Chris Ely recalls the evening, a few weeks after his wife's mastectomy, when Priscilla decided it was time for both of them to face the physical price of her breast cancer.
It was a long, emotional moment. He saw his best friend, the mother of their two girls, a beautiful, intelligent, courageous 40-year-old woman struggle with self-doubt, fearful of how he would react to her new appearance.
"Well, do you want to see this thing?" she asked him.
"And I said, 'It's O.K.'
"Then she just sort of opened her shirt. And I said, 'It's O.K.' And I gave her a hug. And for me, throughout the whole thing, even when she became bald, it was O.K.
"I frankly didn't care how she looked. Outward appearances were not important to me," he says. "We loved each other a lot. And from the point at which she was diagnosed, we were in this thing together."
Mr. Ely, 46, is known to thousands of Marylanders as the weekend sports anchor for WJZ-TV. But he is also one of the millions of men who count themselves among the victims of breast cancer.
These men often face the worst ordeal of their lives with little outside help. Support groups, widely available to women battling the disease, do not exist for their husbands or boyfriends. For the men, the struggle is usually private and painful.
"They say that breast cancer is a woman's disease and certainly the woman feels the pain of the disease, but I lived through that disease as if I had it," says Larry Naughton, an attorney who lives in Howard County. His wife, Courtney, died 12 years after a 1982 mammogram revealed a tiny tumor.
"The toughest thing was knowing that my absolute best friend, my lover, the person I'd lived with for 33 years was dying and that there was not one damn thing I could do about it," Mr. Naughton says.
Now he and other Baltimore men are raising money to fight the disease through their support for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation Race for the Cure, a walk-run at the Inner Harbor this Saturday. Their participation offers them the opportunity not only to raise awareness about the disease, but also to share their experiences with other men.
"There's a kind of relief to know that someone else has been
through the same situation you have," says Norman Ross, director of the Eubie Blake Center, whose wife of 35 years, Ruth, is a breast cancer survivor.
His wife had a mastectomy two years ago after her cancer was detected through a routine mammogram. Caught at an early stage, her cancer did not require chemotherapy.
Others are not so lucky.
Despite excitement about new genetic discoveries that may identify women at risk, despite studies suggesting regular exercise may protect women from developing the disease, breast cancer continues its relentless slaughter.
This year, as many as 46,000 women will die of breast cancer. Another 182,000 will discover they have it, according to the American Cancer Society.
"You can throw out statistics all you want about the impact of this disease," says Mr. Ely, who is serving as a spokesman for the Race for the Cure. "Unless you come face to face with it, you really don't appreciate what the impact is. The movies don't do this disease justice. It's ugly. And it's devastating."
For the six years that Priscilla Ely fought her fatal disease, her husband struggled with her, enduring all the same giddy peaks of hope and all the cruel setbacks until she died last January.
She was in the shower when she found the walnut-sized lump in February 1988. It should have been found much sooner, her husband says.
Priscilla was the sort of woman who persuaded friends to have regular mammograms, the breast X-rays that can detect the tiniest and most "curable" tumors, and would even accompany them to the radiologist's office, he says.
The American Cancer Society recommends all women have a screening mammogram by age 40; a mammogram every one to two years between the ages of 40 to 49 and a mammogram every year over the age of 50. Women should also receive a clinical physical examination of the breast once every three years from the ages of 20 to 40 and once every year after that.
Always vigilant about her health, Mrs. Ely had had a baseline mammogram 15 months before she discovered the tumor in her breast.
"Probably the most tragic thing from our experience is that we had mammography that showed it [the spot] and the doctor didn't pick up on it," Mr. Ely says. "It wasn't picked up until the spot . . . turned into a lump, and then there was a steady progression."
It is Mr. Ely's gift to his wife to talk about their journey toward her death, revisiting the weeks of despair as well as the poignant ceremony last year in which they renewed their wedding vows.
He remains awed by the courage Priscilla showed at confronting her condition, even to the point where she made the arrangements for hospice care at home.
"Cilla had this insight that there would be a point where she couldn't take care of herself. If there was anything I would not accept, perhaps it was that. And she kept saying, 'Yeah, there's going to be a time when I'm going to need help, or I may have to die out at the hospice.'
"And I said, 'Now wait a minute, that's not going to happen. I'm going to be here to take care of you. And she said, 'No, no you can't do that, you won't be able to do that because you're going to have to go to work.' So she knew all about that," he says, shaking his head.
The couple met their freshman year at Washington College in Chestertown, received their bachelor's degrees in psychology in and got married the following year.
