Russ White 0:00
Judy Pearson's career began in a tree, a wonderful old maple in her parents backyard with a perfect branch on which to sit and write. And now hundreds of thousands of words later, this South Haven, Michigan native's voice is still inspiring. She's a best selling author, an accomplished presenter, and a graduate of Michigan State University. But her favorite title is storyteller. Judy, why do you write?

Judy Pearson 0:28
I don't know why. But I kept the notebook that I started sometime back in junior high, you know, all that teenage angst. And there was a great tree limb in a maple tree in our backyard in South Haven. So I literally would climb up there with my notebook, and just write stuff. And I've no idea where that came from. But I've always loved storytelling. And as an author, I wrote two novels, because that was storytelling. I've tried twice to write books that were not really self help books, but they were topic. I was really interested in courage and how men's and women's courage differ. And every time I say that people say, oh, that would have been so interesting. Well, someone else is gonna have to write it because I'm a storyteller. And that was not a story. And then, when I found the woman who became the inspiration for the most recent book from shadows alive, I was like, Yeah, that's right. I'm a storyteller.

Russ White 1:32
A diagnosis of triple negative breast cancer interrupted Judy's career as an author.

Judy Pearson 1:38
Well, like everyone else, it came at the worst possible time. But cancer really doesn't have a great time. I was a newlywed, I had met the man of my dreams. My youngest son had launched into a great career as a minor as a electrical engineer. And my eldest son is just retired, but he was career Airforce and was about to deploy to Afghanistan. And then I found the lump. Two months after a clean mammogram. And through it all discovered that there is a condition that's much more well known now called dense breast tissue. So I tell everyone that don't ever stop being vigilant about your health anywhere, but especially your boobs, because it doesn't matter if you get a clean mammogram, you can still have things that mammography can't see through if you have dense tissue. And so, and the fortunate thing was after my mastectomy, they found three other tumors, that by the time I would have gone around to the next mammogram, I would not have survived quite, quite probably, it was triple negative breast cancer, which is rare, very aggressive. And so I made a deal with God and the universe, if I survive this, I am going to do something with it. I don't k now what that is. But you know, just guide me and I will do something.

Russ White 3:05
Why was MSU the place for you when you were deciding where to attend college?

Judy Pearson 3:10
Well, my father told me that I could go to any university in the city of East Lansing. And it was the 70s. I was like, yeah, I'm going to Berkeley. I'm going to go to New York and he said, knock yourself out kid. So of course, there's where I was. And I had actually been coming to campus since I was probably five. I think. Michigan State fight song was one of the first songs I learned. My dad when my dad, when he graduated in 1950, there was still Michigan State College. My mom went to school here and then my brother, my younger brother, my only brother, but he's younger, also came to school here. Unfortunately, my children did not.

Russ White 3:54
Well, many of Judy's friends from her small hometown of South Haven, thought MSU might be too big for them. Judy was attracted to the home at MSU.

Judy Pearson 4:04
You know, it's interesting. I come from South Haven, which is a small town in Southwest Michigan. And then I had high school classmates who came to school here and found it too big. They they felt lost. There were myriad issues, but always surrounding it sighs because southaven then and now is only about 5000 people. We had 200 kids in our graduating class. For me, there was a different feeling. Partially I'm sure because I was familiar with the university, but partially because I just I love the hum of it and being back on campus for you. And walking around yesterday. I just I just felt it all over again. bomont the sporty statue, the stadium where I say to everybody my dad got tickets in 1950 and he never missed a home game till he died in 2002. Including the week my mother died. We buried her on Tuesday. And on Wednesday, he said, I think mom would want us to go to the game. And I said, Okay,let's go.

Russ White 5:08
Recognizing that healing is helping. Judy Pearson founded A Second Act.

