One of the most unexpected incidents of my life was the time I was hospitalized having faced a grave illness. September 18, 2019, I happened to have a killer pain in my stomach. Resistance as well as self-medication were my initial reaction. Some hours passed. I then found going to the hospital emergency room the only option. After doing the primary tests, I was told I had pancreatitis – inflammation of the pancreas. With this magnitude of infection, I shouldn’t have even been alive. 

I had grown a whopping 13 gallstones in my gallbladder, one of which had embarked on an expedition inside my body and had been stuck in the intestinal tract. Now, it had to move in order to be removed along with the gallbladder through laparoscopy. 

Being hospitalized wasn’t an option, but a necessity. I stayed for two weeks and the journey into the wonderland began. Every morning would start with donating some test tubes of my blood, and IV therapy was a 24-hour ritual every day. To that add pulmonary edema. And here’s when I was introduced to NPO, which is a medical term meaning Nothing by Mouth. To have that little traveller stone moved, I was treated to ERCP. Three times, each of which was a failure. It wouldn’t give in. After each ERCP, a hellish day would await me. A day full of pain and again pain. A tube had paved the path from my nose to my stomach to accelerate the removal of the black liquid. The nurses had to change the location of the catheter every other day because my veins weren’t able to take it anymore. After a week, my arms were nothing short of the Starry Night.

The turn of events all of a sudden took me from my everyday life and threw me on a deserted island. I was in shock. A gigantic one. I had been imprisoned in the hospital and I almost lost my mind. My one and only companion, Mahdi, first incepted the idea of keeping a journal of those days in my mind. These are his words: “see this period as an art project. Observe so that you can later create something out of it. You’re an artist, Farzaneh!” From the on, things changed. Whenever the pain would leave me alone, I would draw and write in my notebook. I would also take photos of things that looked in a way interesting. After two weeks, according to my doctor’s opinion, I was discharged from the hospital only to go to another one. I went through another ERCP, and a plastic tube was inserted into my intestine in the hope that the traveller stone would move. A few days later and after all the trouble my mom and Mahdi had to go through, I was hospitalized in Shariati Hospital to do the ERCP only to learn the little adventurer hadn’t moved and now my intestine was injured. I had pain for twelve straight hours before they did an emergency open surgery on my stomach. I was in the operation room for five hours, and the first question I had when I came back was how many stitches! After a few hours, I found three bags and a tube called jejunostomy hanging from me. I was also introduced to another medical term: gavage. It refers to supplying substances through a plastic tube which was directly attached to my intestine. I was prohibited from eating by mouth for 40 days. Every three hours, 300 cc liquids had to pass that tube.

I had grown impatient for leaving the hospital, but it hadn’t been over yet. The night which was  supposed to be the last, I had a temperature of 40 degrees and the following day I was told my body had gotten infected. Not only couldn’t I be discharged, but also the new phase was to begin: contact precautions. After spending some days in quarantine, I was finally discharged provided that I would continue quarantine at home and take strong antibiotics.

Those were pitch black days and nights. Gradually, the bags were detached. Then came the blessing of drinking water and other liquids, and finally I left the sickbed. Having gone to my own home after 3 months, I felt I had to do something. I went to my etudes and writings and started the work on a small scale. A few months later, I was imprisoned at home, this time due to the pandemic. 

From the very day I started the drawings of this collection, I was struggling with this question: What could possibly such a project have for the audience? Why should I put one of the darkest periods of my life before the eyes of the others? Without an answer, I kept working.

I eventually came to this conclusion that the least benefit of this collection for the audience could be the virtue of empathy that comes with seeing someone’s suffering. So, it is worth sharing. This collection reminds the audience that art in the general sense of the word (drawing, painting, sculpture, music, pottery, writing, reading, seeing) can function as psychotherapy when the times are hard. To be an artist, one doesn’t necessarily need training or classes. One of the advantages of the world of art is to each his own.

* Pancreas: a glandular organ located in the abdomen. It makes pancreatic juices, which contain enzymes that aid in digestion, and it produces several hormones, including insulin. The pancreas is surrounded by the stomach, intestines, and other organs.

** ERCP: a procedure that uses an endoscope to examine and x-ray the pancreatic duct, hepatic duct, common bile duct, duodenal papilla, and gallbladder.