Her Mother’s Keeper

Lisa Ferguson

Monday, May 3, 1999 | 9:43 a.m.

Sunshine London-Caso doesn't look like most breast cancer survivors.

Her body is void of mastectomy scars. She still has her dark, flowing mane of hair, despite having endured the ravages of chemotherapy.

But at age 25, she's intimately familiar with the writhing pain that accompanies the disease, which claims the lives of nearly 44,000 women in the United States annually.

That's because her mother, Rebecca, was one of its victims.

London-Caso's story is among 10 women's tales detailed in the recently published book "My Mother's Breast: Daughters Face Their Mothers' Cancer" by Laurie Tarkan (Taylor Publishing, $14.95).

In 1996, she abandoned her college co-ed life in Santa Barbara, Calif., and returned home to Henderson to care for her mother -- and her five younger siblings, two brothers and three sisters -- as Rebecca battled the disease.

London-Caso accompanied her mother to chemotherapy treatments and appointments for MRI imaging tests. She prepared her meals, dispensed her medicine -- including morphine patches to quell the pain -- and read aloud after her mother's retinas detached as a result of the tumors that had grown behind her eyes.

She stood by as her mother's fingernails, toenails and hair fell out before 46-year-old Rebecca succumbed to the disease in October 1997.

"I had breast cancer," London-Caso, a 1992 Basic High School graduate, contends. "Except that I didn't have the pain."

But, in fact, she did: The emotional kind that can't always be seen, but certainly causes great aching.

Her tale may be familiar to movie-goers: It is similar to the plot of the film "One True Thing," in which a daughter (played by Renee Zellweger) puts her own life on hold to tend to her cancer-striken mother (Meryl Streep).

London-Caso only recently saw the movie. "It was an exact replica of how I felt," she says. "It brought up so many emotions."

As did her involvement with the book. "At first I thought it could be a painful thing to go through, having to talk about it all over again," she says.

"I'm just one of those people who (would) rather go through something and then share it with the world and use it to help others, rather than just put it away somewhere (and) to have gone through it for nothing."

Going home

When Rebecca was initially diagnosed in 1994, her daughter had already settled in the California beach community.

She was studying bio-chemistry, working modeling and acting jobs in Los Angeles and, in her free time, surfing and roller-blading.

"It was the best time of my life," London-Caso recalls.

The diagnosis was hardly earth-shattering news, she recalls. Her parents "made it seem like ... it was an OK thing, not to worry. She just had breast cancer and they were gonna do a mastectomy" as a precautionary measure, along with chemotherapy. Her mother's cancer went into remission.

Three years later, a phone call from London-Caso's father relayed the news that the cancer had returned -- 18 inoperable, malignant tumors had been discovered on Rebecca's lungs.

"When I heard the severity of the illness, I said, 'I don't care what anyone says, my mom's gonna die,' " she recalls. "And that's horrible to admit, to be that negative, but that's how I was feeling.

"I remember going back into my bedroom and closing the door and just falling to my knees and crying, and I couldn't stop."

Within a day, London-Caso packed a bag, hopped in her car and headed home to help.

That she so willingly gave up her "wonderfully charmed life" was what struck author Tarkan about London-Caso's story. "To me, it was kind of tragic that she had to do that," she says.

At home, "Everything was chaotic," London-Caso says. "There was just so much to be done and my mom was having to do it all. I was angry with ... my family, going, 'Gosh, here's this woman with cancer, and she's cleaning and cooking and doing laundry and getting ready for chemotherapy.' "

Rebecca became her top priority. "I couldn't bear to leave her side; she was my best friend." The two were extremely close, and Caso-London considers her mother her role model.

"'I pretty much wanted to be like her. I wanted to be as smart as her, and as nice as her, and as happy as her. ... My whole life, I put her up on a pedestal."

A week later, London-Caso returned to Santa Barbara to fetch the rest of her belongings.

