Recurrence foils woman's try to thank med team

Breast cancer survivor buys 26 Gaga tickets to thank support system but dies before concert

Life is filled with sad ironies.

Such as the recent case of a breast cancer survivor spending $10,000 to buy 26 tickets to a Lady Gaga concert in Washington, D.C., to thank her medical team and family-and-friends support system, only to die three months before she could attend.

According to news reports, Melissa Anne Dabas, 42, passed away listening to a Lady Gaga song while holding hands with her anesthesiologist husband, Jay.

Melisa Anne Dabas and her sons.

The Virginia mother of two boys, a super-fan of the pop singer, had been diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer in the spring of 2016, underwent a double mastectomy and chemotherapy, and was declared cancer-free.

But the disease returned.

The tickets included 18 box seats valued at $1,500 each. Her family decided to raffle off 10 of them to benefit their newly established Melissa Ann Dabas Charitable Trust, an adjunct of the Winchester Medical Center Foundation's Angel Fund.

The aim? To help cancer patients with non-medical expenses.

The concert is scheduled for Nov. 19. Jay is planning to go with their two sons — Avinash, 11, and Sajan, 8 — and is planning to take a large photo of his late wife so she, in a sense, can be there.

Jay wrote on his Facebook page that raising funds via the raffle may "help me keep her voice and spirit and legacy alive."

A story by Petula Dvorak in The Independent, a British publication, quotes him as saying, "I'd get home from work, and she'd tell me all these stories — not about herself but how these people were having a hard time buying food. Or who's going to pay the rent? These people were all having a difficult time covering the non-medical expenses of cancer. Cancer doesn't discriminate, it doesn't only affect people who are able to pay. And this really bothered her. And it was something she never got to do anything about."

To learn more about the disease, its treatments and its aftermath, check out "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at caregivers.

Art stems from 1 in 8 women getting the disease

Torso project shows how breast cancer survivors turn suffering into display of healing, courage

I've long believed in the concept of turning a negative into a positive.

So I admire the breast cancer survivors who — with help from families and friends —  plaster-cast their bodies into an art project.  

As one artist, the uni-named Matuschka, says in a foreword to the book, "1 in 8: The Torso Project," many of the artworks "show the face of female suffering and fragility" yet "demand a response from the viewer, as if the women are saying…'Deal with our losses, with our vulnerability, and fears, yes, but also with our beauty, strength, and courage.'"

The figures in the title refer to the horrifically real odds that 1 in every 8 women in the United States will get breast cancer.

Symbolically, the first "torsoettes," as the women who participate in the art project are called, numbered eight.

The project promotes exhibits of casts made and decorated by survivors in Western Massachusetts. It was originated by Pam Roberts, the book's editor, a woman who opted not to have reconstruction or use a protheses and has made at least half a dozen torsos to show her scars.

Her purpose? "To help her "excise and exorcise the fear of breast cancer and transform it into an expression of courage and love," she says in her book.

"An Once of Prevention"

The paperback includes a color photo of "An Once of Prevention," a piece by Betsy Corner that used limbs and leaves to represent "the lush green of our hills and valleys, the trees which breathe for us" — and, at the same time, to act as a warning about the "chemical toxins that permeate our soil, food, water, and air.

Also, as a rallying cry to "use our purchasing power to change corporate practices" that put those chemicals "in everything from laundry products to lethal herbicides and pesticides."                                                
The project has gone beyond its small-town origins and has now been the center of multiple free, torso-creating workshops in Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire.

It occurs to me that its motto might be, "Have torso, will travel."

Amy Wasserman and her art.

The torso project is one of a dozen resources listed in the playbill for a new play, "Breastless," by Laurel Turk, that addresses the fact that "there are very few voices expressing outrage at the breast cancer epidemic that continues on."

A friend who's seen it tells me that enthusiastic audiences have been packed with breast cancer survivors.

I, Woody Weingarten, celebrate breast cancer survivors — especially my wife, Nancy Fox — in my book, "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," which is aimed at male caregivers.

Family parades together for To Celebrate Life

Husband, wife and daughter model with other breast cancer survivors to raise money 

It was a family affair, what President John F. Kennedy might have called a combination profile in courage.

It involved Thomas R. Mautner; his wife, Cheryl Rose Mautner; and their daughter. Victoria Mautner Zemrak.

All three participated in a recent San Rafael "evening of enchantment" that marked the 20th anniversary of the Marin County nonprofit, the To Celebrate Life Breast Cancer Foundation.

