailgating at Western Kentucky University...

So I was not in any way planning on shooting today, today was gonna be a day for me to hang out with my friends and have a good time; party, unwind from the week, and just forget about the massive piles of exams that I've been studying for that come up the week after this...

However, it started to absolutely DOWNPOUR and all mayhem broke loose. I dropped my backpack to ground and took my camera to start shooting, which was INCREDIBLY difficult. Not only had I been drinking with friends, but I also had NOTHING to cover my camera with. The boys in the area I was at started mud slidding and I was in a jean skirt...so shooting it was akward but whatever. There was a tent close by, and the guys there were letting me wipe my camera off on their shirts to dry it off when I needed too. After awhile the rain became so intense that I had to stop shooting because I was fearful of the craziness destroying my camera. I wasn't really shooting with anything in mind, I just wanted to capture the craziness for memories sake, as most photographers are pretty sentimental. Anyways, I did the best I could under the circumstances and here's what I got....

Pear Lighting-Ambient

2009-09-17T05:05:00.001-07:00

Here's my second lighting assignment, to shoot a photo of a pear but with artificial light. I kind of like it, it wasnt really planned initially to have that light but then I noticed a reflection in the colors from sunflowers that were on the table and yea thats about it...

The decided

2009-09-15T13:41:00.001-07:00

The favorites from Camp Quality... I toned and edited them last night, comments and critiques are appreciated. Cheers.

Tailgating

2009-09-12T18:02:00.000-07:00

The talisman decided that they were going to have a tailgating shootout and heres what I got...I had a blast today shooting this!

T-O-P-S! Tops, Tops, Tops!

Happy Birthday Kylee! Everybody gathered round to chant rather than sing her happy birthday, it was pretty cool.

R.I.P. Lizze Wells, "My Forever Friend"

2009-09-08T14:42:00.000-07:00

This post is more of a journal entry I'm deciding share with you all, so don't expect good grammar or an amazingly crafted story. This is just a brief story about my friendship with Lizzie Wells who was my friend through chemo when I was 14, who I ran into again when I shot my cancer story this summer. Lizzie and I used to hang out at the nurses station together when we were in our prolonged visits to the hospitals (at least when she could walk and wasn't in isolation). I don't care if you read what I wrote below the photo, I just wrote to get it out there. Maybe some sort of explanation as to why I would choose to do what I did.

As for Lizzie, you SHOULD know about her, and what an amazing human being she was. You SHOULD read the paper that she wrote, you should know what strength in a human being is.

I actually took this while she was sleeping, just for myself, because she hated having her picture taken. It's something I now can go back and look at when I want or need some photo inspiration or life inspiration. Because when things become a little too unbearable for me, I remember the times I had with her and cherish it.

---------------------->>>>>>>>>>>

Lizzie passed away on Saturday morning at 8:10am, Aug. 30th. I can not tell you all how much of an HONOR it was to have been lucky enough to run into Lizzie again. It was so meant to be, on the first day I started shooting the story I remember going down the hall and seeing through the 7 west doors one of my favorite nurses Amber. I ran over to say hi and give her a big hug before I went off to shoot. That was the thing that made Kosair a good experience, the nurses, on any given day they could make me smile and didn't treat me any differently because of having cancer.

Sure enough she mentioned something about Lizzie. And I remember saying, "Lizzie? My lizzie from when I was a patient." It'd been SO LONG since I had last gone to see her, but I asked if I could stop in and say hello. I was not really prepared for what I saw, a shell of the Lizzie that I knew. She was bed-ridden, cheeks were swollen, she was wearing a breathing mask, and her voice was croaked and quiet.

I started crying and told her I was sorry, which was really a sorry for so many things...sorry for not being here for you, sorry that I've been able to survive and get on with my life and your LITERALLY stuck, and sorry that your alone. What was ironic, was she assured me that she was "hopeful" (mind you Lizzie had been doing this since she was at the age of 5).

I went back the immediate next day and called her up and asked if she would like it if I spent the night. I could hear the smile on her face when she said, "SUURE". That night I brought her a Lil Wayne poster and we had a sex and the city marathon and then watched In her Shoes. I told her that she didn't have to worry about entertaining me or even do anything, that we could just chill. That her hospital room would be like our own little dorm room. I explained to her that in college you spend so much time together that most of the time you don't need to talk, that their presence alone is enough for you. Lizzie had never been able to go to college and so this was my way of giving her a window into that life that she so desperately wanted.

