Not As I Pictured

"Not As I Pictured" trailer from Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar on Vimeo.

NATIONWIDE MONDAY NIGHT January 30: The award winning documentary "Not As I Pictured" on PBS WORLD stations will be reaching 50% of the nation’s television markets Monday in prime time. Check listings for your town here


Not as I Pictured is a 54 minute documentary film.  It allows us to go on a cancer journey along with Pulitzer-Prize winner John Kaplan.  He fights lymphoma with an amazing attitude, all the while being so very real.  I have the privilege of knowing the editor and assistant director, Jordan Pool, who did an awesome job.


Last spring, I was able to see this film as they gave away over 10,000 copies to cancer patients.  I fit the bill.


I was glued to the T.V. as I watched.  I could not believe how familiar it all was.  Right when it ended, I grabbed my journal and had to write, for I felt the moments and needed to express some of them.  I thought it was fitting to share with you all how it made me feel, on this night when his documentary is being shown nationwide.


Not As I Pictured 


His camera captured cancer,
and all that it entails.


His lens bring to life, a year and 1/2 of mine.


Our stories different,
yet same.


I marvel at his captured tidbits of my familiar.
So much familiar.


~the sound of the machine as it slowly drips poison that heals.


~he stands in front of mirror & holds his hair back to picture what bald will look like.  I, too, did this.


~his hands & pillow covered with hair.  I know.  Mine, too.  His expressed disbelief.  I feel his words.  I know.


~he is getting labs done, & strains his neck to the opposite side of where he will be poked.  We get labs done once a week, you would think we would get used to the sting.  We don't.


~he used a tissue to open doors in public, due to a compromised immune system.  I did this, too.


~he puts numbing cream on his port, the same exact tube I used.  He speaks about how he does not care for touching the port area, for it gives him the "ebbee jeebies"  I  understand.  Me, too.


~he talks about how he must deal with the idea of recurrence.  It is a reality one has to come to grips with.  Yes.


~he talks about his port area, how it hurt like heck at first, and made it hard to lift his children.  Yes.  I know.


~his face winces in pain as they hook him up to a still healing port.  I remember, mine was still raw and oozing at my first chemo treatment.  


~his children draw pictures of him bald.  So did mine.


His life is not as he pictured, and neither is mine, yet, through his pictures I find life, hope, and I'm less alone.  Thank you, John Kaplan.