Edwin Smith discovered at Thebes in 1862 the oldest medical document known to date, presumably written by Imhotep. It displayed the first references regarding breast tumors. It was Hippocrates (V century B.C.), the forefather of medical sciences, the one that named the tumors after the Greek word kapkivoc (karkinos – crab), because the way tumors spread resembled a crab’s limbs. The first mastectomies where made around the II century B.C by Leonidas. Among all the historical dates regarding the Karkinos, the most important one for me is December 23th, 2015. That day my family suffered a severe blow. Manuela, my wife, had Triple-Negative breast cancer that was a 95% level of aggressiveness. That same day I decided to document the long and tough process ahead: the psychological shock, telling our son and loved ones, the biopsies, the physical changes, the treatment, the secondary effects from the medication... (Work in progress)
Edwin Smith discovered at Thebes in 1862 the oldest medical document known to date, presumably written by Imhotep.
It displayed the first references regarding breast tumors.
It was Hippocrates (V century B.C.), the forefather of medical sciences, the one that named the tumors after the Greek word kapkivoc (karkinos – crab), because the way tumors spread resembled a crab’s limbs.
The first mastectomies where made around the II century B.C by Leonidas.
The first effective diagnoses tests (mammograms) started to be done at the beginning of the XX century. Twenty-six years later the first hormonal treatments where implanted and chemotherapy began to be administered on the second half of that century.
Among all the historical dates regarding the Karkinos, the most important one for me is December 23th, 2015. That day my family suffered a severe blow. Manuela, my wife, had Triple-Negative breast cancer that was a 95% level of aggressiveness.
That same day I decided to document the long and tough process ahead: the psychological shock, telling our son and loved ones, the biopsies, the physical changes, the treatment, the secondary effects from the medication...
Can you imagine how would you feel if you were told that your wife or husband had cancer?
Do you know what a triple-negative cancer is? Reacting to such an unknown and painful situation seems impossible to me, still the first thing I did was kissing my wife, picking up my phone and taking a photo of that moment, a moment that stroked the deepest parts of our hearts.
The image didn’t turn out to be very well but it was the seed this work.
It is said that the best way of knowing a story is to experience it from close distances. I’m living it in my own home 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
I can’t stop myself from asking: Would you ask yourself why is this happening to you or for which purpose is this happening to you? Maybe it is a big chance to learn about ourselves.
I don’t want to overload the use of numbers, I’ll just report some of them:
According to the last report from the WHO (World Health Organization), there were 14 million new cases in 2012 and a 70% increase was foreseen during the next decades. For these reasons this project does not only aim people suffering this disease, but the whole society.
I would love to emphasize a kind of breast cancer, the Triple-Negative. A kind of cancer which, unfortunately, still has no “target therapy†(customized drugs depending on the patient).
Karkinos shows the human, intimal and familiar side that many women suffering from breast cancer. I want to believe that this work can motivate other women to examine themselves and take prevention tests.
Showing the process from inside can help this awareness process and to make others understand the different stages to go through.
(Work in progress)