Lizzie strength and courage for life is something I will be taking with me for the rest of my life. On the Thursday afternoon, I came back for one last goodbye before she finally asked for the pain medicine that sent her into a coma. Jane (an amazing women who went to visit with Lizzie too) and I let Lizzie know that it was OK to pass. I could literally feel in that moment her soul, her life, her spirit, passing out from her skin. And in some strange ways I could feel me breathing a part of it in. She clung to Jane for life and I sorta mentioned to the chaplin that, yea Jane was who she needed, and then she shot a piercing, "what the hell are you talking about look" and reached out her other hand to me with all that she could. I just started sobbing as i clung back and thanked her for everything she had given me, let her know I loved her, and that she meant just as much to me as I did to her. That the summer had been a very lonely one without. Jane and I thanked Lizzie for letting her be my friend. Because to be honest when I'm back home in Louisville, they're few and far between after I graduated high school.

In that moment, every other death of a friend I'd experienced brought closure, I finally got to say goodbye. All of the anger, sadness, depression, and guilt of being a survivor floated with it. Actually throughout the whole experience, I remember saying how it was the first time since I survived that I didn't feel guilty about it. Because for me watching people die from the same disease I had been plagued with just seemed fucked up on so many levels. My treatment protocol was a very intense one and required lots of in-patient treatment. Which meant that most of the people who were in there for long periods of time weren't doing well.

To the nurses of 7 West who took care of her, thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking such AMAZING care of my friend. Esp. "Moe-Moe" and Veronica, I love you all more than anything and you all have such a big part of my heart, as well as Lizzie's since you all were her favorites. I am so glad the last thing me Lizzie bonded over was discussing our favorite nurses while making friendship bracelets.

HERE IS THE PAPER... YOU SHOULD BE AMAZED BY LIZZIE.

Life As I know It When I Turned 18

Written by: Elizabeth M. Wells

I turned 18 on March 16th but it doesn't make me feel any different. Somethink that since they turned 18 then they have officially become an adult. But not me, in my house if you think that than you will have the responsibility that an adult has like paying bills, moving out on their own, and I'm just not ready for that yet. As everyone knows I have been diagnosed with cancer since I was 5 years old, and just this pass December I was also diagnosed with lupus. If that's not enough, I have hyper tension problems to go along with all my health issues and I also have blood pressure problems as well.

I'm writing this little short story because I have nothing else to do while I am here in the hospital and it seems like I have been here for the entire summer. I have probably enjoyed the summer at home for maybe three weeks. I will be a senoir this year in school mainly because I have worked so hard to get here. I wanted to go to school this year but I am too scared to go to school for the first semester because I amfraid that I wouldn't be able to keep up or wrried that maybe I'd miss school a lot because I was in the hospital so much. Therefore I have come up with a plan: if I can stay out of the hospital long enough for the first semester while I am home schooled, then I would be able to attend school for the second semester. At least by then I can still attend my senior prom and walk with my class when I graduate. For college, I plan to attend Morehead University to become an early childhood education teacher.

I just want my own room back. If you walked in my room today, you would see that it's a babyish room and not a teenager's room. I just want that feeling back. I would like to be able to have friends over for the night.

I have been sick more times this year than I was last year. The nurses on 7 West treat me like a queen every time I'm here. It is as if I was one of their own children, and I'm thankful for that. I can be mean and unpleasant at times, but that still doesn't change the way they feel about me or even treat me. At times, I don't show or tell the nurses how much I love them and care for them and may not say thanks or even act like I am grateful for all the things they do for me. But I want them to know, that I am thankful for everything. Even when they just come by my room to say hello it really means a lot to me just to know that they think about me, love me, and care about me.

Sometimes I feel like no one understands me, and no one really knows what I go through on a day-to-day basis. I realize that I will be taking medicine for the rest of my life and that I will be sick for the rest of my life. But just because I have a terminal illness it's not going to stop me from enjoying my life! I WILL become a teacher if it's the last thing I do. Knowing I'm sick has stopped me from having some lifetime friendships. It is hard when everyone knows, I'm sick. It has put a damper on my life, but that is all about to change. I am willing to change now. I am willing to live my life to the fullest. It's not that I wasn't doing that at first. I just wasn't enjoying it like I should. I never wanted to go and hang out with other people my age or even go out. I always wanted to stay in the house watching TV. I always wanted to be up under my momma. Everywhere she went, I went to. I always complained about being bored but I didn't want to be around anybody, I didn't want to do anything. This school year I want to be able to attend the schooldances and school basketball games. I want to be able to join a school committee and just want to be a normal teenager. I want to have friends that accept me for me, not friends that just feel sorry for me. I don't like people that just want to use me or feel sorry for me. I don't like people that just want to be my friend because they know I have a disease. Just because I have cancer doesn't mean that I amcontagious. It doesn't mean that if I sneeze or cough, I can spread it. I want everyone in my life to know that this story, though it may seem like I'm complaining, I'm truly not. I have been told my entire life that everything happens for a reason and I know that GOD has a plan in store for me. Whatever that may be I am willing to accept it. I am willing to wait for my purpose in life and while I wait, I want to enjoy life as much as I can. All I ask is that I am treated like any other teenager. I want to be a NORMAL person, but I understand that it may never happen. But don't I have the right to be treated like everyone else? Don't I have the right to live life to the fullest? Don't I have the right to be normal? You will soon see that it is all about to change starting on the first day of school. You will all see a new and improved ELIZABETH MARIE WELLS. You will see someone who is willing to help any one in need and someone who is willing to be the best friend anyone could possibly have. I am willing and ready to act like a normal teenager, which means I want everyone to start treating me that way.

