The Legs Are the Last to Go (22 page)

Addressing the UNESCO World Summit Against Cancer. (© Diahann Carroll)

MALIBU WAS CALLING ME IN THE SPRING OF 1997. MY
old friend Nigel (a charming actor whom I had met years ago through my mother) and I would go driving up the Pacific Coast Highway looking at summer rentals. I thought it would be a nice change to be by the ocean, find a place where Mom could visit with me and enjoy a vacation. There was one place that was just so airy, with a big open kitchen facing the ocean and a fireplace in the den, and I just imagined how relaxing it would be. She could be Malibu Mabel, I could let some clean sea air into my new life, and we could hold court on a balcony looking over the ocean.

But that plan was not meant to be because shortly thereafter, I received the news that there was a spot on my mammogram. It was nothing I could see, even with the doctor pointing it out to me, but before I knew it, I was having a biopsy. The results came back immediately.

“Good news and bad news,” said Dr. Barry Rosenblum, a
very warm man and a good friend. “You do have cancer, but it is so early that the tumor is less than a centimeter in size, and we can be very happy about that.”

I didn't panic when I heard the news. I do remember thinking, “But I have always taken such good care of myself, exercised and eaten well!” It was as if I'd paid my union dues and was expecting a pass for the rest of my life. I mean what gives one cancer? Who knows? Thin, nonsmoking nutrition nuts get it. It seems to me that other than smoking and genetics, you can't blame cancer on anything specific. It is too often blamed on stress. Stress! When I was a girl, we didn't know the word stress. Life is always fraught and difficult, and if it isn't, you aren't really alive. So I didn't look to blame my cancer on anything.

I looked exactly the same, yet suddenly everything was different. I had cancer. I had a new job to do, and that's when I pulled myself out of the initial stupor I felt after getting the news and became very businesslike, almost as if I were dealing with a problem with an orchestral arrangement.

“Might it be someplace else in my body?” I asked my doctor.

“We're just going to deal with this first,” he said. “With cancer, you must take things step by step.” He sounded a little off, a little sheepish.

“Is there anything else I should know?” I asked.

“Well, yes. I'm afraid I have to have my associate take care of you for the next two weeks. I promised my children we'd go away together in July, and I've already postponed once, and I just can't disappoint them again. It's too important.”

“Barry,” I told him, “you don't know how right you are!”

I meant it. I knew from personal experience the emotional costs of putting work before family. But I was also worried. I was fortunate to need only radiation. It would be a nine-week program, starting as soon as possible. Suddenly there was a lot to think about. I had to tell everyone. And my goodness, they had so much to tell me in return. The phone never stopped ringing with friends wanting to be helpful with information and connections. It was overwhelming, but also endearing and ultimately useful to me because I like as much information as possible. Only this bordered on overload. “This doctor is head of oncology! This doctor is my neighbor's brother and he's a genius!” I heard about alternative medicine, acupuncture, and naturopathic practitioners, the value of Sloan-Kettering in New York, meditation, diet, and God knows what else. It became a cacophony of opinions. One question kept coming up more than any other. “You're going to go to Cedars-Sinai, aren't you, Diahann? They have the best treatment in California! Plus it's five minutes from your house!” In fact, that's where I assumed I would have my radiation treatments. My doctors are all there and it's a great hospital, of course. But when I went in for a consultation, I realized it's just such a big impersonal place. There was also the possibility of running into all kinds of people whom I knew or who recognized me there, and that made me uneasy. Besides, I actually wanted a little distance between my home and my radiation treatments. I just thought it might be nice to have my treatments closer to the ocean, where the air and light is always fresher.

After much research, I found a much smaller institution, St. Johns Medical Center in Santa Monica. Friends were skeptical.
But I had to trust myself on this one. St. John's has a stellar reputation, with state-of-the-art cancer treatments, including the latest in radiation technology. Plus, when I got out of my car for my first appointment, I could feel the ocean air nearby. The air is very refreshing in Santa Monica. The staff was incredibly warm, the facility far less imposing in size, and the atmosphere was better for me in every way. So I knew I'd made the right choice. And I think that there are times when taking control based on your gut can be just as beneficial as doing what everyone tells you to do. The treatment was going to be part of my life for several months. Why not have it done at a place that I knew was excellent, but that was also more pleasant for me? Nigel said we could have lunch by the ocean after each treatment. That sounded wonderful!

