Foxy 'Rollercoaster' heroine plays piano on Fox

Pianist Nancy Fox, tap dancer in wheelchair show Fox viewers how music cheers elderly

Nancy Fox

Fox News Channel 2 has spotlighted Nancy Fox, heroine of the new VitalityPress book, "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer."

The heart-warming segment was televised Christmas Day at 5 p.m., then repeated at 6.

If you missed it, you can catch it on the KTVU Channel 2 website.

Just click here, then click on the video (and wait a second or three for it to load).

Enjoy!

Nancy was paired with Maree Gilmore, whom she first encountered a few months ago during a piano gig at the rehab facility where Maree lives.

When the 83-year-old (who's confined for the most part to a wheelchair) spontaneously started tap dancing to Nancy's rhythms, presto, an instant friendship was magically born.

The duo then taped, on Nancy's 75th birthday, an inspiring three-minute video with the theme "Disibilities Don't Limit." That effort is available on YouTube.

A short time later, Sharon Navratil, a producer for the San Francisco Bay Area's Fox affiliate, KTVU, saw a reference to the video in a life-affirming letter Nancy had written to the Marin Independent Journal.

She was so moved she soon brought a camerawoman-editor, Anne Onate, to Kindred Nursing and Traditional Care center in Greenbrae to film the pair for the Fox audience.

Maree Gilmore

Nancy's brilliantly been stroking the eighty-eights there and at countless other senior facilities for years, despite being hard of hearing.

The two-person crew carefully spent almost two hours taping the duo for a segment that lasts only minutes.

Nancy, who's now in her 20th year of being cancer-free, likes to quote from her letter to sum up her feelings about the video and the newscast: "I hope our duet will inspire people with disabilities to continue doing what they love."

She also enjoys repeating what she said in "Rollercoaster," the book I, Woody Weingarten, authored: "I can be happy and healthy…As a card-carrying member of the Cancer Club, a card-carrying member of the human race, I want joy in the years [ahead]."

Nancy's friends emailed and called to offer congratulations — from as far away as Hawaii, where a happy couple streamed the telecast as it was happening — after the newscasts aired.

Those appreciations returned to my foxy Fox wife some of the cheer and joy she's brought others — cheer and joy that could be witnessed in her segment with Maree on Fox.

The whole enchilada could be called a study in inspiration, perfect for the holiday season, or, for that matter, any time.

Giving thanks on Turkey Day and every day

Breast cancer upshot — a grateful patient who survived, a grateful surviving caregiver

Thanksgiving is but a blink and a quarter away.

Which triggers thoughts about what I'm grateful for (parallel, I expect, to what most folks living in these United States experience).

This year, my wife's 20th free of breast cancer, I'm particularly thankful for her survival. And for my having survived.

And for every day we're alive.

Being a patient can be tough under the best of circumstances. Being a caregiver certainly isn't easy. Facing a life-threatening disease can make it all the more difficult.

I shudder even now when recalling what we've had to deal with — the malady, its treatments and aftermath, an unrelenting up and down journey that I've chronicled in my new VitalityPress book, "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer."

Rainbows bounce off dining room table in
the home of Woody Weingarten and Nancy Fox.

But the image I try to retain in my mind is totally positive. It's of the circular glass-top table in our dining room, one whose artistic acrylic base acts as a prism that turns natural sunbeams into rainbows streaming throughout the room.

Fantabulous! Breathtaking! Not bad!

Twenty years ago we'd wanted to replace our unattractive rectangular wooden table that was surrounded by eight uncomfortable wooden chairs that could have passed for a torture rack.

So we looked, and we looked, and we looked.

Furniture store after discount store after department store.

Nada! Zilch! Diddly squat!

Then, after months of searching, we chanced across a wondrous table at an upscale showroom in Berkeley. We couldn't come close to affording it.

So we decided to track down the San Francisco-based Russian émigré artist who'd created it. And we did.

We asked him if he could build a less expensive version for us. He could.

But we still couldn't afford it.

So we let it go.

Until a couple of months later, when my wife, Nancy Fox, was diagnosed with breast cancer.

We both were terrified she might die — soon.

So we instantly decided to buy the table, figuring we needed to live "here and now" and enjoy whatever we could with whatever time she had left.

Two decades later we're still enjoying the furniture.

Every day.

Even when it's cloudy and there are no rainbows.

And we've mentally amortized its cost so, in our minds, we could afford it.