A Great Doctor Makes a Huge Difference
What happened next probably saved my life. One of my brothers made an appointment for me to get a second opinion at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, and I did so the day after Thanksgiving. The oncologist, Dr. Maria Theodoulou, was warm, caring, and blunt about the course that had been set for me in Florida. "You can't just proceed to chemotherapy and radiation," she said. "The margins aren't clear, so you still have cancer in your chest. That cancer will come back, and it will be a monster. You'll be chasing your own tail." So she arranged a second surgery at Sloan-Kettering to take more out of my chest. Recovery was much swifter this time, but this time there were two drains. Luckily, I got rid of them after about a week.

Dr. Theodoulou also had what was then a progressive notion of how chemotherapy should be administered. I wanted to be treated in Florida where I lived with my daughter, so she got on the phone with my oncologist there and dictated an unusually intensive course—every two weeks instead of the usual three, with support from a drug to keep my immune system from crashing.

People know about the nausea thing with chemotherapy. What they don't know is that even when you take drugs to control the worst of the nausea, you still feel very, very sick. I came to the conclusion that you cannot slowly poison another human being without making that person feel as if she is being poisoned. If it's toxic enough to get those vicious cancer cells, it's toxic enough to make you feel as if you're dying. Some days I walked the beach, hoping in vain to distract myself. Some days I tried to sleep through it. On certain days in the cycle, nothing made it better.

Getting Cheered Back to Health
Eventually I made it to New York to get my radiation treatment and second course of chemotherapy at a top center for my disease, as I had promised myself years ago. God did give me endurance, with the help of my friend Joanny, who opened her home in New York to me and took me to daily radiation treatments at Sloan-Kettering. I've always maintained that the real heroes are not the people going through treatment, but the loved ones who sit day after day in the waiting room, not letting their own helplessness stop them from filling you with laughter and hope. Joanny and her friend Marlene, who also opened her home to me sight unseen, will always be my heroes. Along with Dr. Theodoulou and all the staff at Sloan-Kettering, they gave me back the life I was so certain I would lose.

Today I am a 6 ½-year survivor. I've resisted opportunities to tell my story before, because in truth, I didn't want my life to be about cancer. But there are things about the experience that should be shared, if only to tell other women what to expect and how it feels—you are not alone. Breast cancer is beatable these days. Some of it's the luck of whether your body happens to be responsive to the cancer drugs, and some of it is getting treatment at a really top-notch place. I owe my life to so many people. I can only hope I prove worthy of the gift of years they've given me.