A memorial for Colorado psychiatrist, author and philanthropist Janet Laurel, who died at age 51 on April 22, will be held Monday at Hudson Gardens.
Laurel wrote and self-published “Heart and Soul: What It Takes to Promote Health While Confronting Cancer,” an autobiographical guide for late-stage cancer patients. She also founded the Cherubim Foundation, which provides financial assistance for medical care to needy female reproductive-cancer patients.
The eldest of five children, Laurel displayed a maternal persona even in her youth. Her youngest brother, 15 years her junior, considered her a second mother.
In college, she studied music theory and earned her teaching certificate. For 11 years, she taught music at Stein Elementary School in Lakewood, where she also founded Super Singers, a children’s chorus. Long after she left teaching, former students would burst into the Super Singers theme song when they ran into her.
By the late 1980s, she earned a master’s degree in psychology and had a thriving psychotherapy practice, specializing in counseling couples and families.
In late 1994, she found a lump under her armpit. She was 42. When a mammogram came back negative, Laurel’s gynecologist, Pamela Kimbrough, told her not to worry about the lump. Nearly a year later, the lump was still present. Again, Kimbrough dismissed it.
But Laurel’s chiropractor advised her to see a surgeon. This time, though a mammogram was still negative, the surgeon took a biopsy. The result: advanced lobular breast cancer.
During the next 11 years, she endured two mastectomies, 55 rounds of chemotherapy treatment and 33 radiation treatments.
Three times, her dark hair fell out. The first six rounds of chemotherapy catapulted her into menopause, dramatically increasing its worst symptoms. She was not joking when she said that hot flashes left her sweat-drenched 50 times a day.
Like many cancer patients and their family members, Laurel threw herself into what she wryly called her new profession.
She aggressively researched cancer treatment and oncologists. She investigated alternative therapy. Her husband, Greg Engel, taught her how to glean the information buried under the verbiage in medical research papers.
Laurel never hesitated to continue her career as a therapist. Helping others solve their problems boosted her morale. Working served both as a reassurance that some aspects of her life continued as normal and also distracted her from anxiety, despair and anger. She counseled one client by phone when she was in hospice, about a week before her death.
In 1998, Laurel founded the Cherubim Foundation to provide education and financial help to cover therapy expenses for qualified participants. The foundation’s Project Hope pairs cancer patients with a “resource buddy” to help them navigate the maze of cancer treatment and support.
She remained furious with Kimbrough, the gynecologist who failed to thoroughly investigate the suspicious lump.
In 1997, Laurel successful sued Kimbrough. A jury ordered Kimbrough to pay about $233,000 in damages, including costs and interest. The jury also held Laurel 40 percent responsible for failing to readily seek a second opinion.
Laurel also filed a complaint, sparked by the verdict, to the Colorado Board of Medical Examiners, whose members included Kimbrough, who now practices in Oklahoma.
Twice, the board dismissed the complaint, but finally changed its internal review policy. Today, an independent physician chosen by agency investigators outside the board must evaluate complaints about past and present board members.
Laurel tried to see aspects of her disease as blessings in disguise. While longtime friends vanished from her social life, onetime acquaintances stepped up to become reliable allies.
The prospect of imminent death – doctors repeatedly predicted that she had only a few months to two years to live – stripped away social veneers. Laurel and Engel made fast friends with other patients they met in oncology wards.
One evening, about six years after her diagnosis, Laurel turned to her husband. Both expected that she was about to die.
“If I’d known I was going to live this long, I would have relaxed more,” she told him. Then she rattled off a list of other things she was grateful for.
“She had a great perspective,” Engel said. “She figured that oncologists were responsible for the 1 percent of her body that had the disease, but she was responsible for the 99 percent that was healthy.
“At the end, she said she was unafraid of death. Having held her as she died, I knew that to be true. She pulled off her own oxygen. She’d had enough. There was no fear on her face at all.”
A blank book and a painter’s canvas will be provided for guests at Laurel’s memorial at 6 p.m. Monday at Hudson Gardens, 6115 Santa Fe Drive in Littleton.
Survivors include her husband, of Centennial; parents Dorothy and Harry Pokorny of Las Vegas; brothers George Pokorny of Corning, N.Y., Gene Pokorny of Las Vegas, David Pokorny of Philadelphia, and Roy Pokorny of New York City.
The family suggests donations to the Cherubim Foundation.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-820-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