The trio "stepped out" by modeling on the runway of the organization's annual fundraising fashion show of breast cancer survivors.

They were among the 31 who paraded at the event, which also included live and silent auctions, entertainment and dancing.

Tom Mautner

Tom Mautner was the only male to model this year.

He'd had a mastectomy on Feb. 14, 2002 — "a terrible way to spend Valentine's Day," he was quoted in the event's program — after being diagnosed and informed he was part of the 1 percent of breast cancer patients that are male.

Two years later, Victoria was diagnosed at age 34.

Victoria Mautner Zemrak

The mother of five was found to have two types of breast cancer (and a cyst) in her right breast. She underwent a lumpectomy, followed by a mastectomy when more cancer was found in the margins. Reconstructive surgery came last year after treatments of chemotherapy, Herceptin and tamoxifen.

"God, family and friends were my solid rock through all the hard times," she's said. "I couldn't have made it without them."

Cheryl last year had radiation after her surgery

Cheryl Mautner

The mother of three, grandmother of 10 and great-grandmother of three gratefully noted in the program that "My husband…was and is always by my side."

The Sebastopol couple has been married 47 years.

The motto of To Celebrate Life, whose mission is to "raise funds and grant financial assistance to nonprofit organizations [in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area] that provide services and support to people living with breast cancer," is succinct:

"No one should face breast cancer alone. With your help, no one will."

Since its inception, To Celebrate Life has given more than $4 million to fund emergency and direct services for breast cancer patients.

So far.

To learn where to contact agencies and organizations like To Celebrate Life that can help breast cancer patients, their partners and families, I, Woody Weingarten, urge you to check out my book, "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," which is aimed at male caregivers.

Disease-free? Book still worth reading, site says

'Rollercoaster' is praised in online article for showing men how they can be good partners 

A new examiner.com feature article titled "Woody Weingarten's ride through wife's breast cancer may help you" states unequivocally that my book "is worth reading even if no one in your life has cancer."

Why?

"Because," it says, "it is filled with very smart clues about how a man can be the best possible husband or partner. And how a wife can help him be that."

"Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," the story points out accurately, is also "a guide to give people a sense of what they will be facing" if, unfortunately, a life-threatening disease does strike.

It furthermore labels the book "a memoir, a love story, a research guide, and some realities of chemotherapy and medications."

Written by Janet Gallin as an adjunct to her "Love Letters Live" podcast package, the online piece notes that the "husband of a woman diagnosed with breast cancer has to…survive his own terror in order to be a strength to her."

How to do that, despite the ups and downs, is the main thrust of my new VitalityPress book.

Accordingly, the article indicates, "Rollercoaster" can help you figure out what is true concerning the disease, its treatments and its aftermath — and, by the same token, what is not. 

And that's not as easy as a caregiver or patient might think. "A study says X is true and Y is false, the next week it is the opposite," I'm correctly quoted as saying.

The piece maintains that I'm a survivor of my wife's cancer.

I am.

But she, too, is a survivor. And we're both thriving.

You can read the entire article here — and then learn even more by following a couple of its links.

'Rollercoaster' is a love letter to author's wife

Podcast backs 'Rollercoaster,' author Woody Weingarten, helps caregivers and patients

Janet Gallin

Yes, 30 minutes and 33 seconds can take a chunk out of your day. 

But I'm worth it. 

So's my new VitalityPress book, "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer."

Besides, you can always split the 30:33 into multiple listening sessions.

On the other hand, if you find it that enthralling, listen again. 

And again.

What in Heaven's name am I raving about?

The amount of time it'll take to hear a new podcast with and about me, Woody Weingarten, and my book. 

It lovingly promotes both — and, in the process, helps breast cancer caregivers and patients.

The interviewer is Janet Gallin. The venue is her creation, Love Letters Live, once a San Francisco radio talk show and now a vital branch of the examiner.com tree that, I've been informed, is "an entertainment, news and lifestyle network serving more than 20 million monthly readers around the world."

Click here to find the podcast button on the bottom of her page about me, Woody Weingarten and "Rollercoaster."

"Writing love letters filled with hope, passion, compassion, memories, gratitude and promises," she contends, "is  significant gift to writer, recipient and generations to come."

Check out my love letter to my wife, Nancy Fox. You may learn something interesting about her, me, my book or being a caregiver.

The 1971 Alka Seltzer commercial that became a catch-phrase may have said it better than I can: "Try it. You'll like it."