Longing to deal with the trauma of breast cancer? Go the way of 48 year old, Wendy Hunsaker and 41 year old Tania Katan, pick up the pen and get the creative juices to flow away to cope with breast cancer!
It needs an immense amount of courage to cope up with the breast cancer treatment. To cope up with the traumatic physical tests and the emotional high lows faced during the treatment of breast cancer Wendy and Tania decided to write and type on their laptops.
Breast cancer and Wendy Hunsaker
A healthy Wendy Hunsaker at 48 years ,was taken by shock when she was diagnosed with breast cancer a year ago . She was aware of no evident history of any family member suffering from the same.
Calling the treatment a “surreal experience” she thought that it was more sensible to distract herself in the doctor’s waiting room for the treatment rather than mope about her problem. She decided to go creative.! About 10 years ago the lady had started writing for a romantic comedy , so she decided to restart her screenplay as she sat it out at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston to go through the radiation treatments and two lumpectomies prescribed to her.
Mother to a 21 year old boy, Hunsaker, stated “It was nice to focus on something creative and positive because so much of cancer treatment is out of your control.”
Scribbling away at her travel romance that is all about facing fear and finding love” set in the Middle Ages and later, she spaced out the appointment timing and wrote away as she waited for her surgeries and treatment.
Catching up on soundtracks like Crystal Castles, Sarah McLachlan, Taylor Swift that aided to fuel her “creativity and shut out the hospital noises. My imagination would go into that world”. She had to be actually prodded to go for the appointment as she would retreat into a world of her own.
She admitted herself that her writing was like a miracle “I realize that the battles and emotionally pivotal scenes were crafted while sitting at MD Anderson. You can sense the grit of the fight. With two surgeries, pre-op and post-op appointments, and daily radiation for six weeks, I logged over 60 hours in waiting rooms while I wrote.” Hunsaker, has authored the SENSEational Parties: How to Throw a Sensational Party by Captivating the Five Senses.
The spirited girl insisted on party time after a grueling time at the hospital facing treatment.
Tania Katan and her BRCA1 gene
On the other hand 41 year old, Tania Katan, 41, belonging to Phoenix started writing to cope up wuth the pain for both times that she was taken in by the deadly breast cancer. When Tania was in a tender young age of 21 years she found out she was suffering from advanced breast cancer.
In her own words “I was a medical anomaly at the time. I was freaked out about the diagnosis.
This was 1992 when young women were not getting breast cancer. People weren’t talking about breast cancer. There wasn’t the kind of awareness there is today,” she stated. She had to undergo mastectomy as well as the chemotherapy trauma . She trudged to college with her glorious mane shedding and her flailing hope. One day she decided to scribble in a play writing class and decided to write a humorous play.
This made her “super healthy” for about 10 years, but then a lump was diagnosed in her other breast and she was a potential candidate for the BRCA1 gene mutation. She was a patient of ovarian and breast cancer so had to go for the mastectomy, and chemotherapy. She decided to memorize her experiences. She jotted down her experiences on papers, pamphlets anywhere where she could write.
In 2006, this young curator of performance at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, got her My One Night Stand With Cancer published. After her ovaries have been removed she still stands up straight fighting the cancer bug.
