The author opens up about her battle with leukemia and her famous sister’s last days.
“You are not your sister.”
That refrain was drummed into Delia Ephron from the moment she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) — the same cancer that killed her sister, the writer and director Nora Ephron, in 2012.
Watching her sister’s decline was like “staring my own death in the face,” Delia writes in her new memoir, Left on Tenth.
“Nora used to say we shared half a brain. And there was just a feeling that when I got sick that it would be inevitable that I would die as she had,” the author tells KCM.
But the mantra, which felt at once “both like a betrayal and empowering,” Delia says helped pull her through her harrowing battle with leukemia. Her story of survival is just one of the remarkable narratives that winds through her book.
In unsparing detail, she writes about the grief of losing her husband to prostate cancer, the excruciating pain of her bone marrow transplant, and the 100 days she spent in the hospital, wishing at points that she were dead. Then there are the parts of Left on Tenth that read like her sister’s classic rom-coms, like Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, which Delia worked on as well. She writes about how an op-ed she wrote in the New York Times, railing against Verizon’s absurdly poor customer service, led her to Peter. He reached out after reading her piece, some 50 years after Nora had set them up on a few dates. The two began corresponding over email and at 72, Delia had fallen in love again. They married in a hospital room, right before she underwent an experimental treatment for AML.
“It was like all the major life events were crammed into these four years of my life,” Delia tells us. “I just thought, I have to write about this.”
We spoke to the author about finding love later in life, how differently she and her sister approached their cancer treatment, and more.
KCM: Did you ever expect that you’d fall for someone so intensely after losing your husband, Jerry?
Delia Ephron: No, I didn’t. I didn’t think about it at all. I had such a happy marriage, and I think maybe if you have a happy marriage, that makes you more inclined to fall in love again rather than less. All I know is I was obviously open to it. And when I heard from Peter, honestly the connection was as instantaneous as it had been when I was young and fell in love with Jerry. It was so immediate.
Do you have any advice for women looking for love later in life?
Oh my goodness. No! First of all, I can’t quite believe the sequence of things that happened to me: Falling in love in such a big way when I was 72 and then getting a fatal diagnosis of leukemia four months later. The combination of highs and lows is so incredible that I almost feel like no one else could have gotten me through that journey but Peter, so they’re connected in a certain way. I have no idea really, but the other thing is that I like to laugh. I like to have fun. And I think that affected how I was still in the world, that I didn’t go away when I lost Jerry. And I think it propelled me forward.
How did watching Nora’s fight with AML shape how you thought about your own diagnosis?
There were four of us, four daughters, and we’re all writers. Nora was the first and she was just shot out of a cannon. She was going around the track so fast I couldn’t keep up with her. But I was trying when I was younger. And then when I became a writer, I began to understand myself.
But we had worked together and were so involved. Nora used to say we shared half a brain. And there was just a feeling that when I got sick that it would be inevitable that I would die as she had. But my doctors, not just understanding the psychology of our relationship and bond, told me, “you don’t have the same leukemia. It has the same name, but under the microscope it’s different. You can have a different outcome.” “You are not your sister” became this thing. It felt like both a betrayal and empowering at the same time. It was hard because I felt a certain level of guilt from that.
It was just complicated. I think with me having lost Nora to the illness, I had to figure out more and more how different we were. And we were very different.
Your bone marrow transplant sounded like hell. It’s known to be extremely painful and that’s why so many people like your sister elect not to do it. Can you talk a bit about how you chose to go through with it and what the procedure was like for you?
When they said to me, “you only have one possible way to survive, and it’s a bone marrow transplant,” I already knew so much about the procedure. Nora had already investigated it and had told me hundreds of horrible things about it and why she didn’t wanna do it. But my doctor, Dr. Gail Roboz, called me up and altered my focus of fear. She said, “Don’t be scared of the treatment, be scared of leukemia.” But it wasn’t just that. I mean, Peter and I had just fallen in love. There was no way I wasn’t gonna try it.
And when I met my transplant doctor, he didn’t know my feelings about all of this and he said that I had a 20 percent chance of survival. Now I think, what are the odds that I not only had a 20 percent chance of survival, but that I would go on to write about it and have a bestseller? Practically zero. So odds are a weird thing because somebody is making up that small percentage that makes it. Why can’t that be me?
You write in the book about how differently you and Nora approached managing your illnesses. She was very private and you leaned on a circle of friends. Why is that?
If you are really famous and you reveal information about your health like that, you cannot leave the house without being stopped. And Nora was famous like that. Strangely enough, she was extroverted and I’m rather introverted. I like to hang out in my office, and she liked to run a movie set. We’re very different people.
I knew I couldn’t get through this without my friends. I just couldn’t. I don’t know what her thinking was on it — and I was one of the few people that knew about it. But I was very worried when I first got sick that people would write me off. They’d say, “Oh, her sister died; she’s dying too.” I had to protect my hope by telling people. And Nora was protecting her hope too by not exposing herself to everyone.
After living through all of this, did you think to yourself, “this has to be a book”?
No, I did not. The treatment was so extreme. I was in the hospital for 100 days; when I sent for my medical records it was 6,000 pages. I couldn’t walk when I got out, I couldn’t stand alone. I was in a wheelchair. I really thought, if I could come back from this physically, I kept saying to my friends, I’m never going to write again. And then two years went by and it became clear that it had worked, which was so miraculous. I started to do some writing and the next thing I knew I was using that part of my brain again. It was like my writer’s heart was beating.
Then in March, Covid hit and we were all isolated and it just felt like the natural thing to do. It was an opportunity to write about everything: Loss, falling in love, getting sick, surviving. It was like all the major life events crammed into these four years of my life. And I just thought, I have to write this. I genuinely went from thinking I’d never write it to life just gave me this amazing story.
I’m curious about why you decided to include so many emails and texts throughout the book from your friends and family.
It was a creative decision. I wanted everyone to hear these other voices. The love letters between me and Peter, I thought they were just beautiful. And to see two people fall in love in such a frank and honest way, I thought was wonderful.
And you’re still in remission?
Yes, I am. I just had my six-month check-up. I only go in now every six months, which is amazing because if you do get a blood cancer like that, you’re in there a couple of times a week. So the fact that I have my life back is just miraculous.
