Finding My Voice. Nita Whitaker LaFontaine
to his standards he would not do a job. Those days were few and far between. “My clients pay me a lot of money for my sound,” he’d say, “and I’m not going to put anything but my best out there.”
That’s Donnie.
Don had a phenomenal career voicing more than five thousand movie trailers. In the year 2000, when the Cannes Film Festival held a tribute to him in France, he experienced for the first time the impact his voice had in the world of movies. As we walked into a huge, flower-decked room filled with eight hundred people, Don turned to me and asked, “Are all these people here for me?”
In addition to movies Don did close to seven hundred fifty thousand TV and radio commercials. And then there was his announcing: everything including CBS News, Family Guy, America’s Most Wanted, and the 2007 Academy Awards. He’d had many stellar days during our marriage where he’d record twenty-six separate spots in one day. He was known in the business for his capacity to work. And his voice never failed him. Even as he battled cancer, Don was Don through it all. He kept his trademark attitude: “Let’s fix this thing and keep it moving. I’ve got some more living to do!”
A man of impeccable integrity and standards, Don’s energy was deep as an ocean and as powerful as his voice. And even facing the biggest challenge of his life, Donnie never flagged. I could hear him say, “Early morning carpool? Chemo? Radiation? What else ya’ got!?” His faith and motivation spurred him on to maintain a sense of normalcy in his life.
That was Donnie.
In a world where love rules, Don LaFontaine would be immortal.
During Don’s treatment we held a true belief that he would fully recover over the seven weeks of radiation and intermittent chemotherapy. And through it all we held fast to our faith, our family, and our love: we continued to be one voice united.
CHAPTER 2 - KISS ME IN THE RAIN
“Kiss me in the rain, make me feel like a child again.”
—Barbara Streisand
In June, two months after Don’s treatments were completed and a mere five months before that fateful day when he woke up gasping for air, we thought we had won. Don’s PET scan—a CAT scan with an intravenous iodine dye to highlight any abnormalities—looked clean despite a lot of lung swelling. We felt we had beaten it—and the odds. We prayed, praised God, and celebrated with tears of joy. Later we learned Don’s doctors believed they had only a twenty-five percent chance of eradicating the cancer. We considered the clean scan the miracle we all prayed for. Little did we know this terrific high would be short-lived.
Even though the radiation treatments were completed in March, chemotherapy continued until early April because it is given only once every three to four weeks. At one time, Don’s blood count was too low and he couldn’t receive chemo until he was given a blood transfusion. Once his prescribed number of treatments were fulfilled, we traveled to New York to celebrate and see a couple of plays; we had close friends in two Broadway shows and wanted to support them. Don had been a New Yorker for twenty years and I think he wanted to go there as a special trip for the two of us. He wasn’t a hundred percent yet but we went anyway, taking some portable oxygen in case he needed it. It was great not being tethered five days a week to the hospital, and to have chemo treatments behind him.
But at the end of May, Don’s labored breathing returned. Tests showed this was just a normal side effect of his treatment, a condition called pnuemonitis: inflammation of the lung. Don was prescribed steroids to decrease the swelling. A month later, when he showed no improvement, the dosage was increased. Then came more side effects, including tachycardia (accelerated heart rate) and steroid- induced diabetes. We were not deterred; we believed if we could get the dosage of steroids right, get the inflammation down, and balance his diabetes.
Through it all, Don stayed strong and looked well, continuing to work as much as he could. But by early August, even climbing the eighteen stairs from his studio became difficult. Then he landed in the hospital.
***
When Don arrived at the Cedars emergency room on August 22, he was awake and alert, but with a blood oxygen level dangerously below normal. The private ambulance I called had arrived with two female paramedics to take Don to the ER. They had a heck of a time because their gurney didn’t fold and they couldn’t carry him down eighteen steps to the front door. Suffice it to say it was quite an ordeal; each time they tried to lift my two hundred-pound boy by wrapping their arms around his chest, it would throw him into breathing distress that oxygen couldn’t seem to soothe. We needed man power and all we had was estrogen.
Once they were on the way, I checked on Liisi, who had fallen asleep in my closet exhausted from her stomach flu and lack of sleep. Once I had both girls settled and Skye watching over her little sister, I drove as quickly as I could to be with Don at Cedars. When I got to the ER he was already looking and feeling much better. His color was pink and his nail beds and lips were a normal color. After trying several combinations of oxygen masks and different levels of oxygen, the ER doctor placed a Bi-Pap mask on him, giving him a steady, pressurized level of oxygen to maintain his level in the range they wanted and he needed.
“This Bi-Pap just bought Don a bed in ICU,” said the attending physician. I was grateful, knowing he’d get highly personal care there.
“You should go to rehearsal now,” Don said, “I’m fine.”
I put my hand on my hip, rolled my neck, and said in my best southern black-girl attitude, “Have you lost your mind? I am not going anywhere!”
Under the Bi-Pap, he smiled.
I was four rehearsals away from opening in a five-show run of the musical Once on This Island at the UCLA Freud Theatre and had just started accepting a few out of town gigs again. The week before, I’d gone to Omaha to sing as the special surprise guest at a private birthday celebration. Don was my greatest fan; he was always so proud of my work and wanted me to be performing. And here he was on a bed in the ER with pressurized air being forced into his lungs, worrying that I would miss a day’s rehearsal. It was so Donnie.
When I called the director and explained why I wouldn’t be there he said, “Take as much time as you need, we understand; this is your husband.”
The ER nurses stabilized Don—they got his vital signs within a normal range so he was able to breathe without working as hard, and his color was good—in about forty-five minutes, which was about the time I arrived. Everyone was moving with urgency and intention. I was impressed with their highly effective teamwork and felt good that Don was at Cedars and in such capable hands. Since his medical records were already there, he had been spared having to give his history from scratch—and the last thing you want to do when you can’t breathe is talk.
Though the oxygen helped, it still was not clear what was causing Don’s pulmonary distress. Even though the Bi-Pap restored his oxygenation to a somewhat normal level, in order to discover what had caused this incident the attending physician ordered a CAT scan. We waited and waited, but they were so busy that by late afternoon it wasn’t done. Around three o’clock they finally had a bed for Don and I was told they would take him for a scan on the way there and it would take about an hour and a half to get him settled. I decided to run home and check on the girls, though I’d been giving them updates on and off. While driving home, the head doctor from the ICU called to give me the names of the doctors who were going to be in charge of Don’s care and reassured me they were some of the best lung specialists in the country.
Once I arrived home Don called—speaking right through his Bi-Pap mask— asking me to wait until after eight to come back to the hospital. The nurses would be changing shifts, he explained, and I wouldn’t be able to get into the ICU until then.
Through his mask he said hello to “Bug and Buglet,” his pet names for the girls. They were happy to hear his voice. Skye had been sitting beside her father that morning, comforting him when the paramedics arrived. Liisi had been asleep and blessedly missed seeing her father struggling for air.
Earlier,