The Cut and the Cure: the movie!

The Cut and the Cure is now on YouTube! It's a fifteen-minute documentary about my research into breast cancer surgery by James Williams, a final-year student studying film production at Bournemouth University. James came to me a while back, wanting to make a film about breast cancer because it's close to his heart: his family has experienced it first-hand. I've become very fond of James. He's sensitive, intelligent, funny and good-hearted. It's pretty unusual for someone so young to tackle such a difficult subject, but James is not an average student. He lost his father, suddenly, within days of our filming. He knows what loss looks and feels like.

There are two things about the film I have been chewing over. I've been struggling with the placement of graphic surgical imagery so close to the front of the film. I worry that this imagery will have people switching off and missing a central message, which is that viewing surgery as art, as something strangely beautiful, helped me come to terms with going through it. I must accept, however, that this is James's film, not mine. I can use my writing to make surgery accessible; I can imagine the different responses and play with my words accordingly, coaxing people in. When I write, I'm in control. But this is James's film, and I have to relinquish control. I've been holding on to this film, not sure how to share it. Now, I think, I can let it go.

The other thing I want to share is this. A friend and fellow DCIS patient pointed out to me that the way the film is edited makes a case for reconstruction being the "only" way you can feel whole after mastectomy. I don't feel this way at all. I don't wish to strong-arm anybody into having reconstruction. It was right for me; for others, it isn't. Having the choice is what matters. I know that many of the women at the Mermaid Centre who had mastectomies ten, twenty years ago didn't feel the need for reconstruction — and still don't. They have found their own ways to live with their surgeries. I love the story my old friend in upstate New York told me when I first got diagnosed: "Years ago, my grandma made herself a prosthesis after her surgery. She used it as a pin cushion. She used to stick needles and pins in the front of her dress without thinking while she was sewing. It was kind of a shock when she answered the front door..."

So here it is: James's film, The Cut and the Cure. You may or may not find surgery beautiful, but here's to looking something difficult straight in the eye.