What Can The Luckiest Lady Teach You About Cancer

Nancy Novack on My Best Healer Podcast, what an honor. She is a cancer survivor, psychologist, and mom. She said "I thought I had appendicitis. On April 29, 2004, I had pain on the right side of my belly that didn’t want to go away. I went to my internist who examined me and immediately sent me for a CT scan … whatever that was, I did not know.

The Diagnosis
In what seemed to be an interminably long time, she called me in and asked, “Do you want the good news or the bad news?”

“The good news.”
“You don’t have appendicitis.”
Wow! All right.
“Ready for the bad news?”
NO!
“You have stage 4 ovarian cancer. Your liver is two times its appropriate size, more like a small watermelon. Your right ovary is the size of a grapefruit.”

I said two now-remarkable things … “Thank goodness … it is not appendicitis! What is stage 5?”

I was swept away to Stanford to meet the oncologist who would save my life. When I entered the Comprehensive Cancer Center, I couldn’t breathe. This was the very moment that changed and defined the rest of my life.

My friends and family soon arrived at my bedside. They came from all over the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California. That was very nice.

True to the nature of a high-powered teaching hospital, every medical student, oncologist, their fellows, and seemingly every person in the Western world also arrived at my bedside to poke and probe. That was not so nice.

The Oncologist Who Walks on Water..........

Learning to Trust
I began to finally understand what it means to trust. I trusted him implicitly. I never ever felt alone.

The Will to Live

I was blessed to meet Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., who became my mentor and my friend.

My oncologist saved my body. Rachel saved my soul.

Community Call-to-Action
And then, the vision morphed.

I placed clipboards around the room with such things as

I will walk your dog.
I will drive you to your medical treatment.
I will bring fresh food.
I will tutor your kids.

I Am With You: Love Letters to Cancer Patients
I love that she is calling herself "I am the luckiest lady in the world" … I know it. It is a joy to be Stanford’s poster child. I am extremely grateful.

I am with you, Dr. Nancy Novack.

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