For many months after skin cancer surgery, Linda Pitcher couldn’t leave the house. She avoided answering the front door, and if she had to go into her local village, she wore a hat and pulled it low. Now, at 61, she is taking part in her first major ceramics exhibition, at London’s New Designers next month, where she will look visitors in the eye. “It’s nerve-racking. But I’m going,” she says.
Pitcher has not only had to overcome cancer, but also post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) triggered by the surgery, which entailed removing a large part of her nose. When the bandages were unwound after her first skin graft, the nurse held up a full-length mirror. “I fainted. I was sitting down, but I fell to the right. Half my nose had gone. Then you’ve got to walk out to your life and see people. No, no,” she says. “There was no support. I was so self-conscious.”
