{NOTE: This was originally published on Vanessa’s CarePage. We are copying all those posts here to have her story in one place that all can access. We are back-dating the posts to match when she originally published the post there, and are marking the blog post here with Vanessa as the author, as these words that follow are her own.}

Posted Aug 14, 2008 10:36pm

i’m famous! :) ….

…well kinda, sorta. but first thing first. guess i haven’t posted lately because this all sure looks different! i hope it’s still easy to access all your messages because that is my favorite part!

ok, so on to me being famous…as most of you know, last december i went to new york to be photographed by david jay, a really cool photographer who is taking pictures of young women under 30 who have breast cancer. he is calling his endeavor the SCAR Project and it is just that — a portrayal of women in all stages of treatments and surgeries. david hopes to raise money for research, increase awareness and hopefully present a series of images that will challenge the traditional perceptions of this disease (www.thescarproject.org). i had such a great experience the first time, having went after my mastectomy and radiation. his photo was so true and completely reflective of my inner emotions. then after i had my reconstruction and my thyroid surgery, i realized i had even more scars and kinda wished i had waited. but when i emailed david to check in, he said to come back and do a follow-up shot! so that’s what i did. :)

me and christina drove to new york last weekend and had tons of fun. but that’s not even the juicy part! david is trying to get more exposure in order to get funding for his project and to raise money for the cause. he connected with a producer from Lifetime who was very interested in doing a documentary on the SCAR Project. so what do you know, we had Lifetime follow us around new york and interview christina and me! They got lots of footage of the photoshoot and of us before and after it. it was crazy! we apparently are really good at doing the “walk down this street and pretend you don’t see the camera” thing. hopefully we did alright with the interviews too. we all know how much I love speaking in public, ha ha! ☺ the lifetime documentary is a work in progress so who knows what will come of it, but it was cool to be a part of it. If I hear of any new details with the SCAR Project or with the documentary, I will pass them along!

Other than that, it’s been pretty quiet on the homefront. :)