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Pajama parties in Oncology A By Dorit Keren Zvi Tags: Orna Yakir Orna Yakir has an unequivocal answer to the almost inevitable question of cancer patients: "Why me, of all people?" "What do you mean, why? God knew whom to give it to. Imagine if he gave cancer to someone weak, someone who doesn't know what to do with it. At least he gave it to someone who knows how to cope, even to appreciate it." You aren't serious Advertisement "You don't understand how serious I am. I'm very pleased about it." Yakir, a veteran broadcaster on Israel Radio, a playwright, and now the author of a children's book, has been fighting cancer for four years, alternately conquering it and being conquered by it, and refusing to give up. "It turns out I wasn't even supposed to make it, but they didn't tell me," she said this week. "Everyone knew except me, and here I am." Every few months, there is a new turning point in her war, but meanwhile she has won all the battles, one after the other, with powers whose origin even she doesn't understand, and mainly with the help of very black humor. She won fame about two years ago, when she broadcast her daily program of Israeli music on Israel Radio's Reshet Gimmel from her hospital bed. At the same time, she won first place in the Habimah National Theater's Theaternetto festival for her play "Gili," performed by Sarit Vino-Elad. Life as a new cancer patient was looking better than ever. "It was a big celebration for me," she says seriously. "I'm in a hospital, they brought me a broadcasting van, raised an antenna, and that's how I broadcast, in my pajamas. What can I tell you - it was really fun. Honestly. Girlfriends would come with guitars, play, sing, and everyone in the hospital - doctors, nurses and patients - would come to my room. I really went back to my childhood. Because I had no patience to read, my mother would read me stories, there were lots of visitors and everyone brought gifts. Do you know how many pairs of satin pajamas I got? I had a matching pajama for every bouquet in the room. I got loads of attention. I had a wonderful time." Dream come true Yakir knows that if her story were proposed as a film script, it would be rejected as too kitschy. It begins with a warm and comfortable childhood in Netanya, as the eldest daughter of Prof. Aryeh Kasher and artist Tamar Kasher. Military service on Army Radio, marriage to journalist Yotam Yakir, and the move to Israel Radio gave her the feeling that her life was immune to any problem, or as her mother says: well organized. And then something went wrong. The young couple began to work energetically on the next generation - unsuccessfully. When the conventional method didn't work, they tried fertility treatments. Yakir is convinced that the cancer took root then. She underwent nine attempts, barely surviving the last of them. "I was almost finished off by that attempt, and although I survived, the damage had already been done. Nobody will admit it openly, because it is simply not very beneficial for the doctors and the drug companies, but off the record, several doctors told me that fertility treatments spur cancerous activity." After eight attempts, the couple decided they would try only once more. "Enough - you can't drive the body crazy any more and violate the normal routine," explains Yakir. "It means daily treatments, terrible pain, the energy you have to invest, you name it. We decided that if the ninth was unsuccessful we wouldn't mourn, because if it succeeded, fine, and if not, we would begin the adoption process." It seemed natural to her. "As a child, what I loved most were all the books about orphans, "Anne of Green Gables," "Anne of Avonlea," the whole series. To the point where at a certain stage I actually promised myself that I would adopt children. I thought that there was no reason to bring new children into the world when there were so many existing children who only needed a home. So maybe someone else would consider it a punishment, but for me adoption was really a dream come true." After the last fertility treatment, Yakir and her husband were told about a baby girl waiting in a European country, and they received a photo of her that captured their hearts. "I saw a baby with huge eyes, and I said that for those eyes it was worth making the trip," says Yakir. They went to see her, fell in love, but had to get through all the red tape. Symbolically, nine months after they saw her for the first time they returned to Israel with Noga, aged 15 months. During the months of waiting, Yakir looked for children's books about adoption and saw nothing she liked. In order to help her pass the time a friend taught her how to embroider and Yakir, who inherited a talent for art, decided to create a book for Noga by herself. She drew on fabric, embroidered according to the drawings, and wrote for her daughter about adoption, about the process, about the reasons and about the greatest love of all, that between parents and children. "In my opinion, there is confusion about the ultimate love: