Dedicated to Discovery. Committed to Care.

  • Geraldine Ferraro: 1 | 2 | 3

Revealing the truth

At first, I kept news of my situation to a limited group of friends and relatives; I didn't want people to treat me differently. I had two-and-a-half years to deal with it within my family, and I needed that time.

A photograph of Geraldine Ferraro, Cynthia Medeiros, LICSW, and Kenneth Anderson, MD.

Geraldine Ferraro (right) shares a laugh with Dana-Farber's Cynthia Medeiros, LICSW, and Kenneth Anderson, MD.

In June 2001, I went public after Kathy Giusti, president of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, called me and said, 'We're really having trouble getting congressional hearings, is there anything you can do?' I suspected that if I disclosed my cancer and planned to testify, the foundation would get its hearing, and it did. My daughter Donna was working at NBC at the time, and we gave "Dateline NBC" an exclusive.

People were just amazing. I was fascinated by the attention given to the hearing [before a Senate appropriations subcommittee], and I was overwhelmed by the number of e-mails, letters, and phone calls. Since then, I've done a tremendous number of interviews and am contacted regularly by people who find out they've got multiple myeloma. It's added another dimension to my life. If I'm getting on an elevator, somebody may turn to me and say, 'You're Geraldine Ferraro? How are you feeling?' It's very sweet.

There were three reasons for my going public: One was to heighten awareness about this disease so doctors can recognize it when their patients have blood work done during regular checkups. Another was to raise money from the government, and the third was to encourage faster FDA approval of drugs.

At the time of the congressional hearing in 2001, Ken Anderson predicted that in five years, multiple myeloma will be a chronic, treatable disease that one lives with — much like diabetes and high blood pressure. To be frank, I think that's happening right now. And with the new testing and research that's going on, I see a cure on the horizon.

I'm now on a clinical trial for the drug Revimid, and it seems to be working. I'm a happy camper because by doing this I have an opportunity to be on the cutting edge of research. They didn't use thalidomide five years ago, and three years ago, Velcade [a medication showing dramatic results against multiple myeloma] had not yet been approved for use. I guarantee that when the clinical trials for Revimid are over, I'll be advocating for its approval as quickly as possible.

Paths of Progress, Fall/Winter 2003

Paths of Progress Archive

Waging a war against cancer

Until she went public with her cancer diagnosis in June 2001, Geraldine Ferraro was best known for being the New York Congresswoman who became the nation's first female vice presidential nominee for a major party nearly 20 years ago. Today, strangers stop her on the street to ask how she's feeling, and she takes every opportunity to promote research and awareness of the rare disease she's facing.

Ferraro, a patient of Dana-Farber's Kenneth Anderson, MD, has put a public face on multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that was considered virtually untreatable 40-50 years ago but that has benefited from the development of new therapies — including two experimental drugs Ferraro has taken.

"I practically get down on my knees every night and thank God for Ken Anderson," Ferraro says of the director of DFCI's Jerome Lipper Multiple Myeloma Center and an authority on the illness. About 45,000 people in the United States are currently living with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells that help make up the immune system.

A lawyer by training, Ferraro, 68, heads the public affairs division of the Global Consulting Group in New York City. She talked recently with Paths of Progress Editor Debra Ruder about her cancer experience and faith in the future.