Cancer group serves up support

SAN JOSE, Calif. - For six years, they swapped soup recipes and shared carpooling - four San Jose neighbors who became friends. Four women alike in many ways, and like so many other women in this valley: Mothers in their 40s and 50s, organized and energetic, life's doers and problem-solvers.

Then, breast cancer moved in.

Martha Wilson was diagnosed first, in April 2004. Lani Luthard got the word in September. Two months later, Colleen Eilbert's mammogram brought bad news. Only one of the friends, Lisa Chock, has escaped the disease.

During the past year, the cooking co-op they started on their block to relieve working-family stress has provided nourishment the way it always has - a hot meal for four families, available for pickup four days a week.

Now, the co-op also provides a different kind of sustenance. The conversation has changed from cooking and kids to anti-nausea therapy and reconstructive surgery. Emotional support is doled out as generously as the pasta dish the designated cook has prepared on a given night.

"It's not like I got breast cancer and went out and found these people," Luthard said. "Our lives are so intertwined."

The women have become consummate researchers. When the first friend learned her diagnosis, they took to the Internet, exchanged books, and sought out local experts. They suspect their illness is more than coincidence, but they aren't pushing for a major environmental study that might help find out either way. For now, their focus is on recovery and survival.

"The whole thought of this ever beating them never enters into their minds. Never," said Chock. "They took charge and said, `What do we have to do first?'"

There is no designated leader in this group.

"Everybody has their strengths, and you just look to that person when that's what you need," Wilson said.

Eilbert agrees. "You always know at 6 o'clock there will be listening ears."

MARTHA WILSON

It was February 2004 when Wilson's mammogram revealed a lump; a biopsy in April confirmed it was cancer. She had two lumpectomies in June, followed by 33 radiation treatments over six and a half weeks. She's taking an anti-cancer drug and says she feels good.

Wilson considers her cancer experience "a blip on the radar screen." She and her husband, Tom, who have grown children and two grandchildren, were the first of the four co-op families to move into the neighborhood. They're both retired.

The other co-op members say Wilson set the stage for the bond that grew even stronger out of their common illness.

"She was just so out there with everything about it," Eilbert said. "In a way, she laid the path for Lani and me."

Wilson had a family history of breast cancer. Her mother and grandmother were diagnosed with the disease in their later years but survived it.

After Wilson's diagnosis, the co-op sprang into action. Breast cancer was the premier research topic, and Wilson was relieved of cooking duties. Everyone, including friends outside the co-op, wanted to help in any way.

At the time, Wilson's immediate problem was a garage sale that had been scheduled for a year.

"I couldn't move anything because I had had my first surgery," she said. "They worked their tails off. That's what they could do for me."

In early September, the foursome shared a champagne toast to celebrate Wilson's last radiation treatment. Three weeks after that, Luthard went in for her first mammogram. The results stunned everyone.

"To me, hers is the scariest one," said Wilson. "And she has the smallest children. It's really hard with small kids.

"It breaks my heart. I'd trade places with Lani in a heartbeat if I could."

LANI LUTHARD

Luthard, an aide to San Jose City Councilwoman Cindy Chavez, is a problem-solver, a troubleshooter, the first line of defense when residents call in to the council office with a complaint. She is attacking her breast cancer the same way.

"I'm very used to being in control of situations," Luthard said. "Give me an assignment, and I'll get it done."

She and her husband, Andre Luthard, are raising two children, and she still works five hours a day, five days a week. The friends often tell her to slow down, but she also inspires them.

"She's just so positive and full-speed ahead," Eilbert said.

After she turned 40 last year, Luthard scheduled her first mammogram - at the urging of Wilson. She found out she had breast cancer just a few weeks before she was to participate in a 60-mile, three-day fundraising walk to fight breast cancer. She completed the walk.

"I could feel with every step we're moving toward a cure, not only for other people but for myself," she said.

Luthard's right breast was removed in December. The cancer had also invaded 10 lymph nodes, so chemotherapy and radiation were prescribed. She has undergone six of her eight chemotherapy treatments. She's having second thoughts about radiation.

On some days, she feels too sick to pick up her family's food from the co-op, but then she bounces back and hosts an evening community meeting. She is preparing for the next two-day breast cancer walk in July.

"I think you have to keep moving," Luthard said. "That's how I live my life. Everyone around me is more upset about it than I am. I do get emotional at night. When my head hits the pillow, I think, `Wow, this is a lot we're dealing with.'"

COLLEEN EILBERT

Unlike her co-op friends, when Eilbert's mammogram results led to a biopsy appointment in November, she didn't tell the rest of the group. It was only two months after Luthard's diagnosis.

"Normally these are the first guys I would tell, but we were all so weighed down with Lani," she said.

The biopsy showed her cancer was similar to Luthard's, but was more "spread out" in the right breast and had invaded one lymph node. The remedy was similar: a mastectomy and eight treatments of chemotherapy. So far, she expects to avoid radiation.

Their operations were four days apart. Eilbert started her treatment just two and a half weeks after Luthard. She wears a scarf or hat most of the time, now that she has lost her hair.

Eilbert is taking a leave from her job as a software programmer and has slowed down since her treatments began. But that wasn't always the case.

"I gave Lani a lecture that came back to haunt me: Stop trying to be super woman," Eilbert said. "I was getting the same lecture a couple of weeks later."

She said that as she fights cancer, she is driven by a determination to increase awareness of the importance of regular mammograms.

"I missed my mammogram" in 2003, she said. "Obviously it turned about to be a pretty enormous mistake on my part."

She tells every woman she knows to have a mammogram and then says, "Call me up and tell me what it was."

LISA CHOCK

Lisa Chock has also had to struggle with her health. Last year, a massive growth on her thyroid had to be removed in a three-hour operation. But it wasn't cancerous. Her operation was just days before Wilson's.

She approached her recent mammogram with confidence.

"I was never thinking, oh my God, am I next?" she said. "It was, oh my God, I can't live without these women."

In some ways, the biggest burden is on Chock, her friends say. She runs errands, shops, drives kids to school, cooks extra meals and does a multitude of other favors for them.

"We all worried about Lisa because poor Lisa was picking up the slack for everybody," Wilson said. "She has three kids of her own."

For Chock, it's the emotional burden that feels especially heavy. "It's harder on the well person because you want to take the disease from them and you can't. I feel totally helpless."

She marvels at her "amazing" friends.

"Martha is a quiet strength," she said. "You just know she's a rock. When Martha's around, nothing will ever hit the floor.

"Colleen - I will go to her in my most frustrating moments, my moments of despair. She is able to make me see things I wouldn't have seen.

"Lani - it's unbelievable." When Luthard's hair was falling out, she said, Luthard let her kids cut it. "She took something really brutal and turned that one event into something enjoyable for her and her kids."

"It's not about the illness," Chock said. "It's about a person's life and how many other people someone's life can affect."

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(c) 2005, San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.). Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.