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  Artist puts disease's pain on canvasCancer survivor's artworks express feelings, give others hopeBy Peggy Peck Editor's note: CNN.com has a business partnership with MedPageToday.com, which provides custom health content.  Janna Bernstein, top, and daughters: clockwise, Claire, 20, Rachel Kannady, 22, and Ruth, 16. HEALTH LIBRARYRELATED
YOUR E-MAIL ALERTSMEMPHIS, Tennessee (MedPage Today) -- There is no good time to find out you have a malignant tumor, but Janna Bernstein says that her breast cancer diagnosis came at the worst possible time. She learned of it just a week after she buried her mother, who was her sixth relative claimed by cancer in a decade. Although her breast tumor was early, small and curable, "I was absolutely hysterical. I had buried six relatives in 10 years and now I was diagnosed with cancer." Moreover, her mother had been her rock of support during so much of the family's string of crises, and now she was gone. Her only sister lived in San Antonio, Texas, too far away to provide the emotional help she needed, and she had difficulty discussing her feelings with her two brothers, who lived nearby. So the divorced mother of three teenage daughters turned to her lifelong passion -- art. This initiative led to some surprising outcomes. Following in the footsteps of an aunt who was an artist, Bernstein began her creative endeavors at age 3. During her elementary and high school years, she had to work hard for grades, "but I did have talent." Her grades were good enough to get into the elite Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where she majored in art with a concentration in fashion design. "I thought I would revolutionize the fashion industry," she said, but when she returned to Memphis after graduation she shifted direction. Bernstein enrolled at the University of Memphis where she picked up two master's degrees -- one in painting and another in art history. She planned to teach there. Before Bernstein could launch her academic career, she got married and had three daughters. "I decided I was really called to teach children, so I got involved in the school system and I also did volunteer work at the art museum," she said. All this time, she never gave a thought to her own health, and certainly not to cancer, because there was "no history of disease in my family," she says. "There were really no catastrophic events in my life until 1991." In that year, she and her husband divorced. At the same time "my favorite uncle died of stomach cancer and that was the beginning of long series of deaths -- all from cancer -- among my family members." Mixed blessingWhen her mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, Bernstein became the primary caregiver. Early every morning she would get her daughters ready for school and leave for school herself where she taught art to students in grades three to six. After school, she would rush over to her mother's house to relieve the day nurse. In January of 2000, doctors declared her mother eligible for hospice care. "But my mother refused hospice," recalls Bernstein. "This woman was so strong, she just refused to believe she was dying." At the time that doctors were telling her mother that she was nearing death, Bernstein was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study in Japan. "I told her I wasn't going to take it, but she told me to take the Fulbright. She told me to do what I needed to do and she would do what she needed to do." Her mother clung to life for more than six months, long enough for Bernstein to complete her studies in Japan and return home. "When I was still in Japan, I discovered a small lump in my breast," she said. Bernstein says she had been conducting monthly self-exams for years so she was surprised when she felt the lump. But she was just a few weeks away from returning home, so she decided to put off consulting a physician until she was back in Memphis. However, when she returned home her mother's condition had worsened and "I just forgot all about the lump as I took care of my mother," she says. Soon after her return, her mother died. A week later Bernstein was putting on a bathing suit to get into a hot tub, "when I felt the lump again," she says. Now, she resolved to contact her doctor. "In a week, I was in surgery," she said, recounting how the doctor's visit led to mammography, then biopsy and surgery, all within seven days. "I was reeling," she said. Drawing attention to feelingsShe underwent a lumpectomy, a surgical procedure to excise the tumor and some surrounding tissue, and after surgery she had chemotherapy and radiation. During the period between chemotherapy and radiation, she began a series of drawings to express her changing feelings about her body, what had been done to her body and her concerns about the future. "This was how I dealt with my cancer," she says. When her treatments were completed, she decided it was time to share her art with others. "I thought it was important to exhibit this art because it represents the way I, as a cancer patient, was feeling," she said. "I took my art to several hospitals and medical clinics but I was told that it was 'too grotesque' and 'much too uncomfortable.' " This rejection was particularly difficult, she said, "because the hospitals were interested in an art show by cancer patients but the hospitals didn't allow me to express how I truly felt. How horrific, but not ugly, cancer is. I don't know how we can heal if we don't allow ourselves to look at the whole [person] and acknowledge what has happened." During this time, a gallery director handed her a card for Oncology on Canvas, a juried art competition sponsored by pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly. "I was very hesitant because I didn't know if I wanted to put myself out there to be judged," she said. But after much prodding, she agreed to enter the contest. "I was awarded second place, and it has been a wonderful experience," she said, noting that the Oncology on Canvas exhibit has traveled around the country. The paintings have been displayed at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting and a number of other medical meetings. As word of her art spread in Memphis, a cancer volunteer group called Wings approached her and asked whether she would help out with an art project for the group's annual "Kaleidoscope Celebration of Life." The all-day celebration features a wide variety of performances, but most importantly it aims to include all, regardless of ability or infirmity. "So they planned to give out 500 egg shakers because they figured that everyone could at least shake an egg shaker," she said. "They asked me if I could help paint the egg shakers." She had a better idea: "I told them to give me 300 shakers and I would have my students paint them." Art imitating lifeThe idea, she says, was for the egg shakers to be decorated with images that "illustrate the spiritual things in life that really lift us up," she said. When she took the egg shakers to class, she decided to use the occasion to talk to the children about her own cancer. She drew a series of four drawings to illustrate her own experience with cancer. "I painted in front of the class, and I told them my story," she says. Her students "were incredibly open and honest about their feelings about illness and death," she said. "Several students shared stories of cases of terminal illness in their own families." And everyone painted -- bold colors, haunting images, colorful symbols. The eggs are themselves works of art, she said. The egg shaker project was so successful that she is now working with Wings and her students to produce "hand-painted head scarves that will be decorated with powerful words that lift us up, inspire us and give hope to other survivors," she said. And hope is something to which she is once again clinging, for even though she continues to be cancer-free, "my younger sister was just diagnosed with breast cancer two months ago. We talk every few days and her diagnosis has brought us much closer together. I am working on a whole series of scarves and she will definitely have scarves to cover her head and lift her up." 
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