So the first day, he drove me in my Rolls, right up to this hospital. And a young man in the radiation oncology department guided me in to look at the machine. It was the biggest machine, just huge. I had to take off my blouse and bra, and I was given a cotton bra to wear. The whole thing was not nearly as embarrassing as I thought it would be. Anyway, I wasn't about to show how scared I was. I felt it was better not to acknowledge my fear. In fact, I was rather jovial (to help cover up my tension) as I lay down on this black conveyor-belt-like thing that moved me into place. The young man administering the radiation could not have been more accommodating. I admired his skill at making small talk in order to keep me at ease. (Being with staff who are able to make light conversation can really make a difference in how you feel about a medical procedure.) Anyway, I liked this fellow very much. I was lying there
under the radiation machine, as if in a cave, and not feeling a thing as it did its work, the thought inexplicably came to me that if a cure for cancer were found, then this young man and thousands of others would be out of work. Each year 140,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer alone. My treatment took a half hour.

I had the most incredible team. The head of radiation oncology was Dr. Takita. I will always remember our talks. He explained to me that it's very hard for specialists to deal with cancer because it keeps changing, one strain transforming into another. But he also assured me that treatment has progressed so far in recent years that many people live with it as a chronic rather than a terminal illness. I cannot tell you how grateful I was to have a doctor who was so open to conversation and sharing information. When I was telling him about Vic's brusque reaction to my news, he told me how differently families deal with things in Japan. Beginning in his childhood, his parents had prepared him for life changes, not just love and marriage, but aging and illness, too. It's a good way of keeping you from wasting time, knowing you only have so many years to be young and foolish, and only so many years to be free of worries about your health as an adult. Dr. Takita was the first doctor to talk to me openly about menopause. None of my friends were prepared to talk about it. We can see it happening to one another, but don't want to put it into words. In America, people tend to run from illness and aging, rather than embracing them. But Dr. Takita and his team of therapists wanted to know how my family was reacting to my cancer. Did they see me as a whole person, not just a cancer patient?

Yet I couldn't help but feel contaminated, and I felt I didn't have the blessedly clean body I once had. Suddenly there was this virus, this germ in my body, that made me feel uncomfortable, unattractive, and out of control. So it helped that Dr. Takita and the therapists on his staff worked to help me overcome my insecurities. St. John's is very much geared for the cancer community, with all kinds of support programs for patients and their families, from diet consultants to group therapy. One of the most supportive things Dr. Takita did for me during my treatment time was tell me it was fine for me to have a glass of wine at lunch after I left radiation.

“You're kidding,” I said. “Really?”

“You have to keep living,” he said.

And that's what I did. My friends were amazing. They'd pick me up after my treatments and we'd go have lunch on the beach. I felt they were as important as the radiation at that time. I didn't want to involve my mother too much because she was pretty frail by then and I didn't want to upset her. I'd been performing on the road constantly for much of my life, so I've been lucky to have friends who understand that and who still would stand by me when I needed them most. Their intentions in helping me with cancer were just so loving and pure. As you get older, friends become more and more important. They can keep you alive—in fact, studies of the elderly have actually proven that seniors with a larger social network live longer and healthier lives. Nigel was so amazing. As were other friends who invited me to the theater, films, and dinner and made me feel more engaged than I'd felt in years. They acknowledged my fears about cancer, but also let me know we had to continue to enjoy one another.

One of my biggest caregivers was my friend Marilyn. Along with Nigel, she was such an important source of comfort. She waited with me at doctors' appointments that were a constant source of worry and tension. Mostly she offered the calm, caring companionship I needed to feel less alone with my illness. I was extremely lucky to have her and so many other friends around to buoy my spirits.

