I am beginning my scars project with the Evans family. My goal with this project is to show that although we all have scars, there are some beautiful, good and even funny things that can arise from the pain.
Matt Evans and son, Gray Evans, have two very different scars. Matt is now 35, but at just 19-years-old he was told he had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Evans began treatment during his freshman year of college, but he wanted to continue having a college experience. On the other hand, when Gray was just 16-months-old, his parents were told he needed surgery to fix a hernia located in his stomach. The two graciously went shirtless for a photoshoot to examine the differences in their scars and experiences.

“Gray had lots of stomach issues as a child, and we discovered that he was born with two hernias, and one was a medial hernia, that was causing some of his bowel obstructions. And so we had it fixed and he wasn’t constipated anymore, which is good, because we remember one night, Matt, all he wanted to do was watch Michigan-Notre Dame, and instead we were dealing with a fussy, constipated baby. And he had to go to Walmart and buy suppositories, latex gloves, and Vaseline. So he definitely went to self-checkout. After the surgery there was no more need for that stuff. That was great, haha!” Cindy Evans, Gray’s mother.

“I got my scar through chemotherapy, it was for Hodgkin’s Disease. They had to insert a port, which was a little hard grape-looking thing with a wire connecting to a larger vein, so they didn’t tear up my arms for chemotherapy. So they did surgery- inserted the port. When I finished chemo they did surgery again, cut it open, took out the port, and I could keep it as a souvenir. During chemo, I was 19-years-old, freshman in college, I set up my chemotherapies on Mondays, two weeks apart so I was feeling crumby for a couple days, but I was always feeling well enough when Friday came around to go to college towns and party with my friends. And they gave me the nickname of, “’portin’.” They’d say, “Evans, you’re ‘portin’.” Because I had a port,” Matt Evans.
