Writing Through Cancer

We returned home last night after a holiday road trip that took us from San Diego north to Bend, Oregon, the same trip we planned a year ago but had cancel at the last-minute.  We spent one night in the town I used to know as “home,” Yreka, stirring up childhood memories, names and faces of old classmates, memories of my father and mother, the life I knew until, at 18, I left for good.

One memory, never forgotten, took me back to my freshman year at Yreka High School.  I was becoming depressed and withdrawn that spring.  My photograph in the high school yearbook described me as “nice.”  Nothing more.  I became inexplicably and seriously ill near the end of March with little more than high fever and headaches.  At first, the family doctor diagnosed my condition as “mononucleosis,” a virus also known as the “kissing disease,” although I had no boyfriend at the time and in any case, was too shy to have kissed anyone.  But my condition worsened, and over the next many weeks, I was ferried from one specialist to another without any definite explanation for my symptoms.  As I became worse, I began to have, during those long feverish nights, dreams of death, images that would return night after night.  I awakened, terrified and crying, frightening my parents.  Thankfully, it was the persistent recurrence of one of these dreams that prompted my mother’s frantic calls to obtain yet another referral, but this time, to a physician in Medford, Oregon.

We visited Medford this past weekend to meet a dear family friend, now in her eighties. As we drove into the city, I remembered the hospital on the hill—replaced long ago by newer, shinier buildings.  After the physician in Medford had examined me, he made a call to a neurosurgeon, Dr. Mario Campagna, and a half hour later, I lay quietly on the examination table in Dr. Campagna’s office while my anxious parents sat nearby.  I was admitted to Sacred Heart hospital that evening, and two days later, drowsy from medication, attempted to make a joke as Dr. Campagna gently began shaving my head.  Hours later, I awakened to the doctor’s smiling face and the sounds of my father’s unmistakable whistle—something that had ceased during my illness—as he entered the room.  I was minus a chunk of forehead, which would be replaced by a steel plate six months later—but alive.  A year later, when examining the pages of the high school yearbook, my smiling face appeared in several clubs and groups. I was part of the school newspaper staff, and by the time I graduated, described as “most popular.”  I continued, throughout high school and college, to write Dr. Campagna at Christmas and update him on my activities.  He always wrote back, supportive and encouraging.  Three or four years ago, I wrote him again, this time sharing my books and the work I do in the cancer community, telling him that he was, as he had always been, an inspiration to me.

Dr. Campagna died on July 3, 2013, two days before we drove into Medford, the obituary printed in The Oregonian on Sunday, a day after we left to go on to Bend.  We had driven past the hill where Sacred Heart Hospital once stood, past his former office on State Street, and I recalled how lucky I was to have ended up in the care of such a gifted and extraordinary neurosurgeon.  I remember how he strode into my room one morning as I despaired, a turban of white bandages around my head, both eyes blackened from the surgery, and crying over how desperately gruesome I looked.  He smiled, took my hand and said, “What?  Are you worried no one will want to marry you?”  I cried even louder.  “Well,” he said, “I’m not worried.  Besides, if no one will, I have a son—he’s only five—but I’m sure he would like to marry you.”  It was enough to make me smile.  Then he reached out and wiped away my tears.

Dr. Campagna gave me a second chance at life, and thanks to his skills and compassion, he did that for many other people.  He was my hero—and remains so in death as well as life.  Not the hero of storybooks or childhood fantasies, but someone whose presence, whose gifts, truly made a difference.  He inspired me to want to “do good,” to make a difference, as, I suspect, he inspired many others.  His legacy is significant; his contribution to Medford and to medicine one that will be remembered for a long time to come.  Thank you, Dr. Campagna, for what you did for me.

We all have heroes—people who touch our lives in unexpected but profound ways.  Write about one of your heroes—and why they made a difference in your life.