February 2, 2006

By Diane Chiddister

Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar at the Sundance Film Festival last month.

Two weeks ago Yellow Springs filmmaker Julia Reichert was preparing to leave for the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, to celebrate one of the highlights of her career: the premiere of A Lion in the House, the documentary Reichert and her partner, Steven Bognar, created about children with cancer.

The two had been bowled over in November when their film, eight years in the making, was chosen for the documentary competition at Sundance, since at four hours long, Lion was more than twice the length of most films.

In a huge and cruelly ironic twist of fate, Reichert is now someplace she never meant to be: in the James Cancer Center in Columbus, fighting for her own life.

Their experience of filming families whose children had cancer has brought a depth of knowledge to the situation, Bognar said in a phone interview this week, but it has not at all lessened the blow.

“We’re shocked at everything, that she has lymphoma, that it’s rare, that she has cancer,” he said.

In the past week, he and Reichert have “drawn hugely” from the film experience, Bognar said. “We have seen how the families responded to impossible situations, what tools they used, what strategies they used,” he said.

Their own situation involves choosing the right form of treatment for Reichert, whose late-stage lymphoma was recently found to be of a rare kind, so that many traditional treatment options are not workable. This week, Reichert, Bognar and Reichert’s daughter, Lela Reichert-Klein, all of whom are staying at the hospital, are weighing several experimental options and getting second opinions from doctors at Johns Hopkins, the National Cancer Institute and Stanford University, among others.

“We’ve been reading a ton,” Bognar said. “It feels like being in graduate school.”

He and Reichert have also received invaluable help from several of the doctors who were involved in the film, he said.

Reichert received news of her diagnosis soon after getting off the plane at Sundance, Bognar said. She had been feeling ill for about two months, she said in an interview on Tuesday, and was originally diagnosed as having bronchitis. But she continued to feel ill, and on her third visit to the doctor, shortly before Sundance, a chest x-ray revealed a large tumor in her chest. While Reichert originally wanted to stay for the whole Sundance Festival before starting treatment, doctors who attended Sundance as part of the film’s contingent convinced her to leave early, especially given that she was in pain and having difficulty breathing.

After introducing the third screening of the film on Sunday, Jan. 22, Reichert and Bognar left Park City, and Reichert entered the James Center, part of the Ohio State University Hospital, which is a leading center for lymphoma. After extensive testing, they are now feeling the pressure of choosing the right treatment, Bognar said, since the first treatment chosen is critical.

Reichert said that cancer is an emotional roller-coaster.

“I feel very up and down. Sometimes I’m despondent and hopeless and other times I feel like myself,” she said. “It’s very scary. It’s definitely life-threatening but it’s not hopeless.”

The most difficult part of the experience is the pain, she said. Although she is on pain medication, she is in pain most of the day, and some days she has awakened in “screaming pain,” she said.

She and Bognar had intended to take a long-awaited vacation this week, Reichert said, their first in many years. While they had been working on A Lion in the House for eight years, over the last four their work was “utter devotion. It was our life,” Reichert said. The past year of getting the film ready was “nonstop overdrive,” she said.

Now, she said, “we are slowing down, but not in the way we meant to.”

Receiving support from friends and family has been critical, both Reichert and Bognar said.

While they can’t respond to everyone’s kind gestures now, Bognar said, “people need to know it matters hugely. We hope everyone knows we’re hearing it loud and clear, and it’s fuel for us.”

At this point, Bognar said, cards and e-mail messages are the best ways to offer support. Lela Reichert-Klein said her mother especially enjoys funny cards and stories, which Reichert-Klein reads out loud.

In one of the situation’s many ironies, Reichert-Klein is a cancer survivor, and Reichert and Bognar have said that they decided to do the film, which was the idea of a Cincinnati Children’s Center doctor, because of the experience they went through with her. Free of cancer almost 10 years, Reichert-Klein now works in Chicago and plans to attend law school in the fall. But right now, she is taking time off work to be with her mother.

While her mother’s illness is sometimes “overwhelming and terrifying,” Reichert-Klein said, she wouldn’t be anyplace other than with her. And, she emphasized, she knows her mother is nothing if not a strong woman.

“I believe entirely in my mom’s capacity for recovery,” she said. “In a year she’ll be working on another film.”

The family may stay at the James Center for a few more weeks if Reichert begins treatment immediately, or they may be home by this weekend, Bognar said. In either case, well-wishers are encouraged to write to their home address at 726 Xenia Avenue, and notes will be picked up and delivered.

Those who wish to help by providing meals, or in other ways, when Bognar and Reichert return home should contact Anita Brown at 767-9263 or Eric Johnson at 767-7238. Friends may also check www.ysfriends.org to find out ways to help or sign up for making meals.

Contact: dchiddister@ysnews.com