Understanding by P. Shane Mitchell Assisted by Sylvia Montero and Melany Cueva THE CAST

1 Understanding by P. Shane Mitchell Assisted by Sylvia Montero and Melany Cueva This script was developed as part of a grant from the National Cancer Institute R25 CA 096514 to the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium THE CAST EARNEST: A widower in his fifties whose wife died of breast cancer. VERA: A young woman whose Papa died of colon cancer. PHILLIP: A young man in his twenties who is a testicular cancer survivor. NELLIE: A woman in her sixties being treated for lung cancer. MARGIE: A woman in her forties who is a breast cancer survivor. NARRATOR: The Setting: A stage area with five separate areas. Area one is the bedroom of EARNEST and NORA. Area two is a comfortable chair by a table where VERA sorts pictures and puts them in a photo album. Area three is a weight bench where PHILLIP exercises. Area four is a window seat where NELLIE alternately looks out the window and crochets. Area five MARGIE is tapping softly on a drum. NARRATOR :The Time: The Present NARRATOR: At Rise: In the darkness we hear men and women s voices saying the names of cancer words. As the voices continue the lights slowly rise to reveal EARNEST, VERA, PHILLIP, NELLIE, and MARGIE each in their individual areas. The lights of one area should just over lap with the area next to it, connecting each person. EARNEST: Cancer MARGIE: Lump PHILLIP: Tumor NELLIE: Malignant VERA: Fear EARNEST: Primary Site PHILLIP: Stage MARGIE: Nodes EARNEST: Metastasis VERA: Prognosis

2 NELLIE: Hope PHILLIP: Cure NELLIE: Carcinoma NARRATOR: (Lights fade up to reveal the entire cast.) ALL: Cancer affects all of us EARNEST and PHILLIP: Men VERA, NELLIE, and MARGIE: Women PHILLIP: The Young VERA: Our Elders MARGIE: Individuals EARNEST: Families VERA: Communities NELLIE: What can we do ALL: Together, we can learn PHILLIP: We can begin to Understand. NARRATOR: (The lights fade to isolate EARNEST, a middle aged man, sitting on the edge of a bed.) EARNEST: March 19, 1999. Things happen in life. So that you never look at a place or a time the same way again. When I was a teenager I walked everywhere. I mean everywhere, school, home, friend s houses, everywhere. One day I was walking by a construction site and saw some guys struggling with some lumber. I ran over to give em a hand. Found out they were building a church and they were all volunteers. So I helped them out, all that day. When that day was over I never went back, but for the rest of my life whenever one of my friends passed that church they would say, Look, there s the church that Earn built. The place was marked. March 19, 1999 is a marked day. That was the day that Nora died. NARRATOR: (The light fades down on EARNEST and up on VERA. She is sitting quietly with a photo album. She turns a few pages and then looks up to speak.)

