Must-See Movie Review: Audrey’s Children Beginnings of Cancer Treatment In US By Pioneering Research Physician In Philadelphia

Must-See Movie Review: Audrey’s Children In Theaters Now – Pioneering Woman Cancer Researcher In Early Days Of Treatment

This excellent film is about the beginnings of cancer treatment in the US and worldwide. Cancer itself was pretty new, and there was (in most cases still is) no cure, though many treatments have existed from the beginning.

A word of warning is necessary for this film, unlike any others we’ve reviewed: this movie is set in the early days of cancer treatment, when only 10% of children survived the cancer and the treatment (radiation and chemotherapy using various agents). Consequently, nearly EVERY child you will meet in this movie will have died by the end. You should be emotionally prepared for this, because her love for the patients is well carried by the actress and the film itself. So you, too, will care about them.

The movie follows the beginnings of Audrey Evans’ career here in the United States, at the prestigious medical hospital and research center, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). This is the hospital run by C. Everett Koop, who is a household name. He separated fully conjoined Siamese twins, among other things.

We follow Dr. Audrey as she enters her new life in the US. We learn a great deal about her. Her first faux pas is to bring the laboratory rabbits into the patient’s rooms to help them become comfortable with scary tests and procedures. She’s quickly informed by one of the doctors that this is against the rules.

Dr. Audrey sees plants as beings with consciousness. She sees animals in the same way. When directing a group of doctors in her animal experiments (required to allow the treatments to be applied to humans), she explains the proper way to give the mice an injection. To reduce their suffering, the needle is kept away from their tail, where it can cause unnecessary nerve damage and potential infection. Instead she tells them to inject in their neck to reduce their suffering. The single snickering doctor is immediately told to leave, and she brooks no argument. He is gone from the experiment permanently.

She is an unusual person in other ways too. A headstrong woman, she quickly learns that her ambitions to purchase a home for the parents of cancer patients to stay in for free will not be so easy because she is an unmarried woman with no relatives. Women could not get an un-cosigned loan at that time, at all. She even allows one parent to stay with her at her own apartment while her baby is undergoing treatment.

We also learn of her attempt to create a staging system for pediatric neuroblastoma, the first of its kind for this condition.  Up until then, its progression and prognosis were not well understood. If you’re not an oncologist, you probably don’t know what that is. Until the very end, I didn’t either. But it’s really quite simple. You know how when they give a patient a cancer diagnosis, they say “you have Stage 1 cancer” or “you have Stage 4 cancer.” These stages and the system behind it already existed, but they were then created by Dr. Audrey for pediatric neuroblastoma. This would set the stage for better prognoses, earlier diagnosis, and ultimately better outcomes. Instead of 90% of pediatric cancer patients dying, they started surviving.

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It should be noted, however, that in ALL cases where one is dealing with cancer, in particular, “survival rate” indicates a five year survival. After 5 years, the patient is no longer in the system, and even if they die after 5 years and 10 days, they still count as a statistic of survival. This survival also says nothing of the quality of the life they have, particularly since many of the treatments for cancer can cause lifelong pain and debility. Radiation is also a known definite cause of secondary cancers that are often untreatable. Aggressive lung cancers, for instance, often result from radiation therapy for other types of cancer, such as breast or ovarian.

So when you see that someone survived cancer, that doesn’t mean that they are necessarily still alive. However, it was very helpful for doctors to have a way to define the severity and prognosis of the illness.

As we follow Dr. Audrey, we learn of her extreme compassion and love for the children in her care. We also learn that her partner doctor feels the same way, whereas with other doctors at the same hospital, this is not evident. They’re just ordinary ‘it’s a job’ sort of doctors.  For these two, however, they are both haunted by the children they could not save.  They see them in their dreams, and Dr. Audrey thinks about them a lot of the time.  She has a small collection of mementos, such as the stuffed animal one of them used to hold at the hospital.  When she sees them in her house, they remind her of the children she is fighting for.

One of the first troubles she gets in with her colleagues is when she decides that her patients are more important than any other patients, and shouldn’t have to wait a year for her multi chemotherapy treatment regimen to be funded by the hospital. She takes her case right to the pharmaceutical company, and they give her a grant for this. However, as another doctor there points out, this is not helpful. There is no new drug they’re testing; all of the drugs have been used in single before. But she persists, and is allowed to continue the study.

When she persuades two parents to allow them to give the experimental treatment to their daughter before the requisite animal tests have been conducted, this gets her into really hot water. She is fired on the spot, and she must convince the board to reinstate her.

The way in which she manages to do this is very odd in a multitude of ways, but I wouldn’t want to spoil it for you. Of course she was rehired, and goes on to have her next big idea come to fruition as the Ronald McDonald House. She asks hospital donors to help her with that idea, and it ends up that the people from McDonald’s hearor learn of her speech, and they take her up on her request. Everyone knows what that charity is, as it’s been a household name forever now.

This movie is incredible. The acting is superb, with great emotion and conveyance of character. Looking at pictures of Dr. Audrey, you can see how the actress really captures her idiosyncrasies, particularly her facial expressions.  The delivery is excellent. The story is fantastic, and she is clearly an extremely compassionate physician. From many of her children who have died she keeps a memento, which reminds her of what she’s fighting to protect and save. The camera angles are great, and you’re truly transported back in time to a strange earlier time that seems so foreign now.

This is definitely a Must-See Movie, and I would rate it five stars.

Banner Image: Film promo. Image Credit – Falko Ink

Hannah Moller