Coping with a breast cancer diagnosis through comics: The Saga of Bob
Hugo and Nebula award-winning author and illustrator Ursula Vernon shares the story of her breast cancer diagnosis and treatment through art and humor.
- 10/17/23
How do you cope with a breast cancer diagnosis? After a receiving a diagnosis of triple-negative breast cancer in June 2023, Ursula Vernon began coping with a comic: The Saga of Bob.
“I'm not sure how else I could have dealt with my diagnosis,” said Ursula. “NOT talking about it didn't seem like an option.”
Ursula, an author and illustrator of more than 40 books, was inspired to create The Saga of Bob, in part, because comics were one of her first loves, going back two decades to an epic webcomic called DIGGER that she wrote and illustrated.
“I've always found that readers will engage with a comic more rapidly and intensely than they will with a wall of text (and believe me, as a novelist, I sometimes wish it was the other way around),” Ursula said. “But I also knew that there was no way I'd have the energy to keep up with drawing a comic while I was undergoing treatment. So, I started playing around with text layouts and word balloons and a program called Typorama and what came out had the feel of a comic without me having to sit down and painstakingly draw characters on every page.”
Whether you call it a comic or something else, Ursula hopes someone out there finds her story useful. And she wants readers to know: “It’s ok to laugh, by the way. Some of it is hilarious.”
Read The Saga of Bob: Part I below. Each Tuesday we'll post another installment of the comic here on the LBBC blog.
The Saga of Bob was originally published on Ursula Vernon's Tumblr. It is reproduced here with permission from the author.
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The views and opinions of our bloggers represent the views and opinions of the bloggers alone and not those of Living Beyond Breast Cancer. Also understand that Living Beyond Breast Cancer does not medically review any information or content contained on, or distributed through, its blog and therefore does not endorse the accuracy or reliability of any such information or content. Through our blog, we merely seek to give individuals creative freedom to tell their stories. It is not a substitute for professional counseling or medical advice.
Coping
Everyone copes with their diagnosis in their own way. Here are some additional resources about managing these complex feelings:
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- Has worked at LBBC since 2021
- Has far too many close family and friends who have been touched by breast and other cancers
- Is a book lover, yoga practitioner, late-in-life cyclist, farmers' market fan, writer of short fiction and children's picture books, dog mom
Ursula Vernon aka T. Kingfisher is the author of more than forty books, most recently Thornhedge and A House With Good Bones. Her work has won multiple Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Dragon Awards, and on a good day she can be found in the garden, trying to photograph interesting bugs.
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Living Beyond Breast Cancer is a national nonprofit organization that seeks to create a world that understands there is more than one way to have breast cancer. To fulfill its mission of providing trusted information and a community of support to those impacted by the disease, Living Beyond Breast Cancer offers on-demand emotional, practical, and evidence-based content. For over 30 years, the organization has remained committed to creating a culture of acceptance — where sharing the diversity of the lived experience of breast cancer fosters self-advocacy and hope. For more information, learn more about our programs and services.