4^th Angel Stories

Claudia A.

Corporate meeting planning is a tough business. Maintaining contacts, searching out venues, traveling to far-flung locations, sales- not a career for the faint-hearted, especially for someone who owns their own meeting planning company as does Claudia A.  By age 38, she had years of experience under her belt dealing with the daily challenges involved in the business, the foibles of clients and the balancing act required to keep her business and personal life flowing smoothly.

During a business trips in Mexico, Claudia found a small lump in her breast. It came as a total surprise, but didn’t cause her to panic, she recalls. “I had never had a mammogram [American Cancer Society recommendations are for regular mammograms starting at age 40], but I didn’t have any breast cancer in my family,” she explains.

After her return from Mexico she made an appointment with her gynecologist. The doctor immediately referred Claudia for a mammogram, coincidentally scheduled for the morning of the day she and her husband were planning to leave on a Bahamas cruise with his parents. Claudia planned to get the mammogram and, if at all possible, continue with the family plans.

“After the mammogram, the doctors explained that they were about 98 percent sure it was cancer,” she recalls.  “At that point I didn’t feel like there was anything I could do about it. So I made an appointment for a biopsy the following Monday, and we went on the cruise.”

She returned, had the biopsy and got the news the next day that she did have breast cancer.  The treatment plan included surgery to remove the tumor, followed by chemotherapy and radiation then tamoxifen, an oral medication taken to prevent a recurrence.  With the treatment decision came Claudia’s personal decision as well.

“I decided I wanted to keep my life as normal as possible,” she says. “I think that helps as you go through this. The mind is a huge part of it, and I decided I would have a positive attitude.”

After the surgery, Claudia approached chemotherapy as though it was another task to be accomplished. She planned chemo treatments it into her busy schedule and kept on going without missing a beat. During the course of her many weeks of treatment,  she traveled twice to Europe and once to Mexico for business. Claudia shrugs off what sounds like an incredible feat of self-discipline and determination, saying, “I kept working and that kept my mind focused on things other than the cancer.”

With typical efficiency learned from years in the business world, Claudia planned ahead for how she would cope with potential side effects of chemo, including hair loss.  Before she even started to lose significant amounts of hair, Claudia had her head shaved and purchased a wig.

Always up front about the realities of her illness, Claudia took along her 13 –year-old daughter Daniella, her sisters and her husband on office visits and the wig-buying expedition.  “They came with me to doctor visits, shopping for the wig, even to the chemo room,”Claudia says.  “I thought seeing the environment I would be in and meeting people involved in my treatment and helping me select a wig could help my daughter feel less scared and more comfortable.”

It was Claudia’s remarkable openness about her cancer and her positive attitude that led her oncologist to refer her to the 4th Angel Mentoring Program.  Interestingly, despite her amazing inner strength and family support, Claudia says that she still wished she had someone to talk to during her treatment who had been through a similar experience.

“I wished I had someone at the time,” she says, “and that’s what I am trying to give the women I talk with through 4th Angel.”

Claudia talks with her 4th Angel patients about all of their concerns, but her specialty is providing practical, down-to-earth insider’s tips that can help ease  the experience.  One of the patients she speaks with regularly is a woman who was about the same age as Claudia at the time of her diagnosis, so the two women relate extremely well.  “I try to tell her little tricks to help her through,” Claudia says.  “For example, I told her to wear socks in the treatment room because it is freezing.”

Patients appreciate that kind of practical help as they face the unknown world of cancer treatment, Claudia explains.  In a conversation after this particular patient’s first treatment, she told Claudia that, thanks to her, she felt prepared because she had some idea of what to expect.

Another patient, the mother of three daughters, confided her concern about losing her hair during chemo. With her typical common-sense approach, “I told her to buy a wig before she started losing her hair so that the change wouldn’t be so dramatic,” Claudia says.

Although she is mater-of-fact in her advice and her attitude about having gone through breast cancer herself, Claudia doesn’t want to minimize what it was like.

“There were difficult times,” she says, “but somehow I made it. I didn’t know I had that kind of strength until I went through this.”

Marc S.

The sun is just coming up on a beautiful May morning as Marc S. laces up his running shoes, does a few stretches and sets off on his daily 6-mile run through his suburban neighborhood.    A busy probate lawyer with his own practice, Marc relishes these early morning runs as a way to ease into his day. As the sun comes up, he enjoys the warmth on his back, the budding trees, even the neighbor’s dog barking as his runs past, his steady pace eating up the miles.

