2. Last Day with Hair
Preparing for chemotherapy is brutal. The day I cut off my long, thick, youthful hair, I knew it would never return in the same way again. It was hard to say goodbye, but everything’s always measured against the alternative – dying - and it was easier than dying.

4.Birth:
New Life, Near Death It’s so difficult to depict love and pain at the same time, but my memory of Claire birthing our son, for me, was like dancing an in-between space where new life and near death momentarily sat side by side.
The exact moment she felt her first signs of labour, I was having an anaphylactic reaction to the chemical concoction of chemotherapy drugs entering my bloodstream. My husband bundled us into the car and drove interstate, through the night, to be with her. I fainted multiple times, my nose bled constantly, I was hot and cold – going through enforced menopause. I was at my lowest point, and I was about to have a baby.

3. Chemotherapy
The pink hue on the grass is where it has been poisoned. The weeds have now gone, and new growth appears, changed, but more beautiful than before. This is how I’ve visualised chemotherapy working in my body. At first it obliterates all life, even the good is destroyed. But then, over time, new growth appears. Colourful, playful life in the place near-death once stood.

5.Ewan:
Husband, Father, Provider, Carer, Support by Ewan McEoin.: As is often the way when something was lost, something new arrived. My wife plugged into the chemo and her health ebbed away, her body cut and toasted – partially with us – just clinging on. Washing back the grief, refocusing the heart and mind – a new life joined us. In a dream state, I trod water, watching life fade and flicker with one eye and surge with the other. Feeding him late into night and in the coming dawn. Holding him as she slept next door. He was uniquely serene. Here was a reason to live and fight the good fight. And so, we did.

6.Bottle Fed
A lactation consultant assured me I could get my milk supply back using a breast pump. So, six weeks before Claire was due to give birth, I decided to try. It was in that moment I found the lump in my right breast; I just knew...

7.Radio
”Radio’ seemed a lighter and more freeing term than ‘radiation’. It also allowed me to pick different theme songs to be fried to. I was told that Kylie Minogue was treated under the same beam from the big machine that I lay under so I began right there with ‘I should be so lucky’ playing in the headphones. It kind of set the tone for lightly avoiding the idea that I was being nuked and I ran with it.

8.Egg Head
When time is measured in treatment cycles and how much hair the other ‘egg heads’ have who surround me in oncology...

9.Five Year Milestone
Here it is. This ordinary day. This monumental but surprisingly ordinary day. The scans are done. The scans are clear, and I’m now considered cancer free!!
Cancer free’
I’ve spent every single day of those five years with my kids, etching myself in their memory, documenting their childhood. Just in case ‘forever’ ended up being too short. I don’t think a week has passed without some thought of whether I would make it to this day. And here it is... Turns out it’s just an ordinary day. A little sunny, a little windy but fundamentally a monumentally ordinary day.

10. Motherhood
I have every reason to believe it is the power of motherhood that has kept me ‘earth-side’ ever since that fateful diagnosis.

11. Reflections
I recently turned fifty and it felt like a big number but after surviving heart failure and breast cancer – one near death experience for each of my children – I know that any number is a gift and there is beauty in all stages.
In celebration, my family gave me a new camera and a dear friend surprised me with some beautiful flowers which I tried to make look vital and vibrant throughout the decomposition process. To me they looked like they were dancing well into the night, which is what we all hope to do in life.