A Lucky Life Interrupted

by Tom Brokaw

  We were closing fast and I wanted to say something cheerful, but as we passed I realized I couldn’t tell whether the shrunken figure was a man or a woman. I tried to make eye contact but he or she was staring blankly at the passing wall, and then was gone.

  I am seldom at a loss for words, but no comments in passing would be worthy.

  Cancer is such a vicious disease that it can rob us of even small moments of humanity. Whatever self-pity was within me drained away. I swallowed hard, teared up, and leaned against the wall for a moment as I made my way to the Velcade start, grateful that my prognosis seemed to be better than my ghostly corridor companion’s.

  These cancer-patient-to-cancer-patient encounters are not unusual. A contemporary, Bill Theodore, was in treatment for lung cancer, getting his chemo through a port in his chest that allowed him to wander the hospital corridors, pushing his IV stand along. He paused to peer into a room where a much younger patient was working at a computer. The young man was gaunt, pale as an albino, and hairless. Bill heard his inner voice say, “Bill, at least you’ve had a life.”

  —

  With the addition of Velcade to my drug diet I was scheduled to get four subcutaneous injections, one a week for a month along with my twice-a-day Revlimid dosage. It is the pharmaceutical equivalent of chemotherapy carpet bombing. Here, we hope, they are life-giving, not -taking.

  The weekly Velcade injection put me back in the hands of the real worker bees of the healthcare system, the nurses. They swept into my cubicle in pairs—the Jesuit-educated daughter of a New York fireman and the young Iowan who was supporting her husband’s hope of making it as a stand-up comic in New York; the expectant mother and the Long Island commuter; the willowy blonde training for the New York City Marathon.

  We chatted about movies, kids, and nurse’s training while they moved swiftly through the steps.

  “Name and birthdate?”

  “Tom Brokaw, two six four oh.”

  One nurse would read the code off the prescription while the other checked the match on an electronic monitor.

  “Where this time, Mr. Brokaw? Abdomen?”

  Yes, that seems to be working. Earlier in the day I would silently offer the veins on my left forearm for the blood extraction and testing that would determine if the Velcade could go forward.

  Following kyphoplasty I felt the need for a more vigorous rehabilitation regimen, so I transferred to the Hospital for Special Surgery Sports Rehabilitation and Performance Center, internationally known for its work with world-class athletes and wannabes like me.

  Polly de Mille and Rob DiGiacomo soon had me walking in a pool against an activated current, balancing on an electronic plate to determine my equilibrium, standing on a single leg to strengthen balance and muscle mass. They sent me home with instructions on how to advance my fitness on yoga mats and balance boards. I welcomed their systematic, sports-oriented approach and soon began to feel there was a chance of returning to old form.

  Gratefully, Velcade seemed to work quickly. Back pain was reduced dramatically, no side effects appeared after two doses, and Meredith and I were able to join friends on Virgin Gorda, in the sunny Caribbean.

  No one deserved that more than Meredith, who loves the sunshine of tropical climes. While she swam daily in the surf I waded in the pool, frustrated that my kyphoplasty prohibited one of my favorite activities, saltwater swimming. All the specialists agreed the healing had to advance before I could expose the spine to the twists required for effective stroking.

  It was our first real escape from New York since September, and with an eclectic collection of companions, from rear admirals and Navy SEALs to liberal columnists and London editors, we dished and laughed and drank and ate.

  Until the third day, when my office emailed that TVNewser, one of the digital sites dedicated to the serious and frivolous developments in broadcast journalism, was inquiring: “We hear Tom Brokaw has multiple myeloma and we’d like a reaction.”

  I had a standby response, which I swiftly transmitted to my bosses, saving a personal coda for the end. It was time. I was tired of the deception game and if it had to get out, better on my terms.

  My two immediate bosses, Pat Fili-Krushel and Deborah Turness, released a statement confirming that late last summer I had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma during an examination at the Mayo Clinic.

