Conquering cancer with hard work and humour

THE first thing you may recognise about American actress Fran Drescher is her voice. It’s as distinct as your own mother’s.

It’s the voice that carried her to two Emmy Award nominations for her work on the hit sitcom The Nanny. It’s the voice that has been featured on popular TV series, The Simpsons and Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

Lately, Drescher is putting her extraordinary vocals to use as an activist for her anticancer group, Cancer Schmancer, whose mission is to end cancer mortality due to late-stage diagnosis by preventing it from occurring and catching it early.

For Drescher, the genesis of this project was her personal experience as a uterine cancer survivor who was misdiagnosed and mistreated by doctors for several years.

"It took me two years of seeing doctors to get a diagnosis after being misdiagnosed for a peri-menopausal condition I didn’t have," she says.

"It motivated me to write the book Cancer Schmancer, which became a New York Times bestseller because I didn’t want what happened to me to happen to other people.

"When I went on my book tour, I realised that what happened to me actually happens to millions of people. Missed diagnosis, late diagnosis, it’s far too common. Thank God I was only stage one when I was finally diagnosed."

When Drescher looks back on her early years as a patient she recognises that she did not even know what questions to ask her doctors. Being the comedian that she is, she naturally puts a comedic spin on the entire experience.

"It took me two years and eight doctors before finally being told I had gynaecological cancer," she says. "I got in the stirrups more times than Roy Rogers."

Formulating a vision

While Drescher was on her lecture tour for the book, the personal stories of frustration that people were telling her about their own cancer experience caused an epiphany: "I just had a vision that everyone should be diagnosed at stage one," Drescher says. "I think that’s where our healthcare needs to go.

"I started creating the Cancer Schmancer movement as an early detection organisation. The cornerstone of the movement now involves prevention as well, because I think that the nation is too focused on the cure without thinking about what the causes are and eliminating them."

To that end, the Cancer Schmancer movement promotes the Trash Cancer prevention programme, which is dedicated to shifting the trajectory of disease. The programme challenges consumers to question what they put in, on and around them while they’re at home.

"The home is the most constant place we spend the most time," she says. "It’s the one place we have the most control over."

When Drescher mentions the word "control", she’s talking about controlling or eliminating our exposure to carcinogens through environmental toxins that we sometimes willingly assault our bodies with on a daily basis.

To back this up, she says that before a woman walks out the door in the morning, on average, she has used at least 12 personal care items. Men, on average, use eight.

While many of the items on the ingredient list that may have toxic properties are said to only be detected in trace elements, there is really no data on the effect of assaulting your body every day with your particular combination of chemicals. Whether your toiletries contain small amounts of formaldehyde or lead, you may be putting yourself at risk.

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