Damage Control (32 page)
O
N A WARM AND SUNNY
Sunday morning in July 1992, while I lay in bed reading the sports section, my telephone rang. It was my sister Susie. My sister’s role, as a doctor, in my large family has since become medical guardian and bearer of bad news. But fifteen years ago my family had experienced little such news and I remained blissfully oblivious to the possibility.
“I have bad news,” Sue said that morning. “Mom has cancer.”
To illustrate my naïveté, my first question was “Is it bad?”
Cancer, I have come to learn, is never good.
The doctors had found a lump in my mother, Patty’s, breast during a routine examination. She had undergone a mammogram and a needle biopsy with the expectation that it was a cyst. A full biopsy proved that expectation wrong. The doctors gave my mother two choices—a lumpectomy or mastectomy. At sixty, with a handicapped son still living at home whose future my mother worries about daily, she chose the mastectomy. Her treatment would include chemotherapy. The oncologist added, unsolicited, “And yes, you will lose your hair.”
For the next eight months my mother underwent Friday-afternoon chemotherapy treatments. She would sleep and fight sickness over the weekend, then get up Monday morning and go to her office as a CPA. A self-proclaimed “tough old Irish lady,” she missed just one day at the office and refused to let any of her ten children see her suffer. Every phone call I made resulted in the same report. “I’m fine,” she’d say. “I’m fine.” Eventually, she would be.
In 1996 she had breast reconstruction surgery. She did it not so much for herself, but for her four daughters. My eldest sister, Aileen, had several breast lump scares. My mother wanted her daughters to know that cancer did not have to be a death sentence, or leave them deformed.
Eight years later we would all learn an ugly truth about the nondiscriminating, heartless disease.
In December 2003, just before a family cruise, my cousin Russ’s wife, Lynn Dugoni, just forty years old and the mother of two grade-school-age boys, Eric and Paul, felt a lump under her left arm. The lump was malignant. The diagnosis was small-cell carcinoma. Lynn had the lump removed in February, and the day after her forty-first birthday an oncologist prescribed a rigorous twice a week, four-month chemotherapy treatment. On August 24 Lynn had a mastectomy and her lymph nodes removed. Four days after her surgery, Lynn got out of bed and traveled to San Francisco to participate in a gala celebration for my uncle Art. I saw her there, had breakfast with her the next morning. She looked to me as she always did—beautiful and optimistic and full of life. I gave her holy water I had brought back from a pilgrimage to Lourdes, France, with my handicapped brother. I fully expected I would see Lynn again.
Lynn’s lymph nodes tested positive for cancer. She underwent a second round of chemotherapy. By Christmas she regained strength and started to recoup. She and Russ and the boys vacationed in Lake Tahoe. Lynn complained of back pain. New Year’s Day the pain became so extreme she could not get out of bed. On January 3 she was admitted to the hospital. Her cancer had spread.
Over the course of the next three weeks my cousins Mary and Diane and my own sisters provided my family in Seattle with daily updates on Lynn’s condition. I sent her Saint Catherine’s medal—The Miracle Medal, a gift I had received while in Lourdes. But Lynn’s body was too weak, her blood count too low, to receive further treatment. The doctors sent her home.
Lynn left for heaven January 28, 2005, at 10:30 p.m. Russ and his two sons buried her February 2—two days before his fiftieth birthday.
I continue to believe in miracles. I’ve come to learn there is no miracle for cancer. My father, Bill, the best man you’ll ever meet, now battles melanoma. Lifelong friend Barbara Martin fought and survived breast cancer. Other friends have called to deliver the same bad news my sister delivered fifteen years ago.
There is no cure—yet. Perhaps someday there will be. A donation has been made to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation in the names of Patricia and Lynn Dugoni. I encourage all to do the same.
As always, there are many to thank—Northwest Publishing consultant and good friend Jennifer McCord always looks after me. The Jane Rotrosen Agency—Don Cleary and Jane Rotrosen and the gang—make it a team effort, and my agent, Meg Ruley, continues to amaze me with her boundless optimism, energy, and wonderful sense of humor. You make it fun. To the talented people at the Hachette/Warner Book Group—Publisher Jamie Raab and my editor, Colin Fox, who’ve made me feel at home. To the copyediting team that makes me look smart, to Ann Twomey, who continues to design interesting covers, to Rebecka Oliver for ensuring my work is read in numerous foreign countries, and to everyone in publicity, particularly Lisa Sciambra, I am appreciative and thankful.
Here in Seattle, to all the boys in the Sacred Heart men’s group—good friends who have prayed faithfully for my family members, and who stand by with beers and cigars ready to celebrate my accomplishments. To all at Schiffrin, Olson, Schlemlein, Hopkins and Goetz, who help keep the lights on. And to my own wife and children, who have been with me each step of this journey. May God bless you all and keep you safe.