As much work that goes into seeing that cancer patients are well taken care of in the air is done on the ground. In CAN’s offices at the Westchester County Airport, a full-time staff of three employees is assisted by a battalion of 60 volunteers who help 12 at a time during the five-day-a-week, year-long campaigns to ensure cancer patients get to their treatments.
This year, Blum and Weinberg developed a brochure to inform prospective patients about the service.
Once operated on colored index cards filed in a shoe box, CAN’s extensive network of cancer patients and participating corporate aviation departments has been computerized with the help of Weinberg’s wife, Marian, who recently updated CAN with a new software program. It is designed to keep track of the data and the flights for life that keep the organization perpetually ready.
The Corporate Angel Network
* You can contact The Corporate Angel Network by writing CAN, Inc., Building One, Westchester Airport, White Plains, NY 10604.
To Climb a Mountain
Perhaps it was angels. Perhaps it was fate. Perhaps it was just a stroke of luck that led little David to the home of Bob and Doris. Determining how it all happened is just not quite as important as why David’s life became so entwined with the couple. In the end the three of them, together, scaled a mountain.
But before David ever came along, before the two teachers ever married, before their love made them increasingly strong, Bob was given six months to live.
Six months. That was it. That’s all the time doctors believed he had, once they discovered bone cancer was rotting his arm, a tumor the size of a grapefruit cradled in his left shoulder. The avid surfer, however, didn’t believe his destiny was tied to such an early death, and neither did his students. Nearly 100 letters from students, teachers and parents poured in each week while Bob was going through radiation, poked at, x-rayed and given gigantic doses of chemotherapy to shrink his nasty tumor. Despite the pain, despite the surgeries, despite living in a body cast that covered half his body, Bob promised his eighth-grade students at the middle school that he would show up for their graduation at the end of the year. He opted for experimental efforts at UCLA. Rather than having his left arm amputated, they cut out the tumor and hooked in a cadaver’s bone up through his shoulder to hold it in place.
This wasn’t the first time Bob faced death. He faced it twice before. When he was 16, he was in a terrible car accident that tore away one-third of his face. He was in intensive care for two weeks and had 150 stitches to help rebuild his face. Then he served in Vietnam as an officer and was taking his men off for a mission in a tank, when his supervisor waved him back and told him he was needed. The supervisor traded places with Bob. Leaving without him, the tank was later attacked and exploded, killing all the men inside. And now, he was told he had six months. He just wasn’t going to let that happen. “I chose only to live,” Bob later said. “It’s not about putting your life in order for death. It’s not just that. It’s doing what you would normally do. Today, I’m going to go to the store. Today, I’m going to go to the theater. Today, I am alive.”
Once he had the surgery, Doris and several teachers went to see him, wondering if he could move his arm or ever use it again. He immediately showed them all how useful his arm was. He flipped them off!
He went to the beach every day, and walked in his huge body cast. He learned the art of imaging from The Wellness Community and saw himself only as well. He did as he promised and showed up, body cast and all, at his students’ graduation. They dedicated the ceremony to him and he knew he was going to make it—he was a survivor.
In 1983, Doris and Bob’s friendship blossomed into love. They married, both at the age of 38, and wanted to have children. They took two paths. Doris tried to get pregnant even though they knew she had endometriosis. And Doris knew they were both capable of adoption. For her, blood lines were secondary in the case of motherhood. She had already raised a young girl from Mexico who was abandoned by her mother. The girl’s father had showed up in Doris’ English-as-a-Second-Language class with his two children, Olga, 10, and Sotero, 13, in tow. Doris learned their mother had tricked the children into going to the United States to see their father and promised they would come home. But they never did. They moved in with their father and about 20 other people in a small apartment.
Doris couldn’t stand it. The more she learned about the family, the more she wanted to help. Olga came into the classes every night crying, longing for her mother. She was afraid. She was in a new country. She didn’t know the language. Doris took Olga and Sotero to Disneyland and to the movies. They started coming for dinner and overnight. And finally, Doris suggested to the family that they allow one of the children to move in with her.
“The brother said: ‘I’m older and Olga needs a mom,’” Doris recalled. Olga moved right in and Sotero visited nearly every day. It was then—after Doris saw Olga marry and eventually land a job as an assistant teacher in her school—that she knew she could love any child, even if it wasn’t her own.
So Doris and Bob devoted their time to adoption efforts while trying to have a child. Many friends and colleagues discouraged the couple from going for a United States adoption. The waiting lines were so long, they were told, and parents change their minds. So they pursued their Latino connections. After all, both spoke Spanish fluently and had lived in Spain. Doris had also lived in Mexico and was quite familiar with the culture.
They put aside money. They attended extensive classes on foreign adoption. They made contacts in Argentina, Panama and Colombia. They networked with people across the United States. They were fingerprinted. They were cleared by the FBI. They wrote 15-page biographies about themselves. They supplied 10 reference letters. And Doris said she learned a great philosophy from one group of parents who adopted: “Don’t let one single day go by without doing something toward the adoption process. Then you feel empowered.”
