In 2008, when I was diagnosed, if you were a woman in a high-risk-for-cancer category, it cost upward of $3,000 to get an MRI. It was extremely expensive to get tested for BRCA. I was fortunate that I had the means to cover such costs for myself, but I knew thousands of women didn’t have the same resources. A patient-relations expert at Cedar begged me to get the word out. I’m determined to do something about it.
I created a foundation called Right Action for Women, which aimed to cover the costs for such services, and in its lifetime the foundation was able to sponsor hundreds of tests.
I am extremely proud of this organization—we saved a lot of lives. It was my way of coping with how brokenhearted I was to lose my breasts. To this day, I feel emotionally and physically mangled by what I went through, but the organization mitigates the terrible loss I felt and feel. Helping others has a way of doing that.
But there are other ways I know I hurt instead of helped, both others and myself.
About a month after my surgery, I appeared onThe Oprah Winfrey Showto talk about what I’d been through. I remember sitting onstage, all lights on me. It should have been a moment to share the truth.
“It becomes such a blessing. I talked to Melissa Etheridge [another breast cancer survivor] two days after I was diagnosed. And the first thing she said to me was, ‘Christina, this is a blessing that’s happened to you in your life. And right now, you get to start over, to change everything, the way that you deal with things in life, the way you react to things, fear can hurt you, stress can hurt you, this is the time that you have the opportunity to change the way you eat, everything you do.’”
Here’s how I feel about that interview now: it was bullshit. Yes, Oprah was wonderful to have me on the show to promote my foundation and bring awareness to BRCA—even my amazing oncologist, Philomena McAndrew, came on. I will be eternally grateful to have had that kind of platform to help women, but I wish I’d used it differently in terms of what I said. Frankly, I was disgusted by what came out of my mouth. I had lied, thinking that I was being uplifting. I was acting like Little Ms. Warrior, but that’s not how I really felt. Worse, I’m sure I was just making women who had a similar diagnosis, and who were perhaps sitting in their homes watching me onOprah,feel even more devastated, even sadder because there I was, talking about fucking blessings when they were going through aliving hell. I was setting up a paragon that no one going through cancer could ever rightly live up to, and for what? To show that I had somehow overcome through steel and resolve?
During that interview, I even doubled down by talking about how “they can make some very pretty boobies,” comparing what I was facing after my double mastectomy with the hell my mother had gone through before me when she had been butchered by her cancer surgery years earlier. The truth was, I was alone and sad and mourning something that is the most intimate and devastating of amputations, and no amount of plastic surgery can ever make up for it.
Later, I did an interview with Robin Roberts, yet another breast cancer survivor, and once again I bullshitted my way through it, saying things like my boobs would still be sticking up when I’m dead. I was such a liar. At the end of the interview, I got up from the chair and fell against the wall, sobbing. Robin still remembers.
I recount all this to say that when I got my MS diagnosis, I was determined to do it differently. Now I’m going to always be honest. I’m not going to lie anymore. MS sucks. Every little stinking part of it sucks, not least of which, there’s only downhill with MS—it’s not like you can get rid of the cancer, get breast reconstruction, and move on, which was certainly how I described my journey to Oprah, Robin, and others.
I think women feel less alone, and more empowered, if someone tells them the truth. In my mind, I see a woman, whatever she’s suffering from, saying to herself, “I’ve had a great day today, and that’s so much more powerful because I’ve had sixteen terrible days leading up to it.” This is more meaningful than telling women that they should feel like, “I can do this”everyday or “This is a blessing.” I imagine plenty of women lying in their hospital beds thinking,I feel like shit today, but yesterday was a good day, and what’s really important is that somebodyhearsme. Surely that’s how people feel less alone, rather than someone talking about blessings and pretty fake boobies. At least that’s how I’ve felt when honesty cuts through the fake veneer of “Make the most of it” that’s so often demanded of women.
Recently, I learned that my friend Clea had developed cancer. We talked on the phone about our pain and the pressure we felt as women to hide it. Our bodies had betrayed us, and it sucked. Full stop. We were on the phone for four hours, crying and laughing and trading war stories.
One day, she posted something on Instagram to the effect of, “I’m strong; I’ve got this.”
I called her the second I saw her post.
“Nope, we’re not doing this today,” I said. “Do you actually feel strong? Do you actually feel empowered? Do you want to be a poster child for this disease?” I knew the answer was no. “Take it down. We’re going to rework this and I’m going to help you. And every post that you do from here on out is going to be like this: ‘Chemo fucking sucked. All my hair is gone.’”
We need to stop ramming blessings down the throats of people in distress. That’s not how we help people.
We help people by radical, thoughtful honesty.
I had my mastectomies during the summer, so we postponed filming for the fall premiere ofSamantha Who?a bit. When I did my reconstructive surgeries, I was back two weeks later. I didn’t tell anyone I had cancer at that point. I’ve been a private person all my life—until now, I guess. Bing bang boom, you’re welcome.
I finally told the powers that be that I was going to buy a house on the California coast to aid my recuperation. Then, without warning,I learned we’d been canceled. We had begun by followingDancing with the Stars,which had given us a strong lead-in and made us the number one sitcom for a time, but during the second season we’d been moved to Thursdays afterIn the Motherhood.Our numbers plummeted.
I was devastated. I must have cried for two months. I even went on this new thing called Twitter and tried to get a “SaveSamantha Who?” movement started, but to no avail. Frankly, I just don’t think the guy who ran the studio at the time liked that it was a female-heavy show.
I loved that job. I loved those people. It was one of those rare gigs where the stars were aligned. I still stay in touch with the crew, from grips to sound people to camera operators. The day we were canceled was one of the worst days of my life, or so I thought back then.
Thank god something extraordinary was just out of sight, around a bend on that California coast.
FIFTEEN
PINCH
FOR ALL THE PAINof losingSamantha Who?,I at least had my rock god, my best friend, Martyn.
In 2009, we took a trip to Paris for some R and R after the disappointment of the cancellation. There we hung out with our friends Eva Longoria and Tony Parker, her French American basketball star husband.
One night we headed to Girafe, the ultimate Parisian high-end restaurant, with its picture-postcard view of the Eiffel Tower. Much fun was had, and muchvin blancwas drunk, until it was decided it would be a great idea for little old me to jump on the back of Tony’s Vespa for a spin around the capital—Tony was sober: trust—while the rest of our group followed in a van. Though Tony was born in Bruges, Belgium, he was raised in France, so it was nothing for him to spin across the cobbles of the 16th arrondissement like a local, taking curves at twice the recommended speed, and generally scaring the bejeezus out of me while I clung to him for dear life. It helped,I suppose, that I’d imbibed just enoughvinand done just enough dance that I was able to sweep those turns without entirely freezing up, but by the time we arrived back at Girafe, I was probably the color of the wine: pale and entirely see-through.
Any mischievous pride Tony might have felt in my terror quickly evaporated when Martyn asked to drive the Vespa with Tony riding pillion. Being Dutch, Martyn grew up on two wheels, and by the time he and Tony returned, it was Tony’s turn to look both terrified and nauseated.
As a couple, Martyn and I were having fun, two best friends creating memories. It couldn’t get any better, until it most definitely did.
2010: Cinco de Mayo. If I was a Laurel Canyon baby, I like to think of my daughter, Sadie, as a Patrón baby.
