Everybody's Got Something

  At the end of my first week back, Michelle Obama came to the studio for an interview. It was great to see her. She looked fab as usual with her new bangs. Petula had picked out a hairpiece with bangs when I returned to GMA, but it looked too much like Mrs. Obama—I didn’t want people to think I was copying her. So unlike when I had breast cancer, this time I decided to forgo the wig.

  The interview with Mrs. Obama went well; it centered around her health initiative with kids. Master chef Marcus Samuelsson was also part of the interview. He is a genius in the kitchen.

  After the interview we headed to the airport to travel to LA for the Oscars.

  It was the first time I’d traveled that far after the transplant. I was a little nervous about being on the Red Carpet with so many people. But mentally I knew it would be a tremendous boost. One year ago at the Oscars I knew something wasn’t right, and here I was, back again at the Oscars. Almost like staring down MDS and saying, “You didn’t beat me!”

  I had a limited role on the Red Carpet special. I wore a velvet cobalt-blue Marc Bouwer creation. The year before he dressed me in a slinky, white sequined gown. I found out at the last moment I would be able to return to the Oscars. And Marc came through for me. I interviewed Robert De Niro and his lovely wife, Grace, on the Red Carpet. I also chatted up the glamorous and talented Halle Berry. She was rockin’ a gown worthy of being a Bond Girl. It was a chance to thank her for the long camel cashmere robe she sent me. Disclaimer: I thought it was a long sweater. It was just so beautiful, I assumed it was meant to be worn out. Amber, who is much more fashion savvy than I, thankfully pointed out to me that it was actually a robe.

  Sometimes people would caution me, not my doctors, but my friends and coworkers. They would say, “You’re doing too much. You’re doing too much.”

  I just wanted to say, “Oh, people, come on,” because inevitably they would refer back to someone they loved and an illness they had. They would say, “When my son or daughter _____ [fill in the blank] went through this…”

  Everyone’s different. I just know, for me, it wasn’t so much a goal of “I want to be back in that anchor chair.” It was more: I wanted to be well enough to return to my job, to the things that I love to do, to the places that I love to go, to the people that I love to spend time with. It was really that simple.

  In hindsight, traveling to New Orleans and Mississippi, to Key West and then to LA for the Oscars in the five months after my transplant was a bit ambitious, but that’s still the only speed I know—full steam ahead. I didn’t go through all I did to sit on the sidelines—I wanted back in the game! Put me in, coach, I’m ready to play. Or so I thought.

  Chapter 29

  Noncompliant

  It was early April, Final Four weekend, which meant Key West. My first vacation after my return to work. I had just filled in for Kelly Ripa on Live! with Kelly and Michael. I adore Kelly and Michael Strahan is the bomb diggity. He plays “Lovely Day” by Bill Withers in his dressing room before the show. It certainly is a lovely day with Kelly and Michael. I wasn’t feeling that well when Amber and I headed to Key West. Usually when we land, we hop in our rented convertible, cruise Duval Street and then stop at the gas station and pick up Dion’s Fried Chicken. But I was feeling so bad I just wanted to crawl into bed. Amber kept trying to get me to go to the doctor. I said, “No, no, no. I don’t want to ruin your vacation. I don’t want to ruin my vacation. I’m not sick. I’ll be fine. It will pass. It will pass.”

  But it didn’t pass. Beth, one of my friends from Atlanta who also is one of the owners of our home in Key West, got to town a few days later. Like Amber, she was worried. I had brutal coughing spells. My toes would even curl and cramp, because I was just coughing so hard. I lost a lot of weight, went down to a rail-thin 115 pounds. A friend of Beth’s, Kim, flew in from Seattle to join us. We all grabbed a bite to eat in town and rode our bikes back home, as we always did. Kim and I made it back first, I doubled over coughing. Kim simply said: “I really don’t know you, but you shouldn’t mess with your lungs.” Amber and Beth had been after me for days, but a virtual stranger finally got my attention.

