Through the lens of love: a journey of healing amid cancer

IOL News

09-05-2025

After Anna's annual checkup, she had a panic attack. Each year, her 'scanxiety' fluctuates, but it's worst when she experiences symptoms she can't explain and fears they could signal a recurrence.
Image: Rathkopf family
I was at work when the call came. The woman on the line from my doctor's office asked if I had five minutes, then casually told me she was sorry but that I had cancer. I glanced out the window, watching people walk, talk and carry on as if it were just a normal day. But for me, everything had changed. At that moment, I felt like I was already dead.
My husband, Jordan, and I had just started talking about having a second child. Now, suddenly, that future was gone. I was 37 years old, and I would soon learn that even if I survived the cancer, the treatment would leave me infertile.
The day after my diagnosis - later confirmed as triple-positive breast cancer - Jordan and I picked up our cameras. Photography has always been part of our lives, but now it became something more: a shield, a way to cope without words. We documented everything - the sterile waiting rooms, the narrow hospital corridors and the quiet moments at home - capturing our new reality as it unfolded. But we never shared our images with each other.
Anna and Jesse reflected in a mirror.
Image: Rathkopf family
Our cameras helped us express our inner lives while concealing our pain. It's hard to talk about the most painful parts of life. Sometimes, words fail and silence takes their place. That's when photography stepped in. The result is the photos you see with this story, as well as a book we published in October.
I started taking self-portraits. As treatment progressed, I no longer recognized myself. The more fractured I felt, the more people told me I was strong, even beautiful. But inside, I mourned my fertility. Chemotherapy had damaged the eggs in my ovaries, while Tamoxifen (which I still take) put me into an early menopause.
The combined treatments stripped me of my ability to give my then-3½-year-old son, Jesse, a sibling, and I felt betrayed by my body. The loss created a wedge between Jordan and me. He, too, had wanted another child, but as he learned more about my cancer's aggressive nature, an unspoken fear crept in - what if he had to raise our son alone? That fear, paired with my grief, deepened the divide between us.
Anna's body bandaged with ice after her lumpectomy. When she woke up from her surgery, still in a daze, she noticed her surgeon's initials signed onto her chest right above the area where her tumor had been removed.
Image: Rathkopf family
Conversations turned into arguments, so we stopped having them. Silence became our default.
We explored adoption and foster care, but the process felt overwhelming. As the reality of not having another child set in, the emotional distance between us grew.
A 2018 study by researchers at the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City found that young cancer survivors - ages 20 to 39 - 'were at an increased risk' of divorce and separation. 'The emotional and financial burdens of cancer may lead to marital stress for younger cancer survivors,' the researchers concluded. Infertility can add new layers of stress, tension and sometimes anger.
Jordan and I experienced firsthand how illness can expose the deepest fractures in relationships - how emotional needs go unmet, not out of neglect but because neither partner knows how to reach the other through their pain.
Anna's self-portrait as her chemotherapy treatments were beginning. She bought a variety of cheap wigs and never wore any of them except for portraits at home.
Image: Rathkopf family