CHAPPAQUA, N.Y. — Shortly after Nancy Borowick’s boyfriend got down on one knee and popped the question, she began to worry about the wedding. If everything had been normal, Ms. Borowick and her husband-to-be, Kyle Grimm, would have waited a year, until the spring of 2014. She’s 28, he’s 27 and they would have liked the extra time to build their careers and get used to living together. Ms. Borowick works as a freelance photographer and is often up by 6 a.m., calling newspaper photo desks around the city in hopes of getting an assignment. Mr. Grimm is a junior lawyer at a corporate firm who is already married, to his job.
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But before they could make plans, Ms. Borowick needed to know: how long did her parents have? Both had advanced cancers. Pancreatic cancer was eating at her father, breast cancer at her mother, and the daughter could not conceive of getting married without them. “You’re walking me down the aisle,” she kept telling them.
The most likely person to have the answers was Dr. Barry Boyd, who had been caring for Ms. Borowick’s mother, Laurel, since she was first given a diagnosis of cancer in 1997, and more recently, her father.
Dr. Boyd is on the staff at Greenwich Hospital, an assistant research professor at the Yale School of Medicine and a rarity in the medical field, a buoyant oncologist. He would not lie, but he is known for striving to convey the most hopeful version of the truth.
Which is why in April when Ms. Borowick asked for advice on scheduling the wedding, Dr. Boyd’s response startled her. “There’s no reason not to do it as soon as you can,” he said.
She picked Oct. 5.
Nancy Borowick
Nancy Borowick, right, has photographed her parents’ fights against cancer.
The first time Laurel Borowick received a diagnosis of breast cancer, at the age of 42, she thought she was being very calm and controlled until she walked out of the doctor’s office, got into her car and realized she had forgotten to put on one of her socks and a shoe.
She had been worried since the day her husband Howie had come up from behind, put his arms around her, playfully touched her breasts and felt a lump in the right one.
Cancer ran in both families, or more accurately, raced through them. Mr. Borowick was a baby when his father died of brain cancer and 15 when his mother died of breast cancer; Laurel Borowick was in college when her father died from pancreatic cancer.
The Borowicks met at St. John’s University Law School in Queens, working on a theater production. She sang, he danced. He talked, she listened. A famous Howie Borowick story: “Our first date lasted seven hours. About six hours in, it was 3 a.m., and I looked at Laurel and said, ‘Now you tell me something about yourself.’ ”
She worked full time as a lawyer when they were married, then gave it up to anchor the household.
When their younger daughter fell on a soccer field, he was the parent yelling, “Suck it up, Nance.”
When one of the three children had a birthday, she was the parent who would sneak in to decorate their bedrooms while they slept.
He became a highly successful personal injury lawyer representing union workers. Alan Kaminsky, a lawyer who has battled Mr. Borowick in court on dozens of cases over the years said, “Howie is a formidable adversary; he’s a game changer.” By that he meant that if opposing lawyers saw Mr. Borowick had been hired to try a case, they suddenly became more interested in settling.
While she is quiet and discreet, he will tell strangers his deepest secrets within 10 minutes of saying hello.
But in the fall of 2009, after being well for more than a decade, she learned that her breast cancer had returned. She made him swear not to tell a soul. Their older daughter Jessica was getting married in two weeks, and Ms. Borowick didn’t want anything to distract from the wedding.
“Howie kept the secret,” she said. “I was pleased.”
It turned out to be a 5-centimeter tumor in her chest wall, where her right breast had been removed 12 years earlier. The plan was to shrink it with chemotherapy, then do surgery and radiation.
Nancy Borowick for The New York Times
The couple receiving treatment.
The first time Ms. Borowick had cancer, she was frightened of dying and leaving her young children behind; the second time, she says, she was angry. She’d read all the books, learned everything she could, asked a million questions and followed the rules — strict diet, regular exercise — and in the end, so what?
That September, Nancy, then a student at the International Center for Photography, asked about chronicling her mother’s cancer treatment for a project.
The mother liked the idea; it meant they’d spend more time together, and her daughter would learn about her disease.
