One Woman's "Crazy Sexy Cancer"
When I was first assigned a story about a new book and documentary called "Crazy Sexy Cancer," I had no idea what I would find. Like most families, mine has been touched by cancer and there was nothing "crazy" or "sexy" about the experience. But then I watched the film, read the book and met author/documentarian Kris Carr (www.crazysexycancer.com). I haven't stopped thinking about her or her message ever since.
Consider how she opens her moving and at times hilarious film, "Crazy Sexy Cancer," which premieres on The Learning Channel, tonight at 9 p.m. ET. There she is, looking at scans of all the tumors inside her liver and lungs -24 in all. "This is my liver, cancer, cancer, cancer, cancer," she says, pointing to the tumors. "I just wipe 'em off, I erase them."
Or consider how she talks about the search for the right doctor, comparing it to being the CEO of a corporation and interviewing applicants for a job. "How could they revive my business strategy and keep my company alive and thriving," she asks.
Her story, she says, is less about a battle with cancer, than an adventure ride. "One of the things that's very important to me is that we are not victims, we are not oh, poor, so and so, and so we're goddesses, we're thrivers." Or cancer babes.
Carr's documentary, and her new book, "Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips," may be the first girlfriend's guide to living with cancer – a sign of the times really. More and more people are living with cancer, and Carr's message is they can live full lives, they don't have to be "defined" by the c-word.
I had to ask her about the title. She says it is designed to "shatter stigmas" and "head-butt adversity." "There's nothing sexy about cancer," she told me in an interview. "It's the women who have it. We're still empowered, whole, vibrant, funny individuals with or without the disease."
Carr, a former actress who may be best known for playing the Bud Girl in Super Bowl ads, was diagnosed on Valentine's Day 2003. "It was a needle off-the-record moment, I call it. It was terrifying," she said. She learned she had an extremely rare form of vascular cancer which only strikes about 100 to 200 people a year. There is no treatment and no cure. Her doctor said she could wait to see if the tumors made the first move.
"No, uh, I don't want to do that," she said. "You know, Stage IV, there is no Stage V, so for me, I thought, let's get active, let's hit the road, let's go on this adventure."
She turned her video journal into a documentary, interviewing other women with cancer, as well as doctors, researchers, healers and gurus. She also became, in her words, a full-time "healing junkie," willing to try anything from anger therapy to visualization exercises to a veggie diet.
"Well, for me, it was what can I control?" she said. "Cancer is very chaotic. I could control what I put in my mouth, what I ate, what I drank, what I would think."
In our interview, I asked her where she gets the strength to deal with a cancer that is incurable and that could one day end her life. She talked about her family. "They've always made me feel like I could do anything and certainly when I got diagnosed, it brought us together. They always believed I could do anything," she said.
And another source of her strength – the man behind the camera, who helped her shoot and edit her documentary, became the man of her dreams. They married last year.
"It's just so hopeful. Yes I have cancer and it might not go away, but I can still have a future," she said, "because life goes on."
She gets about 300 emails a day from women with cancer, women with loved ones battling the disease or women fighting other types of adversity. Said one emailer, "My sister is half-way through her chemo, sent me your info, I was so excited by your words, your approach to this crazy thing called cancer, thank you for making her a little bit lighter… You are truly a cool chick."
A truly cool chick indeed who is an inspiration to all of us to live well and to live fully.