Ten Years Later (12 page)

“I told Nancy and her partner Dr. Hartman,” she says, “ ‘Not only did you save my
life, you enabled this. My legacy. This baby was born because of you.’ ”

Busy new mom Lindsay continued her work with Fertile Hope. She coauthored a guideline
issued by the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Published in the
Journal of Clinical Oncology
, the ASCO guideline reads in part: “As part of education and informed consent prior
to cancer therapy, oncologists should address the possibility of infertility with
patients treated during their reproductive years and be prepared to discuss possible
fertility preservation options or refer appropriate and interested patients to reproductive
specialists.”

This was a huge step forward in Lindsay’s mission to ensure that cancer patients were
made aware that their fertility was potentially at risk and that options were available
to preserve it. Now, instead of Fertile Hope making calls, the foundation’s phones
were ringing nonstop. Doctors and cancer centers around the country began inviting
Fertile Hope representatives to grand rounds; patients now had to be informed, so
physicians were reaching out for information and guidance.

Lindsay also coauthored a book called
100 Questions & Answers About Cancer and Fertility.
It featured practical and credible answers to the most common questions asked by
cancer patients and survivors about fertility.

“I cowrote it with a physician because I felt like I needed the MD expertise and endorsement,”
she says.

The first person Lindsay hired at Fertile Hope, a fellow cancer survivor and passionate
advocate, also worked as a coauthor of the book.

Work and family were keeping Lindsay busy as she and Jordan cared for seven-month-old
Paisley. And it was about to get busier; ideally, they wanted their family to grow
by one. Lindsay stopped breastfeeding in December and began IVF treatments in February
2007. The results were discouraging times two. The first cycle didn’t work and the
second resulted in an early miscarriage. Dr. Rosenwaks told her to take the summer
off from IVF treatments. Lindsay grudgingly agreed but made sure to chart her ovulation
schedule and not miss an opportunity.

“It was my only coping mechanism,” she says. “
We’ll take the summer off from IVF, but I’ll secretly have us try on our own
.”

She tried and succeeded. Lindsay got pregnant and gave birth to a healthy son, Walker,
on March 20, 2008. She took a three-month maternity leave from Fertile Hope and returned
to work in July. The foundation was gearing up for a productive fall fund-raising
season. But as it approached, the very month that would typically generate big dollars
instead revealed big trouble. On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter
11 bankruptcy protection. The collapse was very bad news for the global financial
markets and for Fertile Hope. The people who supported the foundation were greatly
impacted by the financial-market meltdown. Although Jordan had left his job at Lehman
a year earlier for another job on Wall Street, many of his friends still worked at
the now-bankrupt financial-services firm.

“New York City supported Fertile Hope,” she says. “All of Jordan’s friends and clients
were the ones who came and bid on everything at the auctions. Wall Street supported
Fertile Hope big-time, and so that was devastating. I thought,
What do we do?
”

In early 2009, Lindsay began to reflect on the quality of her life, something she’d
so passionately fought for back in 1999. She was still alive ten years after her first
cancer diagnosis, she’d formed a meaningful and important foundation, she’d met the
man of her dreams, and she had given birth to two children. Now she was working four
ten-hour days just so she could be a full-time mom on Fridays. Even with a full-time
nanny, she was feeling out of sorts and out of touch with the core business she had
birthed.

“I had two kids in New York City, the fund-raising market was dreadful, and I was
really tired of running a small business,” she says. “I want to help patients, but
at this point I felt like a glorified administrator. I was doing HR, and accounting,
and managing my employees, and I hated it. And I’m leaving my kids and not loving
the job. I knew I had to fix it.”

Lindsay began also to notice other groups popping up that addressed fertility protection
for cancer patients. Packets and information kits were being given to doctors and
patients.

“At first I was feeling a loss of control, and
What is going on? How are we losing market share?
” she says. “And then I had this lightbulb moment.
We’ve done it! We’ve succeeded! All along, all I’ve wanted is for everyone to talk
about fertility. I wanted it to become standard practice. I wanted it embedded in
everything that people normally do. And now it is.”

That’s when the last line of her original business plan came to the front of her mind.
Back in 2001, when she launched Fertile Hope, Lindsay knew someday the foundation
would be run by someone else. Her plan ends with the following words: “Ultimately,
it will not make sense for this to be a stand-alone organization. It should be
part of a larger cancer experience. Once the problem is solved, we should be acquired.”

In March 2009, Lindsay flew to Austin, Texas, on Walker’s first birthday and presented
the idea of a Fertile Hope acquisition to the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

“They said yes,” she says with a smile.

Lindsay set about the exciting process of the merger and acquisition, which was finalized
in July. She joined the Lance Armstrong Foundation, serving as an adviser and consultant.
Her role was to work with major health insurance companies as well as self-insured
corporations. Lindsay would meet with chief medical officers or heads of human resources
and make her pitch.

“I say, ‘Here’s a business case for the benefit. I think you should cover fertility
preservation for cancer patients, and here’s why it makes sense for both patients
and payers.’ ”

Working and raising two active kids in a small New York City apartment began to wear
on Lindsay. There was also the emotional toll from another round of IVF treatments;
the action plan was in motion for a third child. She told Jordan it was time to move
to San Francisco and find a house with a yard. In September, Jordan’s boss told him
of a job opportunity in the Bay Area and he jumped at it. The Becks were in their
California home by Christmas.

