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Lisa Schiller's work ID still shows her with a full head of hair.
The picture was taken before May, when her hair began to fall out and she began wearing hats, and before April, when she was diagnosed with a rare type of cancer.
The badge and photo are both a bit symbolic. The badge because Schiller, the vice president of marketing at Rex Healthcare, finds refuge from her disease by continuing to work at a mostly full pace. The photo because she expects to recover and that her hair will grow back.
Schiller likes to paraphrase a quote from author and rabbi Naomi Levy that she read 10 years ago, when another tragedy struck her family: "We don't have the ability to choose our fate, but we have the ability to choose how we respond to it."
"I can't change that I was diagnosed with cancer. But how I live, that's within my power," Schiller says. "Work is something that I enjoy. I feel productive. The alternative of sitting around feeling sorry for myself wasn't going to make me better any quicker."
She's quick to point out that everyone deals with adversity differently. For some people, after a complex, painful surgery and intense chemotherapy, returning to work might be a poor choice. Many people faced with life-threatening illness reassess their lives, preferring to focus on family, religion or philanthropy.
Schiller, 43, lists her daughters and husband as priorities, but never considered the possibility of not returning to work. "You hear all the time about work-life balance. That's not a phrase I've ever used," she says. "It's all part of life. I wanted to get back to normal as quickly as possible."
Schiller's life took a dramatic turn on April 14. Just a week earlier, she had taken her younger daughter, Abby, to Disney World for a few days, then flew with her older daughter, Allison, to New York City for another vacation. Her energy never flagged.
They returned home on a Friday. That Sunday, Schiller began feeling sick and run down, and went to urgent care. On Tuesday, doctors diagnosed primary peritoneal cancer. A sister illness to ovarian cancer, the disease attacks the lining of the abdominal cavity.
"That's probably not a good thing, when you're in health care and you haven't heard of it before," she says.
Schiller called her husband Rob, who met her at the doctor's office. On the ride home, she called her boss, Rex CEO David Strong.
Her surgery was scheduled for a week later at UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill. It involved a total hysterectomy, as well as removing parts of her bowels, a mass pressing on her bladder and the linings of several organs.
Before the procedure, she met with Strong and went over the recovery and treatment schedule her doctors expected. She planned to resume working part time from home and then return to the office. Schiller was back full time in June, surprising her husband and others.
"For that first week, I treated her with kid gloves," Strong says. Then he realized he wasn't e-mailing and calling her as much as he normally would. "We made a pact right there to treat each other the same as we would before the diagnosis. The idea of normalcy was important."
When Strong visited Schiller in the hospital, he would ask for her opinion on various work issues. "I'm sure that was because he knew that was what I needed, not because he really needed my input," she says.
An emotional toll
Schiller is lucky in many regards.
She and her husband aren't politicians but they fit the picture of a Raleigh power couple. They moved here from suburban Washington five years ago when Rob Schiller was named chief financial officer for the N.C. Symphony.
She joined Rex as a consultant and is now one of the health system's top executives. She's on the board of Make-a-Wish, the cabinet of United Way and is closely involved with the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce. Her job gives her great health insurance, and she could have taken a leave of absence.
Her position and contacts made getting the best care at Rex and at its parent, the UNC Health Care System, a little easier. Strong and UNC Hospitals president Gary Park regularly visited her after surgery and during chemotherapy.
Schiller oversees a staff of 15 people who handle marketing, public relations and communications for Rex. The four managers under her filled her leadership shoes while she took some sick time. Her best friend at Rex, chief financial officer Bernadette Spong, also agreed to help her team if they needed anything.
Spong is also the one who came right over the day in June when Schiller says she got upset for the first time since learning of her illness: Her hair had started falling out. Spong took her hat shopping.
Co-workers, friends and neighbors delivered more than five months' worth of meals. They sent cards and contributed to her collection of hats.
The outpouring of support has helped. Still, the illness takes an emotional toll - especially since Schiller's family has seen the ravages of cancer before.
In 1999, Amy Schiller died of brain cancer one month shy of her 3rd birthday.
Allison remembers losing her younger sister and is having a harder time with her mother's illness. "She's 15 and has all the challenges that brings, but she has the extra burden of having a mom with cancer," Schiller says.
Eight-year-old Abby, on the other hand, is curious and asks questions, but doesn't completely understand what cancer means.
Support from all areas
Schiller also never stops looking ahead, despite any risk of recurrence. "I fully intend to be in the percent of people who it doesn't ever come back in," she said.
She's planning a trip to Hawaii with her family in December for a 20th wedding anniversary celebration. She's thinking about another family trip in the spring, when she's scheduled to finish her weekly doses of Taxol, a chemotherapy drug.
Every Thursday afternoon, she crosses the street from her office to get treatment, then returns to work Friday morning.
For Schiller, work is top of mind, even during treatments and tests.
After one of many MRIs at Rex, she had a suggestion. An MRI machine is loud, so patients get headphones and are asked what type of music they'd like to listen to. Schiller thought that if there was a field in repeat patients' medical records to note their preferred music, it might be a nice touch.
"If they asked me if I wanted to hear the Eagles again, I'd be really impressed," Schiller says. Within a week, she got word that they had found a place to enter that information.
Lessons from the past
A few things have changed at work. Schiller wears hats nearly everywhere, after buying a wig and deciding it "looked funny." She does a lot more hugging now, rather than shaking hands and risking an infection.
There are times at the end of long work days when Schiller says she feels her energy waning.
"We try to get her to pull back a little bit," said Lissa Pacanovsky, who works under Schiller as manager of physician relations. "We all have tried to take on more so she would have less to do. But she wouldn't have it."
To keep her focus on the job, Schiller says she uses several lessons related to basketball, which she played in high school. She wasn't good enough to play in college, so she switched to officiating men's games during her time at James Madison University.
"I have the ability to be extremely focused," she says. "I never heard all those people screaming at me when I was an official. I can block out the noise of my illness or how I'm physically feeling and focus on what I'm working on."
And she follows advice she got from former N.C. State women's basketball coach Kay Yow, who died in January after a long battle with breast cancer. Yow spoke at a Rex quarterly leadership meeting two years ago and Schiller escorted her around after the meeting.
"She said not to wallow in self-pity, to swish your feet and get out," Schiller recalls. "It's OK to feel bad for a moment, but you've got to keep moving forward. I believe that's what she meant."
Staff writer Corey Lowenstein contributed to this report.
