Everybody's Got Something (6 page)

At the same time, I made a very personal decision. I decided, and I let my closest friends know, that if I got cancer a second time, I would not seek treatment. I would roll the dice and live as long as I could, on my own terms.

I’d just had a grueling chemo treatment, the type of chemo that was nicknamed “the Red Devil” because of its color. I wanted to crush the syringe with my bare hands. I felt the worst I had ever felt at that point. During that treatment, I was literally on my knees, looking up at the heavens and whispering, “Oh God, no more. No more. Not again.
No mas.
”

I honestly thought I wouldn’t put myself through this ever again. No more poison coursing through my veins. No more tubes. No more needles. I thought, “I’ll take the time I have left and I will travel the world.” Maybe I’d finally get my pilot’s license. But no more barbaric treatments that tortured my body with only a vague promise to prolong my life. What kind of life would that be?

But this is the thing. Everything changed when I was diagnosed with MDS. The doctors said that a transplant would not be treatment, but a cure. I knew that there was a cure on the table. Even though it meant more chemo, even though I knew that my immune system would be destroyed and then rebuilt again, cell by cell, I had only one thought: “I want to live.”

W
hen Charlie Gibson retired from
GMA
, there had never before been an all-female anchor team in morning television. From the beginning Diane and I dubbed ourselves Thelma and Louise. We didn’t particularly want to go over the edge together, but every morning was a wild ride. Now she always says to me, “Remind me, are you Thelma?” And I say, “No, honey, you’re Thelma; you always have top billing. I’m Louise, you’re Thelma.”

We still send e-mails back and forth:
Hey Thelma, hey Louise
. Because when you think of Thelma and Louise, they were gutsy women and what we were doing was seen that way: making history as the first all-female national morning anchor team. Many questioned whether or not it would work to have two women as co-anchors of the show, never been done before. Our producers felt we were both good at our jobs, we’d already been working together, so why wouldn’t we continue that way even without Charlie?

It’s a funny thing about Diane. We can walk into a room together and people come right up to me and treat me like a long-lost relative. 

“Hey, Robin!”

“Robin, what’s up?”

“Yo, Robin, looking good.”

By contrast, people talk around Diane, whispering about her in the third person:

“That’s Diane Sawyer.”

“Hey, isn’t that Diane Sawyer?”

“Wow, it’s Diane Sawyer.”

But the thing is that you
could
treat Diane like she’s your long-lost cousin. She may seem like this gorgeous, intimidating, smart-as-hell, cool glass of water, but at the heart of it, she’s a warm, Southern-born woman who is, above all, absolutely and categorically comfortable in her own skin.

Only someone who is so comfortable in her own skin could be so giving and so kind. From the moment we started working together, to the moment that we bonded as sister friends, Diane has been the epitome of generosity. When the chips are down and life is at its worst, when you think you have
no
options, there’s Diane.

Shortly after my MDS diagnosis, I ran into Diane at a luncheon honoring her husband and the cast of
Death of a Salesman
. We both needed to sneak out because we had to get back to work.

We were leaving and I just stopped her and said, “I need to tell you something.”

She said, “Okay.”

I said, “I’m ill again. I don’t have time to get into it, but we need to talk.”

I hadn’t even made it back to the office before she e-mailed me and said, “I need more details, let’s talk now.”

So we had a long conversation. And she simply said, “I’m on it.” Within days, she knew more about MDS than I did. She called doctors all across the country while coordinating with Rich Besser, who is our chief medical editor. Rich, Diane and I were like this little stealth team, undercover, doing the research, weighing the options. Rich and Diane weren’t giving my name when they talked to doctors; they were just gathering vital information. Eventually I added 
Tom Cibrowski to our tight circle of confidence. Tom is my executive producer, but also a dear friend. Plus, I felt somebody at work needed to know if I started to call in sick frequently.
 

Diane Sawyer should have been a doctor. Her ability to process, catalogue and interpret the most complicated medical information is nothing short of stunning. Usually when someone is in crisis, I’m the person who can coolly sift through information and make decisions about the best line of action, but from the moment that I whispered my news into her ear, Diane took charge, and I was so grateful. She is not a colleague. She is not an air-kiss associate. She is my friend and my lifeline. She was one of the first people I saw in our family’s yard after Daddy died. She not only got herself to the Gulf Coast but she managed to rustle up food from one of our favorite restaurants, Mary Mahoney’s. She wanted to be sure we had gumbo waiting for us when we came back from the funeral home. That’s just Diane. She will be someone I know and love until I draw my last breath.

