Patient Stories

Laura Evans survived breast cancer with a bone-marrow transplant. She has so far climbed five of the eight major mountains in the world and led a team of breast cancer survivors in a successful climb of Mount Aconcagua, the highest peak in the Western Hemisphere.

I had always thought of myself as a healthy person. I was forty-four years old when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. They found five lumps on a Friday; I was biopsied on Monday and had a mastectomy the following Friday. I knew it was serious because they were really pushing me along. I knew a little bit about breast cancer and had fourteen positive lymph nodes, which is not good. I was not old, and I was shocked about how serious my illness was. My surgeon told me that I needed to start living each day as if it were my last.

When the doctor called to say that the biopsy had come back and that it was positive for cancer, my first reaction was that I felt like I was in the middle of one of those World War II movies where the Zeros are attacking the boat, the sirens are going off, and everybody is jumping out of their bunks and rushing on deck and all sorts of explosives are going off all over the place.

My career has been as a dancer at Finocchio's, a female-impersonator club in San Francisco. I've performed as Sophie Tucker, Marilyn Monroe, Dolly Parton, Mae West, Rita Hayworth, and Wynona Judd. I'm thirty-three years old now, and I have AIDS.

As an Oncologist, a cancer doctor, I am always thinking about helping people define their will to live. Individuals with families often define this in terms of their relationships, as in, I've got to see ten-year-old daughter grow up.

I look back on my twenty-five years as a priest as very happy years. I would never change them. I've had wonderful experiences. I went to Peru for five months as a missionary and then went to the mountains at Lake Titicaca. I went to Curacao and Machu Picchu.

Medical oncologists have always been fascinated by the power of the will to live. What makes a person faced with a life-threatening crisis fight to live? How do people cope with chronic disease or refuse to let physical discomfort keep them from enjoying their family, friends, and outside interests? We feel that the answer to questions such as these has to do with the will to live.

I've had two extremely good fortunes. One was my husband, Donald, a remarkable man with whom I had a magical marriage. The other was my oncologist, without whom I would not have survived. Any other doctor would have looked at my prognosis and said, It's over! I was given a gift with the two of them, and something in me used that gift. Subconsciously, I didn't think I could fail either one of them.

Back in 1982 , when I was fifty-eight years old, I went to different doctors because my leg was bothering me, and I was unable to walk. It felt like a screw was going in. None of the doctors could find out what was wrong with me, and I was beginning to wonder if my pain was in my head. When I was on crutches and unable to walk, my orthopedist wheeled me into UCSF/Mount Zion Hospital and said, We're going to find out what's wrong with you from the tip of your head to the bottom of your toes. I never will forget that.

In the middle of the night of March 2, 1968, a friend of our nineteen-year-old son Sam phoned to say that Sam had been injured in a skiing accident. He told us Sam's back was broken and that the doctors did not yet know how extensive the damage would be.