I know I need to stop complaining, because it doesn't reflect well on me. Instead of me complaining about everything, I need to be thanking people and be grateful for my life. I need to be thanking GOD for my life that i have and I need to be grateful for everything that's happened to me over the last 18 years. I need to show and tell people that I'm thankful and grateful for all they do. Deep down in my heart, I don't have to prove anything to anybody, because I know that if I keep my trust in GOD anything is possible. And if I believe that anything is possible, it will come to pass.

I know that my family loves me and I know that they would do anything for me. I want my family to know I love them, and I would do anything in the world for them. I am grateful for them being there for me when I am down, hurt, or even when I am sick, stuck in the hospital for weeks at a time. I thank them for not leaving me out on thing when I'm not there. This story is for anyone who wants to know about my life: my complaints, my gratefulness and my accomplishments. I may not have shared my accomplishments yet in this story, but believe me when I say I have many. I have over come so many thing in my life that I can't tell them all, but I do know the obstacles that I have overcome have not been just me doing all my work. With the help from family and friends, I know I can acheive anything if I just set my heart to it and if I struggle, which I do. I know that my family and friends are right there to help. THANKS.

THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR HELP, THANK YOU ALL FOR BELIEVING IN ME THANK YOU ALL FOR EVERYTHING, THANK YOU MOMMA FOR GIVING ME LIFE, THANK YOU GOD FOR GIVING ME LIFE ALSO THANK YOU, THANK YOU THANK YOU SOME PEOPLE MAY NOT KNOW HOW MUCH I'M THANKFUL FOR BUT BELIEVE ME WHEN I SAY THANK YOU BECAUSE I TRULY MEAN IT FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART.

Chemo Brings Good Days and Bad Days

2009-08-18T05:57:00.000-07:00

Random photos of Shawn

2009-08-12T16:18:00.000-07:00

The title of this post is kind of self-explanatory.

Shawn had gained about 5 lbs in a week from the steroids he was on.

Monday August 10, 2009

2009-08-10T12:33:00.000-07:00

Shawn Bowen, day 1 of me following him

2009-08-07T14:22:00.000-07:00

The 5 year-old cutie who stole every girl's heart from Camp Quality, Shawn Bowen, just started his last round of chemotherapy before beginning maintnence treatment over the next few years. Shawn has ALL (Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia). Over the last year Shawn has been in out of the hospital receiving chemo treatments. He recently was on break right before starting up the treatment he is getting right now, which is why is hair is still in tact. Well while I was at camp I met him and his family, and he was so full of personality that I desperately wanted to follow up with a documentation of Shawn's life. I'm not exactly sure where this story is headed, I just know that I wanted to document his life at least up until I left for school. I want to document this because I feel like not enough people understand how painful this all can be. That you don't just loose your hair or are risking your life. Chemo in itself is one of the most physically demanding things someone can put your body through, and that in order to survive it's your medicine that suppose to make you better has to make your worse first.

I plan to come back and forth a little off and on over the next few years. He's almost done with the nasty stages of chemo and then over the next few years he will get treated with small doses of chemotherapy every now and then as maintnence. But this last stage is a rough one, Shawn is on steroids right now, and if anyone has encoutered someone on steroids you know they can get pretty nasty.

Shawn did pretty well today though, he was off and on upset, but also eating like a bear stocking up for winter. Today he received chemo through what is known as PEG shots, which are administered through his thighs in very long needles. And while they give numbing creme for your thigh, that only prevents you from feeling the needle enter your body. You definetly feel the needle as it in your thigh muscles, and it hurts. One thing that I found really interesting though was after I had been talking to nurses, they didn't understand why there hasnt been found a new way of doing this. Which they also kept apologizing for.

