Karkinos. Triple-Negative

According to Jesús Márquez Rojas’ Doctoral thesis from 2013 (Spain), Edwin Smith discovered at Thebes in 1862 the oldest medical document known to date, presumably written by Imhotep. It displayed the first references regarding breast tumors and it also mentioned the absence of any kind of treatment. It was Hippocrates (V century B.C.), the forefather of medical sciences, the one that named the tumors after the Greek word kapkivoc (karkinos – crab), because the way tumors spread resembled a crab’s limbs. Hippocrates also divided tumors into two subcategories: malignant and benign. The first mastectomies where made around the II century B.C by Leonidas, a doctor and surgeon from the time. The first effective diagnoses tests (mammograms) started to be done at the beginning of the XX century. Twenty-six years later the first hormonal treatments where implanted and chemotherapy began to be administered on the second half of that century. Among all the historical dates regarding the Karkinos, the most important one for me is December 23th, 2015. That day my family suffered a severe blow. Manuela, my wife, had Triple-Negative breast cancer that was a 95% level of aggressiveness. That same day I decided to document the long and tough process ahead: the psychological shock, telling our son and loved ones, the biopsies, the physical changes, the treatment, the secondary effects from the medication, the mood swings, the absence of sex drive, the hair loss, burns, bruises, the anemia, the sudden drop of defenses, the exhaustion, the surgical intervention… Can you imagine how would you feel if you were told that your wife or husband had cancer? Do you know what a triple-negative cancer is or how would you react to those news? Reacting to such an unknown and painful situation seems impossible to me, still the first thing I did was kissing my wife, picking up my phone and taking a photo of that moment, a moment that stroked the deepest parts of our hearts. The image didn’t turn out to be very well but it was the seed that made me decide to start that same day the photographic project: document her everyday life, our life, throughout the whole process. Since then I have been working on this story. Telling stories through photography is what I mainly do in some Spanish media, expos and books. Always stories where the human being is the main character. Stories that usually develop away from my personal life. This time, it’s my turn to live the story at my own home and I’m living it with a never felt before intensity. I have dedicated six months of my life exclusively to this project, searching information, documentation and also flowing with my own emotions. And this story has not yet ended. It is said that the best way of knowing a story is to experience it from close distances. I’m living it in my own home 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This is an advantage for me but it also requires an enormous emotional effort. I can’t stop myself from asking: how will you experience the process? How will this new reality affect you? Will you be able to endure the medical tests? Will you bare chemotherapy? What kind of ideas will cross your mind? Will you cry, shout, get angry or get aggressive? Would you ask yourself why is this happening to you or for which purpose is this happening to you? Maybe it is a big chance to learn about ourselves and get to know us better. It is very difficult to answer these questions. Every individual acts in a different way. This piece of work shows how we are experiencing it at our home. For me, this is a new path that I never thought I would experience. It’s just another example of what is happening increasingly in many homes. I don’t want to overload the use of numbers, I’ll just report some of them: According to the last report from the WHO (World Health Organization), there were 14 million new cases in 2012 and a 70% increase was foreseen during the next decades. In 2012 8.2 million deaths induced by this disease were registered worldwide. For these reasons this project does not only aim people suffering this disease, but the whole society. Possible positive consequences I would love to precisely emphasize a kind of breast cancer, the Triple-Negative. A kind of cancer which, unfortunately, still has no “target therapy” (customized drugs depending on the patient). These treatments are used in, for example, in fighting hormonal tumors, which show great results. Achieving consciousness over something unknown is difficult but we must try. It would be wonderful if this could lead to making an appeal to the governments and private entities to increase the budgets and help destined to continuously investigating and to expand the programs of earlier detection (screening), also in younger women. This is only possible by raising awareness regarding this severe problem and the year by year increase of cases. Showing the process from inside can help this awareness process and to make others understand the different stages to go through and, this way, naturalize a situation where physical and psychical changes happen. The idea is to develop and rise a wider social awareness. Karkinos shows the human, intimal and familiar side that many women suffering from breast cancer. I want to believe that this work can motivate other women to examine themselves and take prevention tests. I think it is important to remind society about this disease the 365 days of the year and not only on the World Cancer Day. Also, highlighting the collateral damages from the disease is important: the companions, the family and friends which also suffer a big emotional burden. (Work in progress)