Everybody's Got Something

by Roberts, Robin

  The five of us as a team had an undeniable chemistry, and we consistently started chipping away at the Today show. What you see is what you get on our show, and our affection and energy in the morning is real. We really like one another, have fun with one another and respect one another. The audience could sense that. Sam, Josh, Lara and I hung out together a lot after work. George would join us occasionally, but he has two young girls at home he wanted to spend time with.

  There’s a rush to playing from behind, in seeing the gap shrink week after week. We could feel the audience begin to shift and follow us more and more. We all brought something different to the table. George Stephanopoulos is the grown-up. He’s very buttoned-up, but even he began to loosen up a bit without losing the essence of who he is. Sam Champion has a booming laugh but is serious and compassionate when out in the field covering storms, tornadoes, hurricanes. Josh Elliott is the tall, handsome jock, who melts when talking about his precious little daughter. Lara “I Brake For Yard Sales” Spencer is a bundle of energy who has perfected the art of covering pop news. I am often referred to as being the heart and soul of GMA. I’m serious when need be but not afraid to show emotion and empathy. When I’m asked why we have been so successful the last few years, my response always is the same: It’s because of the team in front of and behind the camera. The audience can tell we truly like each other, and we make others feel good, too. Our goal has remained the same: to produce the best possible program each and every morning.

  The morning of April 19, 2012, was like any other, except that after the show I had plans to meet Amber and have a follow-up appointment with the MDS specialist. I was nervous; I still didn’t fully understand what MDS was. But at the same time, I was eager to see him again and get more information. Work can be a great distraction when you’re in the early stages of diagnosis. I said a prayer before jumping out of the car and let the day come at me.

  I arrived at the studio in my sweats that morning and the first people I saw were our security team: Rich, Tony, Annie and Walter. Sometimes, especially if we are having popular stars on the show, a crowd is already waiting outside at five in the morning. They get a kick out of seeing me with no makeup and bed head.

  I headed right to my dressing room. My assistant, Sonny Mullen, waited for me, along with Elena and Petula. My control room producer of three years, Emily O’Donnell, came in a short time later and reviewed the segments of the show with me. Emily graduated from Emerson College in 2005, a writing major and journalism minor. She related to my health struggles, because all four of her aunts on her father’s side have had mastectomies. While Team Beauty worked its magic and Emily ran down what lay ahead in that morning’s show, I thumbed through six newspapers: the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, the New York Post and the Daily News. It felt good to be at work; it took my mind off my upcoming doctor’s appointment.

  I don’t meditate as much as I’d like to, but there’s a way that the hum and the buzz of a morning TV show forces you to be in the moment and makes you feel profoundly connected to the world around you. If I had been in another line of work, I might well have found myself at 5:30 a.m. in my PJs, Googling MDS and saying, “Woe is me. Woe is me.” Reading the newspaper, listening to Elena and Petula talk and getting ready to greet the show’s special guests helped me connect to how much I love my life and my work. I didn’t know what this diagnosis meant for my future. The truth is, tomorrow is not promised to any of us. But as I sat in my chair, I said a prayer of appreciation for all the wonderful people whom I work with, all the people who help me do what I love to do best: wish a good morning to America.

  Our executive producer, Tom Cibrowski, came to my dressing room around 5:45 that morning to go over last-minute changes. Lori Stokes, morning anchor at WABC, was still on the air at that time. She has such great style. Sometimes what she’s wearing helps inspire my outfit for the day. After Tom’s check-in, I quickly got dressed and ate a little something. I’m not really a coffee drinker, but I did eat a boiled egg before the show (not the yolk). Then I took a banana with me to the set to nibble on during breaks.

