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Didn't Make Sense
Heather Rudnick stepped into her boss's office and shut the door. Outside, a winter chill hung over the glass towers of downtown Philadelphia. "I just got a call: My doctor wants me to come in to discuss my test results," she said, choking on the words as she started to cry. "He won't tell me on the phone." Her boss didn't ask any questions but said, "Let's go. You're too upset to drive."As they sped to the doctor's office on that cold January day in 2003, Heather, the divorced mom of a six-year-old son, was terrified. Twelve days earlier, she'd developed heart palpitations during a treadmill workout. She blamed stress, since she'd been putting in a lot of overtime at her job as a business development coordinator at a Philadelphia law firm. After the palpitations persisted for several hours, she went to the ER, where tests showed that her heart was okay. Then a young resident pointed to a cloudy spot on her chest x-ray, in the right lung, which he thought might be pneumonia. That didn't make sense to Heather. She felt fine except for her pounding heartbeat, which returned to normal the next morning. Still, she consulted a lung specialist and had more tests, including a needle biopsy. Then she just had to wait for the results.
Now, on the way to the doctor's office, she jumped when her boss touched her arm and suggested they pray together, asking for the strength to handle the results, whatever they might be. That made Heather even more anxious. "My mind was screaming, No! What are you doing? You need to pray that the results are nothing! You need to pray that I am fine!"
She had called her boyfriend, Brad Saler, before leaving work. To her relief, he was there in the waiting room. He wrapped her in his arms to try to console her; then they went into the exam room together.
"I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience when I heard the diagnosis," says Heather. "Tears were pouring down my face. How could I have lung cancer? I was only 33, and I'd never smoked even one cigarette. The doctor had no answers, but he kept stressing that the cancer had been caught early, so surgery should take care of it. I felt trapped in the middle of a tornado, with the funnel closing in on me." She left in a daze, wondering how to break the news to her parents. She called her mom at work, and they cried together. Then it was time to pick up her son, Tyler, at school. "I must have looked like I'd been hit by a truck, and my face was swollen from crying, but he didn't notice anything wrong." Instead, the little boy was excited they were going to visit his grandparents.
Heather thought she had her emotions under control when she arrived at her parents' home in Marlton, New Jersey, the same suburb where she and Tyler lived. But when her dad gave her a wink and a sad smile, she lost it, and had to rush to another room. Her father followed her and gave her a long hug. "Dad looked into my eyes, and said I was going to get through this," she says. "I believed him."
The next few days were a blur of phone calls and medical visits. "One night, I fell into a black hole of self-pity, and said, 'Why me?' Nothing Brad said made me feel any better. He told me I'd be fine, and I screamed, 'You don't know that!' When I asked, 'What about Tyler?' he promised to take care of him. Instead of being reassured by this, I found myself yelling, 'You think I'm going to die!' I was so scared that I was beyond all comfort." And she had another fear that she was afraid to voice: "Brad and I had only been dating for eleven months. I wondered if he'd bail. I had a lot of baggage, with having a ready-made family -- and a cancer diagnosis."
But Brad was by her side on February 17, 2003, the day of her surgery. A blizzard had struck New Jersey the day before, and Heather was worried her operation would be canceled. Before dawn, Brad shoveled through four-foot snowdrifts to the car, while she called to make sure the surgeon would be there at 5:45, as scheduled. At the hospital, there was only time to say, "I love you" and "See you later" to her boyfriend and her parents before she was wheeled to the OR.
Doctors removed almost half her lung, along with surrounding lymph nodes, through an incision under her arm. After a three-day hospital stay, Heather returned to her parents' home, where she spent a month recuperating. At first, she was in such pain that all she could do was lie on the couch. "The doctor gave me a machine to blow into, and exercises so my shoulder wouldn't freeze up, but after two minutes I was in absolute agony. It even hurt to sneeze. I felt like somebody had shoved a hard shoe box where my lung was supposed to be."
By her one-month checkup, she was much better. "I told the surgeon that I'd wear my four-inch scar like a badge of honor -- even in my bikini." The doctor grinned, but the light moment didn't last. He turned somber as he explained that the lab had found cancer in five of her lymph nodes. "I felt blindsided," says Heather. "Instead of having early cancer, it was advanced. I was afraid to ask how much time I had left because I didn't want that number in my head. It would have sucked all the hope out of me."
A panel of cancer specialists reviewed her case and advised six weeks of daily radiation, plus weekly chemotherapy. They explained that because she was young, they could hit her with everything at once, to get the best shot at a cure. Heather took a deep breath, then said, "Okay, do it."
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