Good Medicine, June 2002 © Julie Beun-Chown

Having survived uterine cancer, Fran Drescher now wants to help other women and, as she tells Julie Beun-Chown, have a child.
I met Fran Drescher six years ago on a small yacht cruising around Sydney Harbour. It was a typically hot, sunny boxing day, and the boat was headed out through the heads to view the start of the Sydney to Hobart race.
The Nanny was smaller, more beautiful and fresher than her TV personality, nanny Fran Fine. But she was also like no other celebrity I’ve met before- she was frank, funny, wise and venerable. And yes, that nasal Noo Yawk twang was the voice God gave her.
She openly discussed her marriage to her high-school sweetheart, Peter Marc Jacobson (who co-produced The Nanny with Fran), being raped at gunpoint and her consequent therapy. She was a real person, not a glossy Hollywood creation.

Recently, we renewed the acquaintance. Living on the west coast has softened the unmistakable accent, but there is something else. Her voice is now the voice of a woman who has suffered greatly. After 20 years of marriage, she and Peter split up in 1997. Two years later her show was cancelled. Then, in June 2000, came the cruelest blow of all. After complaining to eight different doctors over two years that she suffered from mid-month staining, cramping after sex and other symptoms, she was finally diagnosed with uterine cancer and required a radial hysterectomy. And yet, it hasn’t slowed her down.
Fran, now 44, is co-writing a new sitcom pilot with her boyfriend (who she wants to remain anonymous, although in her book she refers to him as John, so we will do the same,) talking about doing a chat show and working as a patient advocate for the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
This month she launches her second book, Cancer Schmancer. “It’s insanity,” she laughs. “Other people get cancer, but they don’t turn it into an empire!"

		GM: Fran, how are you feeling? F: My health, thank God, is good. You know I’ve been almost two years well. I go to my oncologist regularly. I have a pap test every three months. I had stage one uterine cancer, and after my surgery it was considered 95 per cent non-recurring. Every time you go to the doctor and get a good report, the odds keep staking more in your favour. GM: So, what is the next landmark in your recovery? F: At the end of June I’ll graduate to visiting the oncologist for a pap test every six months. Surgery is half the race, but you have to go for the follow-up or do yourself a major disservice.

GM: You had this cancer for two years before any doctor picked up on it, but it wasn’t for trying.

F: Exactly. My surgeon told me, “It should never have take two years to get diagnosed. What they teach in medical school is ‘bleeding between periods-biopsy’. End of story. What happens between medical school and practice, I’ll never know,” she said.

It is a bitter pill to swallow for a woman who’s never had children to have a radical hysterectomy when she saw eight doctors over two years.

It’s a slow growing cancer, but the mortality rate is on the rise because it is under-funded and under-researched, and most women ignore the symptoms. Younger women are being told they’re peri-menopausal, which was my initial diagnosis.

GM: So, after all that, how did you finally find out that you had cancer?

F: The very first doctor told me, “You’re too young for a D&C (dilation and curettage).” I didn’t ask, “Why, what would a D&C tell us, why am I too young?” I was just flattered that I was too young for anything! I figured she knew best.

Two years later my oncologist did a D&C in the office. She found mostly stage one cancer cells. She considered it baby cancer, when the cells begin to turn. My sister is a nurse and she said, “When you go to the surgeon, make sure she does her own D&C.” When I went to that appointment, I had everyone there- two girlfriends and John! They were all in the examining room with me, and the surgeon just drew the curtain when it was time to really get in there. The D&C showed there were cells that were stage three and four, plus one and two, so it was actually more advanced than we thought. (The “stages” indicate cancer spread, with four being widespread.)

GM: What went through your head when the oncologist first told you the results?

F: You know, when she said it, I burst into tears. I hung up the phone. I cried on Leesa’s shoulder- she’s my exercise instructor. Then I called John, my parents, my sister, my best friend. I waited until John came home.

By that point I was numb. I realized it was three in the afternoon and I hadn’t eaten yet. It wasn’t until that night that it really started to sink in, and I connected the dots that didn’t need connecting. I was thinking, “This is the end, I’m going to die, this is the crescendo in my career, I’ve done things I never thought possible.” I’ve lived, laughed, lost, and loved again the whole Shakespearian thing. I’ve lived three lifetimes in my short time. Besides, I had decided the month before to make out my will, so it was like it was leading into John Lennon-Land.

