Survivor: Taking Control of Your Fight Against Cancer - Hardcover

Landro, Laura

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684843358 ISBN 13: 9780684843353

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1998

Synopsis

Diagnosed with leukemia shortly after her thirty-seventh birthday, a journalist who decided she would use her training to investigate the treatment most likely to help her live here shares her story of suffering and ultimate triumph over death. 40,000 first printing. Tour.

About this title

About the Author

Laura Landro is a senior editor in charge of entertainment, media, and marketing coverage at The Wall Street Journal. She won the National Print Journalism Award from the Leukemia Society of America for her October 24, 1996, Wall Street Journal article, "A Survivor's Tale." She lives in New York City.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One: THE BAD NEWS

On the afternoon of August 20, 1991 -- my thirty-seventh birthday -- I was in my apartment in New York City, trying to muster some energy to celebrate. For weeks, I had been feeling increasingly tired and out of sorts. My parents were in town to take me out to dinner at my favorite Italian restaurant, and the following day we were planning to drive to Long Island for a family vacation at the beach, a period of rest that I hoped would do me some good. Too bad I'm not there already, I thought. I suddenly had such a crushing sense of fatigue that I decided to lie down for a few minutes.

Three hours later, it took all the strength I had just to get up off the bed again. Something has got to be wrong with me, I thought to myself as I stared at my pale face in the mirror, trying with makeup to cover the dark circles under my eyes.

But what was it that was wrong? Had I been staying out too late, not taking good enough care of myself, working too hard? My job -- managing a dozen reporters and writing about the entertainment industry for The Wall Street Journal -- entailed more than its share of stress, but not enough to make me feel this tired. If anything, life at the newspaper was energizing; I did my best work on the adrenaline of deadlines. I had always been in good health. And though I was no athlete, after years of regular exercise, I had never been in better physical condition.

Like most people, I had my share of modern day health paranoia, illogically wondering if a bad headache could be a brain tumor. Each of my father's four sisters had battled breast cancer. That put me in a higher risk category, and I worried about it. But when you came right down to it, I regarded illness and disease as the curse of the old and infirm, a vague concern for the distant future. I decided whatever was ailing me now must be some temporary aberration, a virus, something I would soon shake off.

The next day we arrived in Southampton to stay at a friend's oceanfront house. I looked forward to being outside every day -- riding my bike, running, swimming laps in the heated pool. But when I tried to exercise, the effort left me winded, gasping for breath. I complained to my mother that I had never felt so run down. As a nurse, she had always been a better diagnostician than the average mother, and she, too, was worried. "You look so pale and tired," she told me as we walked along the beach one morning. "Why don't you see a doctor as soon as you get back home?"

I promised her I would, but after I returned to work in September, things got so hectic that I put off making an appointment. I figured if I ignored it, maybe it would go away. But it didn't. In fact, some mornings, I felt as if I were nailed to my bed, unable to shake off sleep without great effort. There was a nagging ache in my left side that sometimes intensified into a sharp pain. A surge of that adrenaline would get me through the pressure-cooker afternoon deadlines at the office, but I was so spent at night that I would often have to lie down in the back seat of a taxi on the way home.

As if I needed a further incentive to see a doctor, a notice arrived in the mail from Dow Jones, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, offering to pay for a complete annual physical as part of a new health plan. Finally I stopped procrastinating. On the morning of Tuesday, October 22, I went to see Dr. Steven Marks, who had treated me for the occasional flu or stomach virus, and I told him about my symptoms. "You look fine," he said after examining me in his office. "But let's do some blood work just to be sure."

Two days later, on Thursday, October 24, I was in my office, thinking of little else but a story I was writing for the next day's paper. The newsroom was in its usual state of contained pandemonium, reporters hammering away at their computer terminals, the fax machine spewing out press releases, the phones ringing incessantly. I was still waiting for some sources to call me back with information I needed for my story. On days like this, anyone who called me on unrelated business, including my mother, was usually dispatched with a brusque, "Can't talk now, I'm on deadline."

I picked up the phone at about 3 P.M., blanking on the name for a second when the caller said, "Laura, Steven Marks here." Realizing who it was, I assumed it was a courtesy call from the nice doctor to tell me my malaise was all in my head; I had actually been feeling a little better that day. "What's up, Doc?" I chirped, still mostly focused on the computer screen in front of me. But his tone as he answered was grave. What he was about to tell me would divide my life into everything before this phone call, and everything after.

"Well, your blood tests have come back, and there's a problem," Dr. Marks began. "Your white blood cell count is extremely elevated."

He suddenly had my undivided attention. "Like, how elevated?" I asked, feeling a prick of alarm. Dr. Marks replied that my white blood cell count was close to 75,000, while the normal level was closer to 4,000. My alarm intensified. "But what does that mean?" I asked.

"It could be an infection, but there's nothing else in the blood test that indicates that," Dr. Marks said. With my reporter's instincts kicking in, I pressed him harder. "Dr. Marks, what else could this be? What is the worst case scenario here?" I asked.

"Well," he said carefully, "I've consulted a hematologist, and he says it looks like something called chronic myelogenous leukemia." I heard the word "leukemia" and a wave of panic washed over me. I felt disoriented, and my heart started to pump faster in my chest. I wasn't even sure exactly what leukemia was, but I knew it had to do with the blood, and that it was a form of cancer. A friend's son had died of it a decade earlier after a desperate battle that took up most of his short life. "Leukemia," I repeated, then asked incredulously, "are you telling me I'm going to die here?"

"Of course not," Dr. Marks said, assuring me I was in no immediate danger. "But a hematologist I work with can see you today if you want. Why don't you get there this afternoon?" I jotted down the name and address he gave me, and told him I would head there straight away.

As I hung up the phone in a daze, I glanced up to see my friend and colleague Alix Freedman, one of the paper's best reporters and an equally good eavesdropper, in my doorway. She had been standing there long enough to hear most of my end of the conversation. "What is going on?" she whispered. I shakily relayed what Dr. Marks had said, and told her I had to leave the office right away. "I'm coming with you," she said, and ran off to call a car service for us.

Mechanically, I made the calls necessary to enable me to walk out of the office in the middle of a really important story, which suddenly didn't seem so important anymore. I called Marty Schenker, the national news editor, and told him a medical emergency had come up; he would have to find something else to fill the big space where my story was supposed to go. Something in my voice told him not to argue with me. My deputy, Dennis Kneale, agreed without question to edit any other stories that broke that afternoon. Finally, I called the executive who was the main subject of my story and told him it was on hold for today.

I gathered my briefcase, coat, and purse, and walked out with Alix to the waiting car. We headed up the FDR Drive, the quickest route to the upper East Side from lower Manhattan. Mercifully, for once there was no traffic. I stared out at the sun glinting off the familiar city skyline, the tugboats pushing barges down the East River, the graceful bridges linking Manhattan to Brooklyn and Queens. It was a perfect day, but to me everything seemed unreal. I couldn't stop tears from welling up in my eyes. "I can't

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0684843358
• ISBN 13: 9780684843353
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240