On Oct. 30, local artist Chris Potter was celebrating a friend’s birthday at El Capitán State Beach, dancing and partying with his “tribe” just days before he would receive a life-changing diagnosis of an aggressive form of lung cancer.
“We stayed up on Friday and Saturday, dancing and having a blast. Chris seemed so full of life,” Julie Potter, Chris’ wife of two decades, told Noozhawk. “But on Sunday when we came back, he showed me his fingers and they were curved in. I was like, ‘That’s not your hand. It’s been 20 years, I know your hand.’”
Chris Potter had been having headaches since July and would wake up in the middle of the night gasping for air, his wife said. When she urged him to see a doctor at the end of September, he was diagnosed with anxiety.
His difficulty breathing did not stop with the prescribed anxiety medications, Julie Potter said, and once she saw “something weird” going on with his hands, she knew he had to go back to a doctor. He saw a bone doctor just a day later because there was something wrong with his blood levels, and the doctor told him that he should get a CT scan.
That scan changed Chris Potter’s life. It showed that he had a mass on his lung, and the biopsy results came back showing that it was an aggressive form of lung cancer.
Within 10 days, Chris Potter had gone from dancing and sprinting along the beach with friends to finding out that he had cancer.
“I can’t even keep track, it’s been too fast,” Julie Potter said. “I think the hardest thing is just that he was fine while we were camping, and then right away when we got back he started having more difficulty breathing and gasping for more air.”
His chemotherapy and radiation treatment were originally set to begin next Monday, but he recently had to be admitted to the emergency room because he could not breathe at all, his wife said.
“We haven’t even wrapped our head around it,” she said. “I got the radiation introduction on Thursday, and the ‘crash class’ for the chemo information the day before, and now he’s actually receiving that treatment.”
Chris Potter was admitted as an emergency room patient because his oxygen levels were too low that they couldn’t wait for their insurance to process everything, Julie Potter said.
“I’m relieved that the hospital is monitoring him because I’m not qualified to do it, and it’s literally life or death,” she said. “Every night was so scary. I couldn’t sleep. It was truly hell.”
Because of COVID-19 restrictions, Chris Potter is allowed only two visitors per day, so Julie Potter cannot visit him with their two children on the same day, she explained.
“To be truthful, I really don’t want to lose my husband. He’s my best friend,” she said. “There are some people who are together and they have OK lives. We have a great life. We love each other, we have fun, we do couples trips, we prioritize us.”
A GoFundMe fundraiser was set up for the Potter family to help cover medical expenses and utilities, food, gas and other living expenses that will help support the family through the fight.
As of Wednesday evening, about 1,100 donors had contributed more than $146,000.
“We’re astonished by the help of the community. It’s a relief,” Julie Potter said. “We really do need the support because we lived our life and we don’t have a lot of savings.”
More than a decade ago, Chris Potter left his life in the corporate world to become a full-time artist. He is a plein air artist whose artwork hangs in restaurants, offices, public spaces and private homes around the world.
Over the years, he has donated his work to fundraisers supporting multiple organizations, including the Mental Wellness Center, Downtown Santa Barbara and the Arthritis Foundation, among others.
“Chris meets a lot of people, and they would ask him to donate and he never said no,” Julie Potter said. “Anytime he could help, he never said no.”
While he is still trying to draw in the hospital, his family’s sole method of income has been stripped away.
“Chris strives with connection, that’s just who he is. He can never go three or four days without painting. It’s like his breathing, and now he can’t do either,” his wife said. “We’re thankful that we can focus on his health for like six months, which is the most important, and then I’ll figure out what happens.
“I just want him to get out of this.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Jade Martinez-Pogue can be reached at jmartinez-pogue@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
