ONE day you’re having a big cappuccino with your girl friends and talking boys, and the next day your entire existence is changed, and it’s changed by one word: Cancer.
Tomorrow night, TLC presents a documentary – which began as a video diary – by and about Kris Carr, a 20-something NYC working actress (as opposed to working waitress/actress) who went to the doctor on Valentine’s Day 2003 because she was feeling lousy.
Maybe she hurt herself in her yoga class, she thought. “Maybe,” it turned out, wasn’t a downward facing dog injury, but 12 malignant tumors in her liver – caused by an incurable form of cancer.
A few weeks later Carr began the video diary/documentary of her life and possibly her death, if things didn’t work out as she hoped. But hope is what this terrific documentary is all about.
With the crazy, sexy title of “Crazy Sexy Cancer,” the documentary follows the gorgeous Carr’s struggles to understand what’s happened to her and what to do about it, yes, but more importantly, about the insights she gains along the way. Strangely billed as “the lighter side of cancer,” the film is both wrenching and light-hearted.
First thing Carr does in the film is create, in her mind, her own company, “Save My Ass Technology.” The next thing she does is hire the right people to work for the company. She interviews doctors the same way she would any potential employee of her company.
What treatment options did they favor, what were the chances that her incurable cancer would go away?
While she was offered a menu of options from a score of docs, the truth was that her very rare form of cancer was never going to go away.
After living on her own for so many years and even earning enough to buy an apartment in NYC, Carr decided to sell it and move back with her parents to concentrate her energies on getting well without chemo. “I wondered,” she says, “How they felt taking their child to a cancer hospital.”
The rest is of the film centers on Carr’s journey to fix herself – from “Whole Life Expos,” to wheat grass fasts, yoga and mediation.
Along the way she meets some fantastic women who are fighting cancer with everything they’ve got – and I’m not talking about the run-of-the-mill group hug groups. And further along the way she even meets her dream man – the one who came in to help her finish the film.
A must for anyone touched by the disease and anyone who fears it. Who knew cancer could be crazy/sexy?
“Crazy Sexy Cancer”
Wednesday night at 9 on TLC