By Jennifer Eder
While filming a documentary on her fight with cancer, videographer Brandon Bray had 25-year-old Cara Scharf sing “You Walk With Me” from the musical, The Full Monty, more than 15 times.
Ms. Scharf is part of a local a capella singing group, and Mr. Bray had envisioned that her singing would be a recurring soundtrack throughout the film.
But in the final version of the documentary, Ms. Scharf doesn't sing a note. Instead, as she approaches a microphone, takes a breath and prepares to sing, the film ends.
"While I was editing, it was much more powerful to take out the singing completely," said Mr. Bray, senior producer of creative services at the GW Medical Faculty Associates, who recently won a CINE Golden Eagle award for the film. "I wanted it to say that her best performances haven't happened yet."
Ms. Scharf has always been drawn to music – a characteristic she attributes to her mother, who also battled breast cancer and died when Ms. Scharf was three.
“My mom loved to play the piano, sing and watch Broadway musicals. I’m pretty sure I got my voice from her,” said Ms. Scharf.
After her mother died, breast cancer wasn’t a frequent topic of conversation in her family. But as she entered her late teens, cancer moved to the front of her mind. Not only had her mother died from breast cancer, but her maternal grandmother died from ovarian cancer. These facts left Ms. Scharf assuming she probably had some type of genetic predisposition. So when she turned 22, she got tested for the BRCA gene mutation, which significantly raises the risk of getting breast cancer. She was positive.
Immediately Ms. Scharf felt pressure to “get her life on track.”
“I had just graduated from college and didn’t really know what I wanted to do, but to know that my life could get cut short because of this disease makes you want to make your life really meaningful,” she said.
She considered opting for a prophylactic double mastectomy but decided that was a drastic measure and instead she would go with routine surveillance for high-risk patients.
But three years later, an MRI picked up a tumor in her right breast.
“When they told us the news, my whole life immediately changed. All the plans you were making take a backseat,” said Ms. Scharf, who now works at the Society for the Arts in Healthcare, a nonprofit that promotes the use of all types of art in health care settings for therapeutic purposes. “You suddenly have this strength to do all the things you need to do to stay alive and kill the cancer.”
Mr. Bray was brought on by the MFA in 2010 to get away from the traditional corporate video model and instead create personal vignettes that showcase the MFA’s doctors while telling a patient’s story. When Mr. Bray set out to create a video showcasing the MFA’s Breast Care Center, Ms. Scharf’s story was a “no brainer.”
“Here’s a girl that’s just finished college and is having to deal with things that people two and three times her age are having to deal with,” said Mr. Bray, who spent a month filming Ms. Scharf. “She’s one of the most positive people I’ve ever met.”
Christy Teal, director of the Breast Care Center, performed a double mastectomy on Ms. Scharf in April. Next before starting chemotherapy, the 25-year-old had four of her eggs frozen to protect them from the harmful effects of the treatment. Then from June to September, Ms. Scharf received eight rounds of chemo under Rebecca Kaltman, an assistant professor of medicine and oncologist at the MFA.
“Losing my hair ended up being one of the most traumatic experiences. I’ve always been a confident person, but when it actually happened, it made me really depressed,” she said. “Once I lost my hair, it became public that I was a cancer patient.”
Through her battle with cancer, Ms. Scharf had the support of her father, stepmother and boyfriend, but she also benefited from having coordinated care where her doctors all worked together on creating the best outcome for her.
As a way to document her experience, she began a blog, which she named “Wearing My BRCA Genes.” The blog has been tremendously successful, receiving around 40,000 hits so far and appearing on the New York Times homepage of the Health section. Her hope with starting the blog was that young women who are diagnosed with breast cancer will read her experience and realize they’re not alone.
“When you’re getting chemo and you’re surrounded by people who are a lot older than you, it’s easy to feel alone,” she said. “I would get jealous of my friends who haven’t had to go through this life changing experience. Why do I have to go through this when other people don’t have to?”
She hopes the documentary can be a source of strength for others fighting cancer.
Just a few weeks after her reconstructive surgery, the MFA learned it had won a CINE Golden Eagle award for Mr. Bray’s documentary. The CINE awards recognize both established and emerging filmmakers.
“To have the film recognized on a national level is a really big honor,” Mr. Bray said.
Now that Ms. Scharf’s treatment is behind her, she’s adjusting to her “new normal.”
“I feel this pressure on myself to do extraordinary things now that I’ve overcome an extraordinary thing in my life. I hope that I don’t ever lose sight that things can be fleeting,” Ms. Scharf said. “I want to have a career that I love, and I want to have relationships that I’m happy with and make sure that everything I do is something that makes me happy or contributes to my development as a person.”