ISSUE 1 #24MAG

Chris: Eyes So, being a photographer, you’re super, super reliant on your eyes. Like, I mean, if they go, you’re done.

You know what I mean? That’s also very scary. I mean, there’s other things—if you’re a writer, you could always write in Braille. You know, you could do other things. But, if you’re a photographer, you need to be able to see the light and so on and so forth. So, that’s it. So, I don’t know; I feel like I’ve put a lot of eggs in my eyes, in that basket, which is worrisome, a little bit. Like, I have this thing—you know when people get a laser pointer out? I just leave the room, because I’m just so paranoid about it. You know. I’ve actually really never told anybody that, but yeah, it’s just a thing I do. I’m like, “All right, you know what? I’m not risking it,” whatever. So, yeah, I don’t know; it’s an odd little concern.

And, yeah, now I eat a lot more carrots, and I actually try to take care of my eyes. There’s not much you can do for your eyes. I mean, it’s not like you go to the gym for them or anything like that. But yeah, so I definitely take care of my eyes.

Elizabeth: Voice I had my thyroid removed. One of the biggest risk factors for that surgery is damage to the vocal cord nerves. And my voice is very important to me in my work. I sing; I do voice acting; I speak as a presenter. And I’m used to being able to convey myself artistically and effectively through speech. And I was terrified that I would come out of this surgery damaged.

When I woke up out of the surgery, I couldn’t talk at all.

And I was in enormous amounts of pain, and my voice sounded funny.

There were two or three weeks where I just spent the whole time terrified and having to reevaluate my sense of self as a creative person if my voice wasn’t there anymore. Finding a way to calm down and trust that everything had gone fine, and that everything would come back, was very, very difficult. For a while after that, every little sore throat was, “What if this is a side effect?”

But it was strange, because I wasn’t worried about cancer. I was worried about performance.