  Tom Cibrowski, my executive producer, called me in Key West. I could barely put two words together without coughing. He immediately called Rich Besser, who called Gail Roboz. I had been e-mailing with Gail but not actually talking with her. She called me and asked what in the heck was going on. She could hear the difficulty I was having breathing and insisted I go see a doctor right away. Beth has been going to Key West much longer than I and is the honorary mayor there. She made some quick calls and got me in to see a doctor. We had no idea even where the hospital was in Key West, but we managed to find it. Everyone there could not have been nicer. They drew my blood and took chest X-rays. In our bathing suits we waited for the results. The doctor brought me and Amber into his office and called Gail. Even I could see how cloudy my chest X-ray was. I had “walking pneumonia” and needed to get back to NYC ASAP.

  It was a bit of a mad scramble to fly out of Key West and back to my hospital in New York. Dr. Giralt and Dr. Roboz made alternate arrangements for me to be treated in Miami, just in case. By the time I arrived in New York, I literally crawled down the hall of the emergency room. I was just waving the white flag and saying, “Okay. Okay. Okay.”

  At one point, I was just so angry. I feared that my illness was much worse than my doctors were letting on. I’d heard so much about your body rejecting the graft, the dreaded graft-versus-host disease. I feared my body was rejecting Sally’s cells and that my medical team was keeping something from me. Dr. Giralt and Dr. Roboz let me know, in no uncertain terms, that they wouldn’t hide important information from me and that moreover, there was nothing to hide. Dr. Roboz said, “It’s just that these viruses are very painful and not a lot of fun. No, everything else is fine.” I just had to start believing that it would be okay, and I did, slowly.

  My illness in April was a real hurdle. But I have no regrets about going back to work when I did. I know it was very important for me—emotionally and psychologically—at that moment. Yes. I could have stayed at home and the illness in April still could have happened. My doctors were very quick to point this out. It was not a result of going back to work. I hadn’t been overdoing it. It was just one of those freak things. We all have these dormant viruses in us, and our bodies usually fight them off. These dormant ones decide to poke their head out and they see clear sailing and go to town.

  I also had to admit to myself that I was…what is the word? “Noncompliant.” I wasn’t taking all the prescribed medications I should have been taking. I got a little cocky, felt I was doing okay and I didn’t want to take some of the medication. Especially one that was a thick, neon-yellow liquid. Yuck!

  We should have done a piece on the show, because this happens with all kinds of people with all kinds of illnesses. You think that you’re okay, you stop taking your medication, you stop doing everything by the letter because you think, “I’m well.” No, you’re not. You’re well because you’re taking your medicine.

  I’m willing to admit that I’m not perfect and the reason is because the mess that was my health in April has a message. I know that there are people who are reading this book who are on blood pressure medications, diabetes medications and so on, and sometimes you get a little bit comfortable and you start to taper off. But this is what my story is about: You can be cooperative and intelligent and aware—and you’re also human. It’s so easy to say, “You know what, I feel fine. These doctors are just being conservative. This stuff tastes yucky, I don’t want to eat this.” Right? How many times have you personally finished a course of antibiotics? Hardly ever. All of us are like, day three, day four—yeah, I’m good, I’ve got it.

  Wrong!

  Let me be clear. I learned my lesson. I now take every last drop of whatever it is that they tell me to take when it comes to my medication, and I’ve been better for it. Haven’t been hospitalized since April 2013. (Knock on w
ood.)

  April was a horrible, horrible month. I was in the hospital for about a week, and it was the wakeup call I really needed. All I wanted to do was pick up the phone and call Mom. But I can’t call Mom anymore. Again and again, it comes to me. I’m a grown woman but when I am sick, when any of us are sick, we want our mommies.

  Chapter 30

  Taking the Stage

  Although I could hardly imagine it when I was crawling down that hospital room corridor, little by little, I began to get better. I was still on a part-time schedule at GMA, appearing two to three times a week. When I wasn’t working, I rested. I took my medicine. My trainer, Angel, adjusted my workouts according to my strength and endurance. And I finally began to gain weight. As my body got stronger, so did my spirit. By summer, things had begun to come full circle. The summer of 2012 had been such a rope-a-dope.

