CTV'S DOC TELLS HER OWN BREAST CANCER STORY TONIGHT
Canadian Press, Oct. 15, 2005
BY JOHN MCKAY

Each woman who has breast cancer has a different disease and as difficult as it is, she must make her own decisions on methods of treatment, says Dr. Marla Shapiro, CTV News medical consultant and star of her own network health show Balance.

Shapiro is also a cancer survivor and tells the story of her sometimes grim but ultimately uplifting personal battle in a documentary airing this evening on CTV.

It's entitled Run Your Own Race, which is at the heart of her belief that a cancer patient should gather as much expert advice as possible and then decide how to conduct their fight against the disease.

But she stresses it's no easier for a medical professional than an amateur.

"It still was so astounding how difficult that was," Shapiro says. "The scientist in me and the doctor understood that there are no black and whites. You have your pathology done and you're still not 100 per cent sure ... in terms of the course of treatment.

"The tumour type, the grading, the staging, all that medical stuff that we throw at you, it really makes a difference."

Shapiro, who was diagnosed with a cancerous breast last year, made perhaps the toughest of calls by opting for a double mastectomy after weighing the odds against recurrence within her own system.

"I understood that there was no right answer. I understood that all I could do was make the best possible choice for me."

Maybe she could have gotten away with a lumpectomy and radiation and no chemotherapy, she concedes.

"Did I do too much? Was I too aggressive?

"I made the best decisions I could when I had to make them in a timely fashion. And now I have to say to myself 'Let it go, Marla. Let it go.'"

Shapiro is startlingly open in the documentary, with cameras present during her recovery, her chemo, as a defiantly bald woman in public and while preparing for reconstruction surgery. Her husband and children also agreed to on-camera interviews.

A few scenes are admittedly re-enacted. Donning a wig, she plays herself in scenes in which she first learns about the cancer from her doctors, who agreed to participate as actors because they believed it would prove educational.

Asked about the common wisdom that doctors make lousy patients, she says she tried really hard to be a good one, neither belligerent nor compliant.

But she thinks it was especially difficult for her own doctors because they knew her and liked her.

"Here was a patient that could never be reassured. I see the exceptions to the rule. I see patients who should do amazingly well and they die.

"It's hard to reassure someone who sees it all and lives in this world."

When the telegenic Montreal native launched Balance on CTV nearly three years ago, she held to the same philosophy, that a doctor cannot tell a patient what to do, but can only explain the options. Which is what she would do when guests asked questions about such issues as botox treatment, liposuction, stomach stapling and fad diets.

Asked about her health now, Shapiro says she's just fine, thank you.

"I'm great. I'm energetic. I look great. I have hair back, which is sort of fun to watch it grow. "It's all good."

The documentary was completed Sept. 19, the day she returned to work at CTV. She also continues her medical practice.


PUBLIC FIGURES MAKE DIFFERENCE WITH CANCER
London Free Press, Oct. 17, 2005
BY BILL BRIOUX

Can television save your life?

The answer, triumphantly, is yes. Want proof?

My wife, Cathy, was watching TV last March when she happened upon a Paula Zahn report on breast cancer. The CNN anchor, whose mother is a two-time breast cancer survivor, has long been a public advocate for this cause.

At 47, Cathy had never had a mammogram. The special prompted a self examination. Something felt a little different and she saw our family doctor the very next day. Within a week she had a mammogram and an ultrasound. The week after, there was a core biopsy. The following week she was sitting in a surgeon's office, scared out of her mind.

Fortunately, her cancer was diagnosed in its initial stages. Surgery, chemotherapy and drug treatment followed in swift order. Her prognosis, happy to say, is very good.

When she told her surgeon, Dr. Nancy Down out of North York General, it was Zahn's special that prompted her to investigate her breast health, Down looked her in the eye and said, "You should thank her for saving your life."

Zahn, who spoke with me last week from her CNN office in New York, appreciates the thanks but waves off the credit, insisting she's just the messenger.

