Thursday, October 27, 2005

Cancer survivor uses new lease on life to raise research funds

By Laura Berman / The Detroit News

Comment on this story Send this story to a friend Get Home Delivery

In 1955, when Beaumont Hospital first opened its doors, polite people did not discuss cancer. The Detroit Athletic Club did not allow women in their grill room. And Cathy Govan was 2.

On Saturday night, these odd facts will surprisingly converge.

Cathy Govan, who helps Republicans and the occasional Democrat raise money and plan events, was waiting for a businessman at the Detroit Athletic Club when her doctor called her cell phone. It was 2003, and the DAC had long ago opted both to let women join and to eat lunch in whatever room they chose.

Her phone chirped. As Dr. Renee Horowitz reluctantly told Govan the bad news -- "You have malignant breast cancer" -- Govan didn't hide and cry. She told the silver-haired man she knew sitting at a nearby table. That was Jim Nicholson, the president of many things, including PVS Chemicals and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. He excused himself from a table of five. She blurted out her problem. "I have breast cancer."

One step at a time

Nicholson acted as if he handled breast cancer diagnoses during business lunches every day.

"He let me sob and then he said, 'This is an event. This is the biggest event of your life. We need to take it one step at a time.' Meetings were canceled. He spirited her away to his house. Her sisters arrived. Life was planned on a legal pad -- a plan that she followed almost to the letter in the year to come.

In 1955, breast cancer diagnosis was a crude business and the treatment even worse. But nearly 50 years later, Govan was lucky on a few counts: Dr. Horowitz's annual exam turned up a suspicious lump. The Beaumont mammogram looked suspicious. And Dr. Helen Pass, who was then Beaumont's chief of breast cancer treatment, ordered an MRI -- technology that revealed unsuspected tumors, in both breasts, as well as in the lymph nodes.

The truth was not pretty, but Govan -- who is gritty and absolutely unpretentious -- prefers to work with real facts, not illusion. She survived the surgery, the chemo that took her hair and sapped her strength, the radiation treatments that finally had to be canceled when they burned off her skin. She never despaired.

And when the treatment ended and her life resumed, Govan presented herself to the hospital, asking for a way to give back.

Alive and kicking

She is a businesswoman, the daughter of a bricklayer-turned-salesman, not a socialite. But Govan knows how to raise money: Even as chemotherapy was being dripped into her arm in 2004, she was making calls to raise money for the president's re-election campaign.

When the hospital foundation's director, Margaret Casey, suggested she help with a golf outing, she asked for more to do. The result was an ambitious black-tie event at the Ritz-Carlton celebrating Beaumont's 50th anniversary and co-sponsor PVS Chemicals' 60th year in business.

She drafted Jim Nicholson -- veteran of the DAC diagnosis -- to serve as co-chairperson.

The gala is sold out -- $625,000 have been raised that will buy early breast cancer detection MRI technology. And Govan is very much alive, ever-so-politely twisting arms.

Laura Berman's column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday in Metro. Reach her at (248) 647-7221 or lberman@detnews.com.