Since she left South Africa 25 years ago, Nurse Sherril Card-Gordon's life has changed, and changed again. Hear what it was like to lose her husband to an aggressive cancer - and then, to find meaning in that loss by giving other families the hope she never had.
Since she left South Africa 25 years ago, Nurse Sherril Card-Gordon's life has changed, and changed again. Hear what it was like to lose her husband to an aggressive cancer - and then, to find meaning in that loss by giving other families the hope she never had.
Card Gordon Transcript -
Title: He Knew I Would Do It
Description:
Since she left South Africa 25 years ago, Nurse Sherril Card-Gordon's life has changed, and changed again. Hear what it was like to lose her husband to an aggressive cancer - and then, to find meaning in that loss by giving other families the hope she never had.
Participants:
Sherril Card Gordon
Narrator: Rose Reid
Nurse Gordon: Cancer and death really doesn't wait for your life to be perfect. The doctor said to me, I'm not sure what I'm seeing on this scan, but there's a lot of dots. He got up and he came and he hugged me and he said, it doesn't look good. We were so desperate to try to find something. As the family member, I could not believe that I just had to stand by and there was nothing that anyone could do for us in this entire world. My name is Sherril Card Gordon, and I'm a clinical trials nurse at the Perlmutter Cancer Center for NYU Langone.
Narrator: Each year, nearly two million people in the United States are diagnosed with cancer. In 2006, one of those people was Nurse Sherril Card Gordon’s husband, Henry. The prognosis was definitive and it was dire. Henry didn’t make it very long; he died just weeks after being told he had metastatic cancer. His impact, though, has lasted much longer.
Nurse Gordon: Henry said to me, and it's something I'll always take with me is, he said, you've got to keep moving forward. I decided, you know what, now is the time for me to reformat myself. I went to the county college and I asked them, what will it take for me to become a nurse?
Narrator: What Henry he couldn’t have known - is that Nurse Gordon would help cancer patients and their loved ones seek - and sometimes find - the kind of hope that their family never did.
Nurse Gordon: If Henry could see me now, I feel he would tell me that he knew I would do it.
Narrator: From SiriusXM and NYU Langone Health, this is Vital Signs, where medicine is made personal. I’m your host, Rose Reid.
Narrator: Where we’ve been often dictates where we’ll go. Nurse Sherril Card Gordon’s story started long ago and far away, in South Africa. In 1996, She moved to the U.S. with her two small children.
Nurse Gordon: I was a Montessori preschool teacher. I had a little school in Durban, South Africa. So I moved to San Diego and this lovely gentleman was living next door to me and the children. And so he would come over and mow my lawn. And we got married, and it was a league of nations really because he, he was Danish and I was South African and then my two children. And then his son, Derek, who I considered as mine, um, he was the only American in the house
Narrator: She and the lovely gentleman - Henry - got married in 1999. Nurse Gordon opened a Montessori school out of their home, and for a few years, life with their combined families was wonderful, and straightforward. But in 2005, an ophthalmologist noticed a spot in the back of one of Henry’s eyes. The doctor told them to watch it, but not to worry about it, so they didn’t. Henry was told to return for follow up visits... but he didn’t do that either. Then, in 2006, he started seeing spots and lights, and a sort of windmill effect that was impacting his vision.
Nurse Gordon: So basically he was diagnosed with ocular melanoma and we went to the Wills Eye Center in Philadelphia for a second opinion. And they had to remove his eye the very next morning because it had grown so much and it was so aggressive. But he was really funny. He used to make fun of it. For one Halloween for the little children, because the little children loved him, he bought these little eyeball Halloween candies. And he told them that they could have, like, one of his eyes. Very sick sense of humor. And humor helped us. And I could finally beat him at tennis because, he had a problem seeing with the one eye and it was the first time I could ever win a game of tennis against him.
Narrator: After his eye was removed, Henry connected with doctors in San Diego for follow up care. At the time, only blood tests were used to monitor and manage his risk for cancer recurrence.
Nurse Gordon: So his blood work was showing that everything was okay. However, we had gone to Denmark because Henry was Danish and his mother had just died. And so we went to Denmark and he said he wasn't feeling well. He couldn't run as much as he used to run. Cause he, he used to run every day. And we just assumed it was because he was upset about his mom dying and having to tie up the childhood farm.
Narrator: This was in August of 2007. When they returned, Henry went for more tests to try to figure out what was going on. The doctors noticed something peculiar in his liver.
Nurse Gordon: I was teaching and the doctor called me and said to me, Sherril, I think you need to come to my office. And the doctor said, I'm not sure what I'm seeing on this scan, but there's a lot of dots. He said it might be benign because this is pretty typical of the liver sometimes. So I said to him, Dr. Rich, did Henry tell you that he has a fake eye? And the reason he has a fake eye? So he said, no, he did not tell him. So I said, you know, he has ocular melanoma. And Dr. Rich went very pale. He got up and he came and he hugged me. And he said, I think it doesn't look good. He said, cause this was 75% involvement in his liver. So Henry was scheduled for a biopsy.