Following two IVF cycles with Dr. Alan Copperman, a fertility specialist at Mount
Sinai Medical Center, Lindsay gave birth to baby Scarlett on April 6, 2011. She and
Dr. Copperman had worked together for years through Fertile Hope. When the doctor
called Lindsay with word that she was pregnant, the moment was powerful. After Nancy
heard the news, she sent Lindsay a charm.

“I said, ‘Lindsay, this has nothing to do with the kids. This is all about you. This
present’s for you.’ While I do celebrate her children, that was
her
dream. My dream as her physician is to celebrate her.”

Now nearly thirty-five years old, Lindsay began to wonder what was next for her professionally.

“Once you’ve had a career driven by passion,” she says, “what do you do next? How
do you repeat that? Some people never have that, and I had it at twenty-four. How
do you do it again? What does that look like?”

When Scarlett was six weeks old, Lindsay took a step toward laying the foundation
for her future. She entered Wharton’s San Francisco Executive MBA program. Classes
are held every other Friday and Saturday for two years straight. She continues to
work from home for the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

“It’s almost the perfect school for working moms. The kids barely know I’m gone. Two
Saturdays a month they have Daddy Day, but I feel like that’s a dad’s job regardless.”
She laughs. “Even if I wasn’t in school that might be happening.”

Lindsay will graduate in May 2013 with a full MBA. She loves the opportunity the program
offers for global study.

“Over Christmas break I went to Africa for a week and took a leadership class in Rwanda
to learn about how Rwanda’s leader achieved such remarkable change, from genocide
to prosperity,” she explains. “We met with leaders and asked, ‘How do you do this?’
We then brought that information back home and asked, ‘Anyone can be a leader when
things are good, but when things are bad, what do you do and how do you do it? What
could be worse than genocide?’ Any corporation I’m going to run will never have that
baggage.”

Lindsay’s contract with the Lance Armstrong Foundation is from year to year, which
allows her the potential for change.

“I’ll always be involved. I’ll always be on the advisory board and advise them on
fertility-related issues, but they’re so nice and so flexible on if and how we work
together over time,” she says. “It’s a really rare, rare opportunity. I feel very
fortunate.”

Good fortune has been part of Lindsay’s life story. Nancy credits her with tremendous
drive and courage, but Lindsay knew of four other young tongue cancer patients receiving
radiation treatments at the same time she did at the University of California in San
Francisco. Only Lindsay survived.

“Lindsay’s the lucky one,” says Nancy. “I don’t know if she’ll ever know how lucky
she was. Even if you have the best surgeon in the world, there’s nothing like a little
luck with it.”

I ask Nancy, now that thirteen years have passed since Lindsay’s first cancer diagnosis,
what Lindsay’s medical future holds.

“I think she can look forward to what kind of grandmother she wants to be,” Nancy
says.

For the first time in eight years, Lindsay is not taking fertility drugs, nursing,
or pregnant. She’s leaving the plan this time to chance.

“I’ve done ten IVF cycles. I don’t want to pay for any more, I don’t want to endure
any more, but it’s hard to say, ‘My goal was four or five.’ ” She laughs. “Not to
achieve a goal just does not go over very well for me. But, I think we’ve agreed,
no more IVF, but we’re still on the fence about if we would be open to another miracle.”

When I ask her how she manages to find balance in her very busy life (which requires
spreadsheets for weekly menu planning and activities), she pops me another Nancy-ism.

“Nancy always says, ‘You’ll never find balance. If that’s the goal you’ll always fail.’
She says you can still have it all, just not all at the same time,” Lindsay explains.
“She says, ‘You have crystal balls and rubber balls, and you’re always juggling everything,
and you have to identify in the moment which is a rubber ball and which is a crystal
ball. Juggle them all, but don’t drop the crystal balls.’ I find myself living by
those imperatives—
Okay, what are the crystal balls today, or this week, or this month?
, and for me those things are vacation, or family time, or my special dates with the
kids, and I’m not willing to compromise them. You have to make sure, too, when you’re
in a crystal ball moment, that you’re present, not half in. I don’t want to be at
the park with my kids on my cell phone trying to work.”

Those busy mental wheels, always spinning inside Lindsay’s head. Her constant forward
movement fueled by action plans has left her with a full life and, ironically, some
apprehension about reaching the finish line too soon.

“When Nancy diagnosed me, when she sent me home with the pen and paper, I made a Bucket
List.
What do I want to do if I’m going to die?
Ten years later, everything on that list is done except for one thing,” she laughs.
“And I’m afraid to do the last thing because that means I can die.”

Lindsay makes me ask what the last thing is, as if sharing it out loud means she’s
one step closer to accomplishing it.

“A safari in Africa. Jordan says, ‘Let’s go!’ But I say, ‘No, no, no.’ It’s like looking
over the edge at the great big black hole.”

Lindsay may never go on safari, but there’s a good chance her daughter Paisley will.
One of Lindsay’s dreams for her kids is that they see the world. Before she went to
Rwanda for the MBA program, Lindsay showed her kids where Africa is on a globe. Now
their little mental wheels are spinning.

“Right now, in my house, our living room is set up like an airplane. All the dining
room chairs are lined up in a row and there’s a food cart in the back and they bring
the food out to each other,” she describes. “They have a steering wheel in the front,
and every day they pick out a place on the globe where they’re going. Paisley asks
me, ‘When I’m ten can I go to Australia?’ ” And she says, ‘When I go on my honey trip’—that’s
what she calls a honeymoon—‘I want to go to Africa.’ And I feel like, that’s what
I want for them: a happy life of adventure and experience. You can come home to a
comfortable place that you’ve earned and worked hard for, but you should know that
the whole world isn’t that way.”