  We had a good show put together for that day. Cuba Gooding Jr. came on and talked about his inspiring new TV movie, Firelight. The cast of The Avengers came on. Superheroes in the studio! A great Nashville band, the Civil Wars, were performing, fresh off their double Grammy win for Best Country Duo and Best Folk Album. Every year I host a country music special—it’s a little-known fact that I used to DJ a country music show in the early days of my career—so I was excited to see them play. One of the many things I appreciate about working at GMA is that no two days are the same. I’ve always had various interests, and being at GMA allows me to indulge my many passions. I’m as comfortable talking about politics as I am about sports. I feel at home everywhere, from the Country Music Association Awards to the ESPYs and everything in between. Maybe it’s because as a proud military brat I grew up all over the world, in different cultures and meeting people from all walks of life.

  Soon it was showtime. I popped in the main makeup room across the hall to briefly chat with Josh Elliott and Sam Champion. Always good for a laugh or two. Then I headed down the hall to check in with my girl Lara Spencer. It helps to know what we’re each wearing. Want to make sure we’re dressed for the same party, so to speak. George was behind his closed office door prepping for the show. Don’t blame him at all; the hustle and bustle in the hall can be distracting. A humongous elevator took me from the second-floor dressing rooms down to the set where the anchors sit when we open the show…aka “home base.”

  Every morning, before I walk onto the set, I blow a kiss skyward and I say, “Morning, Daddy, watch over Momma.” Then I go to home base and begin my day. My father passed away in 2004, so the crew has seen me do this for almost a decade.

  There have been a handful of times that the morning schedule has gotten disrupted because of breaking news or an unexpected guest, and I’m rushed out to the set and the crew starts yelling, “No, no! You’ve got to go back! You’ve got to go back!” And Angie, our stage manager, whispers to the control room, “Give Robin two seconds.”

  I didn’t even notice at first that other people were observing me greet my father and blow him a kiss. But now they look for me to do it. So on the rare occasion when I forget, I rush backstage, look up to the heavens and say good morning to my father.

  After greeting my dad, I walked onto the set with a big smile on my face. The usual controlled chaos, as we call it, was comforting. Stagehands who had already been hard at work for hours milled about. I did cut-ins for local morning shows in Detroit, Pittsburgh and New York. It was business as usual that morning. No time to contemplate the uncertainty of my upcoming doctor’s appointment. Or to reflect on all that scary stuff I read on the Internet. I was alive. I was doing what I loved. I had the privilege and honor of being welcomed into living rooms across the country. It was a good morning.

  That morning, after we completed the 8:30 hellos at GMA, we were walking back into the studio and our senior executive producer, Tom Cibrowski, said in my earpiece, “I want to tell you first. We did it. It’s official. The numbers are in and we won.” I just started pumping my fist and saying, “Yes, yes, yes!” I didn’t know whether to yell it out loud or wait for Tom to whisper it into the others’ ears. I decided to wait and once we all knew, George, Lara, Sam, Josh and I started jumping up and down like little schoolkids.

  Yes, even the reserved George Stephanopoulos.

  We went back into the studio and we still had twenty minutes of the show to do. We finished the show, and then there was a big celebration in the studio. We were all hugged up. From there we headed to our main office to have a champagne toast. For one blissful moment, I wasn’t thinking about my doctor’s appointment later that morning. There, in that newsroom, looking at all of those faces. I felt so proud of our team. I told the entire ABC News division this was not just about the show, “If you’ve ever
answered a phone for GMA or cut a piece of tape, I don’t care if it was yesterday or 852 weeks ago, you’re a part of this. This is just as much about you as it is about the five of us.” I wanted everyone to feel a part of the victory, because they were.

  I remember Jeffrey Schneider, head of PR at ABC, wanted me to do some more press. I said, “Don’t get me wrong, I’m really excited. But there’s something I’ve got to do.”

  I left the champagne toast at the office near Lincoln Center and picked Amber up at her Hell’s Kitchen apartment.

  Then we drove to my doctor’s office on the Upper East Side. We really didn’t say much in the car. We were both apprehensive about what the doctor might say. This was the first oncologist that I saw whose specialty was MDS.

