'Controle-In Control' (2009)

In control On 28 March 2007, the day before my 34th birthday, I went for my annual check-up at the Academic Hospital of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. Thirteen years previously I had been treated for Hodgkin’s disease, a form of lymph node cancer. According to the protocol, the physician told me, my file was going into the archives. I had been ‘clean’ for so long that I was now ready for closure. The disease was gone for good. Four months later I felt a gland in my neck. An examination showed that Hodgkin’s had returned. To be cured, I had to undergo several months of chemotherapy, a stem cell transplantation and radiation therapy. One of my first reactions to this news had to do with how I had experienced the treatment thirteen years before; I recalled very clearly how frustrated I had been that my life had been put on hold. This time around I fought against the idea of having to lie in a bed and allow myself to have poison pumped into me. And that my plans and dreams had once again been thwarted by the disease. So I bought a simple and handy analogue camera that I could take with me wherever I went and made an agreement with myself that I would take at least three photos a day. By continuing to practise my profession and continuing to take photographs, I had the feeling that I wasn’t giving up my normal life completely. On 26 March 2008, two days before my 35th birthday, I was told the result: the treatment had worked, I was cured again. It would be months before I was able to force myself to look at the photos I had taken during my treatment. And even longer before I could tell the story of my illness through the photos. Ultimately, this book has helped me gain control of what I went through. By telling my story in this way, I gradually got the feeling that I was in control again. Not of the disease, because that’s not possible, but of my life. Amsterdam, spring 2009