No time to call in sick

Noaki Schwartz

Mariann Reynolds has never missed a day of work -- not when she ran Ducks

and Co. at South Coast Plaza, or Red Balloon at Fashion Island, and not

since she opened the S.S. Red Sail on Balboa Island four months ago.

Not even when she was battling a deadly disease.

After growing up in Illinois as the oldest of four children, she has

always taken charge of situations, always been more of a caretaker than

patient.

So when she was diagnosed with cancer in 1992, it sucked the wind right

out of her.

“I had never had any breast cancer in my family,” she said. “When I was

diagnosed, I couldn’t even say oncologist.”Though this is true for many

cancer victims, one out of seven women in Orange County will develop

breast cancer in her lifetime. Every day, one woman in the county dies of

the disease, according to the Susan G. Komen Foundation. To bring this to

the public’s attention, October has been designated Breast Cancer

Awareness Month.

When Reynolds became aware of her own cancer, doctors told her it would

not be life-threatening with surgery.

What she didn’t foresee was that her quality of life would be devastated.

Living through the experience, she said, changed her.

It is with her new eyes that she’s opened her children’s store with a

friend, who has also seen the disease take family members.

The store is a girl’s dream world and a celebration of innocence. From

ceiling to floor, shelves teeter with hand-painted puppets, tutu dresses,

fluffy rabbits and playful sweaters. The pair donate toys, clothes and

money to about six different cancer foundations, including the

Make-a-Wish Foundation and the John Wayne Cancer Foundation.

It was a Saturday, Reynolds remembered, when she first heard the news.

Three days later, she was at Hoag hospital letting doctors slide needles

into the affected breast. The lump was malignant.

Surgeons removed the tumor but then found that two of her lymph nodes

were also infected, allowing the cancer to roam anywhere in her body.

Alone, divorced and with two sons, Reynolds had some hard choices to make

-- choices that would give her some control over her life. She began

reading material on cancer to see what her options were and eventually

chose a very aggressive form of treatment involving three months of

chemotherapy and six weeks of radiation.

“What was most devastating [about the cancer] was my fear of the

treatment. I had heard so much about chemotherapy and losing my hair,”

Reynolds said, adding that death didn’t frighten her nearly as much as

letting her quality of life slip away.

The chemotherapy room, she recalled, was a strange purgatory.

Three times a month for two hours each session, she sat in her recliner

in the pink room overlooking the sea. About seven other ill strangers in

varying degrees of sickness sat with her, often chatting and sharing in

one of the most intimate of human experiences.

“We were looking at death in the face,” she said, recalling the eeriness

of the situation.

The chemicals made her nauseous, but, as a woman, she said, the worst was

losing all her hair. It started falling out on Easter Sunday. Department

store wigs, with their synthetic lining, hurt her sensitive scalp so much

that she spent $1,800 on a wig made of real hair.

It took months before her hair started growing back, which first returned

in a mousy gray. It was a full year before she stopped feeling sick.

Despite her suffering, however, the surgery and treatment did remove all

traces of the cancer.

And all the while, Reynolds kept working. Throughout the emotional

devastation, surgery, chemotherapy and hair loss, she continued to go to

work every morning.

“It gave me somewhere to focus my energy,” she said. “I could either lay

in bed or be at work, thinking ‘poor me.’ I’ve always enjoyed work.”

And while her body has now been cancer-free for the last seven years,

Reynolds still carries some inner scars. It’s part of the paradox of the

lessons she’s learned -- while she clings to making each day count.

“I wouldn’t go through it again,” she said peacefully.