Controle

On 28 March 2007, the day before my 34th birthday, I went for my annual check-up at the hospital. Thirteen years previously I had been treated for Hodgkins disease, a form of lymph node cancer. According to the protocol, the physician told me, my file was going into the archives. I had been clean for so long that the file could be closed. The disease had gone for good. Four months later I felt a gland in my neck. An examination showed that Hodgkins had returned. To be cured, I had to undergo several months of chemotherapy, a stem cell transplantation and radiation therapy. One of my first reactions to this news was a flashback to my experience thirteen years earlier; I recalled very clearly how frustrated I was that my life had been put on hold. This time round I fought against the idea of having to lie in a bed and have poison pumped into me, and that my plans and dreams would once again be thwarted by the disease. So I bought a simple and small analogue camera that I could take with me wherever I went and made an agreement with myself that I would take at least three pictures a day. By continuing to exercise my profession and continuing to make photographs every day, I had the feeling that I wasnt giving up my normal life completely. On 26 March 2008, two days before my 35th birthday, I was given the results: the treatment had worked, I was cured again. This book has helped me gain control over what I went through. By telling my story in this way, I gradually got the feeling that I was again in control. Not of the disease, because thats impossible, but of my life.