3 VERA: September 2. I always remember Papa s birthday. Papa was the elder in the village. When I got older, I left the village to go to boarding school, but every week I d call him on the phone. It felt strange to have him so far away but during those talks on the phone, he seemed right there beside me, helping me out. I wish you could have met him. Papa knew all the old stories. He was a great story teller. I remember as a little girl he d take me outside to look at the moon and the sky. I d ask him, Why are we looking at the moon and the sky? Ah, he said, See the rainbow like haze spread out far around the moon? When you see that it means there s a change coming. You gotta watch for the signs and be prepared. Papa knew all the signs and all the old stories. NARRATOR: (She shows us a picture of her Papa holding her as a baby. The lights fade down on VERA and up on PHILLIP. He is an athletic young man doing sit ups. He counts out the last few and speaks to us.) PHILLIP: 97, 98, 99, 100. Talk about a marked day, February 14, 2001. A good day. Yeh it was Valentines Day. Some people get all sad and stuff cause they don t have a girl or aren t married. But gee everybody has somebody don t they? A mom? A grandma? A sister? An Auntie? Somebody? There s always somebody you love and who loves you back. You just have to remember to think about the good. Everybody has good and bad in their lives right? The trick is to focus on the good, deal with the bad and learn from both. Anyway, Valentine s Day 2001 was the day they officially stamped N...E...D on my chart. No Evidence of Disease. NARRATOR: (Lights fade down on PHILLIP and up on MARGIE.) MARGIE: March 16, 1997 the day I was diagnosed with cancer, the day Karen s basketball team won the championship. May I share something with you? I am a survivor. A breast cancer survivor. Karen, my daughter was with me the day I got the news. We had come into town for a basketball tournament and I thought I d just get this lump on my chest looked at. I always checked my breasts, the first of every month, when I paid the bills. It was easy to remember because I had it written on the calendar. S..B..E. In fact, Karen asked what s S..B..E, so I told her, Self Breast Examination. Well, I went to the clinic and I had a breast exam, then a mammogram, then a biopsy and then well, my lump was malignant. I had cancer. That word can be so hard to say. Cancer. It affected us all. The next day Karen wouldn t even talk to me. When I asked her what was wrong, she said, You know, you ve got that C thing! We couldn t even bring ourselves to say it. It took a long time just to get used to the word cancer. We d call it The C word or The C thing my husband Joe called it The Big C. It s a scary word, but there are other C words that helped us. There s Karen s favorite, chocolate, there s caring, comfort, courage and my favorite corazon, it s Spanish for heart. It takes a lot of heart to deal with a cancer diagnosis, but our family took it one day at a time. NARRATOR: (The lights fade down on MARGIE and up on NELLIE an elderly woman sitting at a window seat crocheting. After a few beats of silence she begins to speak facing away from the audience. Slowly, she speaks, turning towards the audience.) NELLIE: April the 16 th was the day I found out I had cancer. The doctors found it by accident. I was getting an x-ray for what we thought was a broken rib when they found a spot on my lungs. I

4 remember back to that day and it almost seems like it happened to someone else. I was so shocked I couldn t even say the word-cancer. It was so scary, I just started to cry. I ll never forget the nurse who was there. Her name was Phyllis, I never knew her last name, and she was... I don t know does loving sound odd? She was so calm and understanding. She stopped what she was doing, looked at me, touched my hand and said, I m listening. I don t remember much else. But she cared about me in a way I can t explain. But if you ever get sick you want someone like Phyllis, someone to listen, someone to touch your hand, and someone to ask you how you are doing and mean it. Someone to just be there. NARRATOR: (The lights fade on NELLIE and we see the entire cast in dim light. Their voices come out of the shadow.) EARNEST: Mammogram VERA: Colonoscopy NELLIE: Bronchoscopy PHILLIP: CAT scan MARGIE: Bone scan NELLIE: MRI MARGIE: Biopsy EARNEST: Diagnosis NARRATOR: (Lights come up on all five in their individual areas.) EARNEST: Even when Nora thought she was sick she didn t tell anyone because she was afraid. NELLIE: I have to admit I am PHILLIP: I was VERA: He was MARGIE: We were ALL: Afraid. EARNEST: She was afraid to see the doctor because he might tell her she was sick. PHILLIP: Afraid of people finding out.