Narrator: The melanoma had metastasized, spreading to Henry’s liver, and his bones. The prognosis was terrible. Henry’s doctors tried to get him enrolled in a clinical trial in a last ditch effort to save his life.
Nurse Gordon: We were so desperate to try to find something. As the family member I could not believe that I just had to stand by and there was nothing that anyone could do for us in this entire world. And Dr. Rich helped us send scans away. We sent scans away to Israel. We sent scans to Switzerland. Uh, we sent the scans to Philadelphia. And everybody said, no, no we cannot do anything.
Narration: Finally, one doctor in San Diego, right under their noses, offered a glimmer of hope. The plan was to treat Henry with radiation, using stents. But whether or not they could proceed depended entirely on his bilirubin levels, which are an indicator of liver health and function.
Nurse Gordon: So everything hinged on the lab values, right? You're like praying that this is good. So Henry was going in for infusions to help strengthen his bones. And he wasn't looking great. I mean, you could see bilirubin, the liver levels were climbing. And we had the car prepped, we got it all ready to get Henry to go for his stents. And we had been told the day before, when we went for labs that the lab values were good. And we were ready. We were in the car, ready to roll. We had something to prolong his life a little longer. But what they failed to tell us was that the two combined liver values together were too high. The doctor called Henry and said, we cannot proceed. Your lab values are not good. But so that drove me to want to figure out what this was about, because I had no clue, no clue.
Narrator: Henry’s metastatic cancer was diagnosed in September of 2007. He died two months later at the age of 64.
Nurse Gordon: Cancer and death really doesn't wait for your life to be perfect. So it kind of hits you a lot, right? All at the same time
Narrator: Nurse Gordon was picking up the pieces of the life she and Henry had together. Focusing on the children - her own, Henry’s, and the ones she taught everyday - it helped. And so did some of her late husband’s advice -
Nurse Gordon: Henry, oh my golly, he had these great expressions. He was always so forward thinking. And I got to a point, a crossroad in my Montessori school where, when I first started the Montessori school, I had one pupil. Then I had four, then I had six and then I built it up to 12 students. And I loved being on the floor working and just tickling the children and teaching them. But then it got to a point where something had to give. And Henry said to me, and it's something I'll always take with me is, he said, you've got to keep moving forward. Either you’re going to go bigger or you're not going to advance, or you just going to go backwards. And so that's something I think of all the time. And I've carried that through my nursing career.
Narrator: That she would spin her experience with Henry’s illness and death into a meaningful nursing career was a shock perhaps most of all to Nurse Gordon herself. But the timing felt oddly right, as things finally started to fall into place.
Nurse Gordon: Once the children were out, I decided, you know what, now now is the time for me to reformat myself. My children are on their way to a great education. Now it's my turn. Once my son got into college and my daughter was going through college, I met another wonderful gentleman during the course of my grief, through the ocular melanoma support group. And his wife had just four days before my husband had died, of ocular melanoma also. So we became a support group and we started supporting each other through that.
Narrator: Nurse Gordon moved back East, to New Jersey, to be with the wonderful gentleman - Peter - who would become her new husband. And then, she got down to business.
Nurse Gordon: I went to the county college and I asked them, what will it take for me to become a nurse? And they looked at what I had for my credentials in Africa, and they went, Oh my golly, a long time. I said, no, no, no, what do I need to do? Tell me what I need to do. I taught myself all the math I needed. I tested out of English classes and I started at community college in the front row and ready to roll and whatever those teachers told me to do, I did.
Narrator: As her nursing education progressed, Nurse Gordon seized any and every opportunity.
Nurse Gordon: I became a community health director for the New Jersey student nurses. I got to volunteer at St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston in the ED. And I got to work at the same time as a PCT, you know, the people who wash feet and toes and clean bottoms and make beds. So I did that because I have never worked in a hospital. I didn't know what to do.
Narrator: Since completing her degree, Nurse Gordon has worked in a variety of settings, all with ties to cancer care. She has been an inpatient nurse in the oncology department at St. Barnabas Medical Center; a chemo infusion nurse at New York Presbyterian; and now, a clinical trials nurse at NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center.
Nurse Gordon: I wanted to get involved with clinical trials because Henry did not have an opportunity for a clinical trial. And I realized that the forefront of oncology really is research for new ways, better treatments to try to enhance patient outcomes. To be on the cutting edge of something that can work. I need to be where I can progress and be the most effective I can be for my patients.
Narrator: Clinical trials are the foundation of medical research. There are all kinds of clinical trials, all designed in different ways, but each with a similar goal: to evaluate if a new medication, surgery, or behavioral approach works, or doesn’t. These trials rely on actual people to test treatments for diseases that, in many cases, don’t have a lot of options. Clinical trials help medicine advance, and also tell medicine when to pull back. They can offer patients all the hope in the world. And just as quickly, those hopes can be dashed. It’s a high stakes world, and few people know that more intimately than Nurse Gordon.