While Chris worked for the state's department of juvenile services -- he now monitors programs that receive state funding -- Priscilla taught at various schools until their first daughter, Janet, was born in 1977. Claire followed in 1981.
Priscilla reminded people of a taller version of ice skater Peggy Fleming, her husband says. She was about 5-foot-9, with dark hair, green eyes, and a smile that wouldn't stop.
"She particularly liked volunteering at the schools and doing that sort of stuff, she really plunged right into that," he says. "At home, she sewed a lot and cooked and was extremely devoted to the girls. She would do anything for them."
She was also committed to a women's prayer group -- which Mr. Ely affectionately calls "the Bible Babes" -- that helped see her through the long siege.
After Priscilla found the cancer that had been overlooked, she had a modified radical mastectomy, which revealed the cancer had spread to the lymph nodes, lessening her chances of survival. She began a year-long course of chemotherapy.
Meanwhile, in December 1988, Chris was selected from thousands of applicants to become WJZ's weekend sports anchor. At the time, he thought he would turn down the offer in order to spend more time with Priscilla. She wouldn't hear of it.
"Even though she knew it meant I would be working seven days a week," he recalls. "She was wild about this because she knew this was what I had always wanted to do."
Then the Elys heard even better news: There was no trace of cancer in the blood test that followed Priscilla's chemotherapy.
"We thought that was it!" Mr. Ely says, remembering their elation.
However in March 1991 -- two years after the cancer was initially discovered -- Priscilla felt a pain in her sternum. The cancer was back, this time in her bones.
More chemotherapy and a course of experimental drugs followed as physicians tried to stabilize the disease. Eventually the couple realized there was little chance of a cure.
"Priscilla didn't get down very often, but in the latter stages of the disease she was getting discouraged with how she looked and felt and she said, 'I wouldn't blame you if you just took off,' " Mr. Ely recalls.
"And I said, 'Hey, wait. We're in this together. This is the commitment I made to you when we got married. It's the commitment I made to you again back in April when we renewed the vows. You're not going to get rid of me that quick.' "
In January 1993, the doctors told Priscilla there were no more treatments to try. They estimated she might live another three months. She lived another year.
After the cancer spread to her brain, she still managed, in a wheelchair, to get to the Morris Mechanic Theater to see Janet in two performances of The Nutcracker. And she made it through Christmas, her favorite holiday, with the help of family and friends.
The Christmas candles were still lit in the bedroom when Priscilla died Jan. 16. She had endured three brain seizures that weekend.
"She finally gave it up at 11:37 that Sunday night," Mr. Ely says. "We'd had people around the house all day and around 10 o'clock, the last guests had left.
"I noticed a difference in her breathing so I went down and got the girls. I said, 'We need to go up and be with Mommy because I think she's going to die.'
"I told them that she would continue to sleep and that her breathing would get more and more difficult and that she would breathe, and then she wouldn't breathe, and then she would try to breathe one more time -- and that would be it.
"So we went up and sat on the bed with her. And I kept talking to her because they say that people who are dying can still hear.
"We helped her to the end. And I think it was good for the girls to be there because it not only takes the mystery out of it, it also takes the guilt away. How often do you hear, 'I wish I'd been there, maybe I could have helped'? Well, we were there.
"And she was just unbelievably courageous."
RACE FOR THE CURE
The second annual Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation's "Race for the Cure" is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Saturday at Rash Field next to the Maryland Science Center in the Inner Harbor. This year's event will include a 5K run/walk (for women only), a 5K fun run/walk open to everyone and a one-mile fun walk open to everyone.
Last year's race, which attracted more than 2,000 participants, raised $118,000 for Maryland breast cancer community outreach programs and national research.
The entry fee is $20. You may register before the race Saturday or register and pick up race packets -- which include a Race T-shirt -- this week at area malls. For details, call (410) 433-RACE.
HOTLINE FOR MEN
Beginning Saturday, men whose loved ones are fighting breast cancer can call a toll-free hotline designed especially to handle men's questions and concerns.
The new counseling service is run by Why Me, a national organization founded in 1978 to provide information and referral services to breast cancer patients. Spokeswoman Veronica Crane says the Chicago-based group decided to extend its national breast cancer hotline to men after receiving "overwhelming response" to a booklet for men it published recently.
The toll-free hotline is 1-800-221-2141. It operates from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Central Time, Monday through Friday. (After hours and on ** weekends, men can call 1-312-986-8228.) Each caller will be matched with a peer counselor who is roughly the same age and has had an equivalent experience with breast cancer. In addition, men can call to request a free copy of the 16-page booklet "When The Woman You Love Has Breast Cancer."