"Every time someone thanks me it fills me with a couple of emotions," she says. Foremost is "pride in knowing that the message is getting out there. There are so few times in our business that you can feel you can make a direct contribution to people's lives."

Zahn knows all about how cancer can overtake a family. Her mother, who was profiled on the special (segments of which will be repeated later this month) has survived, but her father wasn't so lucky, succumbing to lymphoma. Both were diagnosed within weeks of each other.

Zahn also lost her 36-year-old sister-in-law to breast cancer, leaving her brother to care for their young children. Three grandparents were also cancer victims. "My family has been ravaged by the disease," she says, "so I'm very pro-active about early detection."

There is more and more evidence early detection is vital in treating this disease, which strikes another Canadian woman every 30 minutes.

It is a message being delivered loud and clear throughout October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

When you or a friend or a family member have the disease, every month seems like breast cancer awareness month. The entire world seems like a sea of pink ribbons, T-shirts, broaches, caps and wristbands.

"It's everywhere," says Maria Del Mar, who stars as a breast cancer survivor in the new pay-TV drama Terminal City (premiering tonight at 9 p.m. on The Movie Network). "It's terrifying and yet it also instills a sense of hope because there are a lot of survivors and there are some wonderful, beautiful, crazy stories of survival."

Among the many I have heard came just weeks after Cathy was diagnosed. Suzanne Somers and her husband Alan Hammel were in Toronto in April when there was talk of bringing her one-woman show there. The former Three's Company star, who went public with her cancer battle five years ago, could not have been more comforting or compassionate when I ended our interview on a personal note.

Somers and Hammel spoke of their initial fears and later their determination to pursue the alternative hormone replacement therapy, which Somers insists saved her life. They generously offered help and advice, shipping Somers's self-help book, Slim & Sexy Forever, as well as a related medical text.

Former Nanny star Fran Drescher, currently playing in the Friday night "cougar" comedy Living With Fran on WB, detailed her battle with uterine cancer in her book, Cancer Shamancer.

Drescher suffered through two years of misdiagnosis before doctors successfully treated her disease. Now she's helping establish WOMB (Women Obtaining a Medical Breakthrough), a group aimed at lobbying Washington against what she sees as insurance company resistance to the expense of detection.

"There's so much we're not getting as part of our regular health care," Drescher told me in Los Angeles last July.

Besides Dr. Marla Shapiro, who's special, Run Your Own Race: Dr, Marla's Journey With Breast Cancer, aired Saturday on CTV, Canadians have seen several high-profile media personalities struck with the disease.

Shapiro's CTV Canada AM colleague Beverly Thomson took two years off to wage her own private battle with breast cancer. CBC News's Wendy Mesley and Q107 radio personality Maureen Holloway are currently battling the disease. Even the CBC publicity chief who took my request for a Mesley interview confided she survived her own breast cancer scare.

International music star Kylie Minogue, just 37, was quick to tell fans about her plight. Melissa Etheridge, Patti LaBelle, Edie Falco, Carly Simon, Olivia Newton-John, Kate Jackson, Cokie Roberts -- the list goes on and on of celebrities waging public battles against breast cancer.

That was rarely the case back in the mid-'70s. Shirley Temple Black was so devastated by her 1972 diagnosis that she couldn't bring herself to tell her husband about her pending mastectomy, leaving articles related to breast cancer around the house.

But weeks after Betty Ford moved into the White House, she went public with her surgery, courageously sharing information and later working tirelessly for the cause. Ford broke the taboo and others followed. By going public with their struggles, all of these women bring hope and awareness to thousands of others coping with the disease.

The good news, reports Zahn, is doctors predict a 75-per-cent reduction in breast cancer deaths over the next decade. Early detection -- and TV's role in creating awareness -- can take some of the credit.

"I'm excited by the complete shift in attitudes," says Zahn. Twenty years ago, when I did my first report on colorectal cancer, there was tremendous resistance (from news directors)." Now, whenever she does a cancer report, "the phone banks will light up."