It's not love between a couple, it's love for your child," she says. Already then she thought about publishing the book, but the publishers she turned to felt its audience would be too limited to insure commercial success. Yakir printed one copy and read it to Noga. About a year ago, before Noga's bat mitzvah, she tried once again to publish the book, and this time Yesod publishers agreed. "Adoption is a subject that is no longer taboo," explains Yakir, "and Yesod has provided a platform in the past for stories about all types of children: stutterers, hyperactive kids, kids with single mothers, and just then they were looking for something about adoption." After nine months of work and over 11 years on the shelf, her book "Eikh Nirkam Sippur Ahava" (How a love story is created) will be published next month. One in nine Even before the cancer was discovered, Orna and Yotam divorced after 17 years of marriage. "We got married when I was 20 and he was 21; 20 years later it turned out that we were different people, and that's a good thing, because it would have been very bad had we remained the people we were at the age of 20. Now, if the changes are harmonious, great. But if not - you separate. That's what happened to us. So now we are two happy families." Before her 40th birthday, Yakir decided the time had come for the first mammogram in her life, and she turned it into a celebration. "For me it was a milestone, and I actually celebrated it with girlfriends," she says. "When I went for the test I made a joke of it. Because they say that one of every nine women suffers from breast cancer, I sat in the waiting room and counted the women there, and at the ninth I said 'Okay, that one has it. There's the one with cancer.' I examined everyone's breasts - the one with the eggplants, the one with the tangerines, and I was really in a joking mood." Even before the x-ray technician's reaction, Yakir sensed that something was wrong, but she repressed the feeling and threw herself into her birthday celebrations. Like everyone, she left a stamped envelope for the results to be sent, and waited for it to arrive. A few days later, while broadcasting her radio show, she got a telephone call asking her to come and pick up the results. She insisted there was no reason for her to come, since she had left an envelope, and the reply was: "Lady, with your results, you have to come." Yakir ended the broadcast with a stomach ache, a lump in her throat and a racing pulse. Nevertheless, when she saw the results, she did not internalize them. "You know, I had an it-won't-happen-to-me attitude," she explains. When she was sent to a surgeon, she went to three, and heard the same diagnosis from all of them. Only then, after the third, did she take in what she had been told. "I got into the car, it wouldn't start, and then I started to cry bitterly. You understand, I have cancer, and I'm crying because the car won't start. At that moment I phoned my mother and informed her that there was a family saga: 'Orna's cancer.' I told her: 'You are requested to be strong and supportive, oy vey if anyone dares cry near me or shows weakness, and you'll behave accordingly, starting today.' That's how it was. I have a wonderful family, and I'm really proud of them." The cancer quickly spread to her left leg. One night Yakir got up, lost her balance, and broke her leg. It turned out that her hip bone had disintegrated, and it was replaced. "I got into a wheelchair, I became disabled," she said. Afterward, she was hospitalized for half a year, and from the hospital, she broadcast her daily program on Reshet Gimmel, at the initiative of two technicians, Zvika Bashevkin and Gershon Meital. All that time she was also busy with the Theaternetto project. She and the actress, Sarit Vino-Elad, became close friends, and as a result of the connection, Vino-Elad became active in the One in Nine organization. Her medications were changed, one after the other, but the pain remained, and those around her - though not in her presence - spoke about how much time she had left. But Yakir had other plans. To everyone's surprise, she left the hospital, returned home, learned to walk on her rehabilitated leg, climb stairs and dance. I never cry But a few months ago, the pains returned, along with the hospital visits and the need to find energy. Again she overcame her illness, and now she is in a good period. "I don't know where my strength comes from," she says. "I really have no idea. Just when I'm on the ropes, I fight hardest, and when things are good, I complain. So if you see me complaining, it means I'm in great condition." Yakir's winning weapon is humor. "Yes, sometimes it really is wild humor, and that helps me a lot. It's built into me. When I received morphine, even my hallucinations were funny. In one of them I saw the Angel of Death, you know, the classic one, with the skull and the scythe, trying to enter my hospital room, and the technician told him 'Excuse me, sir, she's in the middle of a broadcast.' The angel was so surprised that he simply walked backward and returned