Gym Teacher Saves Student

January 09, 2010

I eat right, exercise, breast fed my children, and buy organic when I can.  I have never lived on a superfund site and I do not have cancer in my family line.  The chance of me finding a lump in my breasts were--I thought--slim to none.

But 5 years ago, on a quiet Sunday morning at the start of spring in New England, everything I believed about my life changed forever.  My husband and our two children, ages 4 and 1, were downstairs in the kitchen making breakfast. I was upstairs enjoying a much-needed hot shower:  this at-home-Mom needed a little me time. Let them eat pancakes, I just needed some privacy.

As I let the water flow down my aching back, I started my usual self-breast exam.  Why was I doing self breast exams so young, not yet 40, with no breast cancer history and two years from getting my first recommended mammogram?  Because of Miss Provost.

Back in high school, Miss Provost was my gym teacher.   And one day at my all-girl academy, I recall she walked into our locker room and looked at all of us in various stages of puberty. "You need to do self breast exams," she said. "Here's the plackard with directions.  Make sure you do them."  And she left the room.

I was 16 then.  I was 38 now.   22 years and hundreds of self-breast exams later, I actually felt a lump.

What started as a long week of doctor's exams, mammogram, and biopsy turned into a final moment of dread:  a doctor's voice on the other line saying "this is a breast cancer."  I'd tried all week to prepare myself for the worst, but here it was and I just crumbled.  I can't have breast cancer!  I sobbed.  How do you have breast cancer?

In the days that followed my husband and I were sunk in the surrealism of life going on even as our world was collapsing.   I remember doing laundry, thinking--I may be dying, but I still need clean underwear. How inane, but life kept moving whether I was with it or not.  And I was without it, I was disconnected from my world: I was not supposed to get sick.  I felt runover, powerless.  I had cancer.

"What's wrong?" my 4 year old asked.  "Um," I stumbled.  What do I say? With no time to think I dove in, "I am sick.  I got sick and the doctor is helping me get better."    I kept it simple but honest;  I was sick enough as it was, I wasn't going to strain myself by pretending all was well.

Two days after diagnosis, my house was full of talk of cancer, and I needed to get away   My husband and I packed up the kids and headed to visit my brother and his wife, an hour away.  As we sat at their kitchen table, my cell phone kept ringing--all the doctors I'd talked to and written down phone numbers for, asking if I could call them with questions--a habit generated from my days as a TV news reporter.   I was asking each doctor what next?  What do I do?  Who should I call?   And writing it all down--like I would on a story.

My sister-in-law, who is not just family but a dear friend, is also a former ABC and CNN correspondent.  She was watching me, and as I got off the phone from yet another doc, she looked at me and said, "You know, you're handling this like such a journalist;  getting the facts, writing down the information.  This would make an amazing documentary."

I didn't know exactly what that would mean;  what would I be going through?  What would I feel like?  And what would it be like to have cancer on camera?  What I did know was this:  I would be changed in profound and permanent ways by what was about to happen. That in itself was worth capturing on film.

And I felt something else:  something I hadn't felt since the moment I found the lump 7 days ago:  power.  If I did a documentary, I thought, I could expose cancer.  I could reveal it for the nasty, insidious disease that it is, and maybe I could make people care.   

What emerged is the documentary film, "The Breast Cancer Diaries ,"  billed as "an intimate, unvarnished account of one woman's battle with the disease, punctuated with love, romance and humor".  That woman, of course, is me.  And my story, although the camera is on me, is truly every person's story.  How do you find strength in the middle of severe trauma?   Where does it come from, and who are you when it's over? 

This may be my movie, but it is all of our story.  And having made it, I feel lucky and happy to be alive.

Speaking of which, I am doing well, and I am cancer-free, as far as I know----they say you know you beat your cancer when you die of something else.    But I feel strong and healthy and I have my family, friends and doctors to thank.  And I am lucky to live in a country where some of the greatest medicines are availble--because I've had them all, I think.  And so far, they've worked.

So I thank you medicines, I thank you doctors, and I thank you my famiy and friends.  I thank all the people who've watched The Breast Cancer Diaries and sent me email:  we aired on both Discovery Health and Discovery Health Latin America, our largest audience to date.

And way back in a locker room 26 years ago, I am thankful for a gym teacher who took the time to tell a 16 year old kid with her whole life ahead of her, to start looking after her body and specifically, her breasts.  I thank you Miss Provost, whose well-timed plackard thrown on a locker room bench all that time ago may very well have saved my life.

Comments

[Jim lolley]

My heart and prayers go out to all those who have posted here. Cancer is a nasty dibilatating desease,one that took my wife last month after a courages fight. Please know that I am a cancer suvivor too so have seen both sides. Be as spiritual as you can...,love asmuch as you can, hope and pray as long as you can. It is not an easy trial for the victim of cancer nor their family nor their care givers. May God blees you all. And yes there are many who survive so never give up hope.