Anyways, I'll write more later, here's some of the photos.

Appointment for checkup scheduled for 10:15am.

First before check-up a bloodsample of his bloodcount is taken to ensure that his body is ready for chemo.

Shawn waits while watching ratoui in his waiting room for the doctor or nurse practitioner to come visit.

At 12pm, Shawn is finally scheduled to check in over at Kosair where he waits for an hour an half to receive his chemo.

Shawn knowing what is about to happen, resists from the nurses.

PEG Asparaginase shots are given in the thigh muscles and the number of shots given is based on weight. Pegaspargase is given as an injection into a large muscle (intramuscular or IM). Depending on your dose, the medication may need to be divided into two injections. Shawn recieved one in each thigh at the same time.

"Camp Quality is in my heart, Camp Quality is in my soul...

2009-08-03T21:20:00.001-07:00

...The friends I made they live in me, they're memories are just like gold. Camp Quality. Camp Quality. Camp Quality." That's the camp song for Camp Quality, a non-profit year-round support system for kids with cancer, that includes one special week a year to allow kids with cancer to be kids again. The campers age range from 5-16 and can return year after year until they're 16. There's a special bond between everyone there that makes them family. Not only that, the camp provides each camper with one companion to be their friend and is with them the whole week, which allows for some pretty eye opening experiences from those who've never been around this type of enviorment before.

As a former camper coming back as a volunteer, it was extremly different perspective I got from the camp this time. I realized just how special that place is and that there really is nothing else like it and that I took a lot of it for granted when I went there. And while I hope my pictures shed some light on why the camp is important, its really something you have to experience for yourself. Those kids there are some of the bravest you'll meet in your life, and as always it was an honor to be a part of their lives. So many belly-aching laugh's, inside jokes, and just pure fun happened this week. For that I am forever grateful to have experienced it.

For me personally, this was probably the most rewarding photo experience I've ever had. It reminded me of why I got into not just photography but journalism in the first place, to help people. When I finish the story I want people to know about Camp Quality and get why it matters. And if that can come from taking these pictures, well then I did my job.

Here are a few clips from my week. I was way too attached to this story to any type of narrowing down past this number so any help would be much appreciated:

I was so proud Destiny, she was actually really quite scared to do it, but did it cause she wanted to be proud of herself.

This picture reminds of another special thing about Camp Quality, the nurses. This nurse Nancy who is one of the kindest souls you'll ever meet in your life, she was my nurse as a camper. I remember one night where she had stayed up with me and one of the other girls till like 2 am just talking and like counseling us. It was really sweet, it was during my first year.

And this is a group picture of all the nurses from Camp, and while this isn't the most amazing portrait in the world, it's important to post because they make camp special too. While the camp is all about the kids there, so many of the kids look up to them that I feel they need a special note. A lot of cancer patients I know end up going on and wanting to become nurses too. They're the life line of any hospital and on an onocolgy unit, they are the support system. My dad once said that, "it takes a different kind of person to be a nurse on 7 west (the onocology unit of Kosair Childrens Hospital). They see a lot and to want to put yourself through that day in and day out, well they're just really special people."

I reminded myself of this towards the end of the week when I started waiting around with the nurses to get photos of them doing they're job. Certain conversations we had made me even more grateful then when I was sick because it dawned on me how rare people like that are. So guys thanks.

Anyways...enough rambling back on with the rest of the pictures...just thought I'd share that with you.

Another AMAZING women from Camp Quality.

Also, another great thing about this place, its the only time you can do this and be cool.

Carolyn Geiser, part of the staff at camp, she is one of the people who work year-round to pull off the camp.

2009-07-23T18:02:00.000-07:00

my neice alyson playing outside, I decided since this might be my last summer I'll go without having a job and have the oppurtunity to chill with my family, they'll be what I document. And instead of stressing and trying to find news ways each day to travel miles around louisville to find pictures, it'd mean a lot more to me and my family by taking pictures of them. Now granted, they only appreciate them long after they've been taken, but I'm sure they'll get used to it soon, they're so close I can feel it. A couple of them are still adjusting. Others have said it's kind of a bittersweet process.

Cubby

2009-07-23T17:51:00.000-07:00

My dog cubby, is getting quite old these days and its getting easier and easier for portraits to be taken of her. Its really quite sad too, as much she used to urk my nerves from being so gosh darn hyper when I was busy I'm now remembering way back in the day. She was my best friend when I was sick back in 2004. Wasn't phased by the way I looked, kept me warm while sleeping, was quite the confident I could talk to and always gave me the best welcome home greetings after month long visits to the hospital. Well for being so special I wanted to post this portrait of her, Ms. Cubbykins, except shes now become a chubbykins...

