Keep the Cameras Rolling: Cynthia McFadden
Keep the Cameras Rolling
Cynthia McFadden Triumphs Over a Tough Condition
Probing the hearts and minds of some of the biggest influences on American and world culture—President George W. Bush; Britain’s Tony Blair; Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan; and even Hollywood hunk George Clooney—Cynthia McFadden has won several awards for her journalism skills during the past two decades. At 52, she is currently the co-host of ABC News’ “Nightline” and “Primetime”—and she balances that with being a single mom to her 10-year-old son, Spencer.
But what’s even more astonishing to those who know her and the millions of viewers who watch her in action on television is this: Cynthia does it all while dealing with Crohn’s disease. That’s a disease that causes deep inflammation in the intestines, most often in a section of the small intestine called the ileum. The inflammation can cause severe pain, fever, and the inability to control your bowels. Sometimes, the condition goes into remission and causes no symptoms for periods of time, only to flare up with no apparent cause.
Cynthia’s struggle with Crohn’s disease is not new, she tells Health Monitor Network. It goes back a long way. “As a kid, I had a lot of abdominal pain that was often very extreme, and spent a lot of time in the bathroom,” says the native of Auburn, Maine. “But until I started feeling really rotten, I never pursued an explanation.” By then, she was 18 and attending her first year at Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, Maine. The abdominal pain she frequently experienced reached a level severe enough that she could no longer ignore it. And when she sought treatment from doctors at the campus, she finally learned that she’d been experiencing Crohn’s disease all along.
Cynthia was shocked by the diagnosis, as were her parents, especially as Crohn’s is also called terminal ileitis. None of them had ever heard of Crohn’s disease. “We were naive about how to pursue it and just didn’t know what to do,” she recalls. But one of Cynthia’s academic advisers at the time, Matilda White Riley, offered assistance. Cynthia notes, “She went out of her way to help us understand Crohn’s disease.”
At the same time, however, Cynthia was struggling with something she did not reveal to anyone: She believed that she had caused her own illness. “The gastroenterologist treating me told me I was responsible for my condition,” Cynthia recalls. “I was told that being a ‘Type A’ personality actually caused my illness.” (Type A personality traits, which can include impatience, competitiveness, and aggressiveness, were once thought to put people at risk for coronary heart disease.) But believing that she had “done this” to herself simply by being who she was, became extremely tough on Cynthia.
“When I switched doctors a few years after my diagnosis, I learned that Crohn’s is a biological disease—not an emotional one,” she adds. “It still took several years for me to believe I wasn’t at fault.”
But those first few years of living with Crohn’s disease—and believing it was her own fault—encouraged the TV journalist to speak openly about her health. She states, “I don’t want anyone else to experience the psychological torment I felt from thinking I was responsible for my condition.”
Bringing ‘George’ out in the open
Soon after her diagnosis, Cynthia’s pain got worse and her dashes to the bathroom became more frequent. People were noticing, so Cynthia decided to stop trying to hide her illness. “I opened up to friends about what I was going through and that helped me develop a wonderful support system,” she says. In fact, classmates and friends—one of them being the legendary actress, Kate Hepburn (see “Don’t Let Anything Stop You”)—eventually came up with the name “George” to address her illness. “Instead of asking me how many bouts of diarrhea I had that day,” she recalls, “people would simply ask, ‘How’s George?’ It added some levity to the situation.”
Cynthia’s doctors at Bowdoin attempted to manage her illness with what she calls “massive doses” of cortisone, a steroid used to treat inflammation of the bowel. The next step in treatment was a bowel resection, a surgical procedure that removes all or part of the large intestine. In Cynthia’s case, only part of her bowel was removed. The surgery took place 25 years ago, but she notes that today, surgery is a treatment of last resort. Crohn’s is most often effectively managed by medication
Nearly three decades after the bowel resection, Cynthia still has days marked by frequent dashes to the bathroom. But she doesn’t let it—or anyone’s reactions to her sudden departures—get to her. “After my surgery,” she recalls, “I decided there’s no room in my life for anyone who’s going to judge me harshly because I have to go to the bathroom, sometimes with very little notice, and sometimes with ugly things happening as a result.” Which means she also doesn’t judge herself. “Crohn’s is part of me, but it doesn’t define me,” she states. “Accepting that I do have Crohn’s, but that it doesn’t run my life, is how I cope with having it.”
Can’t stop the dream
Because she wouldn’t let Crohn’s disease—or anyone’s judgments—stop her, Cynthia is today living out her childhood dream and emulating her journalistic influences, one of whom was the late Walter Cronkite. After graduating Bowdoin and then attending Columbia Law School, she landed her first television job as an anchor on the CourtTV channel in 1991. “I did worry about being on camera for five straight hours—without a flare-up,” she says. “Although I had my share of pain, luckily, I never had a Crohn’s emergency.”
As a news correspondent, Cynthia says she faces some tricky situations due to her illness. She’s needed a bathroom while on the road in underdeveloped countries—where one might not be available for miles. She’s also had to make “pit stops” along the side of the road. “In some situations, I simply haven’t made it to a bathroom in time,” she says. “But I’d rather face that than the burden of not doing things for fear that I’d need to be near a bathroom.”
No doubt, the news anchor chose a very stressful career. But that stress, she says, along with dietary habits, doesn’t trigger Crohn’s flare-ups for her. She notes, “During some of the most stressful times of my life, I’ve had no symptoms.” For that reason, Cynthia doesn’t follow a special diet and says that since the bowel resection, she’s been symptom-free for the most part. She currently doesn’t require medications to manage her illness, although she notes that many people do—especially when the condition is severe. In the end, Cynthia doesn’t want anyone, particularly her son, Spencer, to view her as a sick person—since she doesn’t see herself that way. “I’m a person first, then a patient,” she says. “And Crohn’s won’t get the best of me.”
—Gina Roberts-Grey
4 Signs It Could Be Crohn’s
Crohn’s disease doesn’t affect everyone the same way, so symptoms—and their severity—may differ among people with the illness. The following four symptoms may indicate that you have the condition, but it’s best to get a diagnosis from a gastroenterologist. Note that several drugs are now available to effectively treat the illness. Ask your doctor about symptoms and treatments.
1. Diarrhea. This occurs when the colon can’t completely absorb the fluids excreted by the intestine. For people with Crohn’s, diarrhea can be frequent and severe.
2. Abdominal pain and cramping. When inflammation of the intestinal walls affects the normal movement of food through the intestinal tract, the results are pain and cramping.
3. Blood in your stool. Food that moves through an inflamed digestive tract can cause the intestine to bleed. Blood may appear in the toilet bowl or mixed in with stool.
4. Reduced appetite and weight loss. The abdominal pain and cramping caused by Crohn’s can affect both your appetite and your ability to digest and absorb food.
Don’t Let Anything Stop You
Cynthia McFadden is very grateful for the friends who’ve been supportive of her and her battle with Crohn’s. Among her core group of friends was the late actress Katharine Hepburn. Cynthia notes, “She was one of the major influences in my life as a professional, a person, and a woman.”
The women met when Cynthia was attending Bowdoin College in Maine, and developed a fondness for each other. “In some ways, she was very tough on me,” Cynthia recalls, “like she was with everyone she cared about in her life.” Hepburn’s expectation that everyone do their best every day—and her belief that no task was too big or too small—significantly influenced Cynthia’s determination not to let Crohn’s disease keep her from achieving her dreams.
“Of all the things I got from her, one memorable example was her ability to laugh at herself and laugh at life,” Cynthia states. “She wouldn’t let anything stop her.”
Digestion & Diet
Update: July 7, 2010
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