  They were generous in their description of my role at NBC News, pointing out that I had been working on a variety of NBC News projects, including the JFK documentary, making appearances on Today, NBC Nightly News, Meet the Press, and MSNBC as well as contributing reports to the NBC Sports coverage of the Sochi Olympics.

  For my part, I said, “With the exceptional support of my family, medical team and friends, I am very optimistic about the future and look forward to continuing my life, my work and adventures still to come,” adding, “I remain the luckiest guy I know,” concluding with a hope that everyone would understand that I wished to keep this a private matter.

  The announcement went viral, another manifestation of the desperate need of blogs and websites for material, any kind of material, especially material with a well-known name as a headline. Almost all, so far as I could tell, played it straight.

  One of my home-state newspapers printed the news in “going to war”–size fonts.

  Brian Williams, who had known of my condition for a while, delivered the news on his nightly broadcast from Sochi during the Winter Olympics, signaling my optimistic outlook with, “In an email tonight Tom mentioned at least the possibility of joining the Springsteen tour in Australia just to give Bruce a bump of some added publicity.”

  It was our small joke. I’m a fan and Brian is a close friend of The Boss.

  Even with the residue of an anchorman’s ego, I was unprepared for the flood tide of emails, phone calls, printed notes, and third-party good wishes and “thinking of you.”

  Cousins from the North Dakota branch of the Brokaws volunteered as bone marrow donors, a very difficult procedure, thankfully not required in my case. The offer alone was a welcome tonic. Friends from grade and high school checked in, some of whom I had not been in touch with for sixty years. Others dealing with MM volunteered their doctors and drug regimens.

  President Obama and President Bush 41 sent notes. So did Nancy Reagan. President Clinton called, urging me to be in touch with a doctor-entrepreneurial friend who is doing breakthrough work on the genome project. Cardinal Dolan of the New York diocese wrote a warm, personal letter, saying he would remember me in his prayers. I wrote back that to be in his prayers and those of Sister Lucille Socciarelli, whom I had inherited happily from Tim Russert, would put me on a fast track.

  I had a heartfelt email from Charles Barkley, the former NBA star and now basketball commentator, from his studio covering the college basketball playoffs.

  We first met at a Super Bowl many years ago and he always calls me “Mr. B” and asks about children who were with me at the time.

  One of the many privileges of being a national journalist for a half century is the opportunity to roam across so many parts of the American political, cultural, geographic, and socioeconomic landscape. Along the way I seemed to have made some friends, and it was emotionally gratifying to know they still feel connected to me or the work I’ve done. It was also reassuring to see that the ideological divides in the country can disappear under the right circumstances. In my reporting and commentary I draw fire from both ends. Yet over the years I’ve developed cordial professional relationships with prominent Tea Party commentators, Fox News luminaries, and outspoken pundits on the left with whom I’ve had disagreements. Sympathetic and welcome notes came from that wide spectrum.

  One exchange that will linger: I had gone on Jon Stewart’s show to promote the JFK documentary without telling Jon I was on chemo, fighting cancer. When the news came out he emailed me, “You are one tough son of a bitch.”

  I replied, “Jon, I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to troub
le you with my condition.”

  He wrote right back: “You can’t be Jewish. I would trouble you if I had gas!”

  I think that one goes in the file with the Obama, Bush, and Nancy Reagan notes.

  I cherish a letter from a favorite colleague, the indestructible Sam Donaldson of ABC News. He’s a cancer survivor—melanoma—and he welcomed me to the club. He recalled working with his ABC colleague Judd Rose on a cancer documentary and the question got around to “Why me?” Both were at the peak of their glamorous profession, popular and famous, highly paid, veterans of war and Washington scandal reporting. How dare cancer intervene?

  An enduring story about Sam is that during a long, grueling presidential trip overseas the rest of the White House press corps was collapsed in a hotel lobby at 1:00 A.M. when Sam came charging through, throwing off commentary and needling the exhausted before retreating to his room to prepare for the day shift.

