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A Fiery Redhead

In every business-niche across America there are the superstars – the ones that everyone else looks to and thinks, “There. Her. I want what she’s got.” That was Wendy.

Charismatic, attractive and, in 1995, at the peak of a wildly successful career, a bit rebellious, Wendy was straddling the line between some of the most powerful medical institutions in the country and the activists attempting to change them. As a result, there wasn’t a name she didn’t know, an innovation she hadn’t looked into; a mistake she hadn’t already heard about.

She had made a name for herself as a breast cancer survivor and psychologist whose message of patient empowerment had helped give women a voice in their care and recovery.

By speaking, writing and working in the field for two decades, she had helped bring breast cancer out of the closet, thereby strengthening the millions of women newly diagnosed and fearful, as she had once been, of being dismantled one diseased piece at a time by an often-heartless medical establishment.
She had personally counseled thousands of women; directing them to the right doctors, insisting on second opinions, encouraging them to look into reconstructive surgery and to talk, talk, talk about how they felt about losing part or all of their breasts.

And on a perfect, sun-dappled California morning in October, 2007, several of the women she helped were sprinkled around tables at a crowded breast cancer survivorship conference, watching Wendy gingerly make her way up to the podium to speak.

There were some among them wondering if Wendy would be able to maintain her newly mastered composure long enough to accept the great honor being bestowed upon her. It’s been a difficult decade for her. She’s had to learn to speak again. And feed herself and bathe and walk. Even now, twelve years after a massive stroke stole her hard-won independence - she struggles to remember basic facts about where she is going or how to turn her cell phone on. By her estimate, she’s only functioning at 80 percent of her old brain power. Even at that, however, she possesses a quick wit and the deep-seated empathy that made her a success so many years ago.

When Dr. John L., whose foundation holds the conference each year, invited her to accept the Pioneer Award as a tribute to her contribution to survivorship, he merely wanted to remind the audience of the people who blazed trails for them. He wanted to express his gratitude to Wendy for her contribution to his own success, which has been precipitated by the breast care center she helped him start in 1987, and has since been named “one of the top 10 breast centers in the United States.”

When he introduced her, in fact, he prepared the audience for a brief acceptance, not the show-stopper she had been famous for producing.

“Wendy is a fiery redhead,” he said, as she moved behind him, using her cane. “I’ve asked her to come back and receive this award because it is really well-deserved. This isn’t so easy for her to do with her neurological losses.”

Standing at the podium, Wendy asked Link to get her notes, which she left at the table in her haste to accept the award. All morning, old friends, patients and colleagues had been sweeping up to her table, gasping in recognition and then embracing her in the kind of hugs reserved for family reunions. They asked to have pictures taken with her. “This woman is my inspiration,” breathed one woman, tears streaming down her cheeks.

And when she stood before them, smiling broadly, they were holding their breath and waiting for her words to come; words that used to flow with breakthroughs and hope, humor and flirtation; words that spilled forth with the kind of ease that made it all so easy to believe that Wendy S. was more brilliant and beautiful and confident in her expertise than any of the myriad doctors attempting to shine a light into the dark caves of cancer. Put simply, she was able to convey hope for survivors everywhere.

It’s been a dozen years since she’s spoken professionally about breast cancer. And, despite the fact that pink ribbons adorn every soda can and water bottle in the building, no one in all these years has risen to take her place as the embodiment of breast cancer survivorship.

“I am particularly blessed be here today,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. She is still a fiery redhead. When a doctor joined her in a photo with another survivor earlier, she was audacious enough to call it a menage a trois, leaving the other two subjects gape-jawed when the flash went off. Trim and elegantly dressed in blue ultra-suede, she doesn’t bother with the notes she’s been working on for days.

“I am …delighted be alive and well,” she begins, her eyes scanning a little above the seated audience, just as she used to do. “I’ve now lived longer with breast cancer than without it.”

Her old friends do a double-take. This must be deja-vu. They remember the devastating muteness of the stroke, which they feared had ended her life, not simply her brilliant career. The newer survivors in the audience – those who missed the era when Wendy S. would have been one of the first names a woman heard when she was just diagnosed – were jolted to attention by the miracle of her long life.

“I wish I could do for stroke what I did for breast cancer, but I haven’t found my way yet,’’ she told them. “But I hope I will. Soon.”

Twenty years ago, Wendy was everywhere. She was on Good Morning America, talking about how breast implants helped her feel sexy again. She was addressing health professionals at the most prestigious venues in the world, including the Waldorf Astoria and the London College of Physicians, prodding them to draw their patients into treatment decisions as much as possible.

At physician’s conferences and health conventions across the country, she was the keynote speaker; the medical professional whose dazzling personal survival story dovetailed beautifully with the national push to make Americans take greater responsibility for their own health.

“You have the right to hire and fire your doctor,” she told a group of breast cancer patients in Monterey just months before her stroke. “You must be part of the decision-making process.”

Nor was her influence limited to cancer treatment. As a psychologist with a specialty in sex therapy, Wendy was still seeing clients and leading group therapy sessions during the week and even maintaining long-distance clients through telephone sessions. Her admiring contemporaries called her as a “fireball,” a “dynamo” and a “passionate woman.” For most of her adult life she had poured her soul into her work. Her public speaking and outreach was all-encompassing. The slideshow that accompanied her speeches – with its raw photos of mastectomy scars and botched reconstructions, was the epicenter of Wendy’s work; constantly under construction and improvement.

As her daughter Dara recalled, “She was out to save the world.”

But, more importantly, Wendy S. was out to save herself. Because each time she counseled a person about the loss of their breasts; each time she instructed a physician to listen with heart; each time she stepped up to the podium and held an audience rapt with her passionate call to action, she was reaching back through the decades, reliving each step of the terrible, inspiring journey that began one morning in a hospital room very similar to the California one she awoke and found herself in 30 years later.

In 1969, when she awoke with a sensation of being run over by an armored truck, its treads thick in her ribcage and shoulder; a part of her wanted to die. The feeling stayed with her all those years. At age 29, she didn’t have any options beyond the butchery then called mastectomy. And the options for recovery were this: get over it or die crying.

Wendy built her career on giving women better options, which is why Link acknowledged her in his 2004 bestselling “Breast Cancer Survival Guide” as “one of the two most influential women in breast cancer.”

Wendy’s influence during her two decades of passionate activism speaks to the larger movement of women in health care. Until the voices of the butchered emerged from utter silence, treatment remained brutal. Her success in changing the way breast cancer was treated illuminates the way that yet another structure that was for so long dominated by men was transformed during her lifetime; due in no small part to her intense sense of purpose.

The intensity is still there.

In the spring, when she got the invitation to come speak, she immediately signed up for a Powerpoint Class at her home in Rivendell Court, hoping that this speech might somehow resurrect some aspect of her once illustrious-career. It was – like Wendy in her prime – a bit ambitious. But as the conference drew nearer, her hope took a slightly different direction. Maybe, she hoped and prayed, if she could speak clearly about what she had been through, she would be able to finally find closure for yet another part of her life that had been unexpectedly, undeservedly and oh, so painfully amputated.

That was why, most of the way on the flight to the conference, Wendy studied her notes, which were handwritten, edited, re-written. They were wrinkled and careworn by the time she stepped to the podium this afternoon.



This work is copyrighted to A Novel Life. No portion of it may be used or reproduced without the expressed and written permission of A Novel Life.