5 VERA: Afraid of the test. MARGIE: Afraid to lose my hair. NELLIE: Afraid I ll die. NARRATOR: (The lights fade down on everyone but EARNEST.) EARNEST: Sometimes it s hard to believe. Nora didn t get diagnosed until too late because she was afraid of what the test would show. Like not hearing the truth stopped it from being true. As she got weaker, she told me she was afraid I d leave her if she were dying. I didn t though. Heck, I d have stayed with her just because of the way she made the bed. She always hated sleeping under tight blankets. She always liked them just sort of piled on. It was me that liked them good and tight. So she always tucked my side in and left hers out, which was fine with me because it made it easier to steal the blankets. I guess I can have the blankets anyway I want em now. Still leave her side untucked though. NARRATOR: (Lights fade down on EARNEST and up on Margie.) MARGIE: Can you believe it? Afraid to lose my hair. The worst thing was the hair. Joe, my husband, loved to run his fingers through my hair. He d even braid it for me. Those 3 strands, all woven together, mind, body, spirit. Sure enough during chemo it started to fall out until I was as bald as a basketball. I never knew you could get so cold without any hair. Karen, my daughter made me a hat. (Laughing) Cory, my grandson took one of those washable markers and drew eyes on the back of my head. Well, sooner than I expected it started to grow back. It s been kind of a lesson. The fear of something can be worse than the thing itself. NARRATOR: (The lights fade on MARGIE and up on PHILLIP.) PHILLIP: What would people think if they knew? I was mad, angry at life, at God, at the health aide who found the lump, the doctor who called it cancer, at everyone, at myself. When my mom found out she just started crying. To her, hearing I had cancer meant I was going to die. I m glad she was wrong, but that s what a lot of people think. A diagnosis of cancer is not a death sentence! I wondered if everyone would think I was dying. I didn t want people s pity. I found myself thinking, I have cancer. What is having cancer like anyways? What should I expect? I didn t feel any pain when I was diagnosed. I guess a lot of people don t. When you feel good, you don t even think about taking the time to take care of yourself. That s why screening tests are so important! I ve changed the way I think about my health. Trust me on this, and get yourself checked. NARRATOR: (The lights fade down on PHILLIP and up on VERA.) VERA: Papa was the tall one always in charge, he had a plan for everything. Colon cancer just wasn t in Papa s plan. We never knew how long it had been going on. Papa was so busy taking care of the village that he didn t take time to take care of himself. Never said anything when blood started showin up in the honey bucket. Like the rainbow haze around the moon there were signs but we just weren t watching.

6 NARRATOR: (The lights fade down on VERA and up on NELLIE.) NELLIE: Yeh I m afraid I ll die. It might sound silly, but it s true. I never even thought about death until I got cancer. Now I think about it a lot. Will it be the cancer that kills me? Will I suffer? Will I be able to do all the things I wanna do before I go? All of those things I still wanna do, that s what keeps me goin. Have you seen the movie, Stories of my Sisters? It says, that being diagnosed with cancer is not a door that stops you from walking along the path of life but rather a key that unlocks the gate to a new way of living. I always liked those words. I ll find that new way But it s hard. Everyday the fear, and everyday the MARGIE: Loneliness. EARNEST: She was VERA: He was PHILLIP: I was NELLIE: I am sometimes so ALL: Lonely. NARRATOR: (Lights fade down leaving PHILLIP illuminated.) PHILLIP: Of everything I faced, the loneliness was pretty tough. Traveling to a big city, being away from my friends, my family -except my mom - she came with me. My friends called and told me about a hunting trip they had planned for the fall. It was good to hear their voices. It gave me courage. But I kept wondering if I would even be around in the fall. After treatment I went home, back to the village but I was different. People didn t know what to say. Some didn t ask about the cancer they just looked past me like nothing had changed. I wanted to shout you can t get cancer from talking to me. One place I didn t feel quite so alone was a cancer support group. These were people like me who knew exactly what I was going through. Some of them could put into words things I couldn t. Who was in the group changed all the time. Sometimes people would die, sometimes they would get better, sometimes they just stopped coming. But no matter who was in the group it always felt the same. Everyone had faced loss and even death. We all knew that one day we would die, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but we all came to accept death as a normal part of living. (Laughing) Yep you gotta live till you die. And I mean we're not dead yet. NARRATOR: (Lights fade down on PHILLIP and up on EARNEST.) EARNEST: When I tell you what I miss the most it will make you laugh. Nora loved to laugh. She d say you have to laugh 100 times a day just to stay in shape. Well what I miss is all the smells. When Nora was alive the house had a million smells. Nights it smelled like dinner cooking and mornings the kitchen smelled like fresh tea. Fall smelled like berries cooking on the stove. M'm I love blueberry jam. Mondays smelled like laundry and the weekends smelled like