  Someone asked, “What would Sam have done if they hadn’t invented television?” Marty Schram of Newsday yawned and answered, “He would have gone door-to-door.”

  When familiar broadcasters write you can still hear their voice, and in his letter to me Sam’s commanding style came through as he reflected on what good fortune we’ve both had doing what we love, and how his cancer diagnosis caused him to reflect on what he had come to take for granted.

  Sam and Judd were moving from their fifties into a sixth decade. Judd settled the discussion by giving what for Sam was the only possible answer: “Why not me?”

  Sam shared the story of another Washington correspondent, same age, who appeared to have terminal cancer until he went to the well-regarded Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida. Moffitt found a match for a bone marrow transplant and the veteran correspondent has gone from counting the days to enjoying a new life. As Sam observed, there are other applications for “Why not me?,” including the bold treatment that works.

  Moffitt’s reputation in the world of cancer treatment is excellent and there was a time not so long ago when we would have known about that through physician referral or a friend’s experience. Now Moffitt has a new outlet: It is boldly advertised on the space behind the batter’s box at the televised major league games of the Tampa Bay Rays.

  Sam’s letter was generous in other ways, a reminder to me that now is the time, cancer or no cancer, to tighten the bonds with those I care for and drift away from those on the margins. Love as an expression of genuine sentiment can be easily cheapened—Love ya, babe!—but not if both parties cherish the relationship. In notes to certain friends, male and female, I wanted them to know that the signoff “Love” was not just a way to end the message.

  There were other reminders that my life on the merry-go-round was slowing.

  In the fall of 2013 I heard that my old colleague Garrick Utley was having serious health problems. I emailed him and didn’t hear back for two weeks. Then, the jarring response. He had been homebound for two years with acute prostate cancer, drained of energy and, reading between the lines, hope. He said his wife, Gertje, a brilliant art historian, was keeping him alive. One more strong woman dedicating her life to the man she loved at a time when he needed it most.

  Garrick and I were friendly generational rivals within NBC News. He broke through first, becoming Saigon bureau chief during the dominant days of The Huntley-Brinkley Report while I was making my way up the ladder in the California bureau. He was born to the role of journalist of the old school. His parents were both prominent Chicago journalists and active in the arts and civic affairs. Garrick studied in Europe after graduation from Carleton College and with a linguist’s ear became fluent in French, German, and Russian. He developed a lifelong love of opera.

  I admired his commitment to and ease in the international arena and he was among the first to congratulate me for writing The Greatest Generation, an extension, he said, of my feel for Main Street America. We moved in different circles socially but stayed intermittently connected until the last years of his life.

  He died at age seventy-four in February 2014. When I received the call late one evening at a Mayo Clinic board meeting in Phoenix, it was not a surprise and yet I was emotionally shaken. He was one more reminder of the mortality zone I now occupy. We shared so much hope and adventure as young men and now this.

  Relying on memory, I dictated an obit to the Today show, thinking as I would not have just a year ago, “Same age, shared experiences, good lives and then, and then…”

  We both flourished in different spheres, coming from what I always assumed were distinctly different backgrounds. That is, until I took my mother back to her South Dakota homestead twenty years ago and visited the Conley family plot in a small cemetery along the Milwaukee Road railroad tracks that brought so many early settlers onto the prairie.

  The markers with the Conley name were side by side with others bearing the name Garrick. I remarked on the coincidence to Mother and she said, “Oh, didn’t I tell you? They were Garrick Utley’s grandparents.”

  When I shared this with Garrick he was as surprised as I had been, explaining that his mother left South Dakota in the twenties to attend Stanford and then moved into the intellectual circles of Chicago.

  It is an American story of westward migration and upward mobility, from the grassland to the great events of the latter half of the twentieth century for two young men with common roots, distinctive and different upbringings, journalistic passions, and the good fortune to be in the right place at the right time.

