Capital Region Cares Capital Region Cares 2018-2019 | Page 52

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Feature
A
t age 40, Marlene von Friederichs-Fitzwater was ness, set to open in Sacramento on North C Street near
diagnosed with late-stage cervical cancer. Her di- Loaves & Fishes in late 2019.
agnosis came in 1979, and she says back then, the
It was her experience as a cancer patient that changed
C-word carried a stigma, and cancers that attacked the direction of her career path. She earned a doctorate
the reproductive organs were viewed as even worse. in the burgeoning field of health communication at the
“People just didn’t talk about it,” she recalls. “There University of Utah, got a job teaching at Sacramento State
was a belief you could catch it.”
and volunteered at the UC Davis School of Medicine as a
Having undergone a hysterectomy and other clinical faculty member. During this time, she created the
treatments unsuccessful in eliminating the cancer, von Health Communication Research Institute, because there
Friederichs-Fitzwater felt like she was alone as doctors simply wasn’t much research on doctor-patient communi-
seemed to disengage. She was given the worst prognosis — cation happening, she says.
“There’s nothing more we can do for you,” she recalls being
After joining UC Davis full time in 2005, she was
told by her doctors. It seemed like the sicker she grew, the asked to create a peer navigator program that pairs newly
more difficult communicating with her doctors and nurses diagnosed cancer patients to cancer survivors who act
became. They were withdrawing, she recollects, which as coaches. It was through this program, which has been
magnified the fear she was
active since 2006, that von
already experiencing.
Friederichs-Fitzwater learned
At the time of her diagno-
of the realities that many
sis, von Friederichs-Fitzwater
people who are homeless
was a professor of journalism
with a terminal illness face.
and writing at the University
She met a man undergoing
of Nebraska in Omaha and a
chemotherapy, and as she
single mother of a high-school
was telling him of programs
student — her other three sons
that could be brought into his
were adults — “And I certainly
home, “He stops me midway
didn’t want to share my con-
and says, ‘I don’t have a home.
cerns and fears with him,” she
I’m homeless.’
says. “I was trying to protect
“And I had no idea that was
him and not let him know how
going on, and so that got me
bad things were. ... I could not
really interested in why, when
die because I didn’t know who
people are homeless, they don’t
— Bob Erlenbusch, executive director, Sacramento Regional
would take care of him, who
have anywhere to go for treat-
Coalition to End Homelessness
would raise him. So I was like,
ment, let alone die,” von Fried-
‘Nah, I can’t die now.’”
erichs-Fitzwater says.
And she didn’t. Von Friederichs-Fitzwater’s cancer
Creating a homeless hospice facility began as a “shared
went into remission after she implemented a handful of dream” with her grandson Joshua, whom the facility is
New Age strategies, including meditating and envisioning named after, who died homeless on the streets of Omaha
her body fighting the cancer, changing to a vegetarian diet, from a drug overdose at age 34 in 2014. Before his death, he
quitting smoking, and changing her overall attitude and and his grandmother had conversations about those who
outlook on life.
lived on the streets, dying alone of terminal illnesses. She
“Really, each day was a gift, and I had to accept it that was seeing the fallout locally, and Joshua was seeing the
way,” she says. “And I’m not saying [those strategies are] same more than 1,500 miles away in Nebraska.
what got me through it and cured me, but I’m saying I now
“You don’t think about them having cancer or heart
know your mindset has a lot to do with whether you sur- disease or something that could kill them,” she says.
vive or not,” she says.
“I don’t think anyone should die alone on the street.”
Today, von Friederichs-Fitzwater, a petite woman at Von Friederichs-Fitzwater has since dug in her heels
5 feet, 3 inches, with chin-length silvery-white hair that and, using the vehicle of HCRI, along with the support
frames her face, will soon be celebrating her 80th birth- from politicians, all four area hospitals and numerous
day — and the opening of Joshua’s House, the West Coast’s partnerships with charitable organizations, is on her way
only hospice facility for people experiencing homeless- to make history.
“Only 25 percent die
of natural causes. The
average age is 50 years
old. Homelessness takes
about 25 years off a
person’s life.”
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