Brent Reaney
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (May 26/04) - It used to be a symbol of pain. Bolted on to a table, the clear plastic mask held Judy Sharp in place while she underwent a series of 35 radiation treatments for a tumour just above her nose.

Judy Sharp holds up the mask, now transformed by local artist Dawn Oman, used to hold her still during radiation treatment for cancer in the spring of 2001. - Brent Reaney/NNSL photo

"She was painful before, you wouldn't have liked her," she says looking at the now colourful creation.

When the mask was unscrewed after the first radiation session, she burst into tears, the 61-year-old says.

"You're very terrified. They put this on me and it felt just like somebody was choking me," she says.

Doctors gave Sharp a 79 per cent chance of being alive in five years. But her body was physically devastated by chemotherapy.

"It does terrible, terrible things to you," she says.

The radiation left tiny burn holes on her skin and within a month, nearly 30 lbs. had dropped off of her already small frame.

Not until three months after radiation treatments finished at the end of March 2001, was she able to eat solid food.

"Before that would be juices, ice cream, that sort of thing," she said.

She had trouble getting her taste buds back.

"I would buy a tomato every week, just to keep trying it," she says.

"I almost choked to death several times trying to eat meat."

At the end of her chemotherapy and radiation treatments, Judy asked to keep the mask even though it brought back terrible memories.

"Every time I looked at it, all I saw was the pain, and I thought 'I really want to get over this,'" she says.

After starting to paint the mask herself, she took it to Dawn Oman, who transformed it into a work of art.

"I always have loved Dawn's work. That's why I brought it to her," she says.

Painted bright blue and yellow, graced with dragon flies and flowers, it looks nothing like the tool used to hold her down during the radiation treatments. It is now proudly screwed to a door in Sharp's kitchen.

"It's still the most unique thing I've ever done," Oman says.

Sharp's cancer is now in remission and the number of check-ups she has in Edmonton is two per year, down from six.

Her hair has grown back after the chemotherapy and radiation, but she's a little disappointed in her new fair-coloured locks.

"I do miss my red hair," she says. "But I did get it back. Some people don't get their hair back, you know."

Treatment left her weak

Eight months after her treatment, she was back working full-time as a registrar for the department of Education, Culture and Employment.

The treatment left her so weak that she had to give up working Saturdays at the Great Slave Animal Hospital Pet Food Store, but she kept her three dogs and four cats.

Getting stronger every day, she now has a new appreciation for life.

"You're just wonderfully glad to be alive and you do not take anything for granted, ever again," she said.

On Saturday June 5, Sharp will be one of nearly a dozen cancer survivors taking part in the Relay for Life at William Macdonald public school.

After the survivors walk the first lap, about 15 teams of 10 people will continue walking around the track until early Sunday morning to raise money for cancer research.