I once ruled my kingdom, not much did I fear, but all that has changed now that death may be near.

Sue Ryan could no longer ignore the dreams.

The first night, her sister holds out her hand, pleading with Sue to follow. Sue wants nothing more than to grasp her sister's hand, but she slowly shakes herself out of the fog. To follow is to die. The following night, Sue's aunt appears, softly telling her to prepare for what lies ahead but not to fear it. On the third night, a doctor appears, menacing, eyes laughing as his leaden words jolt her from sleep: "Sue, you're riddled with cancer."

Awake and barely breathing, she touched her right breast. The hard lump beneath her trembling hand confirmed what she already knew.

Nearly two years later, people of all ages wander into the annual Mayor's Art Show at the Hult Center for the Performing Arts in Eugene, Oregon, with smiles on their faces and light conversation on their lips. Once inside, their laughter stops.

Assembled on the walls of the studio are photographs of a dying woman. Tiny wisps of frail hair clash with dark determined eyes. Her pale skin, made old by the drugs, is leathery and taut. She holds her downcast and balding head in her almost translucent hands, her agony incomprehensible. Her naked breast is robbed of its nipple, a five-inch scar in its place. The poetry that lines the edges of each image sends an inescapable message: Here I am. Acknowledge me. See my disease. See me.

The visitors emerge one by one. Some cry. Others grasp hands, their eyes toward the pavement. Women hug each other. They hold their children for long moments. Turning to another, one says quietly, "God, can you imagine? We're so fortunate."

As they walk down the steps, away, they pass a woman they know intimately but would never recognize. Sue sits hugging her knees to her chest, hidden behind sunglasses and a wide hat that covers her renewed tresses of curly amber hair.

Being recognized isn't important to her; it's the message that counts. "People don't like to talk about breast cancer," Sue says brushing her hair out of her face. "I did the exhibit because I wanted to personalize breast cancer. I just wanted people to know."

I once stood next to you.

I once walked with you.

When her older sister Pat died of breast cancer in 1989, Sue's world collapsed. Only two years younger, Sue had idolized Pat and followed her everywhere. When Sue graduated from high school, she joined her sister at San Jose State University where they majored in sociology and lived together. Sue wrote Pat's papers for her; Pat introduced Sue to all the older guys. Even when Pat married and gave birth to her only child, Suzanna, nothing could break the bond the sisters shared. Nothing, that is, except the cancer cells that were silently multiplying in Pat's body. By the time the breast cancer was detected, it was in its last and most fatal stage. Little could be done.

Pat told no one about her illness until six months after it was diagnosed. She hid under scarves and wigs for the last months of her life and refused to let anyone take her picture. Four months before she died, Pat wrote Sue a letter asking one final favor.

Dear Beautiful Gentle Susie,

Oh, Susie, I love how you love Suzanna. That is what really hurts most not being able to see her grow up. I had such dreams for her, and now I won't be here to see them realized. I know you love Suzanna as much as I do. I know you will help her become a good human being. I know you will tell her what is right and wrong. I want you to be with her every step of the way, Susie. She will need you in more ways than you will ever know. Hold her and kiss her call her Muffy, Puppy-Girl please, Susie, take my place.

The letter needed no reply.

On a cold October morning, Pat called for the ambulance, asking the paramedics not to use the siren. She didn't want to die at home. She didn't want Suzanna to remember her mother's dead body being taken away. Sue stayed at the house until the nurse called that evening. Her sister's feet were discoloring, a sign that Pat was dying. Sue left Suzanna at a friend's house and rushed to the hospital. Trembling, she took Pat's frail hands, talking to her soothingly at first, then begging, frantic. Sue needed to see her sister's eyes one last time. She still had so many things to say to her. But Pat was already far from her sister, far from her pain, deep in a coma. When Pat died an hour later, three nurses had to pry Sue from her body. "She was my sister," Sue says, "my best friend."

Pat is in another room. Sue can see her shape but never her face. A shadow masks Pat's eyes; her head is turned. Always, Sue is embarking on a new adventure. Always, Pat is left behind.

Sue found out she was pregnant less than a year after Pat died. Her boyfriend told her he wasn't ready to be a father and left town. Sue had never wanted a family and went to an abortion clinic several times, each time failing to go through with it. She realized she couldn't leave the table empty. "I had lost so much," she says, "and that baby was the gift. He was life."

Flynn was born in June the next year. Sue fell in love the minute she saw him, but she knew this new life could never take the place of her sister. Despite the friends who were with her at his birth, she felt alone. She wanted her sister there to hold her hand through the delivery, to see her son's crystal blue eyes and to cry with her.

The next two years were filled with the joys of new motherhood, and Sue spent all of her time with Flynn and Suzanna. She loved being a mother. She loved being a treasured aunt. She hated the emptiness inside. Every time she saw a woman with golden-red hair in a crowd, she started moving toward her, thinking, for a second, that she had seen her sister. She constantly dreamed of Pat, often waking to find herself clutching the phone receiver, dialing Pat's number.

Sue can see Pat's smiling face as they sit on the sun-drenched porch of their favorite bed and breakfast. Pat holds Sue's hand, telling Sue she must move on with her life, that she has much to live for and many people who need her. Sue can't, won't let her eyes slip from her sister's gaze. Pat's soft laughter washes over her. Sue feels happy, relaxed, whole.