Nurse Gordon: The unknown of the clinical trial is definitely something that gets me excited to get up and go to work. There definitely is more of an adventure in that you're not sure where it's going to go. You're not sure how it's going to end. I guess it's like when you go on a hiking adventure. I'm an avid hiker. I kind of liken it to the time I made my children come up on a hike with me up to 12,000 feet so that I could see the bristlecone pine trees in the Great Basin in Utah. And so you're walking on this adventure, right? And the rocks are kind of falling from under your feet and kids are hating you, and you're wondering what you're doing. But you kind of go on this adventure, not knowing what there is. So you have a patient, but you're not sure when you have everything together, will that patient actually make the trial, right? So it's the, it's, it's the unknown. And also, you're not sure how the patient's going to react. You're hopeful there will be something good coming out of that, but you're not sure.
Narrator: When a patient embarks on their clinical trial adventure, they rarely do it alone. Family, friends - and sometimes, a nurse - are [all] along for the ride.
Nurse Gordon: You're just constantly rooting for these people. So it’s definitely is more than just, okay, so we've got to, we've got to maintain the integrity of the trial. That is really important, but I think the most important thing is to make sure that the patient has developed a trust. Because a trusting patient and a believing patient will help follow through and just, and just help to improve their own outcome. Patients do become a team member there they're part of the team. And then when you can bring the family into that team, that makes it very powerful. Your heart goes out to that patient, but you still have to try to be delicate in the way you can make the patient feel as though they're participating and make the family member feel as though they're important. I was that family member in the room. I was a wife of a patient who was newly diagnosed. And so these people flooded into the room and basically I was there in the corner and I felt as though my life was falling apart at that time. So you feel helpless. So when I go into a room and I address a patient and a family member, I'm very mindful of that family member, because they are really the person who's going to support that family and hopefully help the patient cope with what is happening in their lives.
Narrator: The treatments being tested in clinical trials are not yet approved for official use. Most never get there at all. The process includes multiple phases, and usually takes years to complete. It’s not for the faint of heart. But there are moments of beauty, progress, and inspiration.
Nurse Gordon: I get really close with these patients. We had a patient who came in on almost a wheelchair and he had tubes from his lungs, stents to keep his kidneys open. He would show me where he was draining fluid into his bottles. And then this patient got to a point where he sent me photographs of him gardening. He was making ice cream for his children. He was showing me how he made it. Instead of talking how sick he was in the infusion room, he would sit there and tell me about his cooking. He told me he was going to buy chickens. So the patient got to a point where with treatment, he wasn't having to drain fluid from his lungs. He no longer needed the stent. And again this treatment was not approved yet by the FDA. The treatment was effective. And so with that, this patient developed a new normal instead of his baseline, where he came in.
Narrator: People in the cancer world hesitate to use the word “cure,” especially when someone is taking an experimental treatment. Thanks to a clinical trial, the patient Nurse Gordon talked about is now in remission. She shepherded him through this process, giving him and his family the gift of hope - and time. It’s not something she can do for everyone, but she has to try.
Nurse Gordon: If Henry could see me now, I feel it, he would tell me that he knew I would do it. And that I'm not done doing what I need to do. Henry was an extremely humble man, and I know, I know he would be proud and I know he would be egging me along the way.
Narrator: Nurse Sherril Card-Gordon has been in perpetual motion since leaving South Africa nearly three decades ago. Her life has changed, and changed again. Her children - including Henry’s son - are grown now, and she and her husband Peter have grandkids. She has had new homes in new places and started new careers. Each time, she has sought and found - meaning. And she’s not done yet. As she continues her work at NYU Langone Health’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, Nurse Gordon is also pursuing a Master’s Degree in Administration and Leadership. After that - who knows?
Nurse Gordon: You know what, I haven't yet fully decided what I want to be when I grow up. Honestly, this is a journey, right? Seriously, this is a journey. You don’t know what you’re going to get, but you know that you've got to improve to get better, to get to where you think you want to be.And I’ve certainly been given all the tools and opportunities at Perlmutter. So yea, if they wanna teach me, I'll learn.
Narrator: Vital Signs is a co-production of NYU Langone Health and SiriusXM. The podcast is produced by Jim Bilodeau, Julie Kanfer, and Keith King, with sound design by Jim Bilodeau and writing from Julie Kanfer. SiriusXM’s executive producer is Beth Ameen, in partnership with Allison Clair and Jim Mandler of NYU Langone Health. Don’t miss a single episode of Vital Signs and subscribe for free wherever you listen to podcasts. To hear more from the world-renowned doctors of NYU Langone Health, tune
into Doctor Radio on SiriusXM channel 110. Or listen anytime on the SXM app. To get in touch with our production team, email VitalSigns@siriusxm.com. For the Vital Signs podcast, I’m Rose Reid. Join us next time as we bring you more stories of medicine made personal.
For the Vital Signs podcast, I’m Rose Reid. Join us next time as we bring you the stories of medicine made personal.