A
fter my father died in 2004, a wonderful writer named Missy Buchanan sent me one of her books to share with Momma. The book was called
Living with Purpose in a Worn-Out Body
, and the title went directly to the heart of what I saw in my mother’s elder years. Mom had just celebrated her eightieth birthday, and the health issues were piling up. Yet she was still a force to be reckoned with in the community, still fighting the good fight. She was known statewide for her work with the governor’s office, but she also took on passion projects closer to home, such as helping the Boys and Girls Club build a beautiful recreation center in the Pass after Katrina. (Momma believed in the power of afterschool programs; no idle hands on her watch!) She lived with purpose even as she faced serious health challenges. I sent her Missy’s book right away.

I didn’t know for several months that Momma had not only read
Living with Purpose
, but she found Missy’s number and called her.

“How did you know what I was thinking when you wrote that book?” Momma asked Missy.

And with that, a special friendship began. Several years later, Missy offered to help Momma write the incredible story of her life from living in poverty in Akron, Ohio, to receiving a $200 scholarship to Howard University, where she had lunch with Eleanor Roosevelt; from being stationed abroad in locales as far-flung as Japan and Turkey to becoming the first black president of the Officers’ Wives Club in Mississippi.

Missy traveled from her home in Texas to the Pass, and the two women spent happy days together eating gumbo and telling stories. By then Mom was in her late eighties, and she wasn’t always up for the company. Missy would stay at a nearby hotel and wait for Mom’s call. Missy is the rare soul that understands, truly understands, older adults: their fears, struggles and hopes. My mother could not have found a better collaborator, and I am so proud of her book.

Now it was April 20, 2012, the day of Mom’s big book party. It was a beautiful sunny day in the Pass. Friends and family had traveled near and far to celebrate Mom. Upper Room Books were the hosts, and the venue was Oak Crest Mansion, an elegant and beautiful Southern home from the 1920s that miraculously survived Hurricane Katrina. Set on twelve bucolic acres, the mansion features a chapel, a gazebo and a great room where they serve traditional afternoon tea by the fireplace. More than 250 guests turned up for Mom’s book party, and it looked more like a wedding when we entered the banquet hall, full of white linen round tables and big bouquets of hydrangea.

It’s a funny thing how much being on national TV is like being a military brat. When you’re on TV in every town in America, you don’t really have a home base. But that’s why my home in Mississippi is so important to me, because it gives me my home base. When I walk through that door I smell an aroma that could only be home. I sit in Momma’s chair, and see that rickety old TV, and it’s grounding, it’s nurturing. If I only stayed in New York City and went to all the premieres that I’m invited to, and all the trappings of being where I am…Well, that’s never going to happen. I can’t even finish that sentence, because it would just never happen. It doesn’t speak to me. It’s not who I am or who I will ever be.

I remember Mom beaming as my big sister Dorothy sang the title of Mom’s book: “This is
My Story
, this is
My Song
, praising my Savior all the day long.” Our cousin Steven accompanied Dorothy on the piano. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

No one at that reception could have imagined the pain we were experiencing as a family. After the book signing we returned home, and I took out swab kits for my sisters. My best shot to beat MDS was a bone marrow transplant. Doctors told me it was my only option for a possible cure. I desperately needed a genetic match.

I have two sisters and one brother. Butch is the oldest, and while he wanted to be considered a candidate to save his little sister’s life, his age and his own health issues ruled him out. Sally-Ann is the next oldest. She’s a television anchor in New Orleans. They love her there and she loves them right back. Dorothy is the next oldest. She’s an artist and an administrator and probably the most creative person I know.

Dorothy and Sally-Ann were eager to swab the insides of their cheeks. But before we began, Sally-Ann’s longtime prayer partner and sister-in-law, Phyllis, led us in prayer. I certainly was in need of a miracle. I didn’t tell them that there was only a three-in-ten chance that either would be a match. A lifetime in sports has taught me that the beauty of life is that odds are meant to be defied. Miracles happen every day.

I was remarkably calm as my sisters took the test to see if one of them might be a match. Sure, I went through a range of emotions, anger, fear, etc. But Mom always taught me we have choices. Never more so than after Dad died, when she said, “You can have sad sorrow or happy sorrow.” I choose to be happy even in difficult times. Uplifting thoughts and actions. Nowhere is it written that we shouldn’t be happy. We don’t get extra bonus points for drudgingly going through life.

