Never Too Late to Honor Your Child’s Legacy

Joe: Hello and welcome to It’s Never Too Late, the show that highlights the stories of people everywhere who have proved that it’s never too late to get started on a new path to success. I’m your host Joseph Sprung, and today we have a very moving story to share for everyone, that shows it’s truly never too late to honor someone’s legacy. With us today we have Sandy Marks, who I met during the COVID pandemic, through a mutual connection in Chai Lifeline. I’m the past president of Chai Lifeline and I’ve supported this amazing organization for many years. Chai Lifeline was a huge source of strength and comfort, and an incredible resource for Sandy and her daughter Cammy, when cancer impacted their family. Sandy unfortunately lost Cammy to cancer a year and a half ago, but she didn’t let that be the end. Thankfully Cammy had frozen her eggs before her cancer treatment and after her passing Sandy decided to move forward with a surrogate. Earlier this year, she welcomed her granddaughter Ariella Skylar Marks into the world. Ariella is a beautiful healthy baby; Sandy will raise her. Now, first of all, I’m so sorry for your loss,

Sandy: Thank you,

Joe: I’m sure you and your daughter were very close. Can you tell us some more about Cammy, and also about you and your late husband, who was a great source of strength for you.

Sandy: Thank you so much and thank you for allowing me to share my story with you today. Cammy was just the most amazing daughter that anybody could ever have. Not only was she my daughter but she was my best friend. She was diagnosed at the age of 11 and fought bravely for…for 9 years. My husband also passed suddenly. He did know about the diagnosis; he passed away one year after Cammy was diagnosed. So it was, basically, just me and Cammy on this… on this journey.

Joe: On a personal level, uh when we met in California, this past April, I was totally floored at your courage, dedication, and strength, and… I think you noticed I was crying after you told me your story. So, let’s move into it right now, how did you decide to move forward with the surrogacy, and ultimately the birth of your granddaughter? Is this something you talked about with Cammy before she passed?

Sandy: Umm no actually it wasn’t. The whole journey started approximately two weeks before she passed away. I had been told that she had a couple other months left. I’m not even quite sure what happened because I had… forgotten. When she was 17, she came to me and said: “I would like to freeze my eggs” so I said “let’s do it. Fine” and I forgot about it. I didn’t give it another thought. Something just inside of me, it just popped into my head. And I remember that we had these eggs, so I called the doctor’s office and they said because she was now over the age of 18, she had to give permission for me to handle all of this stuff. So, I spoke to Cammy about it, and she signed a power of attorney. I went back to the doctor’s office. Surprisingly they initially said no. They had an upper limit… for parents of 55 years of age, and it makes some sense… The reasoning behind it is they want the parents to be around to raise this child. So, they did say no, and I thought well I’ll find another doctor at some point. A couple of days later, I got a phone call, and the doctor had reconsidered. He said my story was so compelling, that he wanted to be a part of it, and that I needed to come and pick up the kit because we had to get a sample from Cammy before she passed away. What they do is they want to ensure the health of the surrogate. So, they want to make sure there isn’t hepatitis or diseases floating around out there that might affect the surrogate. So, I was really hesitating but again, I had this feeling inside of me that you need to go down to the doctor’s office, you need to pick up the kit. It was a Friday. I went down there, my daughter was at Cedars, which is in the city in Los Angeles. I had to drive out to the Valley, picked up the kit, came back and we were making arrangements; the hospitals, the doctors and everybody because they were going to take the sample. They were going to do this on the following Monday so it could be shipped to the lab. Unexpectedly, she passed away the very next day. There were so many things that happened during this entire process that it was just one miracle after another in order for Ariella to be born. It was just unbelievable. They gave me an extra kit, which turned out that I needed because there had been an error made in how the samples were collected, the sample had been collected after she passed away, which at the time I didn’t recognize was such a difficult procedure. They needed a blood sample, and her heart had stopped beating and they said it was incredibly difficult to get that type of blood sample. But miraculously the hospital was able to get everything that we needed, I was about to take… I had a friend of mine that was down there at the time, she’s a cardiologist and she helped direct the nurses as to what to do, because I… I rather checked out at that point. And in the ensuing weeks, I had been working with the fertility doctors and there were so many things that had to be done. I had to select a surrogate, and then again it was rather miraculous, I had selected somebody but had second thoughts. There were just a few things that just didn’t feel quite right. So I went back to the agency, and the woman who I was working with was incredibly nice. She said don’t worry about a thing, we’ll select a new surrogate. She called me up, she called me up about a month after we had started that process and told me that the original surrogate had been assigned to a different family, and that the embryo didn’t take. So, there had to have been some kind of divine intervention, through this entire process, um… Cammy, I really feel that Cammy is smiling from above, and knows exactly what’s been going on and she… I know that she is happy about the whole thing.