Baby Pat is now mobile!

2009-07-23T17:22:00.000-07:00

My nephew stopped by today and hes grown since the last time I saw him, he's now crawling. Still spoiled as ever, but thats OK, he's too cute not to be at this point. And boy did he know how to crawl, every 5 seconds we were having to grab and make sure he didnt run away.

big sister jillian to the rescue.

his smile makes my heart melt.

grandma nise (nee-see)

cousin alyson and baby pat.

he has mail.

"how YOU doin'?" He's gonna be such a lady's man.

double trouble

2009-07-11T12:32:00.000-07:00

Camping: Daniel Boone National Forest

2009-07-10T13:22:00.001-07:00

ummm yea kayaking while trying to take pictures really should be a sport, cause that is so not easy.

Thanks Mrs. Fluhr

2009-07-04T19:44:00.000-07:00

This post is dedicated to Mrs. Fluhr, who was my high school teacher for the last 3 years of high school. My broadcasting teacher sophomore year, and yearbook editor junior and senior year.

Recently this person just did the most amazing thing to help me out which I'm not going to say what. However that is why she gets an entire post dedicated to her. Not that she hasn't already deserved one all along.

Ha, I remember only wanting to apply for the yearbook staff so I could have her as a teacher again. Little did I know that she would eventually come up with the funding for new camera gear including two canon 30d camera's. Which she allowed me to take home and use for days at a time. Mrs. Fluhr, you were patient, understanding, and an amazing person to talk to about my problems whatever they may be. And I know for a fact that I wouldn't be doing photojournalism if it wasn't for you. So this post is dedicated to you.

Summer Brew

2009-07-02T16:48:00.000-07:00

A Friday night party, which I took as an oppurtunity to shoot as an event. It's really interesting what happens when people let loose and just have fun. I was told to shoot anything that was a social gathering of people so here are the photos from a few nights ago.

man payback is a bitch Josh!

the biggest high-five of all time, 5 at once.

And trust me this is one of the funniest husband-wife teams you'll ever meet in your life!

Summer

2009-07-02T14:37:00.000-07:00

One of the really cool things about my sister Juliet, who's a single mother, she has an amazing bond with her daughter Alyson. This was taken this afternoon after Alyson had been out all day away from her.

Camp Quality 2009 Here I come!!

2009-07-01T13:17:00.000-07:00

I finally got word back from Camp Quality, which I applied for late this year to come back as a photographer/floater companion. Camp Quality is a camp for kids with cancer who are either in treatment or have survived. I was a camper there twice, which for all who don't know already, I am Leukemia survivor...hit the 5 year mark this year! I wasn't able to attend last year because my application was sent in past the deadline and then I this year, I thought I wasn't going to be able to return because there were 5 other people ahead of me on waitlist for volunteer. Well today I got the call and I will be coming back as a floater companion which will allow me the freedom to take pictures but also work with the kids. I am so excited, this place has always meant the world to me, and everyone there is family. Sometime around August I'll be posting my pictures from there but until then, I wanted to share a couple of my favorite pictures from when I was there as a camper.

Me getting to fly a plane...and maybe a little too happy about it.

Lindley Lockard and I on the first night, she was the one who convinced me to go in the first place.

Then there was the night we had a party in our room! Good memories.

Photos I Forgot to Post....The Basement

2009-06-30T06:22:00.001-07:00

One of my favorite pass-times at school was shooting party's, my friends having fun and blowing off the stress of whatever test they had that week or wanting to just simply let loose and have a good time. At party's, I like to look for moments but my friends also like posing and doing goofy stuff, either way my friends enjoy seeing them and I enjoy the practice.

It was a group of five guys that started this club called the Basement, which is in the Basement of an unknown house. Well here are some of the photos from the party they threw at the end of the year right before the last week during finals, which actually ended up becoming quite a big party for just a bunch of friends to throw. I tried something new this time too, and went with a gel on the strobe to see what the effect was going to have on the photos. I won't be using a strobe anymore though, I really like natural photos, strobes dont allow for this. It made people notice me and made them slightly more umcomfortable. Anyways heres what the experiment left me with.

It actually started raining too.

Backyard Practice

2009-06-28T17:16:00.000-07:00

In light of the fact I have no internship this summer, I'm pretty much lending all of my effortws to shooting features around Louisville and keeping my familys photo album up to date. Well today I shot my neice, who never lets me shoot her, but today I promised to play her so she promised to let me take pictures. It was a win, win.

