'I'm stronger': Cancer has given Peoria artist a new appreciation for life

PEORIA – Diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 47, Jessica McGhee found a new sense of purpose during the course of a difficult journey.

“I’m a cancer cliché — when somebody tells you you have cancer, you start to appreciate life more," said McGhee. “Now I go to the park and take regular walks and I’m literally walking around looking at the sky and saying hi to trees and posting pictures on my Instagram story - of, like, mushrooms. I’ve lived by that park for literally a decade, and never really walked by it, and now I'm like ‘It’s the most beautiful park in the world, you guys! Have you seen the sunset, it’s so amazing!’”

McGhee laughed while sitting at a worktable in her studio, a former bar she once owned in the Main Street arts district near Sheridan Road. An artist who repurposes garbage in amazing ways, McGhee’s jewelry business, Hey Lola Art Co., had just taken off, thanks to a viral TikTok post, shortly before she was diagnosed in 2021.

“I don’t think anybody’s ever prepared for cancer, but I also feel like most of us have been led to believe that you get cancer, you get chemo and you get better, or you die, and that’s it,” said McGhee. “They don’t talk about the waiting. They told me at my mammogram and ultrasound at the end of July that they were 99% sure it was cancer, but then they made me wait for two weeks to get my biopsy. And then I didn’t have surgery to remove the cancer until October 21, which means there was just all of this waiting and uncertainty that is just so mentally waa!”

McGhee learned she had an estrogen-fed cancer that had spread to at least one lymph node. Ultimately, surgeons removed 14 lymph nodes when they performed the lumpectomy.

“So that put me at risk for lymphedema,” said McGhee.

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Because chemo wasn’t going to provide a clear benefit, McGhee decided to forego it, but she did have radiation.

“Radiation was fine until it wasn’t - then it looks like somebody took a blow torch to you,” said McGhee. “I would wake up in the middle of the night and go in the bathroom and cry so I didn’t wake my husband. It really hurt.”

Throughout her treatment, McGhee shared details of her experience on social media.

“It’s always been super therapeutic for me to be very honest about things that are super hard,” she said.

After more painful procedures, McGhee finished treatment early this year. As she regained her energy, she began a push to make her business more sustainable. That’s another thing she’s thankful to have learned during the cancer journey – her business model needed tweaking.

“My business had started taking off, then cancer shut everything down. I was like ‘I don’t have a business, I have a well-paid hobby,” said McGhee. “I wanted to put things into place with the business to make it a functional business, where if something happens to me, everything can continue.”

She recently hired a business manager and two other part-time workers to help with marketing and shipping. Though she plans to eventually train others to make the jewelry she sells online and at shows, McGhee currently crafts everything herself. She works with discarded plastics, things would have otherwise ended up in the landfill or polluting the waterways. Her artwork is the ultimate act of recycling - part of the process is the act of collecting garbage, much of which comes from beaches around the U.S. Through the years, McGhee has learned a lot about what discarded plastics are doing to the oceans and the creatures who live there, information she passes on to others.

McGhee is very good at promoting her business on social media. She recently started a new podcast called Look at All These Stupid Flowers where she talks about her art and shares business tips for other makers as well as details about her life. On a recent episode McGhee talked about the fact that, after becoming homeless at the age of 15, she supported herself by working as an exotic dancer.

Clearly, cancer is not the only difficult thing McGhee has endured in her lifetime, but this most recent challenge has brought her to a good place. It has been life-changing, said McGhee.

“But, weirdly, in a good way. I need to stress that my journey is not everybody’s, and I don’t think people need to get cancer to really appreciate life. But if it did it for me, I’ll take it," she said. “Every bad thing teaches you a lesson, and I’ve gotten really resilient ... When you go through something like cancer treatment, it’s literally brutal treatment, recovery, brutal treatment, recovery, brutal treatment, recovery – and you have no idea when it’s going to end. And the question you have to ask yourself is ‘what are you gonna do?’ You gotta get up. It teaches you resilience. It’s like everything is just preparing you for the next thing and making you stronger. And I’m stronger.”

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Leslie Renken can be reached at (309) 370-5087 or lrenken@pjstar.com. Follow her on Facebook.com/leslie.renken.

This article originally appeared on Journal Star: Cancer gives artist Jessica McGhee a new appreciation for life