The couple decided they didn’t care what sex the child was, what race it was or even if he or she had a minor disability. They were willing to adopt right up to the age of four or five.
Every night Doris came home and wondered if she had done something toward the adoption that day.
One evening, she realized she had not asked several doctors she’d known for any help. She sat down and wrote a letter asking an ophthalmologist, an internist and a gynecologist if they could help her and Bob find a baby to adopt. Then one evening at a school open house, the father of two children she had in her classes showed up. He was an orthopedic surgeon. The next day Doris went home and sent him the same letter.
Months went by. They hadn’t heard anything. But the international adoption was looking promising. A possibility had arisen in Colombia and they would have to move there for two months to get a child.
A few weeks before they had sent in about $4,000 and their final adoption papers, the phone rang. The wife of an obstetrician was calling and said she’d injured her leg. She went to the orthopedic surgeon that Doris had written to and the surgeon handed her a letter, saying: “Can you do anything for these people?”
The woman knew her husband’s practice wasn’t in the adoption business. They rarely got involved in anything like that. But hadn’t this 17-year-old girl come into the office recently, 38 weeks pregnant, a Catholic who didn’t believe in abortion, bringing her mother along? The girl said she knew she was too young and not capable of caring for the child. When the obstetrician’s wife returned to the office, she showed her husband the letter. The obstetrician was stunned. He had received three other letters from doctors recommending the same couple. They decided to talk to the girl about Bob and Doris and how four different doctors in the community had highly recommended them as adoptive parents. The girl immediately wanted to meet them.
Doris wasn’t so sure. She was scared, scared that once the girl realized Bob had cancer, she wouldn’t want them to be the baby’s parents. Scared that if she met the girl, she would want to get involved in her li
fe. Being a teacher, all Doris could think about was how she wanted to tutor the girl and help her get a good education. Bob and Doris decided to see if the birth mother would go to counseling if they paid for it. The girl agreed, but as a birth mother, she repeated her request to meet them.
Finally, Doris and Bob agreed. They went to meet her at their lawyer’s office. Doris will never forget that day. She stared steadily at the door handle of the office and when it finally turned, in burst this tiny, blonde 17-year-old girl, her hair in a ponytail, bubbling with excitement and energy. The girl, the mother, the attorney, Doris and Bob all sat down in a circle at a large oak table.
The girl looked the couple directly in the eye and said: “I know this is difficult for you. But I decided I had to exercise my rights as the birth mother to meet you. I want you to know that I will never come and get this baby or change my mind. I see myself as the surrogate. I wanted to meet your happy and smiling faces and tell you this baby is for you.”
Doris, Bob, the girl’s mother and the attorney all burst out in tears. The girl consoled her mother and when her mother finally stopped crying long enough, she told everybody that the tears were really “tears of joy.”
“She said we were all blessed,” Doris said.
At the time, however, no one realized how blessed. David was born in October 1986. He was immediately brought home, where Bob was in a cast and recovering from his latest surgery. Doris and Bob fed their blue-eyed blond baby—a gurgling little infant—while cradling him in Bob’s most recent cast. “He fit the cast perfectly,” Bob said. Bob and Doris didn’t work for the first year of David’s life so that they could bond with the greatest gift they had ever received. They were so in love with this boy.
Five years later, Doris was helping David dress one morning when she noticed his glands were swollen. She took him to his pediatrician, who found nothing wrong. Doris’ inner voice told her to persist. She took him several times again to the pediatrician. Then she called her friends in the medical field. His blood count was fine, X rays were clear. Doris took him to several other doctors and finally went to an infectious-disease specialist who suggested David’s glands needed to be biopsied.
Then the pediatrician called later and asked Doris: “Have there been any other symptoms you can think of, anything else, besides the swollen glands?”
“Night sweats,” Doris said. “He has night sweats.”
That’s when “hell began.”
The tests finally revealed that David had a rare form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. A tumor was later discovered in his stomach. David wound up with Dr. Jerry Finklestein, a medical director at the Jonathan Jacques Children’s Cancer Center at Long Beach Memorial Hospital.
Finklestein sat David and his parents down and told him they were going on a long journey. The journey would be up the largest mountain David had ever seen, and it would be a rough journey, one with many peaks and valleys. No matter what, the doctor told David, you must always vision yourself on the top of that mountain— at the very, very top—and never let go of that vision.
The next six months, David went in and out of the hospital having intense chemotherapy. He was put on some of the most toxic drugs imaginable. Doris quit reading the possible side effects of the drugs—blindness, deafness, nausea—because she was afraid she would stop the process out of fear. David went bald. He lost his eyebrows and his eyelashes. He had seven blood transfusions that he was told carried “magic” because the blood was all donated by friends and family.