Joe: No, I’m talking about the dinner the weekend she passed away was the same weekend as the Chai Lifeline dinner. I remember Rabbi Schiller flying out and then they canceled the dinner that morning. So, everything that you did with going to get the test done, going back and forth being at Cedars Sinai, where we as Bear Givers have done Hospital visits there.

Sandy: Yeah, that’s right.

Joe: You know, besides how heroic this is under normal circumstances, to do this when Covid was raging during those months is more miraculous.

Sandy: She passed away exactly one week before everything shut down for Covid, and so we were able to have a funeral and people showed up. And it was right after that point, that nobody could do anything. People were…it was very bad.

Joe: Wow… Now one thing I just want to say right now is while you were doing this, if I recall correctly, Cammy was the star of so many Chai Lifeline videos. I’ve watched some of her videos and I can’t keep a dry eye when I watch her videos. If I recall the dates correctly, when you decided…when you did the kit it was the Friday before the Chai Lifeline dinner, which was Sunday and ended up being cancelled by Corona. Am I correct? Are my dates correct?

Sandy: Well, the dinner that she did, when she…

Joe: No, I’m talking about the dinner the weekend she passed away was the same weekend as the Chai Lifeline dinner. I remember Rabbi Schiller flying out and then they canceled the dinner that morning. So, everything that you did with going to get the test done, going back and forth being at Cedars Sinai, where we as Bear Givers have done Hospital visits there.

Sandy: Yeah, that’s right.

Joe: You know, besides how heroic this is under normal circumstances, to do this when Covid was raging during those months is more miraculous.

Sandy: She passed away exactly one week before everything shut down for Covid, and so we were able to have a funeral and people showed up. And it was right after that point, that nobody could do anything. People were…it was very bad.

Joe: I know this is probably the least of your concerns, but I’m sure some of our listeners are wondering, did you consider the logistics of raising another child at this age, did it deter you at all?

Sandy: I just… I just had a blind eye to it, (laughs) I just charged forward. I felt… I just felt this very strong feeling, that I had to take a little piece of Cammy and bring her forward into…into the future. And it was so compelling for me that everything else fell to the wayside. I spoke with some of my friends, some people that are a little bit younger than me, and I have a very close friend who was incredibly close to Camy as well. So, she has agreed that if something were to happen to me, that she would raise Ariella. That part of the logistics, I took care of fairly quickly, but I never really thought about it. I think dealing with loss… has made me realize that you need to live each day to the fullest, and not worry about what if.

Joe: So true.

Sandy: There are so many people that have had… tragic endings. I mean, if you think about what happened with 9/11 oh my gosh, people that their loved ones went to work and never came home. So, we just… We just… we can’t worry about what’s going to happen tomorrow, and just do the best that we can each day.

Joe: Well, watching Cammy tell her story at the Chai Lifeline gala, and other occasions has been inspirational for thousands of people, including me. How often do you watch her videos?

Sandy: Oh, this is sad. I do watch them all the time, almost every day I put on a video. It… it comforts me in a sense and makes me feel like she’s still there with me. And she is inspirational, I still send these videos to everybody that I know, and if I meet new people, I will tell them about Cammy and her bravery, and send them the video. Because she… She was not only my daughter, but she really was my inspiration, what she went through without complaining. During all of this treatment, she was a student at USC, on the dean’s list, we would make last minute travel plans. I think the most amazing thing of all, is that; there was one time where we were at Cedars and she had a radiation treatment, because the cancer had spread to the brain. My girlfriend came to Cedars, picked us up, and drove us to the airport after the treatment. We did crazy things like that. We just got on a plane, and um… we flew to Israel, at that time and then from Israel, I had made arrangements for an experimental treatment for MD Anderson in Houston. So, we flew to Houston. I thought that the treatment was going to start then, but they needed to spot cells and do some other projects and said “Can you come back in 3 weeks?” So of course, I said yeah – so I looked at Cammy and said, alright we can stay in Houston, we can go home, or…we have our passports. Do you want to go to Europe? So, the answer was Europe and 2 hours later we were on a flight to the Netherlands.

Joe: Oh my god… Ok. How long did you spend in Europe?

Sandy: We were there for 2 weeks, and then we flew back to Houston. Then she started the treatment. I was very hopeful. It was an experimental treatment, called TIL; tumor infiltrating leukocytes, where they take an army of your white blood cells, and that’s supposed to attack the tumor. It does work- and it does work for some people. Unfortunately, it was not effective for Cammy, and it was a difficult treatment for her to go through, and I know she was doing it for me.

