October 13, 1999

Taking Charge, Making Good Decisions
Key to Cancer Battle

By Dan Reany, The Winchester Star

Liza Vann can get a laugh out of a story that stars a dead body and a killer.

The tales she told about her breast cancer drew laughs, gasps, and silence from the crowd that heard her speak Tuesday night at Winchester Medical Center's Conference Center.

Vann, who is an actress, writer, and producer, lives in Manhattan but performs with a drawl that gives away her heritage of growing up in Durham, N.C.

Her talk, "The Top of the Bottom Half: An Evening with the Keeper of All Knowledge" encompassed everything and everyone from a suicidal inmate to misinformed women who undergo mastectomies (removal of the breast) when a much less-invasive procedure would be the better option.

Vann offered a series of "do's and don'ts." A few of the pointers remained a little enigmatic until one of Vann's life stories shed some light on them.

One was, "Don't look at the dogs, work the lock."

Vann was watching her baby brother, Doobie, whose given name is David. Doobie fell asleep and missed the time for his Saturday night bath, the mandatory one before Sunday church. Vann sent a very sleepy Doobie off to bed, but later heard the bathtub water running.

Doobie didn't respond when she knocked on the door. Vann started to pick the lock on the door with a quarter. "I was watching a 'Magnum P.I.' rerun — yes I admit it — and Magnum was working this lock and these huge dogs were running at him. He just kept thinking, 'Don't look at the dogs, work the lock.' I couldn't think about anything else but getting that door open."

Vann worked the lock. The door swung open. She found Doobie face down in the tub. She gave him a few sharp back slaps. He spit up the water he had inhaled, and lived. "Don't get distracted. Don't look at the dogs. Work the lock."

"You are the only one at the table; everyone else comes and goes." Liza advised all people, not just women on the operating table for breast cancer surgery, to cover three points with their doctors just before they are put under anesthetic. "You are the only one at the table. Hell, I was the only one on the table."

Other points included, "Save screwing up for the things that don't count. ... You're picking out shoes. Go ahead and screw that up. Don't screw up picking out your doctor."

Vann spoke highly of her doctor, Chip, who shared information and was straightforward. Most importantly, he recognized that she was the one in charge. "Doctors work for you. Don't ever forget that." Before Vann underwent one of her surgeries, she asked her doctor where he was going to make the incision.

There were two options.

One was to enter through an incision at the top of the breast. The other was to enter through an incision in the area surrounding the nipple. Her doctor had decided on the incision at the top of the breast, but Vann didn't want a scar and opted for the latter. "Your breast. Your decision," he told her. It's one of the reasons he remained her doctor.

Vann spoke out against the use of "feel good verbiage."

" 'Your life is more important than your breast.' Thanks. Any other body parts you want to rank for me? 'You're bigger than your breast.' Yeah, I'm bigger than a hamster, too. What's that mean?... It's not courageous to get a mastectomy. It's not selfless... Sometimes it's a matter of a woman making a bad decision."

Vann spoke of another brother, "Prodigal Peter Rabbit," and his drug problem. He wrecked one family car after another, and continually repeated the phrase, "I'm really off drugs for good this time."

Try as they might family members couldn't stop his drug use, but, Vann said, they could stop him from wrecking more and more cars and coming close to death each time just by changing the habit of leaving the keys in the car.

She said she has a unique perspective as the middle child in a family of 12, with parents who "raised kids in the '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s, and '80s." She's directly at the "top of the bottom half" as the title of her talks reflects.

One of Vann's most baffling bits of wisdom was, "You don't have to jump out of the car if you can't make a pig noise."

When Vann was little, her sister, Gooche, whose given name was Mary Catherine, was riding in the car with her and other family members to a family reunion.

Dad and the rest of the family were in the station wagon behind them.

Being able to make "the pig noise" in your throat was a necessity for family members. Brother Artie called out for everyone in the car to make the pig noise. Vann did her best, which wasn't very good, but passable. Gooche couldn't make the pig noise. "Artie said, 'You can't make the pig noise? Out of the car.' Sister Sara opened the door and out Gooche went."

They were going about 35 mph and everyone in the car, at least everyone who was left in the car, was stunned by Gooche taking her brother so seriously. So was Dad and everyone in the station wagon behind them.

Vann spent the rest of the family reunion answering the question, "What happened to Gooche?" "She jumped out the car because she couldn't make the pig noise."

"Bad decisions beget bad decisions. Stay in the car, even if you can't make the pig noise."

Vann talked about the liberating feeling of accepting and taking responsibility. She said women who are scarred by mastectomy shouldn't be seen as victims. "You make the choice. It's your decision." Vann encouraged women to make informed decisions based on well-understood facts rather than making weak decisions based blindly on the advice of a single doctor.

Vann was diagnosed with cancer seven years ago, but she refuses to call herself a survivor. "I'm no more a cancer survivor than I am a chicken pox survivor. I had cancer. I don't have cancer anymore. Cancer was a non-event to me. It wasn't frightening. It was annoying. Cancer is a fact, nothing more, nothing less."

Vann said cancer isn't even urgent. "The first thing you do when you find out you have cancer, is nothing."

Vann's brother Woody walked into the kitchen one day and asked for a glass of water. He left the kitchen and returned seconds later to ask for another glass of water. After the third glass Vann asked him what all the water was for. " 'It's to put out the fire in the living room.' ... A fire in the living room — that's urgent. Not cancer."

But to keep cancer at a low level of urgency, Vann said breast self-examinations, regular mammograms, and other precautions are necessary. "If we find it early, we all live. That's why it's important to go out there and find it early."