"It's Rock N' Roll", she said.

2009-06-24T18:39:00.000-07:00

Victoria Lucchesl, 25, of Louisville, Ky. auditions for The Lotus Blake in Tyler Park, Louisville, Ky. "It's rock n roll and it's good for your soul," she said while describing her style of music.

Lexington "Cut"

2009-06-20T15:06:00.001-07:00

I went to Lexington last week to see a few of my friends from Western. One of my friends Mel and mine's favorite thing to do while in Bowling Green was ride around in the area outside in the surrounding county and listen to music and enjoy the scenery. She referred to it as the cut and soon I did too. Well Lexington has many more surrounding counties and so we definetly went riding around in that area. Well heres a photo I took while out there.

It occured to me.

2009-06-19T04:48:00.000-07:00

I realized the other day that I never actually posted the video of my first muiltimedia project from this year, I posted a few pictures but heres the entire video.

The Highlands

2009-05-29T07:19:00.000-07:00

I was having a pretty bad day yesterday and then my friend Danielle suggested we go to highlands. My bad day was put to rest after some shooting, cause the Highlands just has a lot of things that look cool. Here are two of my favorite photos from the day.

Queen of the Rags.

This is at the corner of my old bustop from last summer. It was when I started taking the bus that I really began to appreciate the people of Louisville. I had to travel for two hours on a bus every morning to get to work, this was one of the places I transfered buses. It's really cool to hear what people are willing to discuss with you about their lives when waiting for the bus. My favorite story had to be from a man who was telling me all about how he was going to be heading to Holiday World with his family, which included like 6 kids, that weekend. He told me that I need to in life, remember to always take breaks, because those breaks are what really make life special.

Sports...

2009-05-26T13:14:00.000-07:00

So I've got really great people who work at my old highschool, one is a yearbook teacher who figured out how to get grant money for 400mm 2.8 lens and 70-200mm 2.8 (of course it was after I graduated) but since your gracious enough and trust me enough to let me use the gear...much appreciation is given. Then ahealth teacher/coach/athletic director who ensured a free ticket to the state track championship and all access shooting. Both of whom I'm very grateful are still willing to help me out with photo even though I'm no longer a student.

Mrs. Fluhr and Coach Amshoff big thank you's :-)

As a warning, the toning on the photos are awful, as I do not own photoshop and am no longer at Western.

Step this summer that needs to be taken is learning to shoot well in jpg.

400mm 2.8...

Kit Lens...

Pre-K Graduation

2009-05-26T13:04:00.000-07:00

My neice Alyson just graduated from pre-k, before she knows it she'll be garduating high school and going off to college.

Not sure what to call this post.

2009-05-08T04:17:00.001-07:00

My final story has turned a new leaf and I finally started to become at least happy with the somewhat of a direction the story is going. My final multimedia production, which I will finish shooting (for now) on Sunday. I wish I had more time to work on this before I turn the story in for class, but heres a few of what I have so far.

Final Story

2009-05-05T00:17:00.000-07:00

I've been working on my final project the last few days, getting ready for the semester to end. I'm still not entirely sure what the direction my project is headed in future directions, it's got a lot of issues that come up in the family. A family thats really on rough times at the current moment. For the week long aspect of the project it probably wont have all the elements that I need or even want, but I plan to want to continue this story after it's done. I feel like there are some things to learn from these people.

Anyways, this is the photo I like. It doesn't say much about the current issues the family is facing, but it's a good for me photo for right now. I'm still not sure if it will add anything to the final outcome.

2009-04-26T23:30:00.000-07:00

I was out looking for stories today, riding around Bowling Green on a bike, exploring the area. The search was successful in a way because I found the office I was looking for but it was closed on Sundays. However, on the way back I ran into some of my favorite people to take pictures of, those crazy PFT kids who have become my friends over the last semester. The lighting was great so I just started shooting to relieve some stress about finals. Anyways, heres some pictures of those people and some new people I met as well.

Tug: Greek Week 2009

2009-04-24T17:34:00.000-07:00

Thunder Over Louisville 2009

2009-04-19T21:01:00.001-07:00

Airsoft Guns

2009-04-17T15:07:00.001-07:00

So I was told that Pj's are obsessed with airfsoft guns...I guess we just like to shoot things.