to where he came from. Afterward I saw him again, but this time he entered through the wall, and I was broadcasting, with a microphone in my hand, and I signaled him with my finger to my mouth to keep quiet. The angel returned through the wall and muttered to himself that it was very uncomfortable for him to pass through these walls because they were very thick." After all the unsuccessful attempts, the Angel of Death in Yakir's hallucinations began psychotherapy. "I actually saw him lying on the psychologist's couch and crying: 'I don't understand, I've never had such a case. What, isn't she afraid of me?'" And you aren't? "I can't explain it - but no." Orna Yakir laughs so much that she has forgotten how to cry. "It's true," she admits. "Crying is a problem for me. I hardly ever cry, because for some reason I see it as weakness. Sometimes it's hard for me, and I know it's not good, but that's how I am. Recently I even attended a workshop to try to learn how to cry, and it didn't work. It literally makes me sick." When I remarked to her about the terminology she has chosen, she smiled and informed me that this time she was serious. Crying is not good for her. And still, once during the conversation there was a feeling that now she really was about to cry. It happened when we spoke about Noga. During the past few years, said Yakir, her greatest difficulty was her daughter's effort to cope. "Because I was absent from home a great deal, Noga treated it as abandonment and was very angry at me. When I was in the hospital, she didn't want to speak to me on the phone and when she came to visit, she only wanted to leave. It tore me apart. This week she heard that I had to go to the hospital, and again she was very angry. I explained to her that it was only a check-up, and it's not as though I have a choice in the matter. Then she looked at me and said, 'I know, Mom. I'm not angry at you, I'm angry at the situation.' You don't understand how moved I was at that moment." 70 percent bitter Let's change the atmosphere. Maybe we'll talk about you without any connection to cancer? "Why, I happen to love sea food." (In Hebrew, the word sartan means both cancer and crab). Tell me, are you for real? "What's the matter? A little laughter never killed anyone. You know what kind of humor cancer patients develop? In the hospital they tell jokes you could die from." In other words, there are others like you? "I'm serious. In the hospital there really is this internal humor among cancer patients. You want to hear a joke?" Nu. "Moishe discovered that he had cancer. So he came to his wife and said to her, 'Sonia, will you cry when I die?' So she says to him, 'Nu, really Moishe, you know that I cry over every little thing.'" After a few more such jokes, we managed to spend a few minutes without cancer. After all, Yakir does have a long resume, and she has difficulty deciding which part of it defines her. "Everything I do has its own purpose, and every one of my abilities serves a different purpose," she says. "When I'm in a very bad mood, I paint. The bad mood remains on the paper, and I'm purified; if I'm waiting for an adopted child, I embroider; if I'm excited, I write; and if I'm earning a living, I'm a radio host, although that is also my hobby, and everyone should have the good fortune of having their hobby be their livelihood. In general, girls really love to talk, but I get a salary for it." At present she is receiving a salary for her regular daily program on Reshet Gimmel, "Israeli Music with Orna Yakir," from 1 to 2 P.M. and for her fairly new program on Reshet Bet, "Yesh Matzav" (There's a Way). Every Shabbat between 4 and 5 P.M. she exchanges funny-to-weird retorts with Yuval Ganor, and she enjoys this radio partnership very much. "It's lots of fun with two," she says. "When a broadcaster is sitting alone in the studio, there is something artificial about the fact that he is broadcasting to an anonymous audience. This way, with Yuval, we manage to turn the listeners into eavesdroppers to our conversation." At present she is working on another project: a new book. "I'm writing a novel about a radio broadcaster who discovers she has cancer, and everything that happens to her." Sounds familiar. "But it's completely fictional. Oh yes, she's also divorced and has an adopted daughter, but it's really not me." Really. "Sometimes I tell myself that maybe it would be more pleasant if my life weren't like a Turkish film. Either the divorce, or the unsuccessful fertility treatments, or cancer. It's impossible with everything together. But then I think that if everything were to happen by the book, I would be so bored. I'm actually like bittersweet chocolate." Meaning? "When it's too sweet, it's nauseating, so there has to be a respectable quantity of cocoa beans, and I'm very satisfied with my beans." Bookmark to del.icio.us   Clear, present danger Survey : 52% of youth believe Israel faces existential threat. Feeling guilty Europe's criticism of Israel is more than just anti-Semitism.

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