Gradually, Sue's pain began to dull and she felt more grounded and secure than she had since her sister's death. She began writing again and found laughing came easier, lighter. She went to Suzanna's soccer games and to Flynn's preschool parties. She was living again. Sue looked forward to the nights when her dreams took her to a place far away, a place only she and her sister shared, a place where she could finally see her sister's eyes.

But the peaceful images and Sue's sense of security were about to end.

Four years after her sister's death, the three dreams came, the dreams Sue believes saved her life, forcing her awake to feel the hard mass in her breast. The tumor had been overlooked by her annual mammograms for years.

Sue was diagnosed with the most common form of breast cancer, found in the third stage, the fourth being the deadliest. But Sue couldn't imagine dying. She intended to fight. "My sister seemed to give up," she says. "She was ashamed and hid the cancer as if it were her fault. I felt that if I did something totally different from my sister, maybe there would be a different outcome."

Whatever the outcome, Sue planned to document every moment of her disease in black and white.

On Valentine's Day, two weeks after her illness was diagnosed, Sue sat in a room filled with cancer patients, all eyes avoiding contact, while intravenous tubes dripped potent drugs and a mild anesthetic into her blood. She remembered going into the room that Thursday, but not coming out. Friday she slept, barely able to keep her eyes open to see her son. By Saturday, the drugs hit her liver. Getting out of bed was nearly impossible. Doubled over, Sue crawled to her bathroom and lay on the cold tile, vomiting. By Tuesday the pain would be gone, but only for sixteen days. Then, the cycle would start again.

I once looked like a lion,

my tresses sparkled red with highlights of gold.

Now, I sit before you naked feeling

lost and very cold.

By the second round of chemotherapy, Sue's hair began to fall out, first in light wisps, then in fat cruel clumps. The girl, the college student, the woman blessed with a red-gold mane gone. Her identity shattered. "I was known for my beautiful hair," she says, "and all of a sudden I was bald, naked."

Despite the unrelenting attack on her body, Sue remained vigilant in her commitment to record the progression of her disease. Working with friend and photographer Jane Gibbons, she compiled more than thirty images of herself throughout the eight-month duration of her treatment.

In May, after her last treatment, Sue underwent lumpectomy surgery to remove the tumor. The 3½-centimeter mass was hidden directly beneath her right nipple; both were cut away. All the while, the camera kept clicking. If she was going to die, she wanted to leave something behind.

Radiation treatments followed to destroy any remaining cancer cells. Every day for seven weeks, Sue went to the hospital for the same treatments, saw the same cancer patients and heard the same silence. The radiation exhausted her. She slept night and day, saving the little energy she did have for Flynn and Suzanna. "I feel as though I lost at least a year of their lives because I was in bed," she says. "I'm still trying to regain that time."

Today, at age 41, Sue has been cancer free for two years. But the effects of the disease remain.

For Flynn, now 5, cancer and death have become part of his vocabulary. He sees that Suzanna is lonely without her mother, and he often asks if Sue will die. Sue can only hug him and say she wants to be with him forever. At an age when most boys are starting to display their independence from their mothers, Flynn follows Sue everywhere.

Suzanna has become like a daughter to her. Now 11, she often asks Sue about her mother, and Sue talks long into the night about the kind of woman Pat was. Sue tells Suzanna how desperately Pat wanted to see her daughter grow up.

But Sue must now do more than relish her time with her son and niece. Having won her own battle against breast cancer at least for now her fight has switched to educating and making people aware of this deadly disease. "So many women hide under turbans, wigs and scarves that people never see how many women actually have cancer," she says.

As I get closer I begin to see the light.

Now my journey is ending,

I've made it through winter's night.

Pat snakes into the darkness and extends her hand. This time she forces Sue to follow. Her face is dark and haunting with eyes that no longer plead but demand. Crying, Sue darts in one direction; Pat chases her.

Recently, Sue has noticed herself tiring more easily and crying at simple things. She's a couple of months late having her annual chest exam and bone scan done. After two years of enduring three doctors every four months, Sue says, "I'm just tired of going to doctors. I'm really tired. But I have to see Flynn and Suzanna grow up until they're on their own. That's all I want to do for them and for me."

Besides, there is still much to do, and Sue wastes little time. In addition to exhibiting the photos, she volunteers with the Oregon Breast Cancer Coalition and gives informational talks to local groups about the disease. She also plans to begin writing a book soon, a celebration of life, she says, and of the hundreds of women in the Pacific Northwest who have fought breast cancer and won. "I realize how essential goals are for health and for life," Sue says. "Every day I try to set and accomplish creative goals for myself. The creativity brings depth and passion to my life." She pauses, curling a red lock around her finger. "I lost that for many years, but now it's back. All I did before I got cancer was day-to-day living. Now I'm really alive."

I realize that I am home.

I know that love surrounds me

and I no longer walk alone.

Sue's lightly freckled face is radiant in the beam of sunlight streaming through the café window. The room is buzzing with light chatter; the smell of coffee hangs heavy in the air. Slowly, she scans her surroundings, taking in every face, every covered head. "I always do this," she says. "Everywhere I go, I think, 'one in eight women in this room has breast cancer.' There are about sixteen people here, and I'm one. Who is the other?"

Then, with a wide grin, she adds, "God, that sounds so negative. But the truth is I'm a realist." Doctors tell her that only 40 percent of the women with her advanced stage of cancer are alive five years after diagnosis. "A lot of times I don't believe I'll be here," she says. "I just feel so temporary." She pauses, takes a deep breath and settles into a slow smile. "But maybe that's how we all should feel."

By Collen Pohlig
Photos by Jane Gibbons

For more information about Breast Cancer