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Feature StoriesHeather Pickby Michael CoreyThe simplicity of the question clashes with the complexity of the suffering it seeks to understand: Why? Why would a brilliant, beautiful and benevolent young woman be stricken with breast cancer at such a young age? And why, upon having successfully defeated that cancer after a mastectomy and radiation and chemotherapy, would the cancer return with a vengeance in her bones and lungs shortly after the birth of her two young children? But such are not relevant questions--they cannot quell the anguish or the suffering, they can only seek to provide solace with truth and understanding, for there is but one explanation: There is none. There is no reason that cancer should invade a life so young and pure; no reason that it ought to lurk in the body and evade modern medicine, only to reappear with a dreadful and devastating assault; no reason this should happen at all, to anyone, at any time in their lives. It is human nature to seek understanding, however, particularly in the absence of reason. And so another simple question arises to render stolid the human spirit raging to maintain the body electric: How? How could a compassionate, grounded and successful young woman face the unknown with courage and humility? And how, upon having risen to the pinnacle of her profession, and having found and fostered a loving family, could bitterness and anger not overwhelm the star-crossed heroine? The answer is simple: By placing one foot in front of the other. “I walk like a crazy woman sometimes,” says Heather Pick, an immensely popular newscaster for 10TV in Columbus. “Not as often as I want to, but it’s good physical therapy for me.” Everyone has some form of release for the inevitably onerous aspects of life that accumulate with adulthood. There is the stress of work; of raising young children; of managing marriage. But for Heather and her husband Joe, such obligations are cathartic. And while Heather perambulates through her neighborhood, the normalcy of her life soothes with every step, distracting her from the disease that, despite its efforts, cannot slow her down. “The outlets of walking and of course the kids are great distractions--just to look at life through their eyes,” Heather says. “And even through work, I do lots of kids’ issues, and I just find that some of the families are so inspiring. Anytime you think you’ve got it bad, somebody else has got it worse. And I feel pretty blessed to be around here, to be 35 and have two wonderful kids and an amazing husband. I feel pretty darn blessed. I don’t really have much room to complain.” -- In 1999, while working at a small television station in Rockford, Illinois, Heather felt a lump in her breast. “I had that sinking feeling right away,” she recalls. Her doctors said the cancer was caught relatively early, assuring her with an encouraging statistic: She had a 90% chance of survival. Still, she opted for a mastectomy. “Just get it out of me,” she told her doctors. Chemotherapy and radiation accompanied the surgery, further bolstering Heather’s hopes of beating cancer. When her treatment ended, she and her husband celebrated her new status as a survivor. “I was in a false sense of security,” Heather laments. -- With security comes comfort, and with comfort comes progress. Without it, fear and uncertainty too often result in rigidity. So having overcome the tumult of breast cancer at such a young age, Heather and Joe felt secure in their decision to start a family of their own. They were blessed with the birth of Julia four years ago, and in November 2004, their son Jack was born. And then the pains came. At first, Heather assured herself that the aches in her back were due to the fact that she’d been carrying around her newborn too much. But as the agitation persisted, her oncologist encouraged her to seek out a five-year scan. “I took the call about 8 pm,” Joe says. “The nurse said it could be a number of things, but said, ‘You have to have it checked out.’” On December 10, 2004, Joe sent an e-mail to the 10TV community. At the end of November (right before Thanksgiving) we learned that Heather has had a recurrence of her breast cancer, which she had battled in 1999. The cells have returned in her bones (namely in the spine and pelvis) and although they had not been seen in 5 years of follow-up visits, the doctors tell us they had simply been too small to notice until now. Unfortunately, this situation is not operable and also not curable. Apparently it is common for breast cancer to return in the bones. It is not considered bone cancer, but "metastasized" breast cancer. The same cells have simply learned to adapt to another part of the body, despite her surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation in 1999. The good news is that since the cancer is confined to the bones (for now), the disease is not currently life-threatening. They have many treatment options to prolong her life in relative normality for many years. She is already undergoing hormone therapy; a drug called "Tamoxifen" which blocks estrogen from interacting with the cancer. The theory is that the cancer can grow and spread with the natural estrogen in her body and that this drug can slow or even shrink the progress. It has very few side effects compared to chemo and thankfully Heather is currently feeling quite good (she really has no symptoms to speak of). In addition she will receive an IV once a month which will help re-generate bone mass that has been damaged by the cancer. However, the prognosis is not good. It is likely that the cancer cells will eventually grow immune to the Tamoxifen, at which time her doctors have many other hormone-therapy drugs that can also be effective. It will be an ongoing process for the rest of her life. When one treatment stops working, we will try the next. With this approach, we are hopeful that she may live a normal life for several years. However, nobody (including the doctors) can give an accurate