  It was such a pendulum swing of emotion. I had always imagined how I would feel once GMA became number one. I pictured being euphoric, literally dancing in the streets. But I was just numb. It took us about twenty-five minutes to get to the doctor’s office. The waiting room was full, so the receptionist kindly allowed us to wait in the doctor’s office. He was running late. We waited for him in his small, cluttered office for about thirty minutes. All of that waiting. Pure agony.

  Finally, he came in and slumped in the chair behind his desk. He looked tired and he opened a bottle of Diet Coke for himself, commenting about the need for caffeine. I didn’t mention that I’d been up since 3:45 a.m.

  Amber and I were both on the edge of our chairs directly across from him. I appreciated that he didn’t talk just to me but to Amber as well, making sure that she felt a part of the conversation and process. “So myelodysplastic syndrome, what does that even mean?” he began. “Well, myelo is bone marrow. Most people don’t even know what the bone marrow is other than that they might have eaten it as osso buco in an Italian restaurant. Most people don’t know what the bone marrow does, so the first thing we talk about is, the bone marrow is a very important organ. You need your heart, you need your brain, you need your lungs and you need your bone marrow. Your bone marrow makes blood cells. It makes the white blood cells that fight infection, and it makes red blood cells that carry around oxygen and it makes platelets—little tiny cells that help you clot. So when we’re talking about the bone marrow, we’re talking about your body’s ability to make the three blood cells that give you life. If your bone marrow doesn’t work, you’ve got problems with the production of these three life-saving cell lines.”

  Amber and I looked at each other as if we’d just been dropped into a med school biology class and neither one of us had read the books or reviewed the notes. We were following along, but just barely.

  The doctor could tell that we didn’t really understand the severity of my condition. It was as if he thought, “Maybe this will get your attention.” He put my stats and test results in a computer. There was a graph showing one year and two years with a dot in the middle. He turned the computer screen so Amber and I could see the dot.

  I asked, “What’s that?”

  At first, I thought I had one to two years to do something about what I was facing.

  He said, “That’s your life expectancy if you don’t do anything.”

  One to two years? That was my life expectancy? It couldn’t be. Just moments before I was drinking champagne with my colleagues, celebrating a victory that had been years in the making. It was as if I were looking at my life through a kaleidoscope. One moment it was all bright confetti, the next moment it was just a sliver of light bursting through clouds of darkness.

  Once it had sunk in, I kicked into warrior mode. I leaned forward and slapped my fists on his desk and said: “Okay, what do we do?”

  The specialist said, “The only possible cure is a bone marrow transplant.”

  I remember hearing that word cure, and I hung on to that sliver of hope for all it was worth. There was a chance we could defeat this, game over. A chance was all I needed.

  Chapter 5

  Celebrate the Now

  After the appointment, I dropped Amber off at her apartment and headed home. I needed time alone to digest the news. I’d just been told that I had less than two years to live if I didn’t have a transplant. In order to have a transplant, I needed to find a near-perfect match. I had no idea what that would entail.

  I was so relieved to enter the refuge that is my apartment. KJ greeted me exuberantly, and I hugged her back. Good news or bad, number one or number 101, she has nothing but love for me. I sat on the sofa next to my big picture window and looked out onto the Hudson River. One of the first things that came to mind was my dear friend, the legendary college basketball coach, Pat Summitt.

  The first time I met Pat was in 1987, when I was a cub TV sports reporter down the road in Nashville. Her University of Tennessee Lady Vols had just won their first NCAA championship. It was the beginning of a history-making streak that made Pat the all-time winningest coach in NCAA basketball history, man or woman. Pat and I have been good friends ever since. In 2011, at the age of fifty-nine, Pat was diagnosed with early onset dementia linked to Alzheimer’s disease. She said at the time: “There’s not going to be any pity party and I’ll make sure of that.” She went on to coach the Lady Vols the following season and then stepped aside, and she is now head coach emeritus. The way she has faced her illness with such grace and strength is admirable. She is still teaching us all invaluable lessons.

