I am a photographer living in Westchester county, NY. I have been shooting commercial advertising for the past 20 years. I recently received a small business grant from British Airways. I won 10 business class flights to any 4 destinations that BA flies. It was a contest based on a series of essays that I wrote explaining how face to face travel could change my business and help it take a more photo journalistic path. My essays talked about the fact that I am a survivor of ovarian and endometrial cancers, and that since I have been sick, I have been looking for an opportunity to travel around the world documenting photographically how women with cancer are intrinsically connected. I would like to show how our struggles, hopes, joys, and concerns have no borders. That we share a common bond, regardless of where we live around the globe. This blog is hopefully going to document this journey over the next year.
The Children’s Ward in HCMC
It is always difficult to see children with cancer and in HCMC this is very much the case. The same overcrowded conditions exist in this part of the hospital. Some families prefer to camp out in the halls or the stairwells because if you can believe it, they actually have a little more room and privacy there.
Children's Ward
Children's Ward
Child in Hallway
Child and Mother in Hall
Family in stairwell
There is a playground out in the main courtyard area of the hospital and whenever the children were up to it, they were out there, smiling, laughing and playing, just being regular kids. They have a metal swing on the playground, and every time you went outside you heard the constant creaking of that swing, all day, every day. Because this is the only place in the hospital where a mother can sit and rock her child to comfort them, and it was always filled and it was always creaking. It is one of my most vivid memories of the HCMC oncology hospital.
Playground
Mother and Child on Swing