In the past, I won national awards as an advertising director for the Peppermill Casino in Reno, Nevada and I was a successful photojournalist. Nine years ago I was fighting for the rights of west coast fishermen as a public relations consultant in Oregon. I was in the middle of a letter-writing campaign on the evening of December 17, 1996. That was when everything changed.

I was visiting my mother, Geraldine, when I began to feel a little dizzy. By the time she had driven me to the nearest hospital I was floating in and out of consciousness. The emergency room doctor returned after a CAT scan and drew the curtain closed around my bed.

I remember thinking, “Why did he close the curtain – is it bad news?”

It was. I had a brain cyst about the size of a grapefruit. It could have been growing slowly since I was born, the doctor said. It was putting pressure on a critical part of my brain. I would be transported to Sacred Heart Hospital in Eugene for emergency surgery.

But I was thinking about losing my long blonde hair that I’d finally gotten to look just the way I wanted, and about my work with the trawlers. “Who will write the rest of the letters that I want to send out?” I asked my mother as the nurses and attendants were taking me to the ambulance.

During the drive, reality began to sink in. “Can I see the pictures of my brain?” I asked an ambulance attendant. In the scan, a dark mass obscured the entire left side of my brain. “Oh, dear God!” I groaned, awestruck. I handed the scan back to the attendant and said a prayer. I realized then that I had to surrender to what was happening to me.

In Eugene, the cyst was removed and a drainage shunt inserted, seemingly without complications. As I had lost both breasts to cancer in 1990, the doctors took care to test the tissue. There was no cancer. Everyone was relieved.

While in recovery, however, a blood clot formed and I was rushed back to surgery. During the second surgery I suffered two strokes, causing permanent brain damage and a seizure disorder. Afterwards, I could not count higher than three, could not add, subtract or multiply. I didn’t recognize trees or flowers. My hearing was magnified by three, foods tasted differently and, though once a jazz club singer, I couldn’t even hum. I have partial paralysis of my right leg and had double vision. The old Nancy I used to be was dead, gone forever.

I spent two years in foster homes before moving into assisted living housing in Coos Bay, Oregon. At first I was withdrawn and kept to myself. Eventually I started drawing, painting, and taking photographs again.

One day, someone suggested that I enter my artwork and photography in the upcoming county fair. I did, and won the grand championship plus other awards for my portrait entitled “Smoking Lady.”

After taking a sculpture class at a community college, I became hooked on welding. Metal is my biggest passion. I take my sack lunch and my meds and I let my imagination take over.

Last summer, I entered sculptures and paintings in the Coos County Fair. My painting “A Seated Woman” received first place. It also won the best of arts, and the grand sweepstakes in the art division.

They thought I would become a vegetable, but I’m not. I’m thinking and reasoning, I can paint, and I can even sculpt metal. Even though I can’t drive anymore, can’t speak correctly and have seizures every six weeks, I have the guts and courage inside me to change my world.

My art reflects my straightforward, open personality as well as my struggle with my physical limitations. Many of my pieces are metaphors of myself. The use of recycled materials reflects how many survivors try to make a new life out of the situation they’ve been handed.

Last year I had another brain surgery, this time for blood clots in my head. I am grateful to be alive and still productive. There is always hope.

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