Facing Cancer With the Camera Rolling

Rebecca Perl, a health correspondent for National Public Radio, was diagnosed with cancer in 1995. Her bone marrow transplant is the focus of a documentary recently released by HBO.

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After six months of unsuccessful chemotherapy and radiation for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma--a malignant tumor in my chest--I was told I had no choice but to undergo a bone marrow transplant.

As a science writer, I knew what was involved: The procedure, which consists of a lethal dose of chemotherapy followed by a life-saving infusion of reserved stem cells, is one of the most grueling ordeals medical science can inflict.

You vomit, get diarrhea, lockjaw; the inside of your mouth and your stomach lining slough off, you get monstrously fatigued. Your memory is affected, as are your heart, lungs, kidneys. You could die from a simple flu infection. And then there is the possibility that the transplant simply won’t work.

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So when my husband, Tom Jennings, and Dan Collison, a friend and independent radio and TV producer, said, “Hey, let’s film your transplant,” and I didn’t immediately kick either one in the groin, I was left wondering what had happened to my sense of privacy.

“Maybe it’s like your hair,” Tom said. “All gone.”

When you get ill, seriously ill, and you spend a lot of time in and out of hospitals, your sense of normalcy is redefined. Before I developed cancer, I reported with some sense of distance on patients and the doctors who treated them, knowing that a strange or lethal disease was of interest to readers and radio listeners but was nothing that could ever happen to me. Then when, in effect, I became the story, objective reality became the cool blue of the chemotherapy chemicals, the negotiations with insurance companies over how many wigs they would pay for, and the fate of other patients in the same situation as I. Asking me to become the focus of a documentary at that point--after a year of cancer treatment--was like asking me when I am on deadline whether I like my job.

“OK,” I said, finally, to Tom and Dan. Maybe it would distract me. Maybe it would give me something to do, besides being miserable.

We were heading to the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha for the transplant. This facility, and the head of the bone marrow and stem-cell transplant program, James Armitage, were recognized leaders in the field of lymphoma treatment. But after leaving my 18-month-old son, Griffin, at our house in Washington with my parents, and driving across the country for three days to arrive in Omaha as the dead of winter settled in, it became clear pretty quickly that this was not just another adventure.

As I walked into the stem-cell collection room and looked around at the patients, all I could think about were the odds--half of us were not going to make it. I kept my head down. A gray January pall had taken over the city, and soon there would be record cold settling over east Nebraska.

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This center of excellence was obviously operating at peak efficiency, and when they didn’t have the camera in my face, Dan and Tom were able to film several other patients, all banking on a last-ditch effort. One was Graham, who grew up in England but lived in Denver with his wife, Lorraine, and their two kids, Kelli and Thomas. Multiple myeloma, a difficult-to-treat cancer, was Graham’s diagnosis. His chances of survival were even worse than mine--and mine were about 50-50.

But it was not hard to become friends with Graham and his family, especially because their son and ours were about the same age. Thomas, at one year, had a flash of red hair and was comic relief to everyone. He learned to walk there at the hospital, while Graham and I lay immobile.

Graham was so nice, a good contrast to me. I became known around the facility as difficult--a New Yorker. I didn’t like the schedule, the assembly-line mentality. I resented all the probes, the needles, the biopsies, even the doctors and nurses who were trying to help me. What with a camera trained on my every move, I think some people thought of me as a bit of a prima donna. But when I started hitting rock bottom in the treatment--when the nausea hit, when I looked my ghastly worst--and I didn’t stop the camera from rolling, I think they began to be more understanding.

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Four years after I was officially diagnosed with cancer, I went to HBO to see the first screening of “Scenes From a Transplant: A Cancer Diary,” the documentary that Dan and Tom eventually made about the treatment I received in Omaha. I couldn’t watch the film, but who could blame me? I lived it, and, of course, I looked terrible in it. And though I guess it’s a happy ending, it was only so for me: Of the four patients shown--all people I became intimately connected to--I’m the only survivor.

Near the end of the film, I am shown calling Graham on the phone only to discover he’s no longer in his room. For me, it’s just too hard to watch. Why did I agree to do this? There is nothing noble to the sentiment of wanting some good to come from something so bad as cancer. That’s just the trait of a survivor.

As I stood in the crowd outside the theater, another cancer survivor came up to Tom and me. She couldn’t look at me, but she did look at Tom. She smiled, took his hand and said, “Thank you, it is so important.” Perhaps she meant it gave her courage.

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“Scenes From a Transplant: A Cancer Diary” airs locally at 6 a.m. Dec. 29 on Cinemax.