For as long as she can remember, Colleen McCoy has used art to express her deepest feelings.
So it's no surprise that the North Medford High School senior turned to sculpture and paint to make sense of the two grave illnesses that have shaped her life.
McCoy has decorated a life-sized plaster torso with medical hardware and images that portray her relationship with a rare autoimmune disease that nearly killed her at the age of 9 and an unusual lymphoma that took her to death's door again just last fall at 18.
"Sometimes when you're really sick the feelings you get are hard to describe," she said, as she painted details onto the torso. "A lot of people want to understand, and if you can show them something it's a little easier.
"I decided to do a human body because of all the feelings I have about my body," she said.
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Blocks of color on the torso recall aspects of her treatment and her feelings: a purple neck for the time when she stopped breathing; patches of green for the chemo drugs coursing through her body; pinks and reds to show soreness.
"I was so bruised I looked like I walked out of a car wreck," she said.
Small fragments of notebook paper collaged onto the torso are covered with equations, symbols of her devotion to math and to school.
"For me math is really hard because I'm dyslexic," she said, "but math is what keeps me going here at school."
Doctors traced McCoy's recent lymphoma to her years of taking anti-rejection drugs after the kidney transplant. The powerful chemicals weaken the body's natural ability to ward off illness and disease, making transplant recipients more vulnerable to a number of well-known diseases and some extremely rare ones, such as the "post transplant lymphoprolific disorder" that struck McCoy.
Some organ transplant organizations, such as the National Kidney Foundation, have started advising transplant patients that their anti-rejection drugs may eventually put them at higher risk for diseases such as skin cancer.
The sculpture is part of McCoy's senior project at North Medford. She also wrote a lengthy paper on the role of art as therapy for people recovering from serious illnesses and came to an eye-opening conclusion as she worked.
"I realized I'm the proof I'm trying to show," she said.
McCoy plans to attend Southern Oregon University next fall and eventually become a teacher. Her piece will be on display May 12-13 at Medford's Art in Bloom, which provided the art supplies to put the project together.
Louise Nance, McCoy's art teacher, said the sculpture reflects her student's fierce determination to live.
"I think the piece is about her taking her body back," Nance said. "I believe she's painting herself whole."
Bill Kettler: 776-4492; bkettler@mailtribune.com.
