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A Series of

Catastrophes
& Miracles
A True Story of Love,
Science, and Cancer

MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS

Washington, D.C.
Published by National Geographic Partners, LLC

Copyright © 2016 Mary Elizabeth Williams. All rights reserved. Reproduction of the
whole or any part of the contents without written permission from the publisher is
prohibited.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC and Yellow Border are trademarks of the National


Geographic Society, used under license.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data


Names: Williams, Mary Elizabeth, (Journalist), author.
Title: A series of catastrophes and miracles : a true story of love, science,
and cancer / Mary Elizabeth Williams.
Description: Washington, D.C. : National Geographic, [2016]
Identifiers: LCCN 2015033584 | ISBN 9781426216336 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Williams, Mary Elizabeth, (Journalist),--Health. |
Metastasis. | Cancer--Patients--Biography. | Cancer in
women--Patients--Biography. | Women--Health and hygiene. | BISAC:
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs. | BIOGRAPHY &
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
/ Women. | HEALTH & FITNESS / Diseases / Cancer.
Classification: LCC RC269.5 .W55 2016 | DDC 362.19699/40092--dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015033584

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Interior design: Melissa Farris

Printed in the United States of America

16/QGF-RRDML/1
SPOILER:
I lived.
CHAPTER 1

Cancer Club Night

January 10, 2012


It’s a bad time for the phone to ring. Jeff is already down the hall at
his caregiver group; Lucy and Bea are downstairs doing arts and
crafts with the other kids in Noogieland. My own support group is
just about to start, and our facilitator Marlena is strict that outside
interruptions—and latecomers—are not tolerated. I glance at the
phone and see that the call is from an unfamiliar number. Do I
answer it and risk banishment, or spend the next two hours going
crazy wondering who it was from—especially today, of all days?

The family started coming to Gilda’s Club in the fall—right after


the rediagnosis—and since then we’ve grown to treasure our Tuesday
nights here. It’s a weekly source of stability and support in the chaos
of my cancer. We love the unexpected community that my disease
has provided us, and the raucous laughter we always wind up sharing
within these walls. We love the friends who’ve become family over

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A Series of Catastrophes & Miracles

the past few months. But sometimes this little clubhouse is a hard
place to be. Eventually, everybody leaves it—and there are only a
few ways out. The hoped-for option is by getting better.
I have a lot to talk about tonight. This morning, I had examined
my shampoo bottle as I washed my hair and wondered if I would
make it to the bottom of it. Lately I weigh the practicality of
renewing my New Yorker subscription, and the uncertainty of
making plans for summer vacation when it’s only early January. I
wonder if I will finish a canister of oatmeal, or if my bottle of
Tabasco will outlast my presence in this world. These are the things
I think about these days, because I have Stage 4 melanoma—
a condition that typically grants people like me only a miserly
handful of months to live. These are the things I had contemplated
today before going for my first set of scans since starting my clinical
trial. The ones that will tell me if the tumors in my lung and soft
tissue are shrinking, or if I’m closer to dying the painful, merciless
death of late-stage cancer.
I am now three months into the trial. Tomorrow is my children’s
shared birthday. Lucy will be twelve and Bea will be eight. They’re
so in sync, they even came into the world on the same date, four
years apart. Whatever else happens next, we will mark another mile-
stone. We will celebrate another year.
I have my next treatment in two days. The side effects haven’t
been too debilitating—the word I keep using is “tolerable.” I’m
exhausted all the time, have an itchy rash, get dizzy spells, and my
sense of taste is off. But I get to keep what’s left of my hair and not
throw up, so who’s complaining? Especially when the tumor on my
back—the tender purple lump that rests right under my bra strap—
has been looking smaller since the first treatment. Dr. Wolchok says
it’s very encouraging, though I’m trying not to get my hopes up.
People with multiple distant metastases don’t usually get happy
endings. We usually just get endings. We get doctors asking us if

