Cancer vixen

It was an unusual reaction. When Marisa Acocella Marchetto was diagnosed with cancer she responded to the news by ‘pulling on her five-inch heels to kick cancer’s butt’.

It was 2004 and the New York socialite, also a renowned cartoonist for the New Yorker and the New York Times, was due to marry in three weeks. The marriage went ahead. Two years later, and after a graphic novel based on the events has been lauded by the critics, Marchetto’s story is set to be made into a film with Cate Blanchett in the lead role. Marchetto, 45, said, “Cate playing me is a dream come true. She was the only person we had in mind, she was always my first choice.” 
Marchetto’s story begins in 2001 when she was working as an illustrator for the now defunct US magazine Talk. It was then that she met her future husband, Silvano Marchetto, the chef and owner of Da Silvano’s, a New York hang-out for models and actors in the city’s West Village. She was a specialist at satirising Manhattan’s well-heeled fashionistas with her cutting illustrations and love for Giuseppe Zanotti heels and MAC lipstick. The two soon fell in love and got engaged.
Then, when all seemed to be going well for the high-society couple, Marchetto’s doctor found a lump in her breast. She dealt with the situation by falling back on her two great loves: fashion and illustration.
She began dressing in her best outfits to go to chemotherapy sessions, and her medical condition became the subject of her cartoons. The critically lauded result of these was published in the United States this month as a “graphic memoir”.
“I’m a cartoonist. The graphic memoir was the only way I knew to deal with it,” she said. “When the doctor inspected the tumour, and he said ‘We need to find out whether the cells are angry’, I immediately saw them as little green meanies giving me the finger.”
When she was first shown her tumour during a scan, her doctor told her “it looks like the size of a large pearl”. She claims she saw a “black hole”.
Marchetto continued: “I realised I could go at this one of two ways. I could go into that negative space or I could take this situation and say this is an opportunity to change my life.”
The book is billed as What happens when a shoe-crazy, lipstick-obsessed, wine-swilling, pasta-slurping fashion fanatic with a fabulous life finds a lump in her breast. In it, Marchetto draws in loving detail how she and her mother consulted various doctors and were advised on different treatments after her diagnosis.
“For me, shoes were comfort food,” she said. “My five-inch heels made me feel wonderful and gave me the strength to fight this thing. I’ve tried to be as true to the experience as possible but also have a sense of humour. My message would be: Don’t be a victim. Be a vixen.”
During her illness Marchetto’s friends rallied around. But at one point during her  11-month treatment her relationship with her husband was threatened. One of the female clientele of Da Silvano’s found out that Marchetto had cancer and gave its owner a card, which said: “Call me if you want a healthy relationship.”
Marchetto claimed she was lucky in the end. Her cancer was “caught early” and she had a lumpectomy instead of a mastectomy, a procedure which involves removing the tumour and some surrounding tissue instead of the entire breast.
“A percentage of the [profits from the] book is going to breast cancer research,” she added. “Around 49 per cent of woman diagnosed with it who don’t have insurance have a greater risk of dying. Now I’m 100 per cent cancer-free and my negativity is in remission.” 
— The Observer