“I knew my husband was dying in June. He’d been living with a terminal diagnosis for 6 years, but suddenly his cancer turned aggressive…. The last time we saw the oncologist, he sent us home with a DNR order and told me to put it on the refrigerator, because that’s where the EMTs look,” writes Delia Ephron in the opening of her latest book, Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life. This hard-hitting opening sets the stage for a narrative that plumbs the depths of grief and fear, supported by love, marriage, friendship, creativity, and uplifting humor.

A Plot Worthy of a Screenplay

Ms. Ephron lives on 10th street in Greenwich Village, which is a one-way street, traveling west to east, and the only way you can get onto it is by making a left turn. The title of this sad and enlightening book is a play on the author being left alone after her husband of 40 years, Jerry, dies of prostate cancer in their bedroom. It features the many “left turns” her life took, some perilous, some wondrous in the subsequent years.

“What I remember about the days after [Jerry died] was how alien it was. With Jerry gone, I was dislocated, living in an unknown land…traumatized by my husband’s death, exhausted to the point of dizziness. I remember coming downstairs and seeing a crowd in the living room, all of them chatting like it was a party. I felt I’d walked into the wrong house,” writes the author. She explains the outer-body experience in the days following her husband’s death, which came just 3 years after the death of her older sister Nora Ephron—the famous writer best known for the screenplays When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle—who died of acute myeloid leukemia (AML).

BOOKMARK

Title:Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life

Author: Delia Ephron

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Publication Date: April 2022

Price: $28.95, hardcover, 304 pages

In a twist worthy of a movie, 1 year after her husband dies of prostate cancer, Delia Ephron meets and soon falls head over heels in love with a psychiatrist named Peter who reached out to her after reading a touching editorial she wrote in The New York Times about trying to cancel her dead husband’s Verizon service. Peter, also recently widowed, reminded Ms. Ephron they had shared a few casual dates some 54 years before, set up by Nora.

However, this dreamscape of new-found comfort and love does not follow the kind of romantic comedy plot the author cowrote with her sister, as she too is soon diagnosed with AML. Despite the terrible shock of her diagnosis, Ms. Ephron’s spirit and will to live remained undaunted. After several long talks with Peter about “what it meant to start something intense and meaningful at this age…when death is right there in front of us,” they decide to marry in the hospital as she begins treatment for AML.

A Sister’s Death Haunts Her

Given that her sister died of familial AML, the author underwent periodic blood screening. When she is eventually diagnosed, the episode is delivered at the Weill Cornell Center for Blood Disorders.

“I come every 6 months to have my blood checked. My counts have always been normal. But everything was about to change, as Dr. Roboz comes into the exam room and tells me the counts are not normal, and we have to do a bone marrow biopsy right now…. I am sitting on the couch when she calls 2 days later and confirms that I have AML, but she also brightens that terrible news by telling me that I am not my sister and my AML is not like hers,” writes the author.

After dealing with the trauma of her diagnosis, Ms. Ephron goes on a clinical trial of CPX-51, a dual-drug liposomal encapsulation of cytarabine and daunorubicin. After 5 grueling weeks, battling fatigue, nausea and vomiting, and severe skin rash, Ms. Ephron goes home, beat up but hopeful. After the allotted time passes, she undergoes a bone marrow biopsy to see whether the combination worked.

“Several days later, Peter and I wait nervously in the clinic room to hear the results…. Dr. Roboz bursts in and tells us that my bone marrow is gorgeous and that I am in remission. It is impossible to underestimate the power of that word,” Ms. Ephron writes.

A Donor’s Gift of Life

There are other health travails down the line for the author, including an allogeneic stem cell transplant, which she could have described in more depth. She does, however, end up connecting with her anonymous stem cell donor, which adds an intimate understanding of how the oncology community networks and leverages the best possible outcomes for its patients with cancer. And it offers insight into brave and generous citizens who donate their stem cells, which is quite an undertaking—flying back and forth, getting medical clearance exams, filling out voluminous papers, laying out cash, and completing still more paperwork to receive reimbursement.

“My donor, Casey, a young woman deciding whether or not to enroll in college, lay on an exam table for 5 and a half hours while they harvested her stem cells, to give me life,” writes the author.

A Thankful Survivor

Ms. Ephron is a highly successful author, but her writing in this lovely memoir frequently dips into patented Ephron-isms. For example, when she meets her new doctor for the first time, she writes: “My first thought when she walked into the small clinic room was, She could be my sister. She was definitely from the same food group. Dark hair, brown eyes, slender, Jewish.” Although it might charm certain readers of cancer memoirs, others might bristle at writing that borders dangerously on kitsch. Moreover, on a literary scale, it, like others in the genre, fall way short of Paul Kalanithi’s “When Breath Becomes Air and, to this writer’s absolute favorite, the stunningly good memoir by Nina Riggs, The Bright Hour.

That said, Left on Tenth is a joyful and uplifting read. As the author notes: “I can’t believe I’m here, on some level. I think I try to be nicer to everyone. When I was that person on the street with a walker and in a wheelchair, I realized I had never had the kind of compassion and understanding that I have now for people....”

Ms. Ephron still is here because of the great advances made by the dedicated experts in the oncology community. For that alone, this book is recommended for readers of The ASCO Post.