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Knock out depression, knock out discouragement, knock out all kinds of forecasts of gloom and doom. You may not be able to control everything that happens to you, but you can control how you will react. Even if the doctor has given you shattering news, you don't have to be knocked down. You can get up and fight. You can win-perhaps over the disease, but most certainly over the depression.
No one has fought more gallantly and won more graciously over the battle of cancer than beautiful Marguerite Piazza. This extraordinary woman sent me a cassette tape in which she told her story. I played her cassette one day while riding in my car. I was so moved that I had to pull over to the side of the road until she was finished.
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It was in the peak of my career, performing in New York City, when I noticed a pink spot on my right cheek. I thought it was one of those 'zits,' as the kids say. I assumed it would go away. So I just put a little extra make-up on. But it didn't go away. Every time I was at the doctor for laryngitis or some
other minor ailment I'd refer to my spot. They'd examine it, but always responded, "It's nothing. Don't worry about it." So I didn't. But it did not go away.
At this time, I was at a point in my life where I was known as the lady who had everything. I was one of the ten best-dressed women in the world. I was reported to be very beautiful. I was a star at the Metropolitan Opera. I had created a thing called "the act" for supper clubs. I was the first one to have dancers and all that kind of thing. Variety claimed it was the birth of a new form of show business. (Of course, today everybody does it.) I was married to a wonderful man who was a great, Southern gentleman and fun to live with. He had everything going for him.
Suddenly my world fell apart. Billy died of heart failure. Two weeks later, that spot on my cheek was diagnosed as melanoma, the worst form of skin cancer. It usually kills within seventeen months if it is not totally removed. They tried in three different operations to remove that melanoma from my cheek. They wanted to save my face because I was in show business. I was supposed to be beautiful, and you know show business is a business of beautiful people. If they did the radical surgery, I might end up like Scarface Lil.
The three operations weren't enough. The doctor said, "Marguerite, you must have radical surgery if you're going to live. You do have a choice. You can take a chance and decide not to have the radical. In so doing, you will keep your beauty, but you'll probably end up in a coffin. Or, you can let us do what we have to do the radical. Then you'll have a possibility of living." I was scheduled to sing that night. The house was sold out. The theater was packed with people who had come to hear me sing and see me dance.
What do you do at a time like that? Well, you do what you're paid to do. I was paid to lift people. So I prayed for strength. I went on. And each time there was a costume change between scenes or acts, and I took the costume off, hung it on the hanger, and got the new dress on, I hung my troubles on a hanger, left them in the closet, and went on stage. I sang my heart out and danced for all I was worth. The people loved it. I did what I had to do on stage, and I did what I had to do for my children had the complete, radical surgery. Yes, I had.