She speaks out about breast cancer now because in the beginning there was no one to talk to except a woman in a restroom at a movie theater.
Jill Eikenberry was already famous then. She was, in fact, becoming a household name for the gutsy attorney she played on "L.A. Law." But when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1986, her fame and fortune weren't much help. People didn't talk about the disease as openly as they do now, she says. "There was nowhere to go to in terms of commiseration." Or for advice.
"I thought I was going to die," she remembers. When her surgeon recommended a mastectomy, she didn't even ask for a second opinion. A few days after the diagnosis, attending a screening of a movie she was starring in, she ran into a woman she knew. Eikenberry suddenly found herself confessing that she was terrified.
That's when the woman introduced her to her mother, who dragged her into the movie theater ladies room to show her a scar. The mother, it turned out, had also had breast cancer but had opted for a lumpectomy. And she was still alive, 11 years later.
"It gave me the hope that I could survive. And it convinced me to get a second opinion," says Eikenberry.
Now, 11 years after her own successful lumpectomy, Eikenberry is one of two official spokesmen for the Susan G. Komen Foundation, a national organization that promotes breast cancer education and research. The other official spokesman is her husband, Michael Tucker, who once starred with Eikenberry in "L.A. Law."
Together, the Tuckerberrys - as they jokingly refer to themselves - speak at gatherings such as the upcoming "Life After Breast Cancer" seminar in Salt Lake City.
In a recent phone interview from their car, en route to their home in Big Sur, Calif., the couple talked about the need for emotional support, about the meaning of wellness and about what it's like to face a diagnosis of cancer.
Eikenberry's diagnosis came right after the pilot episode for "L.A. Law." She squeezed her radiation treatments in between rehearsals for upcoming episodes but was too afraid to tell anyone except close friends and her director about her disease.
"We were just starting to be household names," she remembers. "We were facing our immortality and mortality at the same time."
Eikenberry's pronouns tend to be plural when she talks about her cancer because she credits her close relationship with Tucker for helping her recover. A loving intimacy, says Eikenberry, helps create the fulfillment required to be truly well.
"So many women with breast cancer are women who have put themselves last on their own priority list," she says. Always putting other people first and "giving till you drop" is not conducive to wellness, she says. Her own definition of wellness has changed, she says; it's not just being cancer-free but feeling "fulfilled and blissful, letting pleasure instead of pain be a part of your life."
"Mike is incredibly good at making me feel loved," she says of her husband of 23 years. "He puts a big smile on my face all day every day."
When it is Tucker's turn to talk on the cellular phone, he has this advice for husbands: "Just love your wife. Be totally attentive.... When she's full, everyone is happy."
Tucker also advises men to get into a support group. When Eikenberry was diagnosed 11 years ago, he says, he didn't know any men who had been in the same situation. "I was just lost.... I was terrified." It was only much later, when he felt free to talk about it, that he realized he had also been angry over the possibility that his wife might die.
Tucker and Eikenberry will lead a "couples discussion" and be keynote speakers at the ninth annual Life After Breast Cancer seminar on Saturday, Oct. 25. Additional discussion groups will cover treatments, hormone therapy, coping skills and environmental causes of breast cancer.
Tickets for the seminar, which runs from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Double Tree Hotel, 255 S West Temple, are $20. To register, call the Breast Cancer Coalition of Utah, 328-5551. The seminar is sponsored by the Breast Cancer Coalition of Utah, the American Cancer Society and Columbia/HCA.