  Do you remember the Rumble in the Jungle with Muhammad Ali and George Foreman? The year was 1974 and the two greatest boxers in the world were set to fight in what was then known as Zaire, now called the Democratic Republic of Congo. Foreman was favored to win because of his powerful punching ability, but Ali had secretly been perfecting a technique, where he would lean against the ropes of the boxing ring and while it looked like Foreman was just pulverizing him, the ropes were actually absorbing the majority of the blows.

  The summer I was diagnosed with MDS was full of so many punches, I didn’t know how I was ever going to stand up tall in the ring again. You know what I was up against. I announced my diagnosis and began pre-treatment. My mom suffered a stroke, and the ravages of aging began to take her down. My sister Sally-Ann was a perfect match for me, and that saved my life. My sister Dorothy ran point on the care of our aging mother. My mother died in my arms, then just a week later I began the most aggressive, brutal regimen of chemotherapy I had ever known. Then I had a bone marrow transplant—and began the count of a hundred days. Every day ahead of me brought with it the risk of an infection that could kill me. Every day behind me meant that like a newborn baby in her first few weeks of life, I was getting stronger. Somehow I made it. It might have looked as if life was beating me senseless with challenges and tragedies and loss, but God was holding me the whole time. He was the ropes that took the brunt of the blows. As the poet Nikki Giovanni so powerfully wrote, “Not more than we can bear…more than we should have to.”

  When I got the news that ESPN, my old home team of esteemed and beloved colleagues, had decided to award me the Arthur Ashe Award for courage, the first thing I did was thank God. Thank God that he had given me, bit by bit, the strength and the courage and the good fortune to be a thriver, more than a survivor, of a terrible disease once more. The second thing I did was pick out a beautiful red dress, a dress that to me said with its vibrant color, “I celebrate life!” The third thing I did was up my time in the gym with Angel, so that I could look good in said dress, designed by Wes Gordon. It was June 2013, and the award show would be held in Los Angeles in July, just a few weeks away.

  It’s called the ESPYs, and the acronym stands for Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly award. In the world of sports, it is the equivalent of the Oscars. Everybody gets dressed up and comes to see who will be named the best female athlete, the best male athlete, the coach of the year, the top paralympic athletes and the most outstanding in the collegiate ranks. The men and women in the room have pulled off so many awe-inspiring acts of physical greatness. World-class athletes that we’re used to seeing in uniform are now in their Sunday best. Movie stars share the stage, and the audience is filled with musicians and luminaries of the sports world. It’s my favorite kind of crowd: brilliant, eclectic and diverse.

  For me, it’s always a thrill just being at the ESPYs, in a room with the world’s premier athletes. But this past year, I wasn’t there to observe or even to present, which is always an honor as well. I was there to receive the Arthur Ashe courage award. Arthur Ashe was a dear, dear friend of mine. He taught me the importance of using the platform we’ve been blessed to be given to be of service to others. He showed all of us that by his selfless acts off the court. The award spoke to what my momma always said: Make your mess your message. Find the meaning behind whatever you’re going through, because everybody’s got something.

  Michelle Obama sent her regards to me by videotape, her beauty and sincerity radiating from the big screen. Tom Cruise narrated the video tribute to me. LeBron James introduced me to the crowd: “I just want us to think about one thing, as all athletes here—male and female. When there’s a time that we’re working out or…when we feel like we have adversity that hits us, and we start to think, ‘I can’t.’…Let us just think about this moment. This is an unbelievable woman and I’m honored to be in this position. I’m honored to present the Arthur Ashe Award for courage to the most beautiful, strong woman I’ve ever been around, Ms. Robin Roberts.”

