Like too many cancer diagnoses, Elizabeth Rodriguez’s came after a whirlwind of tests within days after getting herself to a doctor.

For about a year, the San Antonio artist ignored a chronic cough, headaches and exhaustion.

She hid it all exceedingly well.

“I should have been listening to my body,” she said Monday, before a community of artists put on a fundraiser to help her get to M.D. Anderson in Houston for treatment.

Part of her treatment.

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“I should have checked a long time ago,” she said. “But you know, there’s no sense in even thinking about that, obviously, to be as far along as I am.”

Rodriguez is a realist and acknowledges the tumors inside her lungs and brain “must have been happening more than a year ago. Two years.” 

The last time I wrote about her was in March. 

She was reeling from the success of her one-night-only exhibition, “Las Muñecas en la Calle Guadalupe,” a remembrance of the prostitutes that used to work on that street.
 
The provocative show drew over 500 people who descended on her fascinating home, an old motel on the city’s West Side that once served as a brothel.

Giant Mexican papier-mâché dolls decorated the building.

Viewers made their way inside her home — which she shares with her husband, artist Andy Villarreal — to see the lavish show.

It was a happening event. It was March 16. 

She and Villarreal then went to Mexico City to celebrate their first wedding anniversary. 

“We went to cafes and went to parks and took it easy more than last time,” she said. Her initial lab work done, she blamed her breathing issues and tiredness on the city’s high elevation.

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“They hadn’t told me I had cancer,” she said. In her follow-up appointment, a doctor “just kind of blurted it out.” It was the first time she heard, “Stage 4.”

By April, time was unraveling in a surreal duality, at once in an out-of-control rush of force, then in deliberate measure.

On Monday, she was front and center at the fundraiser. People bought lots of art.

Others were making donations to a GoFundMe account. Halfway through the event, it was at $14,000. A $4,000 pledge not yet included.

Rodriguez already knew she was headed to Houston on Wednesday and that she’d be there for a week, potentially for chemotherapy on her lungs.

It must have hit some viewers that the fundraiser was at Progreso Hall, across the street from the Virgen de Guadalupe “veladora” sculpture by the late Jesse Treviño, a man she divorced after their marriage she said had become a business arrangement.

In the latter part of his life, himself dealing with cancer, she said she produced Treviño’s work. He trained her for it, she added.

It’s an old story in the art world and in the world of highly successful writers, when muse becomes trainee and then stands in for the artist.

Rodriguez didn’t tell me this because she’s facing a life-threatening diagnosis. She’s revealed as much to others in the past.

But when faced with mortality, perhaps such candidness becomes easier to face and easier for the listener to face, too. 

Rodriguez’s diagnosis includes brain tumors for which she’ll receive radiation treatment in San Antonio, she said.

She’s optimistic, as her friends know her to be, but some were holding back tears as Rodriguez posed for selfies Monday.

No one could miss her large-scale paintings, one of them titled “Vietnam War.” It depicts Treviño’s dog tag swinging like a pendulum across the canvas, showing movement and speed. 

It’s set against a chaotic clash of colors and lines. He gave her the dog tag in lieu of a wedding band, she said.

She displayed the actual dog tag, just one, alongside the painting. They belong in a museum. As far as I could tell, no one bid on it.

Her goal was to show it along with another painting she did after their divorce. It depicts her hard-worn hands reaching up to the sky, Treviño’s prosthetic arm extending from hers. The prosthetic arm became part of his body when he lost his painting arm as a result of his war injuries and learned to paint with his other hand.

It’s her hands on his work, from conception to composition to execution.

“He taught me so much,” she said. “He was generous with his knowledge.”

But that’s where it also ended.

This will be an unpopular story for Treviño fans who admire his journey and his art, especially what may be his most important work, “Mi Vida,” now at the Central Library.

Go see it and say a little prayer for Elizabeth Rodriguez, though it might be hard to see how terribly sick she is.

On the day of her fundraiser, she was up at 6:30 a.m. She picked up her medication from the pharmacy, bought flowers for the fundraiser and was feeling like herself.

“I have my moments. I’m not going to lie,” she said. 

But on Monday, she was feeling great.