Cancer affects everyone’s lives at some point, whether it’s your own or a loved one’s battle. Everyone has their own way of handling it, and for Charlie and Kelsey Johnson, that meant a photo shoot.
Photographer Mandy Parks captured one of the more emotional times for Charlie — when her husband, Kelsey, shaved her head as she prepared to undergo chemotherapy to fight her breast cancer — and she shared it on Facebook for anyone who might need to see it.
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Kelsey and Charlie have the fight of their lives coming up.
At first, 34-year-old Charlie, who works as a nurse, thought she just had a benign fibroadenoma , a common breast tumor that seldom increases the risk of breast cancer. However, it soon became uncomfortable and she had it removed. Two weeks later, her doctor told her it was, in fact, cancerous.
Charlie and her medical team decided to go after the cancer aggressively.
She had all her lymph nodes removed and a mediport placed. “Being a nurse, nothing screams to me ‘this person has real medical problems’ more than having a mediport,” she wrote on Facebook . “And here I am with my own.”
Even though she didn’t “feel sick,” and even though the cancer hadn’t spread to her lymph nodes, they started scheduling chemo dates.
“This is when I think I truly lost it for the first time,” she wrote. “That is what ‘made it real.'”
Chemo, of course, would mean that Charlie would lose her hair.
When chemo patients lose their hair, it can be an intensely emotional experience, and it doesn’t always happen uniformly.
According to BreastCancer.org , “If you are having chemotherapy, your hair loss may be gradual or dramatic: clumps in your hairbrush, handfuls in the tub drain or on your pillow. Whichever way it happens, it’s startling and depressing, and you’ll need a lot of support during this time.”
And so, ahead of the chemo treatments, Charlie took control and had Kelsey shave her hair off, with Mandy capturing it all on camera.
Creating Charlie and Kelsey’s photo shoot clearly had an affect on Mandy.
“Strong women aren’t simply born,” she wrote in her Facebook post . “They are made by the storms they walk through. From the pain, mistakes, and heartache we achieve pride and strength.”
“I don’t know who needs to see this today,” she continued. “Or yesterday. Or someone you know might get this phone call tomorrow.”
“Show them what strength looks like. Let them know they are not alone. Stand by them as they kick this like the warrior they are!”
And she thanked Charlie and Kelsey for including her in their story as well.
“Thank you to Charlie Johnson and Kelsey Johnson for allowing me to capture the pain, beauty, and bravery it took to spread this message. Prayers to you both in the fight! I love you guys!”
It didn’t take long for messages of support to start rolling in, especially as Mandy’s photographs started to go viral.
Her post, at the time of writing, had more than 280,000 reactions, 274,000 shares, and 44,000 comments, many from people sharing their own battles and stories.
Kelsey later wrote that he and Charlie were just as thankful for this photo shoot.
“The amount of support and prayers has been breathtaking,” he wrote. “Our goal with this photo shoot was to help as many people as we can get through this terrible battle. It has far outreached our expectations I think is fair to say.”
Here’s hoping for only the best for Charlie and Kelsey.