GM: Years ago you couldn’t bring yourself to tell your mum you’d been raped because you didn’t want to worry her. But this time you really needed her.

F: True. I have a hang-up thinking I have to be everyone’s caretaker and no-one can deal except me. This time I told her, and she dealt with it bravely and strongly for me. And I never saw her breakdown. She and my father came from Florida two weeks before the surgery and left five weeks later.

GM: Once you slept on the news what did you do first?

F: I called the surgeon recommended to me, and she could’nt see me until Friday. I thought, I can’t wait until Friday! But that’s when she sees new patients. Oh!. It’s so frustrating. The only world that stops is yours. Everybody else keeps going about there business.

She said, “Listen, I can expedite things by booking you into an operating room. I’m free next Wednesday.” It was like getting a hair appointment! I said, “I’ll take it.”

GM: So even before she saw you, you had a room booked for surgery. That must have been a comfort?

F: Yes, because if I waited until Friday the room would have been booked, and I would have had to wait more days. Once you know, you don’t have a moment to lose, because you have a cancer inside you.

GM: Yet you were about to lose your uterus, and you haven’t had children. How did you feel about that?

F: Until I had the second biopsy that Friday my surgeon was thinking maybe we could save the ovaries, but then she was there were stage three and four cells. We had to do a radical hysterectomy. I told her I wanted a plastic surgeon to sew me up, and I wanted her to freeze my ovaries, so I could harvest the eggs and have a biological child through a surrogate. (Laughs). Thinking, always thinking!

GM: Wow! So your ovaries are frozen! That’s very new technology.

F: Yes, it’s very early medicine and it’s not commonly practiced.

They have had isolated success. The how is that, down the road, we’ll get a surrogate and do in vitro with a foetus made biologically from my eggs.

GM: How was your recovery?

F: The doctor was saying I should be back to my old self in six weeks. Complete rubbish! A woman my mum knows had a hysterectomy and she said, “Tell your daughter it’s going to be six months to a year. She’ll feel better, she’ll feel worse. And then one day, and it may take a full year, she feel like her old self again.” And that’s exactly what happened. They took out my appendix while they were there, just because. So you know, that alone is big to recover from. I did do acupuncture, which helped me a lot to reduce the internal inflammation.

GM: What about a special diet?

F: I ate no nightshade vegetables, such as potatoes, tomatoes or eggplant, which are inflammatory. I didn’t eat anything raw that would be hard to dist or any animal protein. Now, I’m trying to lose a couple of kilos because I did gain weight through lack of exercise and eating whatever I wanted. I went through a real period of entitlement. I’m trying to exercise, reduce my protein intake, drink more water. I’ll go back to Weight Watchers at some point. And I’m a big believer in therapy because, more often than not, it’s not what your eating, but what’s eating you.

GM: This has been a huge ordeal. How do you feel about yourself?

F: You know, I felt very vulnerable. I wasn’t superwoman any more. And it was hard for me to see who I was. And I could not believe the way I changed. My hips were swollen, and green and discoloured. I had a red horizontal gash across my pubic bone from the incision.

It took me a long time to recover, so my close friends and my family stayed with me. I was in a place in my life were I was really ready to reach out.

GM: What about your ex-husband, Peter? How did he react?

F: Peter and I became friends again, and that is defiantly a silver lining. We e-mail, we see each other when were in each other’s cities. He’s in New York now. Life is precious and there’s not a lot of room for anger.

GM: You’re very passionate about women’s health now.

F: Once you wake up and smell the coffee, it’s hard to go back to sleep. I’m sounding the alarm. The profile for women who get gynecological cancer is getting younger and younger, so it’s really important that we keep our ears to the ground, talk to each other and read about women’s health. If you think something is not right, and your doctor is dismissing it, ask someone else.

GM: What have you got out of this experience?

F: Let me tell you. I had a woman I met at a benefit said, “You saved my life. I read the interview in Roisie O’Donnells magazine, Rosie. I’m in my 20s, I have children, I felt something in my breast. My doctor said, “We’ll watch it, you’re too young for a mammogram’.” She said, “Wait. Fran Drecsher said I’m not too young.” She had cancer, had a mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation, you name it. And she’s wearing a wig, telling me I saved her life.

You know, I think it’s given me a focus and a purpose that my life did not have before. I was always loving, involved with charities and family, and I had a rich life before. Now, I have a purpose. I got sick maybe for this reason.

It’ didn’t kill me, and maybe I can save people. I want to help people.