The Missing Body Part

Our bodies are our temples. I heard that years ago and it has stuck with me ever since. When I think of a temple I picture a Taj Mahal kind of place:beautiful, clean and glittery, with blue and white tiles. A place you enter and at once feel centered and calm and all at one with yourself.           

Metaphorically speaking, this image works really well for me and is perhapswhy it has stayed with me all these years. Realistically though, the body itself, (although a marvel), is sort of messy and red and squishy and mysterious and not at all glittery and clean on the inside.           

It’s also chock full of cells. Busy little buggers doing all kinds of things. Growing and dividing, growing and multiplying, growing and dying off and I don’t know what else [as a side note, I think I should like to take a class on Human Anatomy just so I can figure out what the hell is going on inside this temple of mine].            

A while back I had some cells that got together and decided to misbehave (right under my nose no less), by multiplying too fast and in a ‘bad as things can go’ kind of way. These little buggers had a grand ole’ time for god knows how long, (years I’m told) partying and creating more partying pals, until one day their party FINALLY became visible to me.           

Well, I had all the customary tests and lab work done and sure enough those little bastard cells (notice the promotion from buggers to bastards) had created a nice big fat lump of cancer in my breast. More like a lump of coal. Well, it all had to come off—the whole dang breast!!! Plus 20 lymph nodes, lots of skin and later on, out came my ovaries and tubes. Actually, I’d let them take more body parts if I thought it would keep the buggers from starting up another party.           

My beautiful temple has gone through a lot of changes these past few years. It’s not as glittery as it used to be and there are definitely some pretty blue and white tiles missing on the outside, but on the inside, as my 12-yr-old daughter would say, it’s all “good in the ‘hood.”

—Joi DeFoe

Artist Statement: It seems like everyone I know, over a certain age, is getting the same bad news--breast cancer.  What makes the cells of the mammary ducts, that once produced such nourishing milk, turn so lethal?

Materials & Techniques: Hand-dyed cottons, commercial cotton, cotton batting. Machine pieced and quilted

Size: 37.5"W x 50.5"H