Judy Pearson 5:14
One of the things that happens when you get to the other side of your acute cancer treatment, some people are told they have no evidence of disease as I was, some people are told they must live with their cancer, but the acute phase of treatment is over. And then they're on a maintenance program. So when you get to the other side of that acute phase, in addition to being thrilled to still be here, you realize that your days are valuable. And a great many people experience post traumatic growth, which means you have this traumatic traumatic experience, and you grow from it. The fella who coined that phrase, I said to him, I, when I interviewed him for an article, I said, Oh, I know exactly what that is that happened to me. And he said, No, Judy, I think you were probably pretty positive all along. But, but for some people, it's this eye opening thing that they want to make the best use other days. So a second act celebrates and supports women survivors of all cancers, who are giving back to the greater good using their experiences, and their life span, whatever those days are, to give back to the greater good to the world around them. And that can be having created an organization invented a widget going back to school or just more freestyle, free spirited sorts of sorts of actions. And we raise money through a live storytelling event. And then that money allows us to do networking events, workshops, and give micro grants every year to survivors who want to launch or grow their second act.

Russ White 6:56
Discovered at MSU, cisplatin would become the backbone of combination chemotherapy, Pearson believes it saved her life.

Judy Pearson 7:04
My oncologist sat me down after my mastectomy, and said, Okay, this treatment is going to be really rough. And usually people have to have a three or a four week span in between treatments, you're very healthy. Other than that little bit of cancer, we're going to make that in every other week occurrence. And even though I had no evidence of disease once the the breast was removed, triple negative cancer, which I had had a 30% chance of coming back without the chemotherapy. So I thought that was just too great of a chance. And she said, we're gonna hit you with three drugs, told me the names of the drugs, one of which was cisplatin, go back home. Two days later, the MSU magazine arrives in my mailbox, and one of the featured articles was Dr. Rosenberg who invented cisplatin here in 1965. And it wasn't until after my own treatment that I wrote an article talking about the fact that Dr. Rosenberg saved my life. It's it was when it was discovered, it was miraculous. It was the first Platinum based chemotherapy drug. And it's not without side effects, severe side effects, horrible nausea, hair loss, joint damage afterwards, but you know, I would take all of those in exchange for my life, it was well worth it. So then the other really interesting connection is, in 1971, Richard Nixon was facing a very iffy reelection, and his aides came to him and said, there's a bill making its way through Congress called the National Cancer act, you sign that we are quite, quite certain you will be reelected. It's a bipartisan issue. Democrats and Republicans both fear it, and will even toss in that will cure the disease by the Bicentennial. So he signed it. It infused 1.8, which is $8.4 billion into research. And at that time, cisplatin was in final clinical trials. So there's no tracking the money. Maybe there is I don't know, I don't know for sure. But I'm quite sure that some of that money, went into the final trials for cisplatin. Ironically, in 1971, when Nixon signed that bill, I was a freshman, incoming freshmen at Michigan State.

Russ White 9:30
Judy, tell me more about your cancer diagnosis and journey through treatment as a survivor and not a victim.