7 baking, I liked the weekends a lot. Now the house doesn t smell like anything. It just smells old. For awhile, after Nora died, I tried to keep the place smelling the same, but I couldn t. I would open the door or wake up and think I smelled tea. I d expect Nora to be there. But I knew she wasn t. The head knows things it can t explain to the heart. That s when the loneliness was the worst. If I was carving or cooking or reading, it always felt like she was right there, and when she wasn t... well... she just wasn t. NARRATOR: (Lights fade down on EARNEST and up on NELLIE.) NELLIE: Have you ever felt depressed and wanted someone to hug you and ask what was wrong, but you didn t want to ask for the attention you just wanted someone to care enough to see what you need? I think we all have moments when we want people to read our minds, to just know what we want. My family calls that Timber Wolfing. When I was twelve, my mom took my brothers and sister to this amusement park. (Laughing) There was this huge roller coaster called the Timber Wolf. You should have seen the painting of a wolf on the side. I don t know who painted it, but they sure hadn t seen a wolf before. I don t know if you ve ever been on a really big roller coaster before, but we loved it. I bet I d still love it. The problem was that it gave me a headache, A REALLY bad one. It made my eyes blur and I felt sick to my stomach. Before closing, we had time for one more ride and everyone wanted to go on the Timber Wolf. I knew I couldn t, so I told them to go without me. My brothers and sister started teasing me. I finally told them I was too sick to go. That made everyone feel bad and my sister said that if I wouldn t go then they would all stay with me. That was exactly what I didn t want! I didn t want them to know I was sick because they would stay with me and I would feel guilty, but if they didn t stay they would feel guilty. I wish they would have just gone on the ride and let me be. From then on we called a situation like that Timber Wolfing. Having cancer can sometimes feel like that. You want people to support you but leave you alone when you want it. To always be with you, to give you some peace, to take care of you, to not smother you, to read your mind. It s hard to understand but now when one of us is feeling that way we call it Timber Wolfing and it makes it a lot easier to talk about. NARRATOR: (Lights fade on NELLIE and up on the others of the group as they start to speak. Once up the lights stay up until the end of the scene.) EARNEST: Let me ask you, do you understand what cancer is? NELLIE: Because I didn t until I was diagnosed. PHILLIP: Okay, let me see if I can explain it. VERA: Cancer is not just one disease. MARGIE: It s a word people use to describe over a hundred different diseases. EARNEST: Diseases like... VERA: melanoma or skin cancer

8 PHILLIP: prostate cancer NELLIE: small cell carcinoma or lung cancer EARNEST: Cancer happens when cells divide and form more cells, but without any control or order. VERA: Let me slow this down, because if you re like me biology is a mystery. Every part of our body is made up of cells. PHILLIP: These cells reproduce by dividing and replacing dead or damaged cells as the body needs them. MARGIE: If cells keep dividing when the body doesn t need them a growth or tumor forms. EARNEST: Tumors can be either benign or malignant. PHILLIP: Benign tumors are not cancer and they don t spread to other parts of the body. VERA: Malignant tumors are masses of cancer cells. They invade and destroy healthy cells. They rob the organ of nutrients... NELLIE: Destroy normal cells... EARNEST: Or just push them out of the way where they can t be of use to the body. VERA: Cancer cells can enter the blood stream or lymph nodes and spread to other parts of the body. MARGIE: This spread is called metastasis. PHILLIP: My cancer was found early before it had time to spread. EANEST: Nora s cancer had spread throughout her body. VERA: Some cancers can be prevented. Doctors can find and remove polyps, small growths in the colon before they have time to become colon cancer. It s about taking the first step and having a screening test done early. I live different now because of my Papa. I found out that colon cancer can run in families so I had a colonoscopy. After my Papa died of colon cancer I wanted everyone to learn from what happened. The village dancers went to the Camai Dance Festival, in Bethel, where they had a group of break-dancers, who danced to rap music. They invited the kids up on the stage and pretty soon everyone was makin up raps and break dancing. When the dancers came home they were rapping all the time. Imagine this My cousins sittin around reading a book about colon cancer when they started rappin (laughing and doing rap gestures to mimic her cousins) - If you re over fifty or you ve got a family history. Yo the docs gotta look, No one s off the hook. Let s stop polyps from growin - before any signs are showin.