  Even before I got on the stage, I was blown away by the star power in that venue. How did I get here? I’m just a little girl from Mississippi, sitting here with my siblings and Amber, and I’m just grateful to be alive. My knees were knocking. I’d love to say I was sitting there all calm, cool and collected, but my heart was pounding. Arthur was such an important person in my life. I was at the press conference with him announcing this very award. Fast-forward twenty years, I’m standing there holding it. So many things were flashing through my mind. I knew that in two more commercial breaks, I’d be up. And I was thinking, “How am I going to navigate the stairs in this dress?” Luckily, my studly GMA cohort Josh was such a gentleman and escorted me to the stage.

  I thanked Michelle Obama for her warm words, then I thanked LeBron James for graciously adding to this immense honor. My momma was from Akron, Ohio, and she loved herself some King James. I knew she was smiling down on us at that moment. Then I looked out to the crowd and I spoke from the heart:

  It’s a moment I couldn’t even begin to dream of when I began my career. You heard me, I just wanted to be the best sports journalist that I could be. I wanted to be a pro athlete. That’s what I really wanted to be. I wanted to be a pro athlete. But there’s something—wait a minute, what is it called again? oh yes, ability—you must have. So I am in awe of your vast accomplishments and to be in your company tonight. And in the company of some old, dear friends at ESPN.

  I realize there are many worthy of holding this honor. Others who have exhibited far more courage, strength and resilience. It’s humbling for me to represent you tonight. I draw strength from you. You give me the courage to face down any challenge, to know that when fear knocks, to let faith answer the door.

  Those of us who are fortunate to overcome some form of illness or adversity are often told that we are strong. I didn’t find that strength on my own. It’s a quality that grew with every kind word of support, every prayer, every tweet, every e-mail, every phone call.

  I gained strength from the doctors and nurses who checked on me, long after their shift was over. From those I knew and others I may never know, who took time out of their busy lives to reach out and let me know they were thinking of me [and] praying for me, every step of my journey.

  Through it all, I’ve learned that strength, true strength, isn’t when you face down life’s challenges on your own. It’s when you take them on by accepting the help, faith and love of others. And knowing you are lucky to have those.…

  My family and dear friends, their unconditional love brings me to tears.…My big sister Sally-Ann, my donor, I wouldn’t be standing here. Heck, I wouldn’t be standing anywhere if it were not for you. And I thank you for that.

  Throughout the ceremony, whenever the camera panned to my sister, she pointed to the sky as if to remind us that she wanted no praise, but to give it all to the Lord. In the weeks and months after the awards, sister Sally pointing skyward became an image and a touch point that people referred to again and again.

  It’s very easy to spot Sister Sally, she’s always the one who’s like, “Yes, Jesus. Yes,
Lord. Yes.”

  Yes, Jesus. Sister Sally will set you free.

  I remember when Jim Valvano was the first recipient of the Arthur Ashe courage award. I was standing backstage…the next presenter on after Jimmy V when he accepted the honor with an inspiring speech that touched us all and still does. That night, in establishing the V Foundation for Cancer Research, Jim said, “We need your help. I need your help. We need money for research. It may not save my life. It may save my children’s. It may save someone you love.”

  I’ve been blessed to achieve things in life I could have never imagined as a little girl growing up in Mississippi. But most of all, I’ve never imagined that I’d be standing here, twenty years after Jimmy V’s speech, and say that because of everyone who has responded to his challenge, because of all the donations, research and support, mine is one of the lives that’s been saved.

  But other than my family taking selfies with celebs on the red carpet, the most hilarious moment involved my sister Dorothy. The night before the ESPYs, ESPN treated my family and friends to a big steak dinner. Dorothy had declared, more than once, that the steak was delicious and ginormous. I didn’t realize that she took her leftovers back to the hotel and put it in the fridge in her room. Then the next day, on the flight from LA back to Mississippi, she boarded the plane with those leftovers. When we spoke on the phone, Dorothy proudly said, “I ate off of that steak for four days.” That’s my family: From walking the red carpet to praising the Lord onstage with LeBron James to eating cross-country leftovers, we know how to have a good time and we always keep it real.