Tracey Emin has revealed she has finally received the ‘all clear’ after her battle against bladder cancer, with an Instagram post on Tuesday.
The artist, 59, shared a picture of herself in her hospital gown about to go for her CT scans alongside a lengthy caption where she admitted she was ‘very happy’ and glad to be alive.
She found she had a tumour in her bladder in June 2020 and was suffering with very aggressive squamous cell cancer, which surgeons feared would kill her in months if it spread to her lymph nodes.
Congratulations! Tracey Emin has revealed she has finally received the ‘all clear’ after her battle against bladder cancer, with an Instagram post on Tuesday
She then underwent surgery to remove many of her reproductive organs, parts of her intestines and lymph nodes as well as being fitted with a stoma bag.
Tracey announced she was over two years sober and confessed she missed her removed organs, but declared: ‘There’s so much more to me than a hole’.
She wrote: ‘ALL CLEAR. At the hospital about to have my CT scans and see my Surgeon.
‘It doesn’t mater how cool and stoic I am, inside I’m filled with worry. This time because I’m happy, this time because I feel well.. I’m scared to say I’m happy. But I am, my life is so much better, I’m stronger and clearer.
Feeling happy: The artist, 59, shared a picture of herself in her hospital gown about to go for her CT scans alongside a lengthy caption where she admitted she was ‘very happy’ and glad to be alive
‘I’ve been sober for 27 months and each day life becomes more interesting and I find myself caring and taking more interest in everything that’s around me.
‘I have to be honest.. I wish I had my bladder (a good working one that wasn’t riddled with cancer) I don’t give a f*** about my womb or breeding apparatus.
‘But I really miss my vagina, my urethra and those bloody little lymph nodes that kept everything tickity boo..
‘But Today hearing I have the all clear .. Makes me very happy and feel good to be alive. There’s so much more to me than a hole.’
Awful news: She found she had a tumour in her bladder in June 2020 and was suffering with very aggressive squamous cell cancer, which surgeons feared would kill her in months if it spread to her lymph nodes (pictured in September 2022)
Prior to her cancer surgery Tracey said she stayed up for 24 hours with her solicitor rewriting her will.
She then sent an email to 70 friends breaking the news of her cancer and instructing them: ‘Do not contact me’.
She has been left with a stoma bag as a result of having ‘half my body chopped out’ and is sadly still struggling to paint.
Tracey said in April 2021: ‘I’m not painting because I’m using my willpower to stay alive. That’s what I’m doing.’
Survivor: She then underwent surgery to remove many of her reproductive organs, parts of her intestines and lymph nodes as well as being fitted with a stoma bag
Tracey, best known for works such as her unmade bed and the tent Everyone I Have Ever Slept With, added she hoped to return to painting in the future.
‘I never realised how much I wanted to live until I thought I was going to die,’ she said after learning a year ago that doctors had successfully removed all of the cancer.
But it did not stop Tracey from feeling ‘very happy’, saying last year: ‘I’m doing brilliant, I’m doing so well.
‘I’m so happy and I’m just taking every day as it comes and I’m just so happy to be alive because there was quite a strong expectation that I wasn’t going to make it through Christmas.
‘And I am going to make it to Christmas and the next Christmas and the next one.
‘That’s what I’m aiming for, so I’m feeling really happy and good and I just wish the world would get better. I wish the world would catch up with me on this one.’
Tracey continued: ‘It could’ve been very, very different so I’m so grateful.
‘My surgeon and the team are calling me a miracle woman because I just sort of like jumped up and got back into everything.
‘Maybe at the beginning a little bit too fast… because I was back in bed for a month again. But now I’m balancing things and being more cautious.
‘I want to live forever. I want to do my art, I want to have more exhibitions, there’s things to do… and I had to think ‘I’m not going to be doing it’. I had to come to terms with that.’
Tracey compared her operations to having a child or gender reassignment surgery. She also revealed she had been working on a painting of a malignant lump before doctors discovered the tumour on her bladder.
Tracey is one of the most well-known British artists of her generation, famous for her notorious work My Bed, Tracey’s record of several days spent in bed in the grip of depression.
The bed is unmade and the sheets are stained, while a variety of items such as condoms, contraceptive pills, underwear stained with menstrual blood, money, and cigarette ends are strewn on the floor.
The work was nominated for the Turner prize in 1999 and received a hugely mixed response from the public and press
She was one of the so-called Young British Artists who emerged in the 1990s, along with Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas.
Source: | Dailymail.co.uk