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Dec. 27--Former actress and theater company manager Dina Howard picked up the recording equipment with hopes of producing freelance stories about local artists for Capital Public Radio.
Diagnosed with breast cancer in November 2005, she was unable to complete her first piece for KXJZ, a profile of longtime Sacramento photographer Ilse Spivak. But she held onto the equipment with the idea that she could document her own cancer journey.
"She said, 'I could take my mind off things and have something to do,' " recalled Paul Conley, KXJZ's senior news producer.
A year later, the Carmichael mother of two presented Conley with a pile of digital mini discs, recordings totaling more than eight hours.
"We didn't know what we had," Conley said. "We had no idea what it would sound like technically. (News director) Joe Barr and I were sort of cautiously optimistic."
Three minutes into Howard's first tape-recorded entry, he said: "We knew this was something very special and really quite extraordinary. Not only did she have a compelling story to tell, but she told it in a very engaging way."
The product of those tapes -- a one-hour documentary in Howard's own words -- will be broadcast Thursday and Friday.
The piece takes listeners through Howard's coming to grips with her diagnosis and through several phases of her treatment, which included surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.
"When I decided to do this project, I gave myself an assignment," she said in an interview. "When I am most scared and freaking out, I need to do this."
The documentary, co-produced by Conley, includes Howard's thoughts in the waiting room before her double mastectomy and her conversation with a nurse as the nurse inserted a needle through which Howard's first chemotherapy treatment would flow.
At times, Howard talks into the recorder from the floor of her bedroom late at night, when her house is hushed. Other times she is walking along Goleta Beach in Santa Barbara where she spent many childhood days. Also captured on tape are interactions with her husband, Ed, and children, Noah and Maya, her 92-year-old grandmother, as well as the doctors and nurses responsible for her treatment.
Conley's role was to distill the tapes into one hourlong story.
"I had to listen and let it emerge," said Conley, whose other radio documentaries have focused mostly on prominent jazz musicians. "I found that Dina had producer instincts. She chose all of the important moments to document."
Howard, 40, said she hopes her story -- one she calls both very personal and all too common -- will touch others struggling through similar diagnoses.
"At the end of the day, I hope to be somehow useful to other women in this situation and to their partners and caregivers," she said. "I guess I want people to know you can come out the other side and you can be OK."
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Copyright (c) 2006, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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