Felando Back to Work, Still Fighting Cancer

Assemblyman Gerald N. Felando, who underwent nearly three months of intense radiation treatment to fight cancer, last week resumed his regular legislative duties by seeking passage of a bill aimed at curbing telephone solicitations.

The San Pedro Republican complained that during his recuperation at home he had been constantly interrupted by calls from telephone solicitors, prompting him to carry the measure to allow telephone customers to be listed in a special directory indicating that they do not want unsolicited commercial calls.

But last Monday Felando could muster only five votes from the Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee--two short of the seven required for approval of the legislation. Afterward, in a signal that cancer has not dulled Felando’s sharp tongue, he cracked: “I got no sympathy votes. There’s no sympathy here. It’s go for the throat.”

In an interview last week in his Capitol office, Felando acknowledged that radiation treatment has left him more easily fatigued at the end of the day. The treatment has also affected his appearance, leaving his head bald and his mustache wispy, his feet blistered and tender and his eyes so sensitive to light that he needs to wear sunglasses constantly.

Felando is especially sensitive about his baldness. He scolded several colleagues who joked that his lack of hair made him look like actor Yul Brynner, TV detective Kojak or Curly of the Three Stooges.

Felando, who expects his hair to grow back in a few months, said: “It wouldn’t bother me if I was balding or if I was bald because of natural causes. That’s the hand your dealt. . . . “But it does bother me when people make comments about it now, because it reminds me about the disease that I have and I’d just as soon not be reminded of the disease that I have.”

Felando’s cancer was diagnosed last fall, shortly before he was easily reelected to a sixth term in his 51st District, which includes Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Torrance, Lomita, the Palos Verdes Peninsula and parts of Redondo Beach and San Pedro.

Felando, 54, first disclosed in February that he had mycosis fungoides, a form of lymphoma that affects the skin and sometimes spreads to the internal organs. He began early morning radiation treatments four times a week at USC’s Norris Cancer Hospital in Los Angeles, limiting his time in Sacramento.

Five weeks into his treatment, Felando said he began “to feel so rotten,” describing the feeling as like “a real, real bad case of the flu.” But, he declared, “You have to keep fighting it.”

Felando must go back into the hospital once more for treatment in May. He said that one radiologist told him that because the disease was diagnosed early he has an “80% chance of remission for an extended period of time.”

As an outgrowth of his treatment, Felando, a dentist by training, said his physicians have requested that he prepare a paper on the special way he devised to treat his eyes. He soakes them with a special solution and applies an ointment.

Felando says he is returning to his legislative duties with a changed outlook on his personal and professional life.

“Time becomes a little more precious,” he said, adding that he is focusing more attention on his family and friends and pressing for bills of special importance to him.

As his treatment was intensifying in March, Felando came to the Capitol to push for passage of one of his pet proposals--a ban on smoking on the Assembly floor. Felando, who had sought the action for two years, admonished his colleagues: “I think for the health of the members of this Assembly and for the visitors who visit us every day, we ought to ban smoking.”

But he did not travel to Sacramento to vote on landmark legislation to outlaw most military assault weapons in California. Felando, a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., said his absence angered several constituents. “One guy urged me to postpone treatment and said I should have been wheeled in on a gurney” to vote against the bill, Felando said. The same man wrote in a letter that Felando should have resigned if he couldn’t be present to vote.

Felando dismissed the criticism with a laugh, and on his return last week he did vote against a similar measure on the Assembly floor.

Now, Felando said, one of his top priorities is a bill to require any food outlet to post signs disclosing additives and antibiotics in meat, poultry, commercially raised fish, vegetables and fruit. “I’m saying the American public deserves to know what’s in their food,” he declared.

Assemblyman Dan Hauser (D-Arcata) said Felando has been raising questions about the health dangers of hormones and antibiotics in commercially raised fish for several years--long before his cancer was diagnosed.

After Felando’s first full week back in the Capitol, Hauser and other lawmakers described him as being in good spirits. “He said he’d win” his fight against cancer, Hauser said. “And I believe him.”