Cancer No Match For Delaney-Smith

When Harvard women's basketball coach Kathy Delaney-Smith was diagnosed with breast cancer last winter, her immediate instinct--after recovering from the initial shock, of course--was to keep her condition a secret.

"My first perception was to tell no one, just my assistants and my husband," said Delaney-Smith, now entering her 19th year at the Harvard helm. "I told them it was going to be private and no one was going to know."

But once Delaney-Smith learned the full extent of her illness, the threat of losing her hair and missing practices in order to go for treatment cast doubt on exactly how well she could hide her illness.

Finally, on the same night she won her 150th career Ivy League game, Delaney-Smith rather spontaneously broke her silence in a TV interview conducted before the Crimson's televised contest against Dartmouth last Jan. 7.

"I was just really tired of lying," she said. "So I just blurted it out one day [with] no forethought. I blurted it out before the Dartmouth game, which was three weeks after the diagnosis."

It was then that Delaney-Smith received a key piece of advice that would change her entire approach to her illness.

"One of the TV women who I blurted it out to convinced me to go public," Delaney-Smith said. "I just remember her message: 'You can help a lot of women.' That was probably the defining comment that made me go public, because I really didn't want to."

After that night, Delaney-Smith unofficially began her fight on behalf of breast cancer awareness, a battle she waged as she was simultaneously undergoing treatment for her own condition.

Today, with her chemotherapy and radiation sessions finished and a complete recovery within sight, Delaney-Smith continues to work to educate women about breast cancer and raise money to help find a cure for the disease.

All the while, Delaney-Smith has not missed a beat as her team gears up for the start of the upcoming 2000-2001 season. No longer bothered by the fatigue that dogged her for much of last year, Delaney-Smith is now eagerly awaiting the team's season opener.

Altogether, it is quite a remarkable comeback, given her situation just under a year ago.

Worst Nightmare Come True

"Absolutely, totally horrified."

That is how Delaney-Smith describes her reaction upon learning last December that she had cancer. Having just recently turned 50, Delaney-Smith had gone to the doctor's office simply for a routine check-up when her physician informed her that she had detected a lump in her breast.

Even before the results of her mammogram came back, Delaney-Smith knew the diagnosis would not be good.

"I could tell by [the doctor's] face it was cancer," she said. "I told my husband the night before that I thought it was cancer, but he yelled at me and told me to think positively. But I knew."

The news came as a complete surprise to Delaney-Smith, who had always prided herself on never getting sick.

"I am the epitome of health, I don't even get a cold," Delaney-Smith said. "It was shocking [and] nothing I ever expected."

But while personal sickness might have seemed foreign to Delaney-Smith, cancer is one particular ailment with which she is all too familiar.

In addition to having a brother who is living with skin cancer, Delaney-Smith has lost both of her parents to the disease. Her father passed away from lung cancer when she was five, and her mother died of bone marrow cancer.

Also, in a cruel twist of fate, since Delaney-Smith's diagnosis last winter, both her sister and her sister-in-law have been diagnosed with breast cancer.

Her sister's case was severe enough to necessitate a mastectomy.

"I am sure that I am her resource," Delaney-Smith said. "I prepare her for how she is going to feel with the chemotherapy."

Before the disease was discovered in Delaney-Smith, no woman in her family had ever been diagnosed with breast cancer.

Toughing it Out

The cancerous lump was removed from Delaney-Smith's right breast just before Christmas last year. She began undergoing chemotherapy soon after during the latter half of the basketball season.

After the chemotherapy, Delaney-Smith went for radiation treatments five days a week for seven weeks. The whole process was incredibly taxing on her body, but despite frequent fatigue, Delaney-Smith was patrolling the sidelines at every Harvard game and nearly every practice.

For her remarkable efforts, Delaney-Smith was honored as the recipient of the Women's Basketball Coaches Association's Carol Eckman Award at the conclusion of last season.

"My intent was to continue coaching through [the illness], and I was able to do that," Delaney-Smith said. "There are a lot of days when you don't feel that good. But your choice is to go home and feel bad or be at a job that you love and get through it."

The coach did not even let her illness limit her recruiting efforts, as evidenced by the outstanding crop of freshmen Delaney-Smith has ushered in this season.

"I did go on the road and I did everything I thought I was supposed to," Delaney-Smith said.

"If you can get your mind off of [the cancer], I think that's the way to do it. It didn't consume me."

Part of the reason for Delaney-Smith's success was the tremendous outpouring of support she received from the team.

"I have said it before and I will say it again: the players on this team were a tremendous source of energy and life for me," Delaney-Smith said. "I feel bad that my sister doesn't have the same type of job."

Still, Delaney-Smith was initially wary of breaking the news to the team last December.

"The team, I think, was scared, and I questioned whether I should ever have told them," Delaney-Smith said. "There was every type of reaction. Some were teary-eyed, some people were shocked."

After getting over their own fear and astonishment, however, the players were able to play a reassuring role that fit perfectly with Delaney-Smith's personality.

"I asked them to have humor about it," Delaney-Smith said. "They played along. They worked so hard, probably too hard. I think they and I will remember them for the rest of my life."

At present, Delaney-Smith is using the drug tamoxifen, which she will continue to take for the next five years. Only 15 percent of the population tests positive to go on the drug, but for those who do, it significantly increases their survival rate.

As a result, Delaney-Smith's odds at achieving a full recovery are very good. The worst part of her battle is now over, and she has been able to focus her efforts mainly on the upcoming season, during which Delaney-Smith will seek her seventh career Ivy League title.

A Public Service

Her hair has grown back now, but while Delaney-Smith was undergoing the most intensive part of her radiation therapy, her hair fell out and she had to purchase a wig.

Though Delaney-Smith had originally worried that losing her hair would draw added attention to her and her condition, she was ultimately surprised by how well she was able to hide it.

"I got a good wig, and lots of people didn't know because it looked just like my hair," she said.

That unrealized fear was just one of many of Delaney-Smith's initial preconceptions about cancer that were dissolved in time.

"I had this perception of breast cancer that all people do when you don't know about it: bald, sick, dying, thin, frail," Delaney-Smith said. "I had that picture of that's what was going to happen to me."

As Delaney-Smith has come to learn, the key to reducing anxieties caused by the disease is to educate yourself.

"There is a lot of misinformation out there about [breast cancer]," Delaney-Smith said.

By making her own situation public, Delaney-Smith has hoped to help dispel many of those common myths about the disease that once evoked fear in her.

As a person in the public eye, Delaney-Smith has always been happy to volunteer her time for a variety of American Cancer Society fundraisers, including events such as the Relay for Life, Strides for Breast Cancer and even a fashion show.

"The American Cancer Society is a wonderful, aggressive organization," Delaney-Smith said. "They stay in touch with me, and because I am in a public position, I can serve a purpose for them."

For a coach who led the Crimson to the biggest upset in NCAA Tournament history when her 16th-seeded Harvard squad toppled top seed Stanford in 1998, cancer, too, has proven to be no match for her strength of spirit.

"I am one of those persons who believes that you're dealt what you can handle," Delaney-Smith said.

But, in retrospect, knowing that she might have been able to conceal her cancer, would she have still decided to make her condition public?

"I bet I wouldn't have if I knew I could hide it," Delaney-Smith said. "However, the woman journalist was right: you can help a lot of women."

Regardless of how reluctantly she might have assumed her role in the public eye, Delaney-Smith's upbeat and courageous manner has furnished a wonderful example for others afflicted with the illness.

"It's a horrible disease, but there are wonderful survival stories," she said. "You can get through it."

Delaney-Smith is living proof of that.