guess as to how long the treatments will be effective. Typical cases can go about 3-4 years, although Heather is in much better standing than most. At 34, she is young and otherwise healthy. She may do much better than average, but no one can say. As you can imagine, we are in shock. We struggle each day to avoid the depression that can only be put aside for a few moments at a time. Miraculously, there are still times when we have been as happy as I can ever remember. We have become closer than ever before. Our children (Julia, 3 and Jack, 6 mos.) keep us very active and entertained. We are trying to live our lives as we always would have; as long as Heather is feeling well, we flat out refuse to let this impair our lifestyle. In fact, we intend to enjoy life to the fullest. We are leaving next week to visit family in Chicago and Wisconsin, a trip we've planned for months. We plan to see some of you along the way. The reason you are receiving this information via email is simply because we have grown weary of relating this entire story time and again. Please don't feel slighted, we just need to get the news out and move on. I wish we had the strength to talk with each of you individually, but surely you can imagine the pain this topic brings. We look forward to the happiness and joy that still remains. We have not lost hope, nor our sense of humor. Despite all odds, we are handling this as well as could be expected. Our emotions have been on a roller coaster for the past few weeks, but we are doing everything possible to remain positive and face this crisis with courage. We also encourage support for any legislation involving stem cell research, for the many benefits it can have on multiple diseases, including cancer. Our lives have been forever changed, but we still have time to make a difference. Thank you for your good thoughts, prayers and well wishes. We are eternally thankful for so many great friends and loved ones. We have a difficult road in front of us and we will need all the support we can muster to see it through. -- It has been nearly eight years since Heather and Joe were joined in holy matrimony, and they have never been more enamored with one another than they are now. Their relationship has been forged in the hell of facing cancer; in the heaven of bearing children; in the beauty of living a united life, souls intertwined and hearts enraptured. “I think we’re actually closer than before,” Joe says. “You hate to think that it takes something like this to feel that way--and maybe it wouldn’t, but we’ll never know. We’re definitely on the same page, I think sometimes our discussions are a little more heated. They’re more honest. We’re much more honest with each other, I think. I feel totally willing to tell her whatever I want to tell her. And I think she does the same with me.” And as with any relationship, openness leads to depths of the human spirit that most never dare approach. It is there where truth lies, where fears are confronted, and where eternal love is defined. “In a relationship you’ll often have somebody who communicates really well and somebody who shelters that communication,” Heather says. “In our relationship, it’s always been him that communicates really well, and I’ve always been guarded about the way I feel and putting things out there, and he’s helped pull more of that out of me.” And so it has been that Heather and Joe have discussed the unfortunate realities of her disease. But they have not altered their lives to accommodate cancer--Heather has continued her work unfettered for 10TV, where she works as a morning and noon anchor; Joe has continued to thrive in animation and graphics for Brainstorm Media. They do not get to speak as often as they’d like, due to Heather’s unusual schedule--she arrives at work around 3 a.m., and goes to bed at 7 p.m. But they speak more deliberately, and they live more passionately. “Everything right now is at an accelerated--we don’t know what’s happening tomorrow,” Joe says. “We don’t have time to mince words, we don’t have time to wonder what she might be thinking or what I might be thinking or what--we get it out, get it on the table and there it is.” -- As the most watched news station in Columbus, 10TV has benefited from having multiple anchors that have grown into minor celebrities in Central Ohio. Among the most recognizable is Angela Pace, a Columbus native and long-time evening news anchor. “Everywhere I go, at least once every day, somebody asks me about Heather,” Angela explains. “Restaurants, the dry cleaners, the gym, my eye doctor’s office, my favorite bar--somebody asks me about Heather. And they all end the conversation the same way: ‘Please tell her I’m keeping her in my prayers.’” But the prayers are not merely being uttered by her loyal viewers, but by her colleagues, as well. “As a friend, my heart aches when I think of what Heather is enduring mentally, physically, and emotionally,” fellow newscaster Angela An says. “I love her to pieces, so it's especially difficult to comprehend the ‘what if?’ But as her friend, I refuse to go there, because watching her strength in this newsroom is awe-inspiring. Not once have I seen her take this relapse and use it as an excuse to ‘be in a bad mood’ or ‘down and depressed.’ Every day there's a smile. Every day there's a giggle. And every day there is a twinkle in her eye that lights up the room.” Indeed, the relationship between Heather and 10TV is one of mutual adoration. Heather credits the station for being extraordinarily supportive, from the cameramen to the executive producers, with gestures small and large. Similarly, Heather’s fight against cancer--and how she has dealt with it--has incalculably impacted many of her peers in the frenetic world of television journalism. “In our business, we get too caught up in the mundane things of our job,” Angela An says. “Meeting deadlines, getting the exclusive interviews, scooping the other stations. At the end of the day, does all that really matter? I can't speak for everyone else, but for me--I've learned to let things go, not let things bother me so much and focus my attention or more important qualities of life--friends and family. “As a whole, I do believe there is a bigger sense of family here at WBNS,” she continues. “You know, when people leave a station and move on to bigger markets, there is always one thing almost everyone says the same: They won't miss the station as much as they'll miss the people. We have all cried and laughed together, shared in births of babies together, and grieved together during family deaths. When one of us suffers, there is always someone else right there to help share the pain. And any one of us would gladly do whatever we can to take Heather's away.” Heather’s pain, and that of her colleagues, has been assuaged by the fortitude with which Heather has continued in her profession while continuing her fight to live. That her relationships--with her husband, with her children, with her friends--have all been strengthened because of her fight against breast cancer, so too has her ability to relate with the viewers who adore her. “She’s a great journalist,” says Andrea Cambern, a fellow newscaster and one of Heather’s dearest friends. “She’s compassionate, she’s engaging. But I think what this has allowed her to do is be free, and share some of herself with viewers. And whenever you can do that I think there’s a connection there that brings you closer, and as a result of that you develop a loyal following and more people kind of grab you onto their wing and take you in.” In February, The Columbus Dispatch Online asked its readers the following question: “Who is your favorite local television personality?” The overwhelming recipient of praise was, of course, Heather Pick. The answers ranged from the ebullient--“HEATHER PICK!!!!!!!”--to the appreciative--“She has so much courage and stamina it's unbelievable.” But the thoughtful testimony from a fellow survivor is most indicative of why Heather has become much more than a newscaster in Central Ohio. “Heather Pick is by far my favorite! I worked 50 hours a week during my chemo and I like seeing her,” one person wrote. “She has a charming personality. Why should we hide away like it is contagious? People are more aware that we aren't dead and still need that interaction.” Thousands of women live with breast cancer every year. But very few live with it in such a public way. For them, Heather is a lighthouse guiding them as to how they can live and beat breast cancer. For Heather, those same women are equally inspirational. “There are so many--everybody’s always like, ‘Oh you’re so brave’--but there are a lot of women who are in the same situation who are just as brave,” Heather says. “I’m no different from them, I just happen to have a job where people can see what I do. “At the same time, you also realize that because you’re fighting this publicly that you kind of have a responsibility as well. I feel like there’s an extra effort to make sure I raise awareness for this.” She raises awareness by showing up at work every morning and reporting the news with grace, with strength. She raises awareness by being open about her own fight on the air--in one recent segment, she sought out wigs to replace the hair displaced by her treatment. This simple gesture helps to erase the stigma many have for wigs, something Heather is proud to have dispelled. “We went and set up the camera to see how she looked in those wigs,” Cambern recalls. “And it was like girls in a beauty salon looking at fashion magazines. It was fun, yet we were talking about wigs so that she could go out and feel confident because of the hair she lost through the treatment. But we did and we played with the wigs and joked about her being a redhead. It was an experience I will never forget ever, because she welcomed me into this private moment for her, and she wanted me to be a part of it and I loved being a part of it.” Choosing to remain a part of the 10TV community could have been a difficult decision. But it is one that she and her husband made together, largely because it allows her gifts of strength to be shared with the community while simultaneously preventing the cancer from taking hold of her life. “I think we have a very positive outlook on life,” Heather says. “This is one of those things we can’t control. Do I wish that I were cured? Absolutely. Do I hope for that? Yes. Do I realistically think that that may happen? Not necessarily. There are wonderful people out there who fight like hell,” Heather says before pausing to wipe away a solitary tear. “Life is really about not dealing with things you can’t control but dealing with things you can. Everybody has problems, but it’s just how you deal with it, and how you deal with things you can change.” And so it goes that Heather Pick has traversed many trials in her journey to beat breast cancer, and yet has very far to go. In December 2005, tests indicated that the cancer had spread into her lungs. She has returned to chemotherapy treatments that have, if nothing else, alleviated a recurrent cough that had been ailing her. “Beating this thing and hopefully getting rid of this cancer, is living with it day to day,” Joe says. “I guess that’s the thing that’s taken us a year to get our heads around, to get our minds around it. You may never walk away cancer-free. Maybe you do--you hope you do--but realistically you go, ‘If I can’t, then I’m going to live as long as I can, the best I can.’” Few people learn this lesson in the course of their lives, yet Heather and her husband have not only grown privy to it, they’ve mastered it. So they beat on, leaning into the current, ceaselessly into the future. And they do so for not only each other, but for those whom will follow the path they are forging by living their life beautifully and courageously at their own gentle pace: one day, one challenge, one step at a time. |
race for the cure  self-examination tool  newsletter fall / winter 2007
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