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Of course, when Katzke, a tall, green-eyed honey blonde, found the lump in her breast, she had no idea that she would end up making a breast cancer support video, or writing the script for Legacy, a screenplay she hopes will become the Philadelphia of breast cancer. (Her agent is looking for a film company to pick up the script.)
The breast specialist Katzke first went to see eight years ago told her he could tell, without doing a biopsy, that the lump wasn't cancer. "Crying, I told him my mother had died of breast cancer at 52," Katzke says. "He said I was overreacting because of her, but that I could have another test." A mammogram of Katzke's dense breasts appeared to be clear.
After a year of feeling the lump during monthly self-exams, Katzke demanded it be removed. As soon as the same specialist completed the procedure, Katzke remembers, he told her, "Well, it's a good thing we did this. You're cured!"
"I was furious," Katzke recalls. "It was a real turning point - I got rid of all my guilt and anxiety about going against a doctor's opinion." She proceeded to get four other opinions - all confirming that her cancer had spread beyond the edges of the original tumor. A second surgeon was unable to remove all the abnormal tissue left by the first surgeon, and Katzke eventually underwent a mastectomy and chemotherapy. She was stunned to learn chemotherapy might bring sterility. To prepare for this possibility, Katzke froze her embryos, but her attempt to work with a surrogate mother failed. "I've been in love with an incredibly loving and supportive man for 10 years," she says. "We had hoped to have a child together."
Katzke's breast cancer also created a financial crisis: Her insurance company combed through her medical records, found an abnormal Pap smear five years earlier, and dropped her, claiming she fraudulently failed to report a pre-existing condition. It was then that she sought out a malpractice lawyer. He told her the specialist she initially saw was liable because he had failed to order a biopsy despite the existence of the palpable lump and her family history.
Katzke used the settlement money she won from her lawsuit to get to work on the support video and kit she promised herself she would make if she survived for five years. But Between Us required more money, and raising it was not easy. "Breast cancer funds are available for prevention and research, but for tending the wounded, there are no funds," Katzke says. |
Finally, with some supplemental grants and lots of volunteer help, Katzke shot "Between Us" in three exhausting days. To save on location fees, she filmed in her coproducer Joanne Singer's Manhattan apartment. An unpaid set designer created backdrops using throw rugs, curtains and colorful bouquets. The video was shot in a new digital format on equipment lent by Panasonic.
"Between Us" was an instant hit, and has been included in New York Women in Film & TV's 20-year retrospective of films by women, as well as in last September's Breckenridge Film Festival in Breckenridge, Colorado and in the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival last October.
The video offers women the help that Katzke felt she needed when her lump was finally diagnosed. "I needed to see that other women had made it, how they got through it," Katzke says. "You need something right away - even before a support group."
The Between Us kit, promoted as "first-aid for the heart and soul," includes the video, a 100-minute phone card, Kleenex, a notebook and pen, a scented candle and a handwritten note, often from a volunteer survivor.
Katzke's goal is to have corporate sponsors underwrite distribution of the video kits so they can be given out free. At press time, a Nashville HMO had agreed to distribute 35,000 of the kits if a sponsor could be found. In Alaska, where the kit is assembled in an airplane hangar by partner Janet Burts, Blockbuster Video now buys the videos and makes them available free. All 11 of Blockbuster's Alaska stores have a waiting list. Major U.S. hospitals are beginning to order it.
As "Between Us" becomes recognized in the cancer community, Katzke is getting back to making films on other subjects. In March, she headed for Delavan, Minnesota to make a low-budget comedy. Called Tuesday Morning Coffee, it's based on a true story and deals with the social life of women living on isolated farms; it will have an all-local cast. "I'm excited," she enthuses, "to be able to do something lighthearted."
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