Local cancer survivor would travel anywhere to help 'adopted' friend

They live worlds apart, geographically and culturally. But both share the same unwelcome guest in their lives, breast cancer.

While Las Vegan Norine Rathbone beat it back, Motoko, her Internet friend in Japan is in the last stages of the disease. Both know its course cannot be altered. They also know it will overtake her.

As this sees publication, Rathbone, 44, is in Japan, spending a week there comforting Motoko, 38, driving her to the hospital for treatments, doing her laundry, looking after 2-year-old Shun, whatever is needed. All this for a woman she'd never met before, only spoken to on the phone a couple times and communicated via e-mail for the last year. But their friendship became so strong, Rathbone knew she had to be by Motoko's side.

"I don't care if Motoko lived on Pluto, I would go to her," she said. "I 'adopt' people in my life, but this goes deeper. It's a closeness I can't describe, there's no label for it."

The pair found each other through a friend-of-a-friend scenario which included an American pastor living in Japan. Rathbone learned that not only was Motoko's physical health deteriorating, her emotions were bottled up. Her culture does not readily accept illness. It is seen as a shameful thing in Japan, Rathbone explained, similar to the way pregnant teens used to be sent away to have their babies and give them up for adoption.

Rathbone's experience was totally different. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 2000 when a mammogram showed a suspicious area, later determined to be nearly stage three. Her attitude was nonchalant: She had to make a pit stop to deal with cancer but she wasn't going to let it dictate her life.

After a double mastectomy, she underwent chemotherapy for seven months with Neupogen shots to her abdomen, so many she "stopped counting after seven months and 100 injection holes."

The gregarious Rathbone went about her business with a bald head, had spontaneous grocery cart races with complete strangers, kept working at her photography business and attended the games of her baseball team. Her husband of 24 years never dwelled on the negatives but just treated her "like I had a bad cold."

The situation was not the same for Motoko. The Japanese mother needed to talk with someone who had gone through the treatments, someone whose culture did not speak of cancer in hushed voices. The Internet provided that link and the friendship blossomed.

When Motoko was determined too sick to make a planned visit to the states, Rathbone needed to find a way to get to Japan.

She contacted the Susan G. Komen Foundation but the organization wasn't set up to sponsor trips abroad. The local office, however was emotionally supportive of her plan. They know Rathbone well as she photographed this year's Race For The Cure.

She approached American Airlines, the official airline of Komen, but got nowhere. Finally, she contacted the president of Japan Airlines, Isao Kaneko, offering to pay her way with her $800 tax refund and a trade for the rest with her photography work. To her surprise, she not only got a positive reply, but was assigned a personal coordinator, Erika Kuwasaki.

Just when things began looking good, plans stalled. Rathbone's husband, Ed, was temporarily out of work and the tax refund might be needed for groceries, her passport arrived with a major typo (it claimed she was male) and the airline backed out of the initial photography-trade idea.

But the airline's next offer couldn't be ignored -- round trip to Japan for $898. Kuwasaki even offered to pay the extra $98 out of her own pocket, a gesture Rathbone declined. Ed found another job, a corrected passport arrived and Rathbone received a letter from Motoko.

"She wrote, "If I hadn't gotten cancer, I never would have met you,' " Rathbone said. "My husband and I both cried when we read that."

Rathbone's flight leaves today and she will return July 26.

"I feel that after I leave Japan, it'll be OK for her to die," Rathbone said. "Her life will go on, in a way, because (together) we stood up on her behalf to her culture to say, 'It's OK to have cancer.' "


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