Help for Cancer Patients is in the Bag
Loni Nannini - Arizona Daily Star - May 23, 2010
Cohen was so impressed with the free informational resources and support materials provided in that bag by Bag It, she sent a donation to the local nonprofit and has been helping facilitate the service for other newly diagnosed cancer patients ever since.
"I had been trying to cope myself and find information from here and there. Trying to put it all together yourself when you are scared out of your mind is hard to do," said Cohen, a local artist who has been in remission since 2006. "I was so impressed by all the information right in the bag. It was like, 'Wow!' "
Bag It provides a resource CD, books and educational materials from the National Cancer Institute and National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship.
The materials address topics including treatment and follow-up care, talking to doctors, dealing with insurance companies, research studies, life after cancer and advice for caregivers.
The group has also compiled a three-ring binder to help organize lab results, insurance papers and other medical records.
The binder was invaluable during Cohen's treatment by physicians and other specialists in Tucson and Texas. It includes checklists and prompts questions addressing important issues that patients often overlook on their own, particularly in the midst of treatment when many experience "chemo brain."
"I can't tell you how many times you go to the doctor and they can't find your records or need a copy of something another doctor has, so it delays the whole process. This lets you have everything with you every single time you go to a doctor, and every doctor says, 'Thank you so much,' " Cohen said.
Bag It is intended to fight fear and empower patients while helping the medical community better serve them, according to founder Sherri Romanoski, a breast-cancer survivor.
Since 2003, the organization has reached more than 24,000 cancer patients; it has distributed more than 7,500 bags through 130 offices, hospitals and clinics statewide over the last year.
"We serve all cancers and (both) genders, which sometimes limits us to the funding we can receive, but I think it is important to help everyone who is diagnosed," she said. "People need the opportunity to have information that will help them navigate their cancer journey.
"Once they have the information, they can become an active member of their treatment team."
The organization relies heavily on money raised from fundraisers such as the third annual Wine & Dine for Bag It to subsidize the bags so there is no cost to patients.
All proceeds from the June 6 event and silent auction - which will feature an original oil painting by Cohen, whose Spirit of Renewal Series is on display in the Arizona Cancer Center - will remain in the Tucson community.
Cohen is gratified that "Beyond," which portrays a young woman she met at a cancer retreat, will help support others facing cancer.
"I used a line from my journaling in the painting: 'And so it was that the world turned upside down and inside out and the colors got confused.' The world gets confused when you have cancer."
If you go
• What: Third annual Wine & Dine for Bag It.
• When: 6 p.m. June 6.
• Where: Hacienda del Sol Guest Ranch Resort, 5601 N. Hacienda del Sol Road.
• Cost: $125 per person.
Festivities include dinner with a paired wine tasting, a raffle and a silent auction of wine-themed gifts such as a stay at Spirit Tree Inn Bed & Breakfast in Patagonia and a private tour with wine tasting and Italian food at the local vineyard Vigneto Nanini, as well as an original oil painting titled "Beyond" by Tucson artist Janie Cohen.
• For tickets or more information, go to www.bagit4u.org or call 575-9602.
Contact freelance writer Loni Nannini at ninch2@comcast.net
excerpt from
Creating Opportunity
A UA student art club produces a three-venue show of works by women
Margaret Reagan - Tucson Weekly - February 25, 2010
(read the full article here)
Cancer survivor's art goes from despair to hope
Laura Marble May 16, 2007
Sometimes, feelings lie too deep for words.
When Janie Cohen underwent radiation for skin cancer, and when disappointing results led to other treatments, she dealt with her pain through art.
The 62-year-old Foothills resident is in remission, and a series of paintings from her journey through darkness — the “Renewal of Spirit” series — hang in the Arizona Cancer Center.
“I’m not good at sitting there and saying, ‘I feel sad, I feel depressed, I feel angry,’” Cohen said. “I don’t feel like saying it. It’s just easier on paper. I don’t feel like anybody’s going to argue with me. Canvas doesn’t argue.”
Cohen found out that she had cancer in 2003. The doctors had to take a piece of skin six inches in diameter from her thigh and graft it onto her head.
She endured radiation treatment, but the cancer returned. After 10 more removals of tiny cancerous spots and more radiation, the cancer still returned.
It was during a radiation treatment at University Medical Center that Cohen laid eyes on an advertisement for a healing arts class. Three decades earlier, she had written a book about using art as therapy for the developmentally disabled. She knew its benefits.
In a gentle environment with soothing music and inspiring stories, the longtime painter drew a mouthless self-portrait titled “No Voice.” Nobody had asked her if she wanted cancer. Nobody had given her a chance to turn down its disruption of her life. The portrait spoke more than words.
When the healing arts class ended, her feelings didn’t. So she continued one-on-one lessons with the instructor, often striking canvases as if they were punching bags.
“My goal was to just smear paint to get the frustration, anger and terror out,” Cohen said.
The results were dark.
“They were all the same,” Cohen said. “Invariably they would end up with streams of dripping paint down the left side of the canvas. I didn’t realize it when I did the first ones. I didn’t connect that my surgery was on the left side of my head.”
All the smearing and slapping helped Cohen at first, but as she worked through her grief at being sideswiped by disease, this style of painting began dragging her down.
“It hit me that my art had become extremely dark to the point that I had a couple of black canvases,” Cohen said. “I couldn’t bear to finish them. I put them aside.”
One day, she found a good price on canvasses, and she decided to buy a bunch and use them to create something uplifting.
“It hit me that this was a renewal of myself,” she said.
At about that time, Cohen and her husband set off for the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston in a last-resort effort to keep the cancer from metastasizing. The first treatment did no good. The next, biotherapy, helped.
In Houston, Cohen thought often about what would become her “Renewal of Spirit” painting series. Back in Arizona, she worked like mad to complete it.
“I quit doing the dark works that represented death to me and started doing trees that represent life,” she said.
The canvasses stand at 2 square feet and have swirling backgrounds evocative of the cosmos. Each contains two small squares that contain trees and cacti. Some stand barren, some have leaves, some have thorns. All are imperfect. All represent life.
“It’s true, if you look at a straight branch, it’s not nearly as interesting as a curly one,” Cohen said.
As Cohen worked on the series and, thus, on her grief, she found herself choosing brighter colors for each successive painting. But she never kicked her urge to give each a bit of discordant blue.
“You can say it represents the imperfection — that nothing’s perfect,” Cohen said. “But I didn’t set out to do anything. It was there, and I thought, ‘I guess I’m not totally at peace, yet.’”
Nine months in remission, now, Cohen talks about the insights she has gained from struggling with cancer.
A plaque under her paintings reads, “It doesn’t matter whether the tree is crooked, bent, verdant, or barren. It doesn’t matter if the tree blooms softly or is rigid and hard. It does matter that the tree of life speaks to us. Listen.”
Likely, some people who walk through the Arizona Cancer Center will pause and hear.