9 Do the village colon rap. Stayin healthy is a snap. Pretty silly but the words just stuck in our brains. We had these buttons made-do the healthy rap. Even the elders started wearing the buttons as a reminder to take good care of their health. NARRATOR: (Lights fade on group and isolate PHILLIP.) PHILLIP: This is a little embarrassing, but we re talking about life or death. Sometimes it makes us feel better to laugh when we re embarrassed, and that s OK. I was eighteen when I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. Not exactly the place where you want there to be trouble when you re a man. Especially a young man. The idea of testicular cancer never even occurred to me. I thought cancer only happened to old people. But during my physical, it was the health aide that found it. I was pretty nervous and hoping she wouldn t look down there, I even tried to discourage her from doing a complete exam but it was in the Community Health Aide Manual. I d noticed a lump on my testicle but it didn t hurt so I didn t think anything of it. I was too busy playing Basketball, flirting with the girls. Then BAM! Life changed my plans. Cut them short. I was on a plane to town to see the doctor. You can t tell what something is just by looking at it, so I needed to have it checked out. NARRATOR: (Lights fade down on PHILLIP and up on NELLIE.) NELLIE: Falling on the ice isn t usually considered lucky, but my fall sure was. It was in early April and I was walking to school to see my grandson Cory s play. There was an icy patch and sure enough my feet found it. (Laughing at herself) Down I went. It felt like I broke a rib. I lay there for a little while feeling kind of silly. Do you ever do that? Do something embarrassing and then think that if you don t move no one will notice? Well my son, Jim, was right there to help me up. The rest kind of blurs together- I had an X-ray. The x-ray showed a spot on my lower lung. Then came a biopsy. Then the diagnosis. Cancer. I d smoked a pack a day since I was 14. Just an old woman being as silly as a kid who thinks they re bullet proof. Thinking they can out smart lung cancer. NARRATOR: (Lights fade down on NELLIE and up on MARGIE.) MARGIE: I think everyone has those times when the world seems to stop. You see everything clearly and know that the moment will last in your memory forever. Like the day Joe asked me to marry him. I had no idea what he was doing. He took me to the same place where my father had asked my mother to marry him. Joe was so sweet he got down on his knee and said, I thought maybe, perhaps you might want to marry me. He was holding up a little box. The whole world slowed down. I couldn t even speak. Finally, I said, You jokes! He wasn t. He opened the box and there was a beautiful carved ivory ring-it was all true. The day I was diagnosed with cancer was a little the same. The doctor told me I had cancer, I couldn t even focus on what he said. Karen put her hand on mine and said, Mom, You re not listening. Mom, the doctor just said you have cancer. The doctor seemed miles away. I couldn t hear what he said. All I could think of was how much bigger Karen s hand looked. Finally, I looked at the doctor and I knew it was all true. NARRATOR: (Lights fade down on MARGIE and up on EARNEST.)

10 EARNEST: Nora found the lump early, but she was afraid. Afraid to talk about it. A few years ago she went to a women s tea about breast health. Does it embarrass you to hear a man my age talking about breasts? It s alright; there was a time when it would have embarrassed me to. But there are some things we should talk about no matter how embarrassing. You know guys can get breast cancer too, doesn t happen very often but it does happen. Anyways Sue, the Community Health Aide who planned the tea was both very smart and very wise. People use those two words to mean the same thing, but they re totally different. She was smart because she knew all about breast health, the importance of good monthly self breast exams, having a clinical breast exam and the importance of having a mammogram every year. She was wise too because she knew about the way people think. She talked about the need for women to check their breasts monthly and how easy it can be to forget. So she gave each of the women a plant that only needed to be watered once a month to keep it from dying. You see how she made that connection? I still have that plant. She also gave Nora a wind chime with a soft sounding chime in hopes that when she heard it she d be reminded of the lunch and the importance of taking good care of herself. Nora never forgot. She found the lump early. Most lumps aren t cancerous but you can t tell just by feeling it. Nora was afraid to have it checked. Afraid of the answer when she had it checked. Later, she said that in her head it was almost like if she didn t talk about the cancer it wouldn t be true, but the truth is if it is cancer the sooner it s found the better. By the time Nora s cancer was finally diagnosed it had already metastasized, that s what they call it when it spreads. In all that time she was being treated and all the time since the funeral I ve thought about if we d only seen a doctor sooner. If she d only talked sooner, Nora may still be alive. NARRATOR: (Lights fade down on EARNEST and up on the entire group.) PHILLIP: You wanna talk about cancer? Let s talk. VERA: Let s talk... NELLIE: Talk... EARNEST: Talk about pain. PHILLIP: It was the mental MARGIE: Surgery, radiation, chemotherapy caused EARNEST: Nora never suffered much... NELLIE: I have very little... ALL: Pain. NARRATOR: (Lights fade on general group and isolate PHILLIP.) PHILLIP: It was the mental pain that got me. I m usually pretty confident; I mean hey, I m a young, good looking guy. Don t laugh my mirror wouldn t lie to me. But the cancer made me