Easter Portraits

2009-04-14T02:28:00.000-07:00

Of course this Sunday was Easter and at my house that means family time, so while I was home this weekend I decided to abuse the fact my family has to put up with me and photography and took practice portraits of my family members. Here they are:

Random Campus Life Memories

2009-04-10T01:11:00.000-07:00

My freshmen second semester was a lot of fun and I've had some of the best times of my life while here in Bowling Green. I was looking through these last night while pulling another all nighter and wanted to post them. Here are a few photos from the people I've met this semester and had the opportunity to spend time with.

Mr. Ben Snawder

Kevin with the lollipop...

Aleesha loving her lollipop a little bit much.

Aleesha and Kevin are also probably one of cutest couples you'll ever see.

Nate and C.J.

And this is Sammy Sam...I guarantee you that if you spend just 5 minutes around this girl that you will be rolling your head off before time is up, she is hilarious!

Someone said that this was the V.I.P. section, or at least looked like it could be.

Celena smoking some hookah.

Sophie and Margee.

Margee.

Say cheese!

She does her own thing...

Sow The Fields

2009-04-07T11:41:00.000-07:00

My most recent assignment was a project covering a farmer or a preacher, which for my assignment I chose to do one on Courtney Gentry. Gentry is a freshmen here at Western who works on the college farm. So here it is:

Useless Photo Assistants

2009-04-06T18:04:00.000-07:00

Last week, Brian, my amazing and wonderful photo teacher from last semester in Basic had asked some people who were in the lab if they wanted to help his non-majors class. I figured what the hell, it's always fun in his class. However, instead of being much help, my friend Kristen and I decided after waiting around for students to ask for help to have some fun in the "jesus light". We literally ran towards light and dragged Brian with us for some fun photos outside. Its times like these that I have while being around the lab and being surrounded by some of the amazing people that I am, that I remember why I am here.

the first pose, "a little off the shoulder".

my amazing photo teacher from Basic, Brian Masck and my friend Kristen Houser, being themselves.

Brian takes the best iphone photos EVER!

and then Mandy showed up, so I snapped a few of her too...

Momma Jackie: Keepin' It Real

2009-03-19T10:25:00.000-07:00

My first multimedia assignment was entitled: Unsung Hero, and the idea was to show them as a human being and what makes them a hero. Jackie Pillow was my unsung hero, she works at the Office of Diversity program on campus as the office associate. However, what makes her so special is that she takes it upon herself to guide youth, specifically minority students is her passion, and try to make sure they take the right path in life. I had a lot of fun doing this assignment, Jackie is very honest with these kids and thats what made her so unique, she didn't tell them what they wanted to hear it was what they need to hear. She's like a mother to these kids. I dont have the sound slide presentation up yet, but for now I'm going to post my favorite photos from the project.

Good Luck Houser!

2009-03-18T01:02:00.001-07:00

I took this in the photo lab last Friday and thought it was a pretty fun photo so I thought I'd post it. My friend and fellow photojournalism student, Kristen Houser, was in the lab getting a congratulatory high five after she got the news about receiving a grant for a plane ticket to Washington, DC to pursue an amazing photo story she found while visiting there.

So Kristen, good luck on the project and I hope your story rocks!

Spring Break 2009

2009-03-17T23:30:00.000-07:00

My Spring Break vacation wasn't very exciting nor the typical Panama City vacation that all my friends went on, mine was a more tranquil vacation spent at home. I saw the family and had the luxury of lots of sleep, both of which I don't get very much of as photojournalism student at Western.

My big sis, Candy, is also getting married next spring and she went to try on wedding dresses, this was the third visit to the bridal shop.

From Greene Light

Trying on brides maids gown's.

From Greene Light

My other big sis, Haley, was jumping the gun a little here.

From Greene Light

My niece Alyson coming home from preschool.

From Greene Light

Bonfire

2009-02-28T16:28:00.000-08:00

Bonfires on windy nights are NOT good ideas.

Margee!

2009-02-25T16:46:00.000-08:00

Last semester for a final story I was going to do for my picture story final assignment in basic my story on Margee Luken, a Western Kentucky University freshmen recovering from anorexia. I never ended up finishing or even continuing with this story due to the time constraint. There was never a photo I had that really would represent what she was going through. Yet again, after going through my hard drive and trying to find photos I liked...here is what I like...it's not a photo story but Margee just makes for cool photos.

