Chemo for colon cancer

It had been a year of peaks and valleys, and Denise Perry was in the mood to celebrate. The lawyer had beaten breast cancer, an adversary more menacing than any she'd encountered in a courtroom, and had also reached a milestone not all the women in her family, including her own mother, had: her fiftieth birthday. As Denise prepared to mark August 7, 2001, with a celebration at her West Orange, New Jersey, home, only one thing was missing: her daughter, Kofi.

Kofi Simpson understood all too well what this moment meant to her mother: She had scaled a similar mountain. That's why she was flying in from Smyrna, Georgia, as a surprise. When Denise opened the door that morning, the sight of Kofi confirmed that the two would always be there for each other.

Denise and Kofi are cancer survivors. Kofi, an elementary-school teacher, was 26 and a recent transplant to the Atlanta area when a nagging pain in her arm sent her to the doctor in June 1999. "My primary-care physician prescribed physical therapy," she recalls. "As the therapist massaged my neck, she found a lump, which she wanted to have checked out right away."

That was on a Tuesday. By Friday, Kofi was back at her primary-care physician's office for a follow-up visit. When they came to her family's medical history--her maternal grandmother had died of uterine cancer at age 43, a great aunt had succumbed to breast cancer in her early thirties and another great aunt to colon cancer in her sixties--"the doctor got a funny look on her face," Kofi says, and scheduled a CAT scan for the next day.

"That following Monday I learned the lump was malignant--I had Hodgkin's disease," Kofi says. "I know it sounds strange, but it had never occurred to me that it was cancer, not even with my family's history. I was in shock." Hodgkin's disease, a cancer of the lymphatic system, strikes about 3 in every 100,000 people each year, according to the American Cancer Society. While it commonly affects people in their late twenties, it occurs more often in Caucasian men, which made Kofi's case surprising.

Denise was devastated by the news. She listened as Kofi explained what the doctors had discovered, but soon had to hang up the telephone. She didn't want her daughter to hear her crying. "I was feeling victimized by God," Denise says. "My thought was, You took my mother, and now you're taking Kofi." When the reassuring words she knew her daughter needed to hear wouldn't come, Denise asked her close friend Vivian Andrews to talk with Kofi until she could pull herself together. "As I sat there, a small voice spoke, reminding me that He had given me my mother and He had given me Kofi," Denise recalls. "It calmed me and got me ready for what was to come."

Once Denise regrouped, she flew to Georgia. She convinced Kofi to come back home so that she could look after her. It wasn't an easy decision for her daughter to make. As close as their relationship had always been, Kofi enjoyed living on her own. But her need for her mother's help in battling the disease far outweighed her desire for independence. "When you have cancer, you need support," says Kofi. "For me, that was my mother."

Kofi took a leave of absence from her school, gave up her apartment, put her things in storage and prepared her boyfriend for a temporary separation. Then she and Denise found an oncologist and a hospital for treatment. Together they decided on the Cancer Institute of New Jersey, which is affiliated with the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick.

Denise was there for every test and every tear, holding her daughter's hand through procedures so painful, Kofi says, "it was as though my bone marrow were being sucked through a straw." When the chemotherapy treatments left Kofi so fatigued she would become exhausted just shifting positions on the couch, Denise tried to keep her spirits up.

By November 1999, Kofi had successfully completed five months of treatment and was making plans to move back to Georgia. Then, more bad news: Denise discovered a walnut-size lump in her left breast. But following a mammogram--her first in five years--she received a letter stating that the lump was nonmalignant.

Kofi returned to her life in Georgia, while her mother refocused her attention on her nonstop lifestyle. The family's medical history briefly crossed Denise's mind, "A part of me was concerned, but I didn't really think it was cancer," Denise says.

But then a breast specialist suggested she have the mass removed. When she woke up in the recovery room, she learned that the lump was malignant.

Denise had insisted that Kofi not travel to New Jersey to tend to her, even after a doctor discovered a more aggressive lump in her right breast and another surgery was scheduled. Kofi did the best she could to respect her mother's wishes, running up astronomical phone bills to keep track of Denise's progress, but that wasn't enough. The two were connected by more than familial bonds. "It was as if we were two comrades who had been to war," says Kofi. "We were fighting for our lives."

Kofi spent the summer of 2000 in New Jersey as Denise sought treatment at the hospital that, only months earlier, had been her daughter's second home. "It actually helped begin my healing process because I had to face what had happened to me," Kofi says. "I had never really done that."

Denise admits that the experience was difficult. "I remember just before my first chemo session, the tears were welling up. I felt as if I had given my daughter cancer--that that was her inheritance," she says. "But the surgeon said our cancers were not genetically tied. I was slightly comforted by that."

Today both women are symptom-free. And despite the distance in miles, they are closer than ever. They feel stronger having made it through the storm with their faith intact. "We say `I love you' more," says Kofi. "We're enjoying every day we have."

Vanessa Bush is fashion and beauty features editor at ESSENCE.