Emmy and Golden Glob-nominated Fran Drescher's unique talent and comic training are evident in her hit CBS series "The Nanny", which she co-created and executive produced. A woman of many talents, Drescher has also scripted and directed episodes of "The Nanny", recently wrote, directed and executive produced "Daytrippers", an innovative pilot for MTV, and is currently developing two feature films. Enter Whining, Drescher's best-selling autobiography spent several weeks on the New York Times' best seller list. More recently, Drescher lent her writing and vocal talents to The Emperor's New Clothes, Steven Spielberg's all-star re-telling of the classic fairy tale, which benefits the Star Brite Foundation.
Sounding the Alarm
I got famous, I got cancer, and I LIVED to talk about it. Once you wake up and smell the coffee, it’s hard to go back to sleep.
So let me sound the alarm! We must become better medical consumers. We must challenge our physicians. We must know the early warning symptoms of the cancers that could affect us and the tests that are available. Take control of your body. We put more energy into the buying, selling, and repairing of our automobiles then we do our own bodies.
The doctor is a person, not a God, and we must become greater partners, not infants, when dealing with them.
When doctors call to tell you you have cancer, at the end of the day, they go home to eat dinner with their families, while you go home to eat your heart out. Passive patients of the twentieth century are over, now and forever to be replaced with proactive medical consumers.
How many people go for a second opinion when the doctor is telling them that they’re essentially fine? I did. I went for seven second opinions, as a matter of fact, only to find out at the end of a two-year odyssey, that all the while I was being told I had a peri-menopausal condition, in actuality, I had uterine cancer. And although, thankfully, my cancer was slow growing and noninvasive, it remains the only female cancer with a mortality rate that is on the rise.
By the same token, 80% of all women with ovarian cancer, which is a far more aggressive cancer, find out in the late stages, and 70% of them will die.
Many of these women have been misdiagnosed in the early stages with irritable bowel syndrome.
Why is this happening you may be wondering? Well, all roads lead to big business health insurance companies who bludgeon doctors to go the least expensive route of diagnostic testing. The result being a community of doctors who subscribe to the philosophy “if you hear hooves galloping, don’t look for zebra because it’s probably a horse.”
The paradox being that many female cancers when at their earliest, most curable stages, have symptoms that are almost identical to far more benign illnesses.
This must change, and to this end I am forming WOMB (Women Obtaining Medical Breakthroughs), a movement that will motivate and mobilize women to help me make our needs known, so that our elected officials realize that the collective vote of the everyday woman, a.k.a medical consumer advocates, is louder and more powerful then the richest, most deep-pocketed health insurance lobbyist.
The decisions I made throughout my cancer, and as well as my post-operative treatment choices, were mostly, if not wholly, determined by the information I acquired from the Internet. It is the greatest, most immediate, tool available to the patient, and a resource we should all be taking advantage of.
I’m not glad I had cancer, and I don’t wish it on anybody, but I am better for it. There have been many silver linings as a result, one being my purpose and dedication to improving women’s healthcare in America.
By the beginning of September, I hope you will all log onto womb.org to find out more about my vision for a tomorrow where our daughters' daughters will look back at this time and wonder why we accepted so little for so long. Yet forever will they be grateful for the pioneers of WOMB who demanded a change of the way things were and got it!
Join the alliance, become part of a movement. This is history in the making. Sometimes the best gifts come in the ugliest packages.
Be well & be strong,
Fran Drescher
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