Olivia (29 page)

Olivia now experienced a mixture of emotions - grief, fear, denial and shock. For just about the first time in her life she knew she had to put herself first.

 

Olivia was admitted to Cedars Sinai hospital in Los Angeles where she signed a consent form for a double mastectomy, in case it was found to be necessary, and she remembers making light of it all as she was prepared for surgery. ‘I didn’t want to upset the people around me.’ Typically, as ever, she wanted to do the right thing.

Eleven days after her diagnosis, Olivia underwent a radical modified mastectomy and had her breast reconstructed at the same time. Her shocked family were kept informed from the outset, although the whole truth was kept from Chloe. As Chloe had lost her best friend Colette Chuda to cancer, it was felt best not to alarm her unduly. When Olivia began her chemotherapy treatment and had to go to bed for a day, she’d simply say she wasn’t feeling well and arrange for Chloe to spend the day with a friend or have a sleepover. She managed to get through a whole year without saying the word ‘cancer’ to Chloe.

For Olivia, informing friends of her illness proved more difficult than she could ever have imagined. ‘I remember in the beginning, when I was calling people to tell them I had breast cancer, some of my friends took it badly. The second person I called fell apart. I felt: “I don’t need to hear this, I need to hear I’m going to be OK.” So I stopped calling. I had Pat Farrar and my sister Rona call to tell them. That way I could focus on positive thoughts rather than on the illness.’

But bad news, of course, travels fast, and she was anxious those closest to her should know of her illness before the story was leaked out. It wasn’t long before the press got hold of the news, and when Olivia got wind that a report was about to come out saying erroneously that she was dying of cancer, she decided to pre-empt it and spell out the truth.

On 14 July she announced in an official statement that she had breast cancer, and she added: ‘I draw strength from the millions of women who have faced this challenge successfully. This has been detected early because I’ve had regular examinations, so I encourage other women to do the same.’ Olivia’s concert tour was immediately cancelled and she apologised to ticket-holders saying: ‘I look forward to rescheduling soon.’

Privately, Olivia confided to friends that she had had a kind of feeling that somehow she wouldn’t get to go on this particular tour. ‘I had no reason to know why,’ she said. ‘But your higher self knows. Something was telling me and so I pursued it and it was so.’

Once Olivia had gone public about her illness, get-well cards, letters, flowers and messages of love and support poured into the hospital from friends and fans all over the world. Among those who wrote to Olivia wishing her strength at this time was her good friend Didi Conn, who had played Frenchy in
Grease
. Didi reminded Olivia how many people loved her and went on to express her own good wishes for Olivia to come safely through whatever she needed to go through.

After surgery, Olivia had eight months of chemotherapy and at first she considered forgoing it and using various alternative treatments instead. ‘Common sense prevailed. One of my girlfriends said: “Why would you want to risk even that one cancer cell? You have a child.’ In the event, the chemo was not as bad as she feared and she didn’t lose her hair, which, she says, was a psychological bonus. ‘I wore an ice cap, a sort of tea cosy filled with ice cubes which is supposed to help.’

There were many times, she says, when she thought she would die if she fell asleep. ‘I felt constantly nauseous, headachy, sleepy. I was in a fog and my short-term memory, which can be affected by chemotherapy, became terrible.’

To aid her healing, Olivia also used a wide range of alternative treatments including homeopathic medicine, herbs and acupuncture to balance out her chemotherapy treatment. She also practised yoga and meditation and read up on anything she felt might help her.

At the time of Olivia’s illness, Matt was building an environmentally correct house, having largely set aside his stuttering acting career and set up a construction business. He said:

 

Olivia’s oncologist put her in touch with another woman who had had the same treatment so that she would know what to expect. She believes this was a great help. ‘Women at this time feel very alone very often, and it’s wonderful if you can get together with a peer group who have gone through it. Because I had this fear, and I know a lot of women have this, but I was too embarrassed to tell anyone, I thought that they’d put the needle in and I would die. I thought that I’d be allergic to the chemotherapy and that was a huge fear.’

Olivia was heartened to learn that this particular woman she’d been put in touch with was six months on from finishing her course of treatment. Just knowing she had got through it and survived was, she says, a great comfort.

Nancy Chuda, who had lost her little daughter Colette so cruelly to cancer, was also a tower of strength. She pointed out to Olivia that it would be down to her to set the tone as to how others would perceive her illness and how they would react. If she was positive in her outlook, then those around her would also be positive rather than regard her as a victim. ‘She was an incredible support to me at the time,’ Olivia said of Nancy. ‘She took me to a movie and shopping and girlie things like that, and she said we were just going to do normal things.’

