Good day, all.
In this post I will be talking about the process of choosing the article to illustrate for the Professional Practice project. Initially after reading the list of possible topics, I thought I would go with something environmental as it is something I would consider myself to be rather passionate about, I do care a lot about the Earth and its inhabitants as well as the effect which humans have on it. However, before I could go on a hunt for an article with this topic I realized just how many people were going with this topic and for whatever reason I decided to drop out and pick another one.
After some thinking I gradually came to the conclusion that I would base my project work on the Health topic as it is also something that I am rather familiar with and am fond of. Initially I thought I would do something about mental health bus alas chose to go with cancer for a subject. My main reason of choice was the fact that my mom is currently fighting breast cancer and I thought it would make it easier for me to cope with that idea if I indulged myself in work where I would explore the subject more. It worked out well with my previous projects, so why not? (I based my A4A reflective piece on my feelings towards leaving my cat as I was leaving for university and my PoV project I based on my struggles with overcoming the fear of death)
I struggled a bit with finding an article that would be interesting or had potential on being illustrated in a way that would be unique/eye-catching. But then, I remembered reading/hearing about a case where a man who had developed breast cancer was denied access to support groups due to the fact that he was a man.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/dad-breast-cancer-declined-access-21570637
I found this case to be particularly interesting as it was rather unusual and rather unheard of. That being due to the fact that only about 390 men are diagnosed with breast cancer yearly. (It is still a very significant number of cases but because the terminal illness is a lot more frequent among women it sort of gets downplayed or disregarded when men are affected by it)
With my illustrations I hope to take several approaches to this situation and provide different perspectives to showcase how each “side” felt. However, in my opinion, this should never have even happened, it was inhumane, just simply inhumane. I want to translate that with my drawings and approached to the subject and hopefully I will be able to. I have started working on some concepts/sketches that I will be uploading into the second window of the Part B section. Stay tuned.
Additional links to articles that I will be referencing/quoting in my zine:
– via Cancer Research UK (cancerresearchuk.org)
Robertas Tijusas 