11 afraid, made me lonely. It felt like a dead end-the end of my dreams. I worried what people would think if they knew. I ve had pain before. I ve broken bones and even broken my heart. There was this girl named Rosie in eighth grade. We were showing off for her after school. Rosie was leaving not paying any attention to us, so I chased after her on my four wheeler hollering, Please don t leave me! I crashed, bustin my collarbone and Rosie didn t even look back. I m okay with most pain, but cancer isn t stitches, it s not a broken bone and it s sure not Rosie not looking back. NARRATOR: (Lights fade down on PHILLIP and come up on EARNEST.) EARNEST: Nora didn t have pain. I was surprised. I always thought that cancer was painful. But lots of people never really get bad pain. I was with her when she died so peaceful like. I d rub her feet and hold her hand and just sit by her side. She told me she d be the best guardian angel I ever had. I was never much of a church guy, but she sure was. Every Sunday, and church socials on Wednesdays. She used to always sing. Hymns, songs off the radio, dance songs. Baking, cleaning, you could always find her, by following the singing. She always had such a good attitude. We d tease her by telling the dark clouds to look out. Nora s bright smile would scare them away. She could scare away the dark clouds with just her smile. Even her doctors said her positive attitude helped. To tell you the truth, I m getting a little more church in my life these days. I started going to have more time with Nora when she was alive. Now it makes me feel a little closer to her that she s gone. Maybe I m getting in good with God, maybe it s just changing my attitude. Who knows? Who really knows? NARRATOR: (Lights fade down on EARNEST and up on NELLIE.) NELLIE: I don t know why, but so far I ve had little pain, Shortness of breath yes and coughing yes! But not much pain. NARRATOR: (Lights fade down on NELLIE and up on VERA.) VERA: Papa always found lucky pennies. Everywhere he went he d find a penny, his lucky penny. When he started having pain he just didn t want people to know. He didn t like the idea of taking pain pills. He thought he d become a drug addict. He saw this TV show once about drug addicts, people getting hooked and it really scared him. He didn t want to take drugs and end up that way. Truth is, people that take pain pills to relieve their cancer pain don t become drug addicts. The health aide finally helped him to see the difference between taking a pain med he really needed and being a drug addict. I m glad he started taking those pills to control his pain; it made him feel a lot better! Now, whenever I see a penny I know he s lookin out for me. I feel a little luckier. NARRATOR: (Lights fade down on VERA and up on MARGIE.) MARGIE: Some days it was tough, I mean really, really tough. Surgery and chemo, feeling nauseated, not being able to eat, radiation, feeling tired Some times I just didn t think I could do it. My family kept me going. They believed in me. NARRATOR: (Lights fade up on the entire group.)

12 ALL: Are you wishing we d change the subject? EARNEST: It's too important ALL: We can t VERA: I won't. NELLIE: You really need to... PHILLIP: You have to... MARGIE: You must VERA: Hear this. EARNEST: Do you know what causes cancer? VERA: Cancer begins with our genes. PHILLIP: Back to biology again. Remember we talked about cells? Each cell has a purpose. There are tons of different purposes and so tons of different types of cells. VERA: Hair cells, skin cells, blood cells...all made up of genes. No Not like blue jeans, G-E- N-E-S. Genes tell your body how to build the cells. NELLIE: Genes can get damaged. When that damage is fixed the cell develops just fine. But if the damage is not fixed in just the right way our body can develop cancer. EARNEST: What damages our genes? PHILLIP: Drinking alcohol. MARGIE: Viruses can cause cell changes that can be found in Pap smears. NELLIE: Using tobacco. The thing that I keep thinking is that I don t like smoking. Never did. I ve smoked since I was 14 years old and never liked it. It made me smell bad, yellowed my teeth, made me feel awful in the mornings and never really gave me much pleasure. I always coughed, couldn t play sports cause I couldn t breathe very well. But it sure was hard to quit. I remember my very first cigarette. There was this guy, Tony. Tony s sister, Edna, was my best friend and I was in love with Tony. The problem was that we didn t have anything in common. Tony was a smoker, so I had Edna swipe a pack of his cigarettes which I just casually whipped out in front of him and started smoking. It was pretty silly. I wasn t even good at it. I wouldn t inhale or else I d choke, so I practiced smoking in private. Can you imagine? Practicing smoking! Oh the tobacco companies would be happy as they spent all my money. You know in the United States 1200 people die every day because of tobacco. That s like three whole villages