However, I was not so lucky to develop chicken pox in the middle of my radiation treatments. That's right, chicken pox! My mother verified that I had had mumps but not chicken pox as a child, and when you have radiation, your immune system is depressed. “God,” I said, “I believe in testing people for endurance, and I've always been a hard worker all my life, but I think you're overdoing it here!” I really did feel overwhelmed. I mean chicken pox potentially all over my face and body while struggling with cancer? But even as I fussed and fumed, some voice inside of me said, “Oh, be quiet, Diahann. You're going to handle this. You don't have any choice.” And so I did.

Radiation was postponed, and I went shopping. I mean, what else was there to do when a new wardrobe was required of me? Style matters, even when you have chicken pox! So I bought about a dozen big white shirts, men's shirts, because the spots had reached my hands, and I didn't want anyone to see them. Thankfully, the spots stopped at my neck and did not get onto my face. That would have been awful for someone as vain as I am. “Does this mean you're giving me a break, God?” I asked. As soon as I wasn't contagious, I'd go out to dinner again with friends.

I eventually went back to radiation. Connie Chung did a
segment about my cancer, following me right into treatment. I was thrilled to do this because the conversation Connie and I had was the kind women friends might have shared, but in this case it was for a national network audience of millions of women who were too intimidated to discuss their situations. But my manager, Brian, and others had helped me decide not to try to keep my illness a secret.

It sounds less of a big deal now than it was ten years ago. After all, when someone like Elizabeth Edwards spoke so honestly and openly in the middle of her husband's presidential-primary campaign, it is hard to imagine why anyone would keep it to herself. But I can tell you why it's easy to fall into secrecy. It's because you don't always want people asking how you are and reminding you of this frightening thing in your body. I like attention when I'm on the stage. When I'm having dinner or on the phone, I like a little more give-and-take. So it would have been easy to just bury the whole thing. On the other hand, I knew so little about my illness going into it that I thought it would be wonderful to get some more information out there to the general public. But there was and still is such a stigma about having cancer in Hollywood. Colleagues told me going public had a negative effect on their careers, and that it certainly didn't help them seem as attractive and desirable in a sexist industry. So it was a big deal for me to decide that I would give interviews and say, “Yes, I have breast cancer.” And it was wonderful to receive calls later from women in the industry who told me they were facing the same challenge.

The thing is, I was lucky. I didn't need chemotherapy. They'd caught my cancer early, and I wasn't sick or inca
pacitated by my treatments. I didn't even have a sensation of burning while being radiated. Radiation today has become so sophisticated and precise that it impacts your life only minimally. Even chemotherapy has become more precisely calibrated, so although it still can be exhausting, some women don't even lose their hair. The radiation darkened a spot of my skin, but there was no pain. And my energy level remained high. So I had no trouble giving interviews.

I gave a number of interviews. And it turns out that being a spokesperson is a role I enjoy. And of course I had been wearing wigs for years, so when women undergoing chemotherapy needed some advice, who better than I to give it to them? Women had always related to me as a role model. Now I was looked up to for another reason. And getting out there to talk about my problem turned out to be as beneficial to me as it was to the people I was speaking to. I genuinely believe it was good for my health. I did interviews on radio and in newspapers. I signed on with various organizations, such as the American Cancer Society. One, called the Wellness Community, has created a network of facilities where people can drop in for information about the best way to deal with cancer, and with situations having to do with work, family, and expenses as well. Several times a year, I also address large groups of lower-income women from the black, Hispanic, and Asian communities.

I talk about my own experience, and about the need for prevention. The whole world of cancer needs demystifying, particularly in lower-income communities. Women are still intimidated. So while things are always improving in terms of the number of
people getting mammograms, I still meet plenty of women who would never consider having one. They believe the machine is dangerous. By hearing me tell my own story, they come to view the process as much more accessible. It helps for them to see someone of color talk about these issues. These women need to hear from a ten-year survivor that mammograms are not dangerous and that without them, my cancer would have spread.