AIRED: September 1, 2010– 3:00 pm PST
www.voiceamericanetwork.com
PLAY
TITLE: “One Family’s Journey into the Unknown that is Cancer”
SPECIAL GUEST: Dr. David & Kate Treadway, Author of “Home Before Dark”
http://www.drdavidtreadway.com
What if your entire life changed in an instant? It happened to David Treadway when he awoke in the middle of the night with a pain in his shoulder. Allen and David discuss his shock at learning he had Stage 4 Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and a 25% chance of survival, and how both he and his family dealt with the news. As the treatment of the disease raged war in his body, Treadwell’s instinct as a successful psychologist was to prepare his wife and children for his death. What resulted was a family writing project and a compressive look at one family and their journey into the unknown that is cancer. David Treadwell beat the odds and has been enjoying life in remission since 2006.
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sychologist David Treadway reacted with shock when diagnostics revealed his stage 4 lymphoma; he was “riddled with cancer.” But the journey “in two parallel worlds”—of medicine and marriage—that his wife Kate, a doctor in the hospital treating him, underwent most distinguishes their account of catastrophic illness initially written, at David’s urging, by Kate and their sons Michael and Sam in 2006, the first anniversary of David’s diagnosis, when recurrence and bone marrow treatment likely loomed. Struggling with seeing David “thin, tired and hairless,” nerves frayed, but healthy new beginnings came, too.
As the family responded to the ongoing crisis, Kate came to see that David’s “ability to detach,” about which she complained in the past, “has gotten him through . . . and allowed him to be there for me”; Sam found inner fortitude to face his fear of loss; Michael marked it as his “true entrance into adulthood”; and David realized “we are all fighting a great battle.” Many others—readers—will take strength and solace from their account. –Whitney Scott