It was clear David never thought for a second he would die. After all, look at his dad. His dad had cancer. He was still here. David felt like getting cancer was normal, like getting a cold, the measles or the chicken pox. He thought that he had something just like his dad and that he would be fine. Doris and Bob never talked to him once about death. They believed they must show a united and strong front. They never showed David how scared they were.
They moved in to the hospital and slept on the floor of David’s room each time he went there, sometimes as long as 20 days at a time. The first time David went in for chemotherapy, Bob lay on the floor sweating, reliving his own experience and knowing full well what his son was going through.
When David threw up from the chemotherapy, David’s parents explained that his body was driving out the bad cells that were hurting him. And once again, the school came through. Cards poured in. People made food for the family. Everybody rooted for David.
All that was three years ago. David is now nine. He goes to school regularly and has not shown a spot of cancer in his body for three years. Recently, he was so compassionate and understanding about illness, even at his young age, that he wrote a loving letter to his mother’s friend who was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Dear Winnie:
I had cancer too. You are going to lose your hair, but it will grow back. Do not be afraid. If you get a headache, put your fingers on your temples, rub them forward one time and go backwards. That will help it for a minute. The medicine makes you go to sleep. Don’t concentrate on the thought of the needle. Just look the other way. You will be better soon. Listen to your doctors, for they will give you instructions that you’ll understand. Say “FIGHT THOSE BAD CELLS. FIGHT THOSE BAD CELLS.”You’ll be strong later. Don’t worry. You may throw up. That is the bad cells and all the medicine getting out of your body. Tell your husband and your daughters and son that they should give you breakfast in bed, lunch in bed and dinner in bed and watch a lot of TV. You are in my thoughts.
Love,
David, Age
9
Doris and Bob know that had it been a 17-year-old mother or perhaps just any mother who hadn’t dealt with cancer before, the swollen glands probably would have been missed and the cancer would have raced through David’s body like wildfire. To this day, they believe that because of the magical way David came to them, he was meant to come to them—simply so they could save his life.
While David battled his illness, his parents won a trip to Mammoth Lakes.
When he was better two years later, they climbed Mammoth Mountain. There the three of them stood together, looking toward the sky. They had made it to the top.
Diana L. Chapman
An Affair to Remember
It is a curious thing in human experience but to live through a period of stress and sorrow with another person creates a bond which nothing seems able to break.
Eleanor Roosevelt
We met in January of 1995. Although I was 54 years old and he was young enough to be my son, we were to spend many hours together under the most intimate circumstances.
His room was cold and sparse with one huge bed that was hard as a rock, but with a lovely skylight that changed colors as the photo equipment he used circled the room. He often left me alone in the room, but I knew he was always close and watching me from his vantage point. This is not the beginning of a love story but the tale of young Dr. Wollman, my radiologist.
After breast surgery he became my best friend. On our first visit he informed me that seven weeks of fun was about to begin. He explained in layman’s terms what to expect and showed me the room and the equipment that would be used to radiate my left breast. The first visit is the longest, at least 45 minutes of immobility while the machine is set and the target spots are put on your body—my first and last tattoo, by the way. After the first two weeks of radiation, which was five days a week for a grand total of four minutes a day, the radiated area takes on a look of intense sunburn. Not only that, but the breast that is being treated goes from a size B cup to a size C or better. Wearing a bra is out of the question and the heat that radiates from the treatment area is unbelievable.
It is amazing the thoughts that go through your mind while looking at the skylight and waiting for the treatment to be over. One comes to know the caregivers as well as their families. My Dr. Wollman and his staff were there to boost my morale whenever they thought I was down. I think I even boosted theirs from time to time. They
might not have known it, but the hug they gave me whenever I walked in for treatment made it worth the discomfort and panic that I experienced each time.
During those seven weeks, I prayed, told jokes and meditated. When the time came to “graduate,” as we call it, I cried as I bid my new family good-bye. However, I still see the dear doctor, and there is always that big smile and the warm hug that lit up my life for seven weeks. I shall never forget these caregivers and hope that every cancer patient that needs to go through radiation/chemotherapy is as lucky as I am. One is fearful at first because of the unknown; however, with the right attitude and doctor, it can almost be a cherished memory.
I had my first mammogram in October and everything is fine. It is important that we as women know our own bodies and if in doubt with one diagnosis, get a second or third if necessary. Had my new doctor not insisted that the small cyst come out, I would have ignored it. I will continue to live life to the fullest and be here the same time next year and the years after that. After all, there are many sunsets to watch and much love to give. My hope is that for all of you there is a Dr. Wollman and your affair can be one to remember with fondness and no regrets.
Linda Mitchell
Simply Hold a Hand
If we doctors would admit our mortality, then we would find a way to succeed with even the sickest of our patients, sometimes simply holding their hands when they are frightened and in pain, other times helping them understand the meaning of their illness and how they can use it to experience life and love. It is my patients, out of their kindness and their wisdom, who have taught me this, and it seems to me that whenever I am in danger of forgetting it, another patient helps me return to that knowledge.
Bernie S. Siegel, M.D.