Olivia's Torment
The family of Olivia Newton-John fears that she is cracking up under the strain of her mastectomy and the chemotherapy used to prevent her breast cancer returning.
Olivia rarely feels well enough to venture outside her fabulous Malibu mountaintop mansion, and she receives visits from only a handful of her closest friends.
A lot of Olivia’s spare time used to be spent outdoors with her only child Chloe. Now she’s limited to spending just a few hours each day with her active little girl.
The Grease star now dreads the after-effects of violent vomiting, exhaustion and listlessness which can last for more than a week after her regular chemotherapy sessions at the Cedars Sinai Hospital in Beverly Hills.
Once-bubbly Livvy barely has five or six days of feeling normal before she has to steel herself for the next of the fortnightly treatment ordeals, which are expected to continue for at least six months.
Friends are also deeply concerned about the fits of tearful depression when Olivia blames her self for a series of personal disasters, culminating in the breast cancer diagnosis in July.
Says a close relative: “She keeps saying. ‘It’s all my fault. Everyone is going around me. We tell her to pull herself together but she’s convinced it’s her fault.”
Olivia, 44, is also convinced her career is over and believes the Back To Basics tour that was to mark her comeback is now just a dream.
“She thinks she’ll never get back on top in showbusiness,” says the relative. “It’s so bad she finds it difficult to even listen to her own music at home. She can’t cope with thoughts that her name will never be in bright lights again.”
The strain is telling on her eight-year marriage to Matt Lattanzi. Friends say they literally thanked God when Olivia did not lose her long blonde hair as a result of the debilitating treatment.
“She still looks tremendous but it’s true to say she is not at all enthusiastic about chemotherapy,” says close friend and lawyer John Mason. “Olivia didn’t know what the treatment would be like and it’s turned out to be a lot worse than they told her.”
“She is just so tired all the time. She doesn’t want to do anything and feels sick to her stomach most times.”
“She tries to act normally but it’s so hard for her to cope. She talks on the phone to her mum and family in Australia.”
Olivia has turned down offers of psychotherapy to cope with the trauma of losing her breast. Her medical advisers recommended a holiday but Olivia’s assistant Sylvie Brown says the celebrity feels so weak that she has been unable to travel any further than a few kilometres up the coastline.
Despite being a model of healthy living, vegetarian Olivia had a history of breast lumps and under-went regular checks. The last one led to an early diagnosis and treatment of the malignant tumor.
Olivia has been plagued with a string of personal disasters in the past four years. A miscarriage in 1988 was a “bitter blow” as she and Matt desperately wanted a brother or sister for their daughter Chloe. Chemotherapy means it’s unlikely she’ll be able to bear children again.
Then her best friend Nancy Chuda’s daughter Collette, 4, died of cancer last year. Olivia, who told friends Collette’s death was a cause of great sorrow, helped establish a fund in Collette Chuda’s name. Olivia has intensified her fund-raising efforts since her own diagnosis.
Olivia suspended her singing career in 1985 to start her own chain of 60 Koala Blue boutiques. She was the epitome of the Eighties woman, balancing a high-flying career with motherhood. However. the business crashed this year with almost $4 million of debt, and left dozens of franchisees fuming.
Olivia’s father Brin died in June, and it was only a matter of weeks after his funeral that she got her own bad news.
“She has discussed with friends whether the stress of all these events may have caused her own cancer but doesn’t really subscribe to it,” John says. “She feels it’s a genetic thing. She had some lumps and problems before.”
“She says it wasn’t helped by the fact that women who give birth for the first time over the age of 35 are more prone to breast cancer.”
Olivia has always been a model of healthy living. She eats no dairy products and used a mini-gym, running treadmill, exercise bike and weights.
“I am very lucky genetically,” she once said.
“My father is tall and slim and my mother stays youthful. I am also very conscious of what I eat. I get into little bursts of being physical where I go to a gym regularly.”
“There are horses to ride on the ranch and when I run out of things to do around here I just open the back gate and head straight for the hills with our dogs.”
Olivia gave birth to Chloe when she was 38 and recovered her figure with a strict regimen of walking 8km a day in the hills and swimming 100 lengths in her pool. Since then Olivia has become an ardent campaigner for a cleaner environment and works to save South American rainforests.
“We want to educate people on pesticides in their food and the way meat is treated before it is passed on to families,” she said recently. “We have created a wonderful environment for ourselves but there are so many people living in dangerous places next to power stations and factories.”
Of her own ordeal Olivia has said: “I draw strength from the millions of women who have faced this challenge successfully.”
But all the comforts of her luxury suite in the celebrity wing at Cedars Sinai Hospital mean nothing when she is faced with the nightmare of coping with the sickening chemotherapy.
Although the treatment will give her a 75 per cent chance of survival, Olivia will have to dig deep into her mental resources to keep her spirits up and to keep fighting for her life.
“I’ve come this far and I’m not about to give up now,” she has said, “Thousands of women are beating breast cancer and I plan to be one of them.”
By Gerard Evans
The following week's article in Woman's Day answer these claims.