Judy Pearson 9:37
The diagnosis comes like a thunderbolt. It's like any catastrophic event. I read an article one time about the top, top 10 stressors in life and besides the death of a loved one, and a divorce. catastrophic illnesses is the next one. And so if you get that kind of Why me sort of thing? And I was actually talking to a to a pastor. And I said, I'm not asking that why me question and he said, when when people do I respond to them by saying, Why not you? Why Why should it be him? Should it be her? Why not you? And I thought, well, that's a good answer. I had a very I'm a researcher by profession. I very carefully researched my disease, my treatment, my reconstruction, at no time did it occur to me to research survivorship. I didn't even think it was a thing. And that surprises me because I thought myself fairly well read. On the other side of all the treatment, I started having unexpected and really quite frightening issues, night sweats, and this severe joint pain, chronic fatigue and insomnia, brain fog, which for her writer is a really bad thing. And when I went to my oncologist and asked why I hadn't been told, it wasn't like I wouldn't have taken the treatment. She said, which was very common 10 years ago, wasn't important to talk about, we were busy saving your life. I now know. And all of the folks that I interviewed for from shadows to live, who were the architects of the cancer survivorship movement, their whole focus has been on making sure that survivorship is considered part of the cancer continuum. There's diagnosis, there's treatment, there may be adjunctive types of treatments after the main treatments over but survivorship is every bit as much of the cancer continuum, it's the rest of your life. The treatment is is really a year maybe a little longer to get you to the rest of your life, why wouldn't you spend as much time focusing on that learning about these issues and learning how to move beyond them. And that was why the survivorship movement launched and became so successful. Before the National Coalition for cancer survivorship was founded by 23 people all with a connection to cancer. And before they launched the cancer survivorship movement, we were called victims in the newspaper. And even after their 1986 founding, there were articles all said victim and even if the article was about them, and the headline read survivors, not victims, the writer continued to call us victims or call them victims in the article, it was hilarious. And so I At first, the term survivor was a little foreign to me, because I thought, you know, I feel like I've won the lottery. If you said to Vince Lombardi or George Patton, wow, you survived that they would have punched you in the face. You know, I don't want to just be a survivor. I want to be a winner. And then I realized I was swimming upstream. survivorship was already coined. And and I'm happy with that, I get it now, I totally get it. The other interesting thing about the idea of survivorship, if you experience a heart attack, boy, from the moment you have recovered or had whatever corrective surgery, they're starting to talk about rehab, they're starting to talk about you getting back to your life and what we're going to do to make sure that the rest of your life is quality of life. And they never did that for cancer, which I find so interesting. Now, it's true. Cardiac issues kill more people every year. But there are more cancer survivors in the country. 17 million as of this year, it just in America, and so it's a much bigger population that absolutely should learn how to deal with their disease and their long term effects.

Russ White 14:01
Judy Pearson's latest book is titled, "From Shadows to Life: A Biography of the Cancer Survivorship Movement," part medical history, part inspirational biography, this is the story of a social movement that continues to improve life for millions.

Judy Pearson 14:18
So as I mentioned, I'm a storyteller. And after cancer, I just couldn't find the next great story to tell which was when I was going to do the whole courage thing, and then that just didn't work. So I started a second act.org and I through a second act was introduced to a woman called Susie lay, who lives in Tucson, which is about two hours from Phoenix where I live. And Susie is a rock star and amazing one of the founders of the cancer survivorship movement, and became the inspiration for the book from shadows to life. A Biography about Biography of the cancer survivorship movement. And the shadows. Part of the title is that although Nixon designated all that money, and people actually started surviving, because before the 70s, more than half of the people diagnosed died. So it was a grim, grim diagnosis. cancer was still thought to be contagious. You couldn't tell people that you'd gone through cancer treatment because even though you might have no evidence of disease or been cured, like they used to say, people were terrified that you still had the germ. And so you could be fired. You couldn't join the military, you couldn't adopt children. College students couldn't get roommates, because their parents feared that the roommates parents feared that they would catch cancer. It was it was a horrible life. So you went through this god awful diagnosis. And then we're just left behind one of the architects of the movement, Dr. Fitzhugh Mullen said it's as if we have invented sophisticated treatment to save people from drowning. But once we dragged them to the to the dock, we left them there to cough and splutter on their own. And that's exactly it that that was just it. We're done. You're you're saved now goby. So it was a really monumental task to bring cancer out of the shadows. And that's what this group did.

Russ White 16:24
At one time. Did people really believe that cancer is contagious?