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Cancer Club Night

we’re in pain, an unspoken “yet” dangling from their lips. We get the
understanding that the cancer could be dancing anywhere in our
bodies, eating our organs.
Earlier today, I had guzzled down a jug of disgusting orange fluid
and I’d held my breath as technicians took pictures of my insides,
wondering what they would reveal about the monster within me.
“Whatever happens,” I’d told Jeff when I called him afterward,
“I can probably try to talk them into operating on my lung.” I wasn’t
sure I believed it. The lung tumor is in a delicate place, and if my
condition is worsening, my options are diminishing.
Thank God Debbie has been doing okay. She’s been on Abraxane
since September, and this round of chemo seems to be going well,
even if the fuzzy new Chia Pet growth of hair she’d finally grown
back over the summer is gone once again. “I have one eyelash left,”
she’d told me the last time I called. “It’s driving me crazy.” She
doesn’t know how long her course will be this time. The doctors
keep saying they have to wait and see how she’s doing, how her CA
125 numbers are.
Debbie is tired of the constant rigors of getting her parking
validated at the hospital parking lot. She’s irritated with her chemo
port, and she’s over this whole having poisons flowing through her
body thing. She’s also scared of what happens when the chemo ends.
I’m scared too, but I feel like I could live through anything else
they dole out on the fourth floor of Memorial Sloan Kettering if they
can just get me to the spring. Just to see the cherry blossoms one
more time. But even if my tests today tell me that the cancer has
been arrested, there’s still the nagging doubt, the skepticism that
comes when you’ve already had one recurrence. If I live through the
next few months, what will become of me when the initial course of
treatment is scheduled to end? How many reprieves will I get in this
life? Tonight, I’ll settle for one. Tonight, that’s what I want to talk
about with my group.

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A Series of Catastrophes & Miracles

So when the unknown number appears on my iPhone right now,


I am sorely tempted to ignore it. But I pick it up anyway, just in case
it’s important, as I scurry guiltily out of the room toward the hall.

The voice on the other end is Dr. Wolchok’s. “I have your results,” he
says. He must be calling from his own phone instead of his usual office
one. Dammit. If it weren’t grave, he’d wait till my appointment this
Thursday. He wouldn’t be calling me from his own phone at night.
“Hey, how’s it going?” I ask, like this is a social call and I give a
damn how he’s doing this evening.
He wastes no time. “I’m calling because I have good news,” he
replies. “I would have contacted you earlier, but I didn’t want to tease
you until we had confirmation on everything from the lab. We got
your scans, and the tumor on your back has completely receded. The
one in your lung is gone.”
I leave my body for a moment as the universe abruptly lurches in
an entirely new direction. “Did you say gone?” I ask. Then I add,
because I want to be sure I understand what he’s saying, “Now, what
does that mean, exactly?”
“Gone,” he repeats. “Your tumors are completely gone. You pre­
sent no evidence of disease. So we’ll see you again on Thursday and
we’ll run your blah blah blah and you’ll come back blah blah blah.”
I don’t comprehend him. His voice has become the droning horn
of a grown-up in a Charlie Brown special. I’m too busy simultane-
ously registering shock and crying. As he continues, I sleepwalk into
Jeff’s meeting room. I simply point at him and beckon him out. He
follows obediently as I say, “Thank you, Doctor,” and hang up.
Jeff regards my tearstained face with apprehension. “He says it’s
all gone,” I say. He looks utterly bewildered for a moment, at the
blubbering woman giving him impossibly happy news. Then a smile

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Cancer Club Night

spreads across his face. He holds up his hand for a high five that melts
into a hug. “Okay,” he says, his eyes damp. “Okay, I’ll take it.” We
don’t jump up and down and whoop like contestants on a game show;
it’s too unreal. Instead, he goes back into his room and I quickly
scoot into mine. My metastatic, eager-to-kill-me cancer is gone. In
just three months. Three months and a hundred years of research
and my doctor’s entire life’s work.
Everyone else is already well settled in when I return to our group.
Cassandra is curled up in her usual spot on the couch like a sleepy
cat. As soon as I stagger, red-faced, into the room, she shoots me a
worried look, and flashes her thumb—first up, and then down—in
silent question. I reply with a hasty thumbs-up as I grab my seat next
to her, and she squeezes my hand reassuringly.
Tonight is the last time I will ever see Cassandra. She will be dead
in a month. Her sons, who are currently downstairs screaming circles
around the girls, will be the next to leave the children’s family group
and go into the children’s bereavement group. Tonight, though, she
and I sit hand in hand on the couch, friends who, in other circum-
stances, might have met and bonded over playground parties and
homework hassles and passionate debates over where to get the best
hot chocolate in town. Now instead fighting tooth and nail not to
leave their children.
Marlena breaks the spell. “If everybody’s here, I guess we can start,”
she says. “Who would like to go first tonight?”
I raise my hand. As Cassandra gives me an encouraging nod, I
say, “I would.”

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