Dreams do come true

FROM the time I was a girl, I had dreamt of becoming an author. Throughout my youth, I cherished creative writing assignments and, upon entering college, even majored for a brief moment in time in journalism.

Circumstances forced an abrupt end to my college education, and reality set in quickly as I was forced to find a "real job" in the middle of my junior year. Through perseverance, luck and timing, my career led me on a path which far surpassed my wildest expectations, and I rose to the level of senior executive vice- president of an international marketing company over time.

My writing skills were left to training manuals, memos, minutes and the occasional "white paper", but whenever people would read anything I wrote ("thank-you notes" were my specialty), they would always say: "Christine, you should be a writer".

I heard the phrase so frequently that I thought long and hard about why I had never pursued my passion. The same answer always floated to the top of my list: I could not think of a subject that I felt I knew enough about to put a pen to paper.

The year was 1994, and I was on top of the world. I had just signed the largest contract in the history of the retail service industry. I had just turned 40; my husband and I were coming up on our 20th wedding anniversary; I had two healthy happy sons; we were buying the house of our dreams; life was great. It came to a screeching halt in a day.

I found a lump in my right breast during a routine self- examination. Having lost my mother to breast cancer at the tender age of 42, I had been very cognisant of my family history. The lump proved to be cancerous, and I began what would turn into a 12-month journey of surgery, aggressive chemotherapy, radiation, and a loss of my best asset: my long, thick, curly, luxurious brown hair.

Following my mother's radical mastectomy some 28 years prior, my mother had sunk into a deep, clinical depression. She stopped washing her hair, shaving her legs or even brushing her teeth. In the months that followed her surgery, my father, a physician, unable to deal with my mother's depression, left my mother.Having witnessed this atrocity as a child, I could only imagine upon hearing the words, "Christine, I am so sorry. You have cancer", that my fate would be the same as my mother's. Anger, fear, denial, and grief set in, and my surgery was scheduled for New Year's Eve.

Six weeks after my surgery, I awoke in the middle of the night with a vision: cartoons. I made my way in the dark downstairs to our family room, and as I sat down at my desk, as many as 50 cancer-related cartoons started flowing into my head. I scribbled madly, sketching and writing punchlines, until exhausted, I crept back up to bed, pulled the covers up to my chin and thought to myself, "What was that?"

The next day I got up, dressed, and went to both the public library and a Barnes and Noble bookstore. I strode into the bookstore first, walked up to the information centre, and announced, "I would like to see all of your humorous books about cancer, please." The clerk behind the counter squinted his eye as he looked at me disdainfully and pronounced, "You are sick." Aha! I chuckled to myself as I pulled a notepad out of my purse, scribbling down his very words: another cartoon for my book.

I proceeded across the street to the library where I was guided to one book technically classified under "Humour and Cancer": Erma Bombeck's I Want to Go to Boise, I Want to Grow Up, I Want to grow Hair. "I think I am on to something," I thought gleefully as I pulled out of the parking lot and headed toward my daily radiation therapy.

Days, weeks, months passed by as I trudged on through my treatments. My cartoons and "my book" became my focus as I searched for signs of humour in my predicament. The harder I looked the more I found, and my first book Not Now ... I'm Having a No Hair Day! was born.

Exactly one year from cancer surgery, I sat in my publisher's office and signed a contract for not one, but two books about using humour as a tool to deal with a diagnosis of cancer. Both of my books, No Hair Day ... and Our Family Has Cancer, Too! written especially for children, have won awards and received international acclaim and media attention.

I look back on the many roles I have played in my life: daughter, sister, student, wife, mother, businesswoman, entrepreneur, professional speaker, friend, cancer survivor. But the role that I hold dearest to my heart and fills me with pride is that of "author". Today is the perfect time to dream ...

CHRISTINE CLIFFORD

Christine Clifford is CEO/President of The Cancer Club, a company marketing humorous and helpful products for people with cancer. Visit her at www.cancerclub.com. E-mail her at christine@cancerclub.com

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