Going Nodal: The Hodge Experience

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Intro

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NOTE:  PET Scan people seem to be cheerier than CT scan people, Radiation Oncology Nurses are Photogenic, male anesthesiologists are as good looking as surgeons are arrogant.

Going Nodal: The Hodge Experience is a documentary made
entirely from home video footage that I took during my
treatment for Hodgkin's Lymphoma AKA: Cancer of the
lymphNODES.

I hadn't intended on making a video of my personal business
for the whole universe to watch when I was taping everything.
In fact, I didn't touch the hours and hours of footage until
nearly a year after I was out of treatment. When I did review
the footage I thought it was not only gross, but also a
representational goldmine of alternative cancer media. Or I
mean I wanted to put the whole story together so other people
could see the experience in some format other than the
typical bald survivor/fighter/cancer champion hero video that
you usually get to see accompanied by piano music.

I showed it to my fellow cancer peeps first and then to some
other people at grad school and then to Karmanos Cancer
Center in Detroit. The Patient Family Advisory Board there
liked it and bought it for what I was told would be patient and
staff education. I found out later that the board had decided
against showing it to patients because it might scare them.
Huh?

Anyway my little old video should be a lesson to everybody
about the power of visual representation. My experience gives
some insight into how influential the medical community is in
shaping patient self–image and representations of illness. It
should also be a lesson to bored sickies and cancer patients
that people treat you all crazy when you have a camera in one
hand and an IV full of Adriamycin in the other.

Going Nodal has been screened at Wayne State University, a
few cancer support groups, craploads of living rooms, a
couple times in front of a large audience at Gilda's Club, The
Reality Bytes Film Festival in Illinois, and The Nextframe
Student Film Festival out of Temple University (it even won
first place – shucks!), and The Emerging Filmmakers
Program in Cannes.  This fall it is going to be screened in
Amsterdam at the Shadow Film Festival.

You can check out a few clips (sorry right now I only have WMV
files) here. If you have any comments or questions, want to
see more, want to fund my future projects, or want to hear
bloody stories, please contact me by email.