At 5’ 10” and 225 pounds, Marc considers himself in the best shape he has been in his  47 years.  Besides his daily run, he lifts weights several days a week and boasts that he can lift 300 pounds for 30 reps with his legs and 500 pounds for 24 reps.

Professionally, Marc holds both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in political science, as well as a law degree and is currently working on an LLM degree.  He cut his professional teeth as a domestic relations staff attorney for the county court, moved to a private law firm and eventually got laid off. 

Marc is always ready to turn a negative into a positive, and the layoff gave him the impetus to start his own practice. Now, he happily works from his home office, primarily in domestic relations, probate and estate planning.  His subspecialty in estate planning for pet owners has earned him a national reputation.

 Not bad for a guy who had cancer at age 39.

In the prime of his personal and professional life, Marc tried his best to ignore the warning signs. Looking back, he now realizes that he was in serious denial at the time.  The abdominal pains he was experiencing he wrote off as scar tissue from an old appendix operation. He devoted serious effort to ignoring the unexplained weight loss and the night sweats. More difficult to ignore was the extreme fatigue. “I was exhausted by 10 a.m.,” he recalls. “I had to go take a nap at noon.”

Ultimately, it was Marc’s passion for physical fitness that tipped him off to the possibility that he needed to see a doctor. “I had been running up to five miles every day, and then I got to the point where I couldn’t make it a mile,” he says. “Even so, I was still in denial thinking whatever it was, it couldn’t possibly be something that bad.”

Marc’s doctor assessed the situation, ordered several tests and quickly came back with the diagnosis that surprised Marc and turned his world inside out: Stage IVb Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system.

The reality hit Marc hard. “The doctors started telling me about lymph nodes. I didn’t even know what a lymph node was,” he says.

Within a few days of receiving the diagnosis, Marc was undergoing tests every other day. The results were disturbing – a large tumor in his abdomen, more under his arm and even more under his ears.

“I remembered wondering years ago what I would be like in the year 2000,” Marc recalls.  “For one thing, I always planned to be in really good shape in case something happened to me. Another thing, I knew I didn’t want cancer.

“Now, I was thinking maybe that was a premonition.  I started thinking that I had had a long life, but now it was over.”

 What Marc didn’t realize was the high cure rate for Hodgkin lymphoma, particularly in otherwise healthy young people. His doctors told him that his chances for a complete cure were high – according to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the cure rate in younger patients like Marc is about 50 percent for stage IVb like his, and the overall cure rate is 86 percent. 

The news intensified Marc’s determination, and he made two promises to himself – to get better and to help other people.  But first, he had to get through the treatment - 16 chemotherapy infusions, four-and-a-half hours at a time, once a week over the course of 30 weeks. As much for his mental health as well as his physical wellbeing, Marc continued working out the entire time, walking and lifting light weights. “I kept thinking that working out, staying active had to be good,” he explains.

When the chemo was completed, Marc’s oncologist recommended a stem cell transplant.  With all of his CT, MRI and PET scans clean with no evidence of cancer, Marc hesitated on going through with a transplant.

Two years later, when a PET scan showed a positive lymph node, Marc and his doctor decided it was time for the stem cell transplant.  The process begins with an intensive seven-day chemotherapy regimen, rigorous enough to leave most people physically wiped out.  Again, Marc’s penchant for physical fitness gave him an edge – his doctor was surprised to find him walking the hospital hallways after the week of chemo, impatient to get on with the transplant.

After a three-week hospital stay following the procedure, Marc went home and slowly returned to work and working out.  “I’m stronger than ever,” he says with understandable pride. “I’m feeling healthy and fit.” With the cancer now more than five years behind him, he is considered cured.

Marc also has made good on the second part of his personal promise. Although he works 80 hours a week in his law practice, he always finds the time needed to mentor cancer patients through The 4th Angel Mentoring Program and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s mentoring program, is a devoted volunteer for the Society’s Light the Night fundraising walk and puts his legal training to work as a lobbyist for legislation related to cancer research funding.

To Marc, it’s all part of who he is and how he looks at his life.  “I just try to do whatever I can,” he says. “You’ve got to move on with life.”