13 dying everyday. Doesn t that make you angry? When I see kids using tobacco, it really makes me sad. I d like to believe that kids today are smarter than I was. Once you get tricked into starting it s so hard to quit. You can quit but it s not easy. So here s my story, I ve got cancer which keeps me from doing a lot of the things I love just because I wanted to impress some guy who well..let s just say it wasn t worth it. NARRATOR: (Lights fade down on NELLIE and up on EARNEST.) EARNEST: You know how much I loved my Nora, so I can say this, Nora was a big woman. I don t mean that unkindly. I thought she was beautiful but I admit she was big. I remember when she was pregnant with our daughter she got so round she couldn t tie her shoes. I came into the bedroom and she was sitting right here crying because she couldn t bend over. (Laughing) I teased her a little so that we both laughed about it, then I tied her shoes for her and bought her a pair she could just slip on. Problem was that after she gained all that weight she never took it off again. I still loved her just as much as ever. We didn t know that you can lower your risk of getting cancer just by what you eat and getting exercise. Even old timers like us should have been taking long walks and eating a good diet. I don t mean to sound like your mother telling you to eat your fruits and veggies, but it s true Eat your vegetables. Fresh, frozen, canned or dried can all help. Things you can pick like greens and berries all help. Do it as a family, have a little fun with it. Six out of 10 cancers are related to diet, exercise, alcohol and tobacco. Six out of ten! Including cancer of the colon, lung, cervix, and breast even breast cancer. I wish I would have known that then, because I tell you, I d rather we exercised together to help her lose weight and still be laughing about it today. NARRATOR: (Lights fade down on EARNEST and lights up on the entire cast.) MARGIE: 2 out of 3 cancer deaths can be prevented... VERA: Do you want to know the secret? PHILLIP: Exercise. Makes you feel better in all kinds of ways. EARNEST: Eating right. Like your mama said eat your vegetables. NELLIE: Not using tobacco. PHILLIP: Not drinkin alcohol VERA: Getting screening tests, early! PHILLIP: And if cancer happens, whether you could have prevented it or not, how do you deal with it? How do you deal with the loss of a... EARNEST: Wife. VERA: Dad

14 PHILLIP: Part of your body. NELLIE: Life. PHILLIP: How do you cope? I... MARGIE: I... ALL: We just do.... NELLIE: One day at a time we just... ALL: Do. NARRATOR: (Lights fade down on cast isolating PHILLIP.) PHILLIP: Orchiectomy. That s what they call it when you have a testicle removed. Makes you squirm doesn t it? Try this. Mention the idea to a guy and watch him cross his legs. Not a pleasant word. Not a pleasant thought. I felt like half a man. Useless. The truth is that when I started talking about my worries, I found out that they were just that - my worries. It didn t matter to other people. Even the girls liked me OK. NARRATOR: (Lights fade down on PHILLIP and up on EARNEST.) EARNEST: How do I cope with the loss? Day by day. I know there are people who have had parts of their bodies removed in surgery, and I don t want to show disrespect to them when I say this, but after all these years, to lose Nora feels like losing a part of myself to cancer. My Uncle Charlie got shot in the leg in a hunting accident and they had to cut it off right at the knee. He had this big German Shepard who only had three legs. They were a sight to see. Him with one leg, the dog with three. The reason that I m telling you about Uncle Charlie is that you d see him grinding his right foot into the ground below the stump of his left knee. If you asked him what he was doing he would say he was scratching his itchy foot. Can you picture it? Him trying to scratch an imaginary itch on a foot that didn t exist. As a kid I wondered about Uncle Charlie, but I wonder what the kids would think if they caught me talking to thin air, or reaching across the bed to snuggle into someone who isn t coming back. NARRATOR: (Lights fade down on EARNEST and up on NELLIE.) NELLIE: I have to take the long view on things. The fact is that I will die. (laughing) Maybe not by Thursday, but it s part of living. So I can t get angry about that. What I get angry about is all of the lost opportunities. Now don t laugh at this, but I always wanted to play the fiddle. (Laughing) When I was a teenager my boyfriend s Apa played for all the dances. We d all laugh and have a good time. Eventually, Apa got arthritis too bad to play anymore and I always wished I could fiddle for him. I wanted to keep the old tunes alive. I always wanted to learn another language, I still want to tell the stories of the elders to my Grandchildren, I want to do so many things. So how do I cope with those lost opportunities?

