Kerri Anne Besse is the creator and designer of The Cancer Calendar book.

She is an artist & designer who was diagnosed with breast cancer on March 11th, 2020. From there, her whole world did an about-face.

After you receive the call that you have cancer, you go numb. For weeks I tormented myself with questions like “Why me?” and “How could this have happened at the age of 39”? After a while, the pity party started to not feel so good. I had to gain some very serious perspective. Especially when I was hearing of people younger than me being diagnosed with breast cancer.

Being an artist, I knew that creating something during this process was going to make it a bit easier to face each day. When I was told that my cancer had spread to one lymph node and that I was going to have to have chemo, I was devastated and very scared. Two weeks later, on May 16th, 2020, I sat down in my studio and started drawing a calendar of sorts. Black squares were drawn with a Sharpie, one for each of the days I was going to be undergoing chemo. Six infusions, three weeks apart for a total of 60 days. Once I saw these squares I thought to myself, well 60 days is NOT that long in regards to a lifetime. Seeing that number instantly made me feel like I could conquer chemo and I wanted others who have to walk this path to have this same profound feeling of relief. In addition to the fact that one of the side effects of chemotherapy is short-term memory loss. If I didn’t write an appointment down somewhere immediately I would forget about it. That same day I bought two pieces of poster board set out to create a calendar for myself before my first infusion on May 21st, 2020.

My hope is that this book will help others keep track of their appointments as well as have a little bit of satisfaction and joy in the process. The joy of creation and placing a sticker inside a box signifies what you need to accomplish that day. A place where you can pour your feelings onto the pages. The journey of cancer after diagnosis never ends. Once you are a survivor you will always be a survivor! During the creation of this book, I started to see the beauty in the process and the journey. Finding the silver lining and holding onto it tightly!

In 2021 - 2022 Kerri was a Young Advocate with the Living Beyond Breast Cancer (LBBC) organization. LBBC is a non-profit organization that helps more than 600,000 newly diagnosed patients and their loved ones each year. Upon completion of her year of advocacy, Kerri is still heavily involved with LBBC and 20% of all book sales will be donated to the organization. To learn more about LBBC, please visit https://www.lbbc.org/