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What she held onto

Facing cancer treatment, Newsday reporter Lauren Terrazzano armed herself with objects of hope and comfort

BY LAUREN TERRAZZANO | Newsday Staff Writer

March 6, 2006

On my way to the hospital in the inky darkness of a December morning, I stuffed a Bloomingdale's shopping bag full of the things I would carry into battle.

A pair of red boxing gloves. A rabbit's foot hunted down by the man I am going to marry. And a hand puppet that oddly resembled my surgeon, presented to him as a token of thanks before my operation, though neither of us could predict the outcome.

My journey to that moment had begun a few months earlier, on a brilliant August day, when I learned my diagnosis: lung cancer. The words echoed in my head. I was 36. The disease kills 70,000 women each year and is the leading cancer killer among men and women. It seemed unfair to me, of course, because I had been smoking for only five years. "So young," the nurses would whisper at one Boston hospital, when they thought I was out of earshot.

Street cops fold prayer cards in their hats to protect them from the unexpected dangers on the midnight shift. Japanese warriors once strapped ivory figurines called netsuke to their belts when going into battle. American soldiers sent to the booby-trapped jungles of Vietnam armed themselves with everything from love letters to illustrated Bibles when they went into war, as Tim O'Brien wrote in his book "The Things They Carried."

So, for my own booby-trapped battle, I also chose talismans, each of which had some particular meaning I didn't quite grasp at the moment but knew was important. Some were sacred objects from friends and family members - statues of saints and necklaces of jade. Other items were of the everyday variety - handwritten notes - that symbolized the friendships I had cemented at various points in my life.

Beyond the traditional medical weapons and doctors' plans, they were pretty much all I had. Today, most of the things sit on a shelf in my bedroom, underneath journalism awards I picked up in a career writing other people's sad stories.

The rabbit's foot was sought out by my fiance, who traveled to every magic and souvenir store in the West Village to find it, at my request, during the early days of my diagnosis. It had to be red, a symbol of good luck in Chinese culture. And it had to be a rabbit's foot because it reminded me of one given to me by my grandmother during childhood, the soft fur once comforting to the touch of small fingers.

I attached it to my keychain and brought it to doctors' appointments at Memorial Sloan- Kettering in Manhattan, holding it firmly at times as I sat in a waiting room designed to soothe the soul with its spread of teas and crackers and the sound of trickling water. But we were all anxious there, waiting. Nothing could soothe my soul. Yet somehow, it felt comforting to clutch the rabbit's foot.

Then there was the underwear. If you were going to get cancer, I reasoned with two of my best friends that day in Victoria's Secret, you had to have matching tops and bottoms for those endless doctors' appointments, emergency room visits and X-rays. We giggled at the absurdity of buying underwear for your potentially terminal illness. They were nothing fancy - simple black cotton or nylon. I kept them in a stash I called my "cancer collection."

As odd as it might sound, having the underwear taken care of provided the kind of predictability needed when life seemed to be in free-fall. When you have an illness that robs you of certainty, you set little goals for yourself, and give yourself little rewards. Getting out of bed in the morning and getting dressed before noon earned me the right, I believed, to watch television. And finishing a bowl of chicken soup earned me the cool pleasure of a Popsicle for dessert.

The doctor puppet would be another reward, if I could get through the chemotherapy, make it to surgery and present it to him. It wore green scrubs and had curly hair made of black yarn. My friend picked it up in a toy store in Huntington. In my mind's eye, it bore a resemblance to the physician who was going to put a scalpel to my chest.

The puppet stood sentry on my shelf for months as other doctors injected chemicals into my veins every three weeks with the hope of killing the cancer cells. The day of my surgery, I brought the puppet with me. In an anesthesia- induced haze, I told the surgeon to take it out of the shopping bag. He did so, and I saw him look at it with curiosity. He seemed to like it.

Packing a punch

For months, the cherry Everlast boxing gloves were tied to a doorknob in my kitchen. "You're a fighter," the card read, from my parents' best friends.

The gloves came with me as I staggered through each hospital stay, in both New York and Boston. My father brought them along as a quiet reminder that his only child was supposed to be tough. I didn't feel tough, as I became weaker by the day, and I developed infections because the chemicals had beaten down my immune system. Still, the gloves were there in my hospital room, either slung over a doorknob or strategically placed in my line of sight.

Throughout the battle, dozens of letters poured in from friends and colleagues, words written with the clarity people muster when they are afraid you will soon be gone. My mother read the cards and letters to me during treatment. Or at night before bed, when I was too sick to read them myself.

"Your stubbornness is one of your most endearing - and annoying - qualities. But I'm praying for your stubbornness," my boss wrote.

"Be strong. I am with you," a former colleague and friend scribbled on a card he sent with a plant. It had to be a joke. Didn't he know I killed houseplants? To my surprise, the plant is still alive. I guess he had faith I would help this one live. Or maybe that I would live.

As my long straight chestnut hair came out, first in strands and then in clumps in the shower, I got a haircut. One day, in a fit of anger, I took a scissors and lopped off what remained. Now, I was bald.

This became an opportunity for people to give me things that, as it turned out, gave me strength. First, someone offered me a Red Sox cap from Boston, where I was born. It was the team's miracle year, when they won the World Series in 2004. Maybe it could be mine?