Word: motichka
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...Joanne Motichka had been expecting bad news. Her mother died of breast cancer, and she knew that she herself had a high risk of getting the disease. So she had regular mammograms, saw her gynecologist frequently and began seeing a breast-cancer specialist too. "I was cancer phobic," says the 45-year-old artist and photographer who goes by the professional name Matuschka. It was no surprise, therefore, when the lump she found in her right breast in 1991 turned out to be cancerous. On the advice of her surgeon, Motichka had a modified radical mastectomy: the breast was removed...
...story might have ended there, except for two things. First, Motichka, who specialized in nude self-portraits, continued to take them; she became a symbol of the disfiguring effects of breast surgery, and a photo of her scarred chest wound up on the cover of the New York Times Magazine. Second, it turned out that the surgery she so vividly publicized may not have been necessary. Her tumor, she believes, could have been handled by a much simpler procedure that would have left her breast intact. Late last month a New York jury agreed, awarding Motichka $2.2 million...
While the evidence was far less conclusive in 1991, when Motichka was diagnosed, many doctors already believed that less invasive treatments could be effective, and were advising their patients to consider that option. According to Motichka, her physician, Dr. Hiram Cody of New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, recommended a mastectomy anyway...
Radical mastectomy is inevitably traumatic, a disfigurement of a part of the body that our culture sees as the focus of a woman's femininity and sexual appeal. Motichka turned that trauma into both therapy and art; the pictures made her famous. Still, she says, the fame and exposure could not make up for the fact that she had lost a breast. "All was good on the surface," she says, "but that didn't mean I didn't have difficulty walking down the street." Beyond that, active involvement with oncologists and advocacy groups was educating Motichka about treatment options...