up some scissors and I cut it off"
The old Ellen was gone, and she
would never return.
But instead of lingering as a ghost,
Ellen Goldman began anew. The first
stop was the wig maker.
Goodbye, she said, to that gleam-
ing, bare head. Goodbye to the natur-
al look, the heavy auburn hair that
once curled- about her face. And hello,
glamour girl.
Goldman decided to go blonde. It
was a kind of luscious look, just past
the shoulders, decidedly unfamiliar.
The wig, she says, "was the right bal-
ance between fun and losing me.
Almost every man who saw it loved
it.
As she began to heal, both in body
and spirit, Goldman mapped out a
health program she was certain would
keep her safe — far, certainly, from
cancer. She would go on a diet so pure
"nothing touched my lips that wasn't
organically grown." She began an
exercise routine that left her "in the
best health I've ever been in."
Her physician assured her "there
was a greater than 85 percent chance I
would never have cancer again."
And so her soul filled with opti-
mism as she completed her
chemotherapy, and it was all over.
"I felt thrilled, but it's deeper than
that. There's such a release of tension.
I would cry with relief, a poignant joy,
because it was finally over. Nothing in
the day-to-day aggravation of life
bothered me anymore."
There had been a time, she says,
when she longed for anything but the
thick, wavy hair she had had since
childhood. "I used to think it was
unmanageable. But ever since it has
grown back, every day with hair is a
`good hair day,' and every day I wake
up is a gift."
B
ut it wasn't over. In 1995,
Ellen Goldman returned to
Detroit, where she took a
job as executive director of
Yad Ezra, the kosher food bank. It was
the kind of work she had always want-
ed, and it was good to be back home.
Several weeks after starting her new
job, Goldman found another lump.
Determined not to panic, she called
an oncologist and took the first
appointment available. It would be a
two-week wait. This time, Goldman
didn't fight. A large part of it, she says,
was the terrible knowing of what
might be.
The physician who at last saw her
was certain the lump was nothing but
a fibrous tissue, though he sent
Goldman for a mammogram. The
surgeon who viewed the results
assured his patient she was fine.
Goldman knew better.
"I demanded a biopsy," she says.
"He told me I was overreacting, that
he had seen hundreds of mammo-
grams and knew what he was talking
about. He told me to go home and, if
I still had a problem, come back in
six weeks."
Six weeks later, Goldman returned.
This time, the surgeon scheduled a
lumpectomy. The results came in the
next day. It was cancer.
And so, like a weary soldier forced
to the battlefield, Goldman found
herself facing surgery again. Yet this
time the experience would be doubly
painful. Days after Goldman found
out she had cancer in her second
breast, she learned her mother was
facing the same disease.
With her first breast cancer,
Goldman had been terrified, exhaust-
ed, uncertain.
This time she was furious.
"I was extremely angry that both
my mother and I had to go through
this," she says.
The women scheduled surgery on
the same day, which meant they
could have it over with as soon as
possible, "though we couldn't be sup-
portive to each other because we were
both busy fighting for our own lives."
For her first fight with the disease
Goldman had been reluctant, but
eventually gave in to a mastectomy.
This time she opted from the start to
have her breast removed. Her physi-
cian agreed it was the right decision
— one, he says, he would have rec-
ommended to his wife or daughter.
But this didn't mean Goldman
would be breastless.
Several months after her second
mastectomy, Goldman went into the
hospital.
She was about to emerge a new
woman.
"His name is Dr. Daniel Sherbert,
and he is a miracle worker," Goldman
says. "He's as close to perfection as
you can get in a plastic surgeon."
Dr. Sherbert rebuilt both of
Goldman's breasts with saline
implants.
Although it took awhile for the
recovery — "There's nothing immedi-
ate about 'immediate reconstruc-
tion,'" Goldman says — the results
were, well, big.
"I'd always been very small, and
now it was time for cleavage,"
Goldman says. "Today, my breasts are
gorgeous."
Fellow cancer patients know exact-
ly what she's talking about. Whenever
they get together, there's a great deal
of showing off. "You don't know how
many women I've taken my shirt off
for, and how many of them have
done the same for me," Goldman
says.
N
ow it was time for business.
Throughout her experience,
Goldman had kept a jour-
nal, which she began to
develop into a book called Coping
One Breast At a Time. At first it was
purely for herself, a place to go when
she was most wounded. Then
Goldman began to see that she could
help others as well.
"I wanted to open a method of
communication between the patient,
family and friends," she says. "So
many people have told me, 'Someone
I know has cancer and I don't know
what to say.'"
What about a card, Goldman
began to think. What could be com-
plicated about signing and sending a
card?
She had just left Yad Ezra. Her
surgery was recent, but not so recent
that she couldn't bear to think of it.
(There was a time, Goldman recalls,
when she wouldn't even watch TV
shows about hospitals and illness).
Now was the time to get started.
The words came easily — usually
short, fun phrases:
"If you massage your head and
meditate on hair growth, it will take
90 days to grow back. If not, 3
months."
"Tell me what is so positive about
positive results?"
"The phrases I used on my cards
came to me everywhere, all the time,"
she says. "I would be in the shower,
sleeping, in a support group."
Originally Goldman made sketches
herself. Then a friend of a friend
directed her to artist Howard Munce
in Connecticut, who kindly but firmly
told Goldman she couldn't draw. He
offered to do the art himself, for free.
After that, it was nothing but posi-
tive results -- only this time they
really were positive.
Goldman patched together a sam-
ple card and her friend Ande Teeple of
Art Inc. made a camera-ready copy (at
no charge) for Goldman to show
potential clients.
Goldman's next stop was Tapper's
Jewelry, where longtime friend
Howard Tapper directed her to Daniel
Kelly, president of Colortech Graphics
Inc. in Roseville. Kelly, Goldman says,
" made a very generous printing dona-
tion."
Their donations are going to a
good cause. A percentage of the sale of
each of Goldman's cards will go
toward breast-cancer research.
Goldman's line is called Chemo-
Savvy, Inc. She had been reading a
magazine in a doctor's office when she
came across a picture of the Lone
Ranger, and that got her thinking
about the masked man's best pal, and
that brought to mind chemotherapy,
and how one should be savvy about it,
and there it was.
Goldman's mother, meanwhile, is
on medication but otherwise cured.
Goldman also recently had a check
up and is in excellent health.
With the success of her cards, she's
hoping next to publish her book, then
expand to Chemo-Savvy T-shirts.
She also plans to design affordable
underwear for women who have had
brea s t-cancer surgery. (Don't even ask
what it's like trying to put on a bra
after you've just had surgery on half
your chest, Goldman says.)
But it doesn't all have to be done
today. Goldman is still thinking and
planning, dreaming and imaging all
she can to help other women with this
disease.
"How about ..." one idea comes
tumbling out. "Or maybe ..."
She's impatient to get started but it
will take time, she knows. Fortunately
for Ellen Goldman, life is just begin-
ning. ❑
10/3
1997
93