  At his memorial service I shared my first memory of him as a rising NBC News correspondent. We were told he spoke three languages and loved opera. I was unsettled by that news because I was still trying to master English and my music tastes ran more to Fats Domino, Chet Baker, and the Mamas and the Papas.

  I then recalled a magical night in 1968. Meredith was with me as I was returning from a reporting trip to Europe. We stopped in Paris and Garrick invited us to dinner at a small, quintessential Parisian café on the Île de la Cité in the middle of the Seine. It was just before Christmas and when we finished the meal we emerged to a soft snowfall that might have been lifted off a canvas by Monet. Notre Dame, bathed in muted light, was at our back as we three, all of twenty-eight years old, walked back to the George V Hotel for a nightcap.

  I’ve been to Paris many times since, often for grand occasions, but no evening will ever measure up to that one. Our ancestors buried side by side on the South Dakota prairie could not have imagined the possibilities for their grandchildren.

  That shared life span made Garrick’s death more emotionally difficult than I would have imagined before my own first flashing light, that computer-screen readout in a small Mayo Clinic physician’s office warning of mortality.

  We had the glory years and then were ambushed by the cancer years.

  By the third week of February I was feeling much better, perhaps a result of the addition of the Velcade. My back pain diminished considerably, still there but more a tweak than a spasm. I was eager to get the results of a twin regimen of Velcade and the original drug, Revlimid. In one month I’d had spinal compression fractures cemented by kyphoplasty, added another high-powered chemotherapy drug, and doubled my testosterone supplement. Something should work.

  First, however, Meredith had to get through her own ordeal.

  Never a complainer, she had been anxious about pain in her left shoulder. An MRI revealed a substantial bone spur, and there would be no relief without surgery. After an hour in the OR, her surgeon described the spur as “epic,” saying he couldn’t believe she had not been complaining more. Guess he doesn’t see many cowgirl-tough patients on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

  Shoulder injuries and repairs are notoriously aggravating, making it difficult to sleep, or to get through a day. The patient is almost permanently hooked up to an icing machine for the first week.

  In typical stoic fashion Meredith soldiered on with some help from me and our longtime home manager, the estimable
Goldine Nicholas. We attached Meredith to the icing machine and helped arrange the sleeping conditions, stood back, and waited for the complaints related to what every shoulder injury veteran says is deep pain.

  Not a whimper, except when I accidently bumped her wounds while changing a dressing. She quietly threatened to have me replaced.

  That would not do. I needed the job mostly because I needed to be with her, always, in whatever condition.

  I began telling callers we were running a MASH unit without the benefit of Alan Alda’s sardonic wit.

  There were some advantages. Confined to quarters, planning the evening meal became a more elaborate process. Deciding what to watch—House of Cards on Netflix or a DVD of 12 Years a Slave as a warmup for the Oscars telecast.

  Spending more time in front of the television set gave me new insights into mass marketing. First, no one in any commercial seems to be unhappy or angry, whatever the circumstances. A neighbor trimming a tree drops a huge limb onto your car parked in your driveway, totally wrecking it. In real life the car owner would go ballistic, reaching for a baseball bat to give chase to the chainsaw misfit, screaming obscenities. Or he’d show up with a platoon of lawyers prepared to sue the neighbor for everything he has.

  But in TV Commercial–land, the aggrieved party is next seen with a friendly insurance agent, smiling happily about what he is sure will be a swift and appropriate settlement.

  Right.

  If obesity is a national epidemic, has anyone calculated the number of calories represented in a day of fast-food commercials? It is one gut bomb after another, dripping with layers of bacon, cheese, ground beef, fried jalapeño peppers, cheerily consumed by slim models who treat these caloric megatons as if they were an aphrodisiac.

  I am not a food scold. I believe in individual choice, not mandated restrictions, but if the liquor and beer companies are expected to remind consumers about responsible drinking, if advertisements for over-the-counter or prescription drugs are required to list all the possible side effects, why not expect fast-food companies to list the calories in the sandwiches they advertise as if they are the elixir of life?