"It was an emotional thing," she says. "I went into shock, I think, and I was irrational and I just said, 'I'm staying (in Henderson), I don't care.' "

Caring for mom

Her mother's disease gradually progressed. "It was very hard for me to see her in pain and deal with whatever symptoms cropped up each day ..." London-Caso says in the book. "After I'd spend time with her, I used to go in my room and cry. I felt so helpless that I couldn't take the pain away, that I couldn't stop her from deteriorating."

Other times she would sneak away to jot down in a journal anecdotes and words of wisdom Rebecca imparted to her eldest daughter during conversations. She hopes someday to share them with her siblings, particularly her sisters Rachel, Joy and Noel, ages 9, 12, and 14.

The girls are still a bit too young, she says, to understand most of the journal's contents. For now, "I just remind them of phrases my mom would say. I think to myself, 'How would Mom respond to that?' (and) I'll say the same exact phrase to them."

Throughout her mother's illness, London-Caso's emotional well-being teetered in the balance. Frustrations over her mother's situation, as well as a longing for her former life in Santa Barbara, mounted.

She and her longtime boyfriend severed ties, and she soon learned that she couldn't count on her "so-called friends" for support.

"What really surprised me about myself was that I didn't turn to anyone (while) going through this. I really dealt with it on my own," she says. "I had a lot of times when it was real tough."

It seemed the only one who really understood was Rebecca.

"You'd think I'd be comforting her all the time -- she's the one dying," she says. "But she was the one comforting me a lot."

The two celebrated London-Caso's birthday at a bar. "I was crying and I was so miserable. She just cried and said, 'I wish we could get you back to Santa Barbara. You were so happy there.' " But her daughter knew she couldn't leave.

Rebecca's condition continued to worsen. "She got so sick, and she stayed that way. So, here I was taking care of my mom and watching her suffer in so much pain. So many days, she didn't even know who I was.

"I even used to tell her that ... I wished I could just take the pain for her. Or I wished that God could just take me instead."

Like Streep's character in "One True Thing," London-Caso says, "my mom did not one time complain about being sick. ... She was sweet and smiley and great and wonderful and happy up until the last breath."

Life goes on

In retrospect, London-Caso says she doesn't regret having put her life on hold for her mother.

"I'm young and I have many more years to live," she says in the book. "I gave a really small portion of my life for a really big reason. But when it was over I thought, I'd done nothing for myself for two years. I didn't have friends, I didn't go out, so I thought I was ready to go on with my life."

Instead, she experienced "a great depression" and sought counseling.

"Initially, I used to think to myself that I could never live without my mother. I thought that I would die for sure," she says. "And my sisters kept me going.

"When you have these little babies ... looking up to you, the only female, blood (relative) they have to look up to, going, 'I need this and I need that,' 'Can you help me with this?' 'Can you you kiss me good night,' ... you can't stop. I pretty much told myself, 'Just do it,' because that's what my mom would say all the time."

Things are finally moving forward. London-Caso has worked with local cancer organizations, including the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, and a program at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center.

She also helped found (with a chiropractor) the Wellness Institute of Nevada in Henderson, where she helped implement alternative medicine, nutritional counseling, yoga and meditation programs. It's similar to the work she does now at the Lifestyle Institute in Las Vegas.

But she hasn't done it alone: Her maternal grandmother, Marion Furman, has been a pillar of support. So has Chris Caso, her husband of seven months.

London-Caso opts not to fret -- as many daughters of breast cancer patients do -- about her own risks of developing the disease. Prior to her mother's illness, her family had no history of breast cancer.

"Who knows how she got it? She was healthy her whole life -- never smoked, ate right, a totally healthy, active person," London-Caso says. "I just don't want to waste my energy being paranoid about those things."

In fact, she'd rather spend it sharing her story with other women.

"I would give anything to travel the world and talk to every daughter about it," she says, "because I feel like I could really make a difference."

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