Nancy’s husband Jim also played a vital part, with the most dramatic and far-reaching results, by telling Olivia when she was diagnosed: ‘Congratulations. Now you will grow.’ Olivia recalled:

 

Olivia came to firmly believe that illness can be brought on by stress. She also came to believe, after talking to other women, that she was in some probability a typical victim. ‘Most of us are a certain type who don’t know how to express ourselves,’ she said in a revealing interview. ‘We try to be everything to everybody, we give, we don’t take care of ourselves emotionally. We do things for everybody else and repress our own desires and feelings.’

She said an inability to express her feelings was a trait she had noticed in her father, particularly when she had flown to his bedside shortly before he had died. Olivia said the closest he came then was reading some poems to her and Rona and trying to say something through the poetry that he couldn’t express himself.

Olivia credits Dr Deepak Chopra with helping her to take important strides towards recovery. Dr Chopra is an MD and wellness guru, who has been at the forefront of a major trend in holistic healing, and Olivia got in touch with him to her lasting advantage. ‘She was very familiar with some of my work,’ he says. ‘We met and discussed meditation, lifestyle, diet, stress management and she was the most extraordinary student. She took immediately to everything.

‘She suddenly realised what her most important priorities were, and her most important was her wellbeing, fulfilment, her happiness and the happiness of her daughter and nurturing relationships.’

Dr Chopra taught Olivia some meditation techniques to aid her recovery. Through him she first learned of the mind-body connection and its part in health and wellbeing, and he also introduced her to the concept of the seven chakras, the energy centres of the body.

Olivia later recounted her own inspiring personal spiritual journey towards healing for
The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success
, a DVD based on Deepak Chopra’s best-selling book about living a purposeful and satisfying life. She opened her home to the film to say: ‘Very often the things that come out of pain end up being your biggest blessing.’

Cancer changed everything about Olivia and she came to reassess herself through regular sessions with a psychiatrist.

 

On reflection, Olivia conceded that all too often she tried to do the right thing lest people felt she was too selfish. She said she was a ‘very fearful person’ and probably too scared to think deeply about herself. ‘I didn’t have time to reflect until I got sick,’ she said. ‘But having cancer freed me and helped me grow up. It has, in retrospect, been a very positive experience.’

Indirectly, Olivia’s cancer led her to take a role in 1995 in the low-budget movie
It’s My Party
directed by Randal Kleiser who, of course, had directed her in
Grease
. Eric Roberts starred as a gay man who gathers all his friends and family together to say goodbye to them before a friend in the medical profession helps him die a dignified death. Olivia played one of the friends, a married woman in the throes of divorce and with a son who is coming out.

With homosexuality, AIDS and euthanasia as the film’s themes, it represented Olivia’s first serious screen role. Major names who agreed to appear in the $3million movie for minimal pay included George Segal, Marlee Matlin, Lee Grant and Roddy McDowall, and Olivia took the opportunity to join them because she felt she could draw parallels with her own battle against breast cancer. ‘I’ve lost friends to AIDS,’ she revealed. ‘I’ve been in the room when my best friend’s brother died, so it struck a chord with me. I knew I could relate - and I could relate to the humour very much. Some people find that strange, but I remember when I first had cancer, I used to ring my friends and make jokes, because they were so freaked out that was the only way to break the ice.’

Chapter 14

A Touch of Paradise

MATT LATTANZI

 

 

IN THE HISTORY of television soaps,
Paradise Beach
is unlikely to warrant much more than a mention. It was a short-lived series, and yet it was one that was to signal a turning point with far-reaching effects in the marriage of Olivia Newton-John and Matt Lattanzi.

Olivia’s cancer, her continuing brave battle to beat it, and Matt’s anxious devotion to supporting her, were inevitably placing a strain on the couple’s relationship. So when an opportunity for them to totally change their lifestyle presented itself, they seized it with little hesitation. They put their Malibu home up for sale for £5million and headed off to Australia. The house was expensive to run and they resolved to down-scale and live more modestly and more simply for six months - in Australia.

‘I heard there was a job available in a new TV series to be made in Australia,’ Matt explained, ‘and we agreed that if I got it, then we’d go. Livvy was done with her treatment and this job came up and I said great, let’s go. I can get you away from this. Two weeks after I’d sent in a tape of my work to the producers, I was packed up and gone.’