Tribute
Sun., October 24, 10:58 AM
When I first got sick, I thought a lot about a lady named Rhoda. Rhoda was married to one of my cousins when I was a little kid. (You may remember that most of my cousins on that side of the family were a lot older than I was.) Rhoda was a kind and gentle lady who had been ill quite a bit (back surgery); but fifty years ago she was finally okay, and they had a little boy. One day my mother told me, “Rhoda has cancer.” “Where?” I asked. “All over,” said my mother, “the doctors took a look and just closed her up again.”
How brutal that sounds! But it was not all that unusual long ago. Non-invasive diagnostic tools like CT scans and MRI’s were not yet developed. There were no blood tests that could detect a cancer. A doctor might be able to feel a growth, but he needed to get inside for further information. Sometimes the tumors were removed; sometimes there was no hope.
Rhoda’s husband wasn’t ready to accept that verdict. As a veteran of World War II, he and his family had the right to military medical care. He got her accepted into a new program at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. He told us some of the details afterward.
This must have been one of the early chemotherapy research. Rhoda took the drugs they gave her and usually threw up – violently. She lost the hair on her head, while her facial hair grew abundantly. She was often in pain.
She didn’t survive much longer than other women with her condition, so what did she gain from this? She did get some time – time to get her affairs in order, to make her peace wherever necessary, to write letters for a little boy who would never remember his mother. And whether she realized it or not, her participation in this study helped a lot of patients who came after her.
Before I was married, I worked for a time in the public information department of a large cancer center in New York City. At that time, treatment for breast cancer was radical mastectomy – removal of the breast, the underlying muscles, and all the lymph nodes. It was a very traumatic procedure that required a long healing time; the lack of lymph nodes in the arm often left permanent swelling. Around the time that I was working there, a dialogue was beginning between two schools of surgeons, those who continued to advocate radical mastectomy and those who thought simple mastectomy would be sufficient – just removal of the breast and maybe some surrounding tissue, with perhaps some chemotherapy following. The “radicals” were still in the majority. As far as lumpectomy was concerned, the consensus was that “only quacks did that.” In all cases, the patient had to make it through five years wondering whether she was cured or if her cancer would come back.
In the “nothing you ever learned…” department: the first press release I ever worked on concerned a new leukemia drug called L-asparaginase. Many years later, I was temping at Yale’s School of Pharmacy, where they were studying the underlying chemistry of…L-asparaginase. As one of the researchers explained to me, “we know that it works. Now we want to know why.”
Over the years I’ve read several biographies about people with cancer. One of those was about a boy who was treated with L-asparaginase. Betty Rollin, who used to report for NBC, also wrote two books – one about her own cancer (First You Cry) and another about her mother (Last Wish). Her mother was one of those patients who just couldn’t stand the thought of any more treatments and chose to die rather than go through it again. (Just incidentally, Mrs. Rollin was one of my mother’s customers. You never know when these stories will hit home.)
Compare the ordeals I’ve described with the easy time I had. I am so grateful to all those women who came before me, who were guinea pigs, whether or not they were told they were. One thing we know is that research works. We have to support it wherever we can, whether you choose the American Cancer Society , or the Susan Komen Foundation , or local cancer facilities. Support fundraising events, like Marn’s “Jog for the Jugs” or southern Connecticut’s “Swim Across the Sound.”
And remember, go and get your mammogram. Your sisters are here for you, but some things you have to do for yourself.
