A choice to live generously

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

It was a packed room. There was barely enough space between tables to squeeze yourself into your chair. The Combined Jewish Appeal Women's Division annual Choices dinner drew 483 women – 87 of whom were new donors – who, in sum, contributed more than $700,000 to this year's campaign. The Women's Division as a whole has raised $1.5 million of its $1.8 million target.

The theme of the Choices gatherings is, as the name suggests, the choices women make and the positive impact women can make on the world. The featured guest speaker embodies this concept and, this year, physician, TV personality and author Dr. Marla Shapiro shared her moving story. She spoke not only about her struggle to overcome breast cancer – which is the topic of her recently published book, Life in the Balance: My Journey with Breast Cancer – but the less widely known tragedy of her third child, who died from sudden death syndrome.

"It's taken seven years for me to talk about it publicly," said Shapiro. In 2000, she was approached by several health-related organizations to tell the story about losing her child. Starting in Vancouver, she crossed the country.

"I met women and men in small communities across the country who didn't have support about sudden death syndrome and bore the guilt of the fact that they had done something to kill their children," she said. It was during this process that Shapiro said she recognized the importance of a national platform to educate, as there was a marked reduction in sudden death syndrome afterward.

Having participated in that program, Shapiro was much in demand as a media personality. But her journey to success was interrupted by the results of a mammogram. She was called back for a magnification view, something that happens often, so she said she wasn't worried.

"As the radiologist approached me," she said, "the first thing I thought to myself was, and I swear this is true, she did not take my course in communications skills at the University of Toronto because she definitely has bad news for me. She could not look at me. She had a hard time even approaching me. She found something really fascinating on the floor and, in a moment of her forgetting that I was, in fact, her colleague and a physician, too, she had the nerve to basically say, 'We found a little something.' I don't tell patients, 'We found a little something.' I find that absolutely demeaning and patronizing to treat women and men as if they don't understand when you're about to deliver them bad news."

And the radiologist did have bad news for Shapiro; news that changed Shapiro's life, which was, at that point, she said, a balancing act between her kids, life, a medical practice, a TV show. As a physician, she said, she had been a navigator for many of her patients through difficulties and, "I was really not interested in becoming a member of the team. I quite enjoyed being the captain. I thought that dealing with my son's death had made me about as empathetic as I was ever going to be. I really didn't need to feel that I was going to walk around to the other side of the examining table.... But one in three Canadians will experience cancer in their lifetime and we don't always get to pick and choose which one of us it's going to be. It was me. So we started this journey."

Recognizing that she wasn't going to be able to practise medicine for at least a year, Shapiro followed up on a prior request by the Globe and Mail to write a column. But not everything was that easy to arrange and Shapiro described how sick she felt after chemotherapy. She also shared a story about being at a pivotal event for her daughter and the look on her daughter's face when she thought that Shapiro had not been able to attend: "In that moment, I recognized all the 'what ifs' I had. What if I'm not here to see her graduate? What if I'm not here to see my firstborn get married? What if I'm not here to hold my first grandchild? What if I'm not here for my son's bar mitzvah? All of those thoughts were reflected in my daughter's face as she could not see me. And I suddenly recognized that this was not just happening to me, as much as I thought it was."

Shapiro went on to relate her experience with cancer and her recovery from it, with a mix of humor and sobriety. She spoke of her gratefulness for the support network she had during her illness. She noted the importance of allowing others to help you; the need, in life, to both give and receive. She stressed that women must speak and share their stories, and that such actions are what galvanize us as a community of givers.

She concluded her remarks with a request that everyone "live generously, with your spirit, your heart, your philanthropic measures, your time, your commitment."

This idea was reinforced by the other women who spoke that evening. Lisa Boroditsky opened the event with the impressive fund-raising figures, emphasizing how many more women in the community were making the choice to contribute to the CJA, while one former recipient of community aid, Dena Bild, spoke about that personal experience, as well as her efforts, and those of others, to give back to the community in such ways as delivering food hampers to the needy and getting the Tickets to Inclusion program off the ground. Lana Marks Pulver highlighted three women who had benefited from CJA funds – one from Russia, one from Argentina, another from Ethiopia – and stressed the idea that "a gift to Federation is really a gift through Federation." And Karen Ergas, in introducing Shapiro, noted the doctor's many accomplishments, while Alisa Charach, in thanking Shapiro, praised her for the way in which she has chosen to face her life's challenges – "with humor, dignity and courage."

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