Judy Pearson 16:28
Isn't it crazy? It's nuts. It's just they were fed, if you went to someone's house, you were fed on paper plates. It was really crazy by the 80s. That was pretty much dispelled. I mean, like every other old wives tale, you know, it took longer in other parts of the country. But even in the 80s, after it was no longer thought to be contagious. Employers could ask the question, have you ever had any of these diseases, including cancer? And those questions? Actually, actually, were before the Have you ever murdered anyone question? because employers didn't want to hire survivors for fear that they would have a recurrence, that they would die, that they would be, you know, a puny and sickly lot. And it was just a bizarre thought. So this was on the heels of the the AIDS movement. And they took a page from that and started testifying before Congress made sure that the Americans with Disabilities Act included cancer survivors, they had a march on Washington that pulled in 250,000 people, and simultaneous, were marches all across the country, including here in Lansing. And it was a Saturday on September 25. And during the halftime of the Michigan Michigan State game right here on campus, they ran a video of what was occurring in Washington DC. Isn't that cool? I wasn't here, but my dad was.

Russ White 18:05
Are you optimistic about a cure for cancer one day?

Judy Pearson 18:09
We don't use the word cure. The other part of survivorship was that you couldn't call yourself a survivor until you past five years, and then it was 10 years, or maybe it was three years, there was some moving goal line, and then you could be a cancer survivor. Well, what happened if you got re diagnosed like the day after you hit the five year mark? Are you no longer a survivor? So sort of the same thought, is there with cure, because we still don't know. all there is to know about the disease. But what we do know is that it's not one disease. It's not like the polio vaccine, you know, polio had three or five cousins that they had to kind of deal with. But But mainly, it was one thing, cancer, can any cell in your body practically can become cancerous, any cell anywhere. So it's hundreds of diseases. What we have learned and what's so brilliant, is we now much better understand cell structure and DNA and the human immune system. And in fact, the COVID vaccines that research was based on certainly the infectious disease research, but the National Cancer Institute had a great deal of genetic research that they've been working on now for decades, that really pitched in and helped with the with the COVID vaccine creation. So cure, I don't I don't I just that word is not even in my vernacular. But what I know is that if if my cancer, for example, metastasized or had another primary cancer, that I'm in a much better place today than I was even 10 years ago, because they can use my immune system, they can. My breast cancer, as I said was triple negative, which just before my diagnosis, cell research, divulged that that type of breast cancer is more akin to ovarian cancer than other breast cancers. And that was something that had happened just a year before I was diagnosed. So 10 years later, massive leaps forward. And the research that's being done here at Michigan State that I just learned about in the lab, man, it's it's really wonderful in that the hope would be that someday, we could actually then prevent cells. If you have any kind of genetic mutation in the breast cancer, the bracha mutation was the first but now they we know of many other mutations. If you have any of those mutations, you can be immunized that can maybe stave off a cancer diagnosis, that would be a dream.

Russ White 20:57
Judy Pearson shares her three key takeaways from our conversation.

Judy Pearson 21:01
Three things I'd like as takeaways. First of all, you are your own best advocate. Listen to your body. Don't be dissuaded from a Doctor Who says you know, we've done everything and we don't know what to do. So you're fine. That's just not good enough. Keep going until you have an answer. I did that. I'm about to do it again with a heart issue. Don't ever back away from from that diagnosis. Or that prognosis. You don't have to be rude. Just go get a second answer. Secondly, for people who do have any illness, be it cancer or anything else. Find someone to help advocate for you, you become your own advocate, but in the throes of the diagnosis and the flurry of treatments and and everything that comes along with that you get pretty model brained. Find someone who can be your advocate who can come to appointments with you take notes, ask the questions you may forget to ask. Do that. Ask for one if you're the patient, and do that for somebody, if you're looking for something to do some way to help. And then the third thing is live every day. Get rid of toxic things. Not only the chemicals in your house, maybe the people in your life, maybe your job. Don't waste a minute of life because it is so precious. And as I tell my grandchildren, even if you're having a bad day, it's not forever. It's just for now look at tomorrow is a brand new day.

Russ White 22:38
Learn more about all we've discussed with Judy at judithlpearson.com. That's P-E-A-R-S-O-N.com. I'm Russ White for MSU Today.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai