Win H.

Diagnosis: Stage 3A lung cancer (adenocarcinoma) metastasized to the lymph nodes, diagnosed on 53rd birthday, May 28, 1993.
Treatment: Surgery, two rounds of radiation, chemotherapy (cisplatin, valban and 5FU) surgery again, and another round of radiation and chemotherapy

Diagnosis: Blocked right coronary artery, 1995
Treatment: Angioplasty

Profession: Communications for financial services company

I call my fall while rollerblading for exercise my lucky break. I knew I had a broken jaw and road rash on my legs. (I didn't know I had also broken six ribs.) At Mass. General's emergency room they asked if it hurt to take a deep breath. It did. They X-rayed my chest and Dr. Farber noticed a shadow on my lung and scheduled me for a CT-scan. My wife, Margie, has worked at Mass. General for more than 20 years. An administrative assistant in neuropathology, she started networking right away.

Margie: It was a great advantage to be able to take a CT-scan to a friend and say, "Can you tell me what's happening here?" We were looking for doctors to work with us as a team--people who would communicate. John Wain was perfect for us. He gave us a very full explanation of what he saw.

Margie: Dr. Wain expected to go in, remove the tumor, and that would be it.

Win: But when he did the mediastinoscopy, the first step in the surgical procedure, he found metastatic cancer in 2 out of 5 lymph nodes. My surgery was two hours instead of six hours. We networked to my oncologist, Jerry Younger, and my radiation oncologist, Noah Choi, and got into a more aggressive protocol of radiation, chemotherapy, surgery again and then more radiation and chemotherapy.

Margie: So much of your treatment is fate. You don't know which protocol is best for you. The hardest part is finding out what protocols are available. We called another hospital to check what they would do. They suggested the same protocol. It was the most aggressive treatment available for Win's cancer.

Win: Learning that my cancer had metastasized was in many ways more of a blow than the original diagnosis, but you recover from the punch and you fight. I was a Marine. Happily, I never had to go to Vietnam. All of us are curious about how we'd react in a war. It's the same with cancer. There's no way to know how you are going to react. My first reaction was shock. My second reaction was, OK, this is a challenge and I'm going to beat it. It was almost exhilarating. I feel lucky that I never had a moment of feeling sorry for myself--I never asked, "Why me?" I said to myself, " OK, you're going to test me? I'll show you what I've got." I think I may be good at this kind of challenge. In 1951, when I was 11, I had polio and the right side of my face, my right arm and leg were paralyzed. My recovery was considered remarkable. Doctors attributed it to the fact that I wanted to get out of the hospital so badly. I have some curvature of the spine and a slight difference in the length of my legs, but lettered in soccer in high school and got into the Marines after college.

Margie: Our two daughters were devastated. They've worried about me because I have a weight problem. I'd joke and say, "Hey, I'll feel lucky to hit 50." But Win always exercised--they never expected something to happen to him.

Win: I just took this on as a task. I was able to work except for the time I was in the hospital. I tolerated the first round of radiation and chemotherapy well. I didn't lose all my hair. The second round knocked me for a loop. Between mouth sores and sore throat, I wasn't even able to swallow my own saliva. I finally had to be admitted to the hospital with dehydration. The third treatment-- after surgery--wasn't as bad as the second. On August 25th, after two rounds of radiation and chemotherapy and a three-week break, I went in for surgery.

Margie: We were frightened with this one because we'd been burned on Win's first surgery. We talked about the possibility that Win might not survive. We were very honest-cancer has brought us even closer. We had put our papers in order before the first surgery.

Win: Each of us was trying to support the other. But with this second surgery, Margie and I admitted we were scared. Throughout Margie turned her priorities upside down. My needs were absolutely the first thing that got taken care of so that I could concentrate on the fight. When I was in the hospital, Margie made sure that she or one of our daughters was with me and I knew I could roll over and ignore them without offending them.

Margie: I didn't allow visitors at this time. People would say, "What can I do?" and I'd say, "He'd love a card." I would spend the morning with him and then stay at work late at night.

Win: My experience with cancer is sort of a paradigm for the roles of the sexes. Margie always put me first during my illness, which comes naturally to women--to give until they drop. Then last year when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, I was torn between being the caretaker and being at the office--I wasn't the caretaker she was. I'm not satisfied with the way I handled it. If she ever has a recurrence, it's going to be different.

Win: Bernie Siegel's book, Love, Medicine and Miracles, made me aware of the powerful role the mind can play. A friend taught me to meditate and use imagery. My safe place to go is a Japanese garden where it's peaceful and serene. The sound of water is important and I used tapes of mountain streams. I told Dr. Wain, that I didn't want any negative comments during the operation and he assured me he doesn't allow negative comments or jokes in his operating room. He allowed me to bring with me into the operating room my tapes and a bag of charms including an Egyptian symbol of life, a cross, a scapula, a crystal, a rock found on a family trip, and a message from a fortune cookie that said, "Keep on charging the enemy so long as there is life." Many people were praying for me. When you are fighting like this you put everything you possibly can to work.

Win: I've been struck by the paradox of serenity and violence in Japanese culture and in me. I used the Japanese garden, tapes, meditation and imagery for serenity, but when I was on the radiation table, I used the Samurai approach, chanting to myself "kill the cancer", just the way we would chant things in the Marines.

I was lucky to work for a man whose wife is a cancer survivor. He understands the fragility of life and he said, "Tell me what you want to do and we'll work it out." I was able to use my sick-day allowance without taking any disability leave and still manage the development and production of the annual report.

I started a Cancers Concerns Group after a man at work died of cancer. I hadn't known he was sick and never had the opportunity to connect with him. Our group meets in a conference room for lunch. I tend to be a private person, an introvert. Cancer has provided opportunities to see more positive than negative. People going through cancer express their vulnerability. You really see them more as they are. I know the Cancer Concerns Group is more important to me than my work. Cancer has been a means for me to connect with people. For me cancer has been a gift and the gift is mindfulness. When asked by a social worker about my goals, I said I wanted to do whatever I could to prevent a recurrence of cancer. She said, "You might want to re-think that goal because if you have a recurrence, you will have failed. Think about investing in the quality of the life you have, however short or long. Then you can't lose." That was invaluable advice. I take nutrition classes, I exercise, I try to think about what's good for my immune system, and most of all I try to live mindfully in the present. I've become very attuned to my body. In 1995 I developed chest pain when exercising. I had a blocked right coronary artery, possibly due to the radiation treatment. The angioplasty worked and I am free of chest pain. And I expect to celebrate my fifth anniversary this year--1998. That's good news.