Kathleen Watt • Facial Sarcoma Survivor, Writer | REARRANGED • A Memoir. Julie McCrossin AM

Kathleen Watt
Writer & Cancer Survivor
kathleenwatt.com
Julie McCrossin AM
Broadcaster & Cancer Survivor
juliemccrossin...
Video Production Daniel Taylor
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REARRANGED
An Opera Singer's Facial Cancer
And Life Transposed
A Memoir
By Kathleen Watt
REARRANGED tells of leaving the operatic stage for a starring role opposite the Big C. Bone cancer in my cheek ended my career as an opera singer and brought me face to face with mortality, disfigurement, the meaning and uses of beauty-and a lot of left over pieces.
A small corps of medical elites convened to excoriate my diseased bones with surgical wizardry and lethal toxins, and stayed on to restore me to myself through a brutal alchemy of kindness and titanium screws.
REARRANGED is a tale of letting go to hold on, of putting old pieces to new uses-and of the unlikely arrangements that make it all work out.​
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[@AnneMoshtael]

Very interesting. Two strong women! Thank you both ♥️🙏🏼🌹🌟

[@bonnieabrs1003]

As a retired nurse I have found many times my own death bed humor saved my sanity. Not laughing at a patient, but some ridiculous thing in the circumstance. It happens in my personal life & has helped me overcome hopeless & helplessness. I know I’m in trouble if I can’t laugh at my circumstance. Way back during my nursing studies we had a class given by an oncology specialist. He was trying to figure out why people faced cancer in their particular manor. He began with his young patients. In the office wile waiting their turn his receptionist gave the kids plain paper & a box of crayons & asked them to draw their families in their home settings. They willingly did this. He placed each drawing in the child’s record & during the course of treatment would occasionally ask them to do it again. As the children left his care & he studied the drawings, he noted the children who separated themselves from the family didn’t do as well as those who were close in the family group or chores. And they used the black crayon to color the area of their cancer. Some were of course old enough to know where the area was, but more did not know. Adults requested to do the drawings also colored their cancer in black, including areas not yet found as metastasized spots. It looks like some of the things we instinctively know & do are not so far fetched. His best information was a positive attitude made a very large difference in the outcome. So very glad your outcome was so successful. Continued good luck & health to you.❤️🙏🏻