  Every time I see Pat, I wonder, “Is this the time she won’t remember me?” But I know that I will never forget the many things she has taught me, including this: When you are down and you don’t know how to pick yourself up, start where you are. I can hear Pat’s voice saying the words in my head, “Left foot, right foot, breathe.”

  Left foot, right foot, breathe could describe my entire life the spring of 2012. Even after meeting with the doctor and receiving that devastating news, I didn’t have much time to sit with the news of my diagnosis. I had about an hour, then I needed to change clothes to attend the wake of the mother of my longtime producer, Karen Leo. Her mother had passed away from cancer. At the viewing, Karen was so appreciative that many of us were there to support her. She knew this was a big day for our show, but we are family first, and we were there when Karen needed us. I was not the only one on an emotional roller coaster on the day that our show became number one. Karen had to orchestrate her dear mother’s homegoing service. I mean, truly—we’ve all got something.

  After the wake, I went back home to change for the big party the network was throwing to celebrate our win. Number one for the first time after 852 weeks. I was fried. I could hardly believe my day: number one, MDS, Karen’s mom, GMA party. I put on some skinny jeans and my favorite jean jacket lined with Hermès silk. The GMA party was only a few buildings down from my apartment on the same street overlooking the Hudson River.

  When I got downstairs, Sam, Josh and Lara were standing at the front door of my apartment building. I was so excited to see them! I thought that maybe somehow they all realized what I’d been going through and they were there to comfort me and escort me to the party down the street. Welllll…actually they were a little tipsy from celebrating and they were lost. We had a good laugh and walked arm in arm down the street to our rooftop party. People stopped us along the way and congratulated us.

  It was a gorgeous April evening on the rooftop. I remember I just held my breath for a moment as I took in the brilliance of the early springtime sun setting over the Hudson. Our house DJ, the one and only DJ Kiss, was spinning the best dance tunes. Everyone was so incredibly happy. We finally did it. We finally broke the streak and beat the Today show after 852 weeks. Sam and I did the limbo…how low can you go?!

  I almost told Ben Sherwood, the president of ABC News, on that rooftop what I had learned just hours ago. I almost took him aside and said, “I have MDS. If I don’t find a match, I have less than two years to live.” But seeing his smiling face, listening to the booming beats of one of the best dance parties I have ever been to, I couldn’t do it. How
could I? I was looking at him, beaming, proud—and rightly so—of all we were able to accomplish under his leadership. I couldn’t dampen all that joy with my dire news.

  I looked around at the team. We have such a hardworking and young staff, especially the overnight shift. They are the ones who in the wee hours are putting the final touches on the show while we sleep. Many of them had to leave the party early to get back to work, but not before we took picture after picture on that magical rooftop.

  Before I left the party, I stole a few moments for myself. I walked over to the quieter end of the rooftop and just took in each and every person, the warmth and hope on all of their jubilant faces. This was a moment that they had dreamed of, too. It wasn’t how I had imagined it would be, secretly sitting with my heartbreaking news, but I prayed it was for every one of them. Thank God I could say that I had truly enjoyed the journey, because if I had saved all of my joy for the destination, I would have missed it. We are all so focused on getting “there,” but you have to be careful. Sometimes, I sense a lot of times, “there” ends up feeling different than you expected.

  It was difficult not to let my mind wander. If I found myself on that rooftop becoming depressed, I realized that I was living in the past. If I started to become anxious, I knew it was because I was living in the future. I was truly only at peace living in the present.

  It was then that I looked to the heavens and thanked the good Lord that he had allowed me to live long enough to see this special moment. I then quietly left the party early, silently chanting to myself like a little schoolkid:

  We’re number 1, yay!

  We’re number 1, okay?

  What did you say? Hey!

  We’re number 1, yay!