Joe: Why only for you?

Sandy: Well, we really were, we were very very close. It… whether it had something to do with the fact she lost her dad, or the disease, or combination of all these things. She knew how difficult the treatment was going to be, and I think that there were times where she wanted to give up and she didn’t want to do it. But she also wanted to be with me and was willing to put herself through some of the very horrific treatments, because she knew that I wanted her to be ok. And we would have a discussion and talk about whether or not she should be doing this or not. Because, some of the treatments, we just didn’t know… the percentage that it was effective was a bit low. So, it was the type of thing that you needed to have some faith and hope that you were going to be one of the lucky ones that it worked. She had melanoma, which… which was not from sun exposure, adolescent melanoma is a genetic condition, and it’s generally from a mole that when the kids go through puberty somehow or another, the hormones light it up. She was a competitive figure skater and spent all of her time indoors. She was not outside, and never got sunburnt. It’s more of a rarer form of melanoma that people are not aware about, so I tell people all the time that if they see any moles that they should go to a dermatologist and have a screening because if this disease is caught early enough it’s completely curable. If it’s stage one they can just remove it, and you can go on your way and be perfectly healthy. So, for Ariella, because of this background she’s being monitored and watched by pediatric dermatologists over at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. So, we are taking some proactive steps to make sure that she will be ok.

Joe: You know the more I hear, why don’t we go back to the way you and I met, you know we said we met through Chai Lifeline, and it was the Chai Lifeline connection that really cemented our friendship but why don’t we fess up online here, on air on how we actually met.

Sandy: (laughs) ok.

Joe: Why don’t you tell the story?

Sandy: Ok right, well. My husband passed away years ago, and Cammy always encouraged me to start dating again. I was very busy with her, so I didn’t have any time, and I did not want to take any time away from her. So, after she passed away, and some months had gone by, well now we’re in the middle of Covid (laughs) so it was quite difficult to meet people at that time. So, I decided to go on this website called JWED and I saw your profile, and it mentioned that you do charitable work. That really struck a chord with me because that’s something I’m very interested in, doing charitable things in Cammy’s memory. One of the projects that I mentioned to you, was Cammy’s Disney Day, just going off on a tangent here. We were annual pass holders at Disneyland, and this was one of her favorite things to do, and we often went to Disneyland, so I wanted to take kids and teens that are struggling with cancer to Disneyland for a day. I wanted to turn this into an annual event, so hopefully COVID will be history next year! And we can start this.

Joe: You can, you know we will support you in any way we can, and Bear Givers will support you in any way we can. In doing anything that we can do for you. Also, why don’t you tell everybody about the night that you told me this story, it was approximately 4 weeks before Ariella was about to be born. We were having dinner in Los Angeles late on a Saturday night, and you just looked like a woman who had swallowed a canary bursting to tell me something. You even asked me a question like: What was the craziest thing I ever did?

Sandy: Yeah!

Joe: And I’m thinking, where is this going? And, as you told me the story that night, I was so… I was so emotionally floored and happy for you and the next day I had a meeting with my friend Barbara Firestone. I don’t know if you know Barbara, she’s the head of the largest school in the country for children with special needs, and we’ve become very close with Barbara. And when I told Barbara this story, she was just as floored- you know I think she was just as floored as I was, and her first reaction was “what can we do to help this woman?” I said this woman is so strong and so secure in what she does, in her following, she can help us a lot more than we can help her. What are some things you have learned from this experience that you can share with our audience today?

Sandy: (laughs) Ok I’m a little bit prejudiced, but yeah! She is gorgeous! She’s three and a half months old now, and just smiling. There’s just this incredible sense of joy I am experiencing when I take a look at her, and I’m hoping that… And it’s my job- I want her to be healthy, and happy, and grow up and hope that her dreams come true as well.

Joe: Well, she has a tremendous role model in you. Hopefully she will be the amazing woman that you are, I mean this is truly unique. It says a lot about you and your family connection that you were strong enough to do this.

Sandy: I would also like to give a shout out to the Claire Marie Foundation, this is a woman that I met; her daughter was Claire. Her daughter died of melanoma at the age of 17, and she created this Foundation based on the east coast, and they do free screenings for skin cancer. They’re starting back up again after COVID, just look up the Claire Marie foundation and see where they’re having their next screening, and I encourage people to go.

Joe: Thank you so much, we appreciate that information, I just want to say thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story with us. I’m speechless, and if you ask anyone in my office, I’m never speechless. We wish you and beautiful baby Ariella so much joy and all the best for the future. Thank you from the bottom of my heart Sandy, bye now.

Sandy: Thank you.