15 NARRATOR: (Lights fade down on NELLIE and up on entire cast.) EARNEST: I ll tell you two ways I cope with losing Nora. First, I take better care of myself. I exercise and eat better. I get myself checked for disease that I m at risk for because of my age, being male, or having a family history, like colorectal cancer, prostate cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. We can do lots of things to prevent disease but if I happen to get cancer one thing for sure is I want to find it early when it can be cured. It s like a tribute to Nora to take better care of myself. Second, I learned to bake bread. I mean what the heck, I can t give up the smell of fresh tea and baking too! PHILLIP: I laugh a lot, I still get embarrassed about things but laughing always makes it seem better. Cancer isn t contagious but laughing sure is. I read a story in the paper about these school girls in a village in Tanzania who started laughing and just couldn t stop. Their laughing spread to people in the next village. I guess it took 6 months for the epidemic to stop. Now, that s something worth catching. As for those other things I was worried about, I got married a few months ago and we re expecting our first baby. So much for things not working. Now that s what I call coping. VERA: I go right on telling Papa s stories. Papa always made a grand entrance at all the parties. When Papa died we had the memorial potlatch all planned. Remember I told you how Papa planned everything down to the last detail. Papa always wanted to be in charge. Well the day came that they were suppose to fly Papa in his coffin back to the village. Being a pretty tall guy they could get the coffin in the plane but the pilot wouldn t fit. It took them another whole day to find a bigger plane. Papa arrived late for his own potlatch making one more grand entrance. I m sure Papa was laughing. That s just how he d want it, for us to keep on living and laughing. MARGIE: I m still here. Yes, I m missing a breast, but that s not the end of the world. When Joe kisses me goodnight he s still the same goofy guy that asked me to marry him and I m still the same girl too surprised to know what to say. Life is far from over and I don t plan on just getting through the days, I want to really live each moment. There s this saying, Yesterday is history and tomorrow is a mystery but today is a gift that s why they call it the present. NELLIE: It makes the dogs howl, but at 64 I m learning to fiddle. I m not quite ready to fiddle at the dances yet but I m workin on it. I decided why not? It s never too late. There s still a lot of life in me no matter if I have cancer... EARNEST: If she died... MARGIE: If I had surgery VERA: If he died... PHILLIP: If I ve been hurt. I m still here and I have to... NELLIE: You have to...

16 MARGIE: We have to... VERA: I need to... EARNEST: We all need to... ALL: Live. EARNEST: March 19, 1999 VERA: September 2 PHILLIP: February 14, 2001 NELLIE: April 16 th MARGIE: March 16, 1997 PHILLIP: Good days. NELLIE: Bad days. MARGIE: Special days. EARNEST: Days you can t forget. VERA: Days that you want to remember. EARNEST: And then there s today. For good and bad there is today. Whatever it brings I ve decided to live today. I think my wife... VERA: I think my dad... MARGIE: my family... PHILLIP: I think that I... NELLIE: We... ALL: All of us EARNEST:...want it that way. NARRATOR: (The lights fade on the cast leaving only the bedlamp beside EARNEST S bed burning. He crosses to it, picks up a picture of Nora, sits on the edge of the bed and reaches out to turn off the light.)