"The Steps"

2009-02-21T12:22:00.001-08:00

So this is a photo from what was technical hang out spot last semester, it's the steps outside of my dorm building on campus here, Bemis Lawrence Hall. I used to go out there quite frequently to go on a smoke break or two, but those steps allowed me to meet some interesting people last semester, and theres some good memories too. After awhile the frequent visitors to the steps started just calling it the steps. Some of the craziest things used to happen out there at night and a little during the day too. At night though, you never knew who was going to be playing music or who you were going to meet or what funny story you were going to hear or what game some stranger you just met was going to make up to entertain ourselves or what some crazy party girl was going to do in order to sober herself up before she entered the building. It was an interesting place to say the least and I met a lot people by hanging out there. Anyways, along with the photo from the last post I found this on my hard drive yesterday. I took it looking for my moment assignment for my basic class, which I ended up not using because it didn't fit the requirement of the assignment to have them interacting. However, its still a photo that I'm pretty fond of so I thought I'd post it here.

Jackson's Orchard

2009-02-21T12:12:00.000-08:00

This is something I took last semester for my basic assignment to cover an event and my choice was Jackson's Orchard a yearly fall pumpkin festival. I was cleaning up my hard drive last night organizing it and I found it so I thought I'd post it.

Inauguration Barack Obama 2009

2009-02-11T10:23:00.000-08:00

I attended the inauguration events for President elect Barack Obama and my take on the event was pretty simple. This was history I was experiencing and everyone around me during that day, for the most part, was in pretty high spirits. On Monday I spent most of the day getting street shots and asking people what Obama being elected meant to them and some of the responses I got were pretty moving. Some felt like the division between blacks and whites no longer existed others felt that Obama was not just bringing America together but the entire world. Me and the group I went with were lucky enough to catch the first metro out to DC and even on the metro, because we were the first to leave and everyone knew this was history, they were even in a good mood. I was in a section that was pretty close to the capital building and most of the people around us had been camping out for 12 hours to see this and every single one of the people I asked about how they felt on the cold weather said it was worth it. It was one of the longest and shortest days of my life, but an experience nonetheless. I fell a total of four times that day; once while standing on the seats of the metro to get a better angle for shots, two times while I was being lifted by random strangers to get crowd shots, and then the last time was while climbing the barracades on the way back. I was pretty sore the next day, out of the 30 hours that I was awake in DC I only got to sit for maybe 5 hours in between everything, it was exhausting but so much fun. This was history and I can say that I was there and to me that was the best part. Here are a few of my favorite shots from the event.

Daniel Bellaril, 58, uses the ventilator's in the national mall to stay warm. Bellaril has lived on streets of Washington, DC., for seven years and normally spends his days outside of the Justice Department petitioning and protesting. In regards to Obama's election he said, "I think Obama is offering more options; ethnicity wise, and I think he will bring change. I hope he represents me. All we need now is for a women and poor man to be president and everyone will be represented."

Despite the large crowds, the excitement of the day was felt by all, as people laughed together, joked, and swapped funny stories on the first metro ride to leave for DC from Sterling, Virginia. That left at 4:00 a.m. on the inauguration day, Tuesday Jan. 20, 2009.

Left to right, Sara Brown, 21, Tim Yagel, 20, James Harrison, 21, Chris Thorton, 22, Seth Morgan, 21, from Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia dance to the song "Celebrate" playing over the speakers on the West Front Lawn of the Capital Building. "The cold didn't really bother us because we brought out sleeping bags," Harrison said, "We just came to enjoy the warmth of the people around us and celebrate making history."

Rachel Rasmusslon, 28, and Piero Bryan, 29, Seattle University students seek warmth together while staking a good spot to watch the inauguration celebration. The two had camped out overnight in the West Front Lawn of the Capital Building and had been outside for ten hours, in temperatures that dropped to an estimated 20 degrees with a wind chill of 17. “It’s totally worth it. This is history and the first time that we actually get to witness it first hand since the seventies,” Rasmusslon said.

A women holds her daughter outside the Washington Monument while she watches President Barack Obama's inauguration speech.

A boy holds a sign up to the crowds after President Barack Obama gives his inauguration speech.

2009-02-11T05:45:00.000-08:00

For my first blog post I thought I'd upload some shots I took on Monday afternoon when a man outside the steps of DUC started telling everyone that they were going to hell. According to some I had talked to in the crowd he had been there for about two hours by the time I arrived. His agenda seemed pretty clear, he wanted attention and wanted college students to know about God. I hadn't really paid too much attention to what he was saying, I mostly noticed how angry the crowd was getting. From what I understood, he wasn't listening to what anyone in the crowd had to say and was trying to talk to us instead of with us. However, it was pretty cool to see that people felt they could speak their minds to argue against this man, because it wasn't just non-religious people who were angry, everyone felt he was going about this in the wrong way. He definitely got people talking, which was good, even if he wasn't hearing it.