It is the biggest story she has ever done in her life, says Wendy Mesley, co-host of CBC Television's Marketplace, but also the one that makes her the most nervous.
Chasing the Cancer Answer, Mesley's investigation into why the disease is one of Canada's fastest-growing medical crises, airs tomorrow night on CBC-TV at 7 ET.
Mesley, a Gemini Award-winning journalist, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer in the fall of 2004. Her prognosis is excellent. The cancer was not in her lymph nodes. Following two lumpectomies, chemotherapy and radiation, she is "expected to live," she says lightly.
But do not expect a typical triumph story of Woman in the Biggest Fight of Her Life, even though that's what her producers initially wanted, she says.
This documentary is vintage Mesley, who once told me that "the biggest gap in TV is learning what's happening in society." In that way, at least, Chasing the Cancer Answer could not be better suited to Mesley's unflinching, take-no-prisoners journalistic approach.
According to the Canadian Cancer Society website, over 2,865 Canadians will be diagnosed with cancer -- not each year or each month, but, shockingly, each week -- and 1,337 will die of the disease at the same rate. A senior (unnamed) doctor at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto, where Mesley received most of her treatment, told her the incidence rate, over a lifetime, is fast approaching one in two people. "In the fifties, it was one in 10," Mesley says, clearly alarmed over what she discovered. "In the seventies, it was one in five. It's now one in two! And I'd never heard that before. This is a story about, why is everybody getting it?" she says. "So how could I not do it? I'm not very good at walking by a good story."
Still, she feels trepidation. "I've been nervous about doing this story," she confides in a rare moment of vulnerability. "You don't attack the people who are saving your life."
Mesley, who is 48 and the mother of a young daughter, is still in the care of her Princess Margaret oncologist, and is receiving the cancer drug Herceptin. "I'm telling them [the cancer specialists and health authorities]that they're not doing their jobs!" she explains. "If you want something out of people, normally you tell them how brilliant they are. This [kind of story]is not the standard thing that somebody in need would do. But I've got to assume they're good people, that they're not going to hurt me for this." Her husband Liam McQuade, an advertising executive seven years her junior, often wishes she weren't so dogged and principled a reporter, she jokes.
When Mesley was first diagnosed, she wasn't going to make her illness public. But then a series of events made her realize that she couldn't hide not just what was happening to her, but also, the outrage she was feeling.
Told she would lose her hair through chemotherapy, she knew others would soon know she was sick. Then she started talking to other breast-cancer patients. "I got mad that I met so many women who were ashamed to have breast cancer, who thought their husbands wouldn't love them any more or their employers wouldn't want to keep them on staff. And I thought, screw that! And the more I read, it's the people who are in charge of our health policy who should be ashamed," she says, her face blushing in anger.
Always a self-described "health nut" who exercises regularly and eats a balanced diet, she began "poking around and trying to figure out if there's something that we should be doing, or that we could be doing more of, in terms of prevention." (Mesley had had a clear mammogram less than a year before her diagnosis.) Her discoveries, which she won't completely divulge before the program, are shocking, she promises. "There's a lot we could be doing. . . . It is known that the increasingly chemical world that we live in is contaminating us. And it is known that cancer is a complex process and that multiple exposures to different triggers throughout your life -- whether it's radiation, whether it's getting on a plane, or having too many mammograms, whether it's carcinogens that you are eating in your everyday products -- all of these things, all together, cause cancer in humans."
She was outraged when she discovered that the prevention message from the Canadian Cancer Society is what she calls an "eat-your-veggies approach" -- obvious advice such as don't smoke, stay out of the sun, exercise regularly and eat well. "We know that already!" she cries. So she asked Dr. Barbara Whylie, CEO of the Canadian Cancer Society, why they don't advocate for more preventive measures. "At first, they said, 'Well, we are gradually dealing more and more with environmental pollutants, but it's awfully complicated.' And then I said, 'Then what's with this eat-your-veggies approach?' "And I said, 'Aren't you blaming the victim?' " Mesley says. "You're telling people that it's their faulty lifestyle that led to this? And in many cases, maybe it's not our fault! Don't make us think like that!"She felt betrayed. "All this stuff about rah-rah 'survivors' [of cancer] Well, after the research I've been doing, I think we're victims. I don't want to be turned into a survivor if I'm a victim!" she continues. She sighs deeply. In a calmer moment, she says simply, almost apologetically, in a little voice, "The stuff I've learned has made me so angry."
European countries are far more vigilant about screening what goes on their grocery shelves, she points out. "Stuff that's sold on our shelves here is reformatted with carcinogens taken out of them, or at least, much reduced, to be sold over there. Because of health concerns, there are bans on products in Europe that we eat everyday. We don't even have the debate here."
The problem is that there are few financial incentives in cancer prevention, Mesley explains. "Research in prevention isn't going to get funds, certainly not from the drug companies and not by the government who are advised by the industry."
Working on Chasing the Cancer Answer has been draining, says Mesley. "I've been like a dog with a bone on this story for over a year. I am looking forward to moving on," she allows. "But this has also been very life-affirming. I love my job. I get to be a citizen with a microphone."
In addition to tomorrow's broadcast, Chasing the Cancer Answer will air at 7 p.m. on March 11 on CBC Newsworld.
QUOTE WORTHY
On her new post-chemo pixie haircut everyone loves: "Who knew?"
On whether her celebrity helped her get treatment: "If you're a journalist, you can always open doors. So I may have had my
surgery a week earlier, I'm sure. No one has ever told me that, though."
On her devotion to her work: "If cancer's not going to change me, what will?"
On her long-time It-girl image as tough but vulnerable: "Enough already with the vulnerability, okay? Just let me be tough. It'll be nice not to have to fight anything for a while."
-- Sarah Hampson