Bleeding Vessel

My 2022 endometrial cancer experience

Feb 04, 2025

For World Cancer Day 2025, here is a slightly edited version of my original blog post about my embroidery Bleeding Vessel. I started the piece 27 July 2020 and finished stitching it 15 June 2022—almost two years.

An embroidery of a uterus stitched in black thread on white linen with texture like a woodcut. The mesometrium spreads like wings, the ovaries are ovals on the mesometrium, and the fimbriae on the ends of the fallopian tubes look like sea anemones. Inside the uterus, the edges of the endometrium are stitched in bright red thread with long and short stitch in a textured leaf pattern. The centre endometrium is filled with the same texture but in burgundy with thinner thread. The edges between the burgundy and the bright red are filled with single strand satin stitch with curlicue edges. There is an apple-sized half circle fibroid on the left upper area of the uterus and a strawberry sized one on the right lower side. Both fibroids are made of red, pink, and cream beads of various sizes. Another strawberry sized section of clear, purple, and red beads is a cyst over the right ovary, and a small section of dark red and purple beads are a polyp inside the endometrium. There are long burgundy strings hanging from the bottom of the endometrium with medium and large red beads on them that extended past the vaginal opening. The initials L. P. are stitched in white on the right side of the image. — Bleeding Vessel (2022). Cotton and nylon thread with glass beads on linen/rayon blend. Stitched area is 42 x 28 centimetres.

I began this piece as a combination of symptomatology and anatomy so it sits between those two series. Each of my symptomatology pieces has been done in order to understand my symptoms better. Each is a meditation, a learning, and often ends up manifesting some sort of treatment or solution by the time the piece is complete. This piece in particular took me deep into those three journeys.

When I started this piece, it was going to be mostly about my fibroids and ridiculously heavy periods. Heavy periods meant I was anaemic & had trouble keeping my ferritin (iron stores) at a healthy level. Low blood volume is an issue in ME/CFS so each period I would crash from even lower blood volume and it would take 5-10 days to come back to baseline. I was managing well aside from that—able to write and play the piano regularly—and would work on my stitching while crashed from my period. Then, starting in fall of 2020 I had a series of five hospitalizations from liver infections and sepsis which I now know are from primary schlerosing cholangitis (PSC). I stitched while in hospital and during my home recovery from each infection.

I had a good summer in 2021, and wrote an essay on Stoicism and chronic illness that won a contest, but ended up hospitalized with more liver abscesses that winter. I had a lot of imaging done at that point, and they found endometrial buildup in my uterus which greatly informed the texture I embroidered in the endometrium of my piece.

Lia's fingers, her gold stork scissors, and her knifecat needle minder are on top of the uterus part of her embroidery. The outer lining of the endometrium is done in thick bright red long and short stitch in a sort of leaf pattern. The inner endometrium is done in the same stitch with thinner thread in burgundy. there is a small bit of white between the two that is being filled with single strand satin stitch in burgundy along the blebby edge. — A close up of the texture of the endometrium while in progress.

Between hospitalizations, I had a couple of phone consultations with a new gynaecologist. She was quite curious about my embroidery piece and gave me clear measurements of all my fibroids and the one ovarian cyst so I could integrate them into the piece.

An embroidery of a uterus with the mesometrium like wings stitched in black thread on white linen looking like a woodcut. There is a strawberry sized section of red, pink, and cream beads of various sizes on the left and a strawberry sized section of clear, purple, and red beads over the ovary. — A freshly beaded ovarian cyst.

In April, my gynaecologist performed a hysteroscopy to remove what was either a polyp or fibroid within my uterus and did an endometrial biopsy and D and C at the same time. I was so relieved that the D and C meant no periods for at least a couple months.

Pathology came back a month later. I was diagnosed with stage IA endometrial cancer (the earliest possible stage). This surprised everyone, including my gynaecologist who said the polyp she removed didn’t look cancerous. A couple weeks later I had a complete hysterectomy. The surgery got rid of all the cancer, but I will need regular checkups for the next five years.

I had completed most of the embroidery by the time I had surgery, but still had the beading to do. The beaded fibroids, cysts, and cancerous polyp are based on actual measurements from my imaging and pathology reports. It was during my surgery recovery that my gynaecologist first saw the embroidery and she absolutely loved it!

Making art about being ill while being ill feels like a healing act. It allows me to understand what is happening to my body so I can better offer compassion to those parts of myself. As of January 2025, I am three and a half years post-hysterectomy. The relief of being cancer-free but and no longer crashing every few weeks from such heavy periods is palpable. Embroidering a uterus to help solve my gynaecological issues has manifested itself very well, and I am readily embracing my cronehood.

Ria Baeck

Feb 12

Just B E A U T I F U L!!

both the stitching and the process, as you described it.

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1 reply by Lia Pas

Helen iles

Feb 5

Women have been weaving their healing stories into quilts and embroidery forever. This is next-level! Thanks so much for sharing your unique art and healing story.

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