networking, then we could beat it. Why else was I famous?
I threw myself into advocacy, hosting small seminars to promote the importance of prioritizing your own health. I used the analogy that they use when you’re getting on the plane. “You’ve got to put your mask on before you help anybody else,” I said countless times. “If you prioritize yourself, you’re gonna save yourself.”
In interviews, I would bring it up constantly.
“Is Will Smith a good kisser?”
“You bet he is,” I’d say, “and you know you can bet your life on early detection. Did you know that eleven thousand women under forty are diagnosed with breast cancer every year?”
Susan G. Komen made me a Circle of Promise Ambassador, then a Global Ambassador. In 2008 they sent me to Kumasi, Ghana, to help dedicate the country’s first breast health facility, one of the only ones in West Africa. I wanted to bring to the world the message that breast cancer is treatable and survivable.
One of the speakers that day was Dr. Lisa Newman, an African American surgical oncologist out of the University of Michigan. She was talking about what people can expect as far as prognosis.
When I heard her say the word “metastatic,” my ears perked up. That was Sook’s diagnosis. It’s funny, I thought, I never really knew what “metastatic” meant.
And then I learned.
“Of course,” Dr. Newman said, “there is no cure for metastatic breast cancer.”
Everything else was drowned out, and I heard her words as an echo. “There is no cure for metastatic breast cancer.” But wait. We’ve got the money. We are seeing the best doctors. We are doing all this work. What do you mean?
Then it all became very clear to me: Sook was gonna die, no matter what we did. There is no cure for metastatic breast cancer. This was three years into Sookie’s journey—a sister should have read up on “metastatic” at this point. I definitely shouldn’t have been sitting there in Ghana, on the other side of the world from my dear friend, finding out that she was going to die no matter how much I gamed the system.
It was like that moment in the living room with Ray. I was the last to understand the truth I didn’t want to accept. Clueless Nickie, thinking she knew what was best for everyone.
FOR RAY AND ME, LIFE BECAME ABOUT TRYING TO SPEND AS MUCH TIME AS possible with Sook. She was still going full speed ahead, lobbying in D.C. and still trying to get into clinical trials for treatment. She got a great boyfriend and a dog. She had hope, but she was very clear that it was more about buying time than finding a cure. The thing that she was excited about was that while she was getting a few more months from the latest clinical trial, what they were learning from her would help other women.
On one of her better days, I was in New York for some work event. We met down in SoHo at this restaurant, at a time when we knew it would be empty. We just wanted to be girlfriends.
We held hands, and literally as I was asking her what she wanted her legacy to be, what she wanted me to carry on, I felt someone standing next to our table.
“I never do this . . .” she said.
She was a tall woman, well dressed and looking like she knew better.
I turned. “I am so sorry,” I said. “This is not a good time.”
“This is just going to take a second,” she said.
Sook wouldn’t look at her. Finally, I turned to the woman and smiled. I chose to satiate this woman’s need, just to make her go away.
It was a minute, maybe a minute and a half with Sook that I wouldn’t get back. I returned to Sook and again asked her what she wanted her legacy to be. What message she wanted me to carry on.
“I want you to tell people that fear can kill you,” Sook said. “I was afraid, and it killed me.”
It was my last lunch with Sook.
RAY CALLED ME NEAR THE END OF THE SECOND WEEK OF JUNE 2010.
“Look, it’s coming,” he said. “If you want to be able to talk to Sook while she is able to respond, you should come now.”
I booked a flight to spend the weekend with her in New York. Then I got a call from one of the execs behind Jumping the Broom. They really liked me for one