Cured, My Ovarian Cancer Story (Plucky Cancer Girl Strikes Back)

In 1991 Joyce Wadler, a 43 year-old New York City reporter, had breast cancer which was caught early and successfully treated. She thought her cancer problems were over, she knew of no other cases of breast cancer in her family. Four years later Ms. Wadler was diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. She also learned that she was carrying a genetic mutation, BRCA-1, which has been found in Ashkenazic Jews and which gives women a higher risk of breast and ovarian cancer. “Cured: My Ovarian Cancer Story”, which originally appeared as, ‘Cancer Redux’, a two part cover story in New York Magazine, is the story of how Joyce Wadler successfully overcame cancer a second time. It also includes information about how women can try to protect themselves. ---------- MY HAIR STARTS FALLING OUT ten days after chemotherapy: a few strands on a white tablecloth at the Knickerbocker restaurant. I am having lunch with a guy I met at a party two months ago. The guy is sniffly. “I’m fighting something off,” he says. “Me too,” I say. I wait a few days, till my hair comes out in clumps in the shower, then, as directed, I go back to a wig store on the West Side where they shave the rest of my hair and do the final fit for the wig. They don’t like to buzz you until the hair is really coming out. They say it’s too traumatic. When I get home, I take off my wig and all my clothes, and stand in front of a full-length mirror and check me out naked. I am quite astonishingly bald, but I am still dramatically girly: My waist goes in, almost everything else goes out. I look sort of sci-fi. On the Starship Enterprise, they would probably go for me in a big way. Space Tomato, I call me. Maybe I should take out a personals ad: Mature Woman Seeks Trekkie. Excerpt, 'Cured, My Ovarian Cancer Story