In the weeks that it took to get the results, I prayed every day for a miracle. Diane Sawyer was a wonderful resource, doing the legwork of investigating what the best next steps for me would be when—“not ‘if,’” she would say—I found my match. Every time I talked to Diane on the phone, I could hear her flipping through pages of her notes. If the match is such and such, this would be your best hospital. Depending on the type of donor you have, and what kind of match it is, this would be your best bet.

The plan was for my nieces to take the test next, if it turned out that neither Dorothy nor Sally-Ann were a match. I remember asking my mother if my dad had any children we were never told about. I said: “Mom, I promise not to get mad, in fact I’m giving you this onetime pass to come clean: Does Daddy have any other children?” Momma was horrified, she said, “Oh, mercy, no!”

I pride myself on the fact that I never played the race card. But if I could not find a match within my family, it seemed like a race card could be played on me. The National Marrow Donor Program has more than eight million Americans in its database. A Caucasian person who doesn’t find a match in their family has about a 50 percent chance of finding one in the database. For African-Americans, that number could be as low as 7 percent. African-Americans tend to have a more racially mixed genetic makeup than their white counterparts—think about the range of skin tones that exist between a Michelle Obama and a Halle Berry, a Serena Williams and a Beyoncé, or an Alicia Keys and a Jennifer Hudson. The same diversity that makes our culture so rich also makes finding a precise genetic match more challenging.

There are so many stories about people, especially people of color, who wait a year or more to find a match. Even when huge campaigns are mounted and thousands of people register, a match isn’t always found. A genetic match is the most literal definition of a needle in a haystack. Every time I thought of the doctor’s chart and that dot that was placed right between a year and two years, I knew how dire my situation was. I didn’t have a year to wait for a match. I needed a match and I needed one
now
.

And yet, the whole time I was waiting for results, there was work. Every morning up at 3:45. On the air by 7:00.
Good Morning America
. Later, when my coworkers found out the secret I’d been keeping, they would wonder how I did it. How did I show up every day and not just fall to pieces under the sadness and the fear? How did I keep it together? How did I not crack and say, “Hey y’all, back up. I’m sick”?

When I had those “Woe is me” moments, the “me against the world” moments, I would think of Momma. Everybody’s got something. Momma would always say, “Why is my something any worse or more significant than anyone else’s?” It’s not. It’s just not.

I bet if we all threw our problems in a huge pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back. Don’t compare your life to others’. You have no idea what their journey is all about. That’s why I always give people the benefit of the doubt; it’s one of my rules to live by. There may be a reason why someone is having a bad day; there’s often something that we can’t see. She is not necessarily a bad person, just someone facing a bad situation.

We all have doubts and fears. The thing about fear is that it only needs the tiniest space, the size of an eye of a needle, to get through and wreak havoc. Maddening, but true. So when I was struggling and in doubt, I would simply take the next small step. I would stop and think: “No, life is not tied with a beautiful bow all the time, but it’s still a gift. I’m going to tear away the wrapping like a little kid at Christmas.”

In the church of my childhood, they said, “First the faith, then the works.” I held strong to my faith, and then I got what I’d been praying for: a match. The day I got the news, about three weeks after my sisters had each swabbed their cheeks, was like one of those old television commercials where Ed McMahon pulls up in front of your house to let you know that you have just won the sweepstakes. I couldn’t wait to share the news with my family.

First, I called Dorothy to let her know she was not a match. She was disappointed but told me later she never thought she’d be the match. Mom needed her more than I did. Dorothy was the sibling who lived closest to Mom and always took her to her many doctor appointments. She’d pick up Mom on the way to church. It was devastating to Mom when doctors told her she could no longer drive. She felt her independence had been taken from her. It’s one of those difficult times for an aging parent. Mom always looked forward to hitting the road. I still miss how she would say when she pulled into our driveway, “Home again, home again, riggity jig jig.”

When I got the test results back, I gave Sally-Ann a call. You’d think I would have led with, “YOU’RE A MATCH!” But we had a nonchalant conversation for a few minutes, then I casually said, “Oh, by the way, you’re a match.” I think I’m just getting my hearing back, that was how loudly she shouted for joy. But I know how much my big sister hates needles and hospitals. I needed a miracle, but I also needed to give her a graceful out. “Do you want to do this?” I asked softly. Sally-Ann was uncharacteristically silent for a moment and I braved myself for her response, whatever it might be. “I don’t
want
to do this, baby sister,” she said. “I was
born
to do this.”