By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO — Before We Go is an eight-episode podcast, starting today, Oct. 8, in which Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider, an internist, tells of her father’s Steven’s fight against pancreatic cancer. Meanwhile, she and her sister faced the decision of whether to decrease their chances of suffering a similar fate by having hysterectomies and removal of their breasts.
The podcast takes the listener through the Ungerleider family’s discovery of their ailments, treatments, their father’s hospice care, a discussion between their father and a rabbi about what comes next, the moment of death, and the rituals following the death.
It is both introspective and clinical. Questions about the emotions that family members felt during the process are answered mostly by Ungerleider; her sister Ariel Kelley, a city councilmember and former mayor of Healdsburg, California; Ungerleider’s husband Ed Aten, and her father’s companion Joanna Rice.
Clinical and technical information is provided by Dr. Steve Bardis, Dr. Ari Baron, hospice nurse Steve Epstein, genetic counselor Dina Goldberg, and Rabbi Steve Finley of Sonoma, California.
The Ungerleider family was especially vulnerable to cancer. Shoshana’s grandmother Joy Ungerleider-Meyerson, who had served as the curator and director of the Jewish Museum in New York City, had died in 1994 of pancreatic cancer. Shoshana’s uncle, Peter Ungerleider, also died of cancer. The reality that terrified her father, Steven, a sports psychologist and producer of the 2016 documentary Munich ’72 and Beyond , was that he too would die of cancer.
In one episode, the Ungerleider family received “good news/ bad news.” The BRCA-2 gene was associated with her father’s cancer, which meant that the cancer might have a slight chance of being more susceptible to a certain kind of treatment than other cancers without BRCA-2 associations. So, that gave the Ungerleider family a morsel of hope that the father might be able to beat the disease. On the other hand, the BRCA-2 gene — so abbreviated for “breast cancer” gene — meant that Shoshana and Ariel had to be tested for whether they carried that gene as well. If they did carry BRCA-2, it magnified the chances that they too would suffer from cancer.
So, while their dad was in hospice, the sisters had radical surgeries and went through recovery. In a sense, they had to be both patients and caretakers — not a good situation. Their father’s hospice stay was longer than the time they needed for recovery, so eventually they were able to lavish their attention on their father.
Five years before her father received the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, Ungerleider in 2017 began End Well, a nonprofit organization, which seeks to facilitate better, gentler, palliative care for terminal patients. Following in her father’s film-steps, she was the executive producer or major funder of the documentaries Extremis; End Game; and Robin’s Wish (about the last years of comedian Robin Williams.), garnering two Academy Award nominations in the process.
Steven Ungerleider died March 18, 2023 at age 73.
*
Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World.