Wry wit springs from that still-infectious laugh, quiet determination blankets her every word. Emerging from a year-long media feeding frenzy that left her tearful, angry and spent, actress Suzanne Somers hasn't lost her maverick resolve.

“Courage,” she says, “is belief in what’s right for you.” No stranger to adversity, the former Three’s Company and Step By Step star has withstood plenty heading into year four of breast cancer recovery – relying on controversial Iscador injections to buck not just the system and traditional chemotherapy, but skeptics who stand in her way. “I’ve impressed myself with my courage, and that can sound... very egotistical,” Somers, 56, says. “It’s just that cancer rocks your world, and to fight the medical establishment is no easy feat. To have your doctors say, ‘Well, I hope you don’t die,’ gives you pause for thought, because that’s the last thing I want to do. I want to live.” Among entertainment’s most recognizable faces with 22 years of on-air TV, Somers has journeyed to hell and back more publicly than most – first with childhood abuse, more recently, breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. “My husband has also been very courageous. Frankly, he can’t live without me. I’m not kidding,” she adds with a playful laugh. “I’d stay alive for him because he’s made me his life.”

Despite ongoing recovery, life is still mostly rosey for this best-selling author and home-fitness guru, who opted for a lumpectomy, radiation and homeopathic, after-care treatment that, per her insistence, bypassed chemotherapy in favor of Iscador –a mistletoe extract commonly used in Europe to boost the immune systems of cancer patients. The FDA, in contrast, considers its benefits largely unproven. “When you are first diagnosed, there are two ways to respond. Either you fall into line and doctors tell you everything to do and you just do it, which, frankly would be a lot easier, or you go to war, like I did,” Somers says.

“To buck the system and have your doctors say, ‘All right. I will watch you through this, but I am not responsible,’ makes you take pause.”

Somers opted for Iscador and its 80-year history in Europe because she wanted to take charge of her own health care without trading one set of risks for another. In the case of popularly prescribed Tamoxifen, Somers says, risk of cancer recurrence diminishes by 10 percent, but risk of heart attack, stroke and pulmonary embolism increases by 40 percent. The statistic got her attention.

“I’m thinking, ‘Those odds aren’t very great,’” she recalls. “There are a lot of drugs that get thrown out there that, five years later, the studies are in and (researchers) say, ‘Oops!’ I thought, ‘If I’m going to be part of the ‘oops,’ I want to create it myself.’”

Somers says she hasn’t had a cold or the flu since she began injecting Iscador.

“I’ve been around my grandchildren who have runny noses and are little walking petri dishes,” Somers says, laughing. “I have this feeling that I can’t catch anything right now because Iscador is building my immune system. And maybe that’s part of the process for me ... belief can heal.”

Taking Charge

After hundreds of hours researching hormones, chemotherapy, Tamoxifen and other after-care drugs, Somers says she arrived at the only decision she could, believing proper hormonal balance is the key to preventing disease. “When my doctors all told me I’d have to give up my hormones, I said, ‘I can’t. I need everything I have to fight this disease,’” Somers reveals. But the big drug that caused all the controversy was Iscador.

Weighing her chemotherapy options, Somers considered the decades-long work she’s devoted to maintaining a chemical-free, fitness-conscious lifestyle. The treatment’s ravaging side-effects on an otherwise healthy body wasn’t worth the risk, she decided.

“One time, I had all five of my doctors on the phone on a conference call,” she recalls, “and I said, ‘let’s get one thing very clear. I have total respect for every single one of you, but I’m going to decide what I’m going to do. I want your input, and then I’ll make my own decision.’ And to their credit, they went along with that. I know I’m kind of a case study for them, and I’m happy to be one.”

Somers doesn’t encourage anyone to follow her lead. “I didn’t want to talk about it, because I was doing something controversial,” she says. “But I told my fans, ‘I’m telling you NOT to do what I’m doing. I don’t know that what I’m doing works. I can’t verify that.’”

Somers’ unconventional treatment, personal though it may be, sparked heated public debate during a particularly emotional, private time. Though Somers has lots of new projects in the works, she has intentionally faded from talk TV during her first three years of recovery, frustrated by the media’s inability to see past her condition. “The problem was that this was so private, and I’ve been so public with everything in my life,” she says. “And I felt like I could keep this one thing to myself, because I didn’t want to be perceived as a sick person. ... I am more than my cancer.”

Public scrutiny?

This strong-willed veteran’s weathered plenty before. At the height of her Three’s Company fame, Somers dared to demand the same pay as top male TV stars at the time and was promptly fired from ABC’s Thursday-night megahit. The show’s once-enormous ratings never recovered. “Here I was, on the number one show in the country, the number one female star with demographics,” Somers recalls. “After the firing, I couldn’t even get a meeting. I was in grief for the better part of that year.” Cancer hit even harder. Somers heeded doctors’ advice and took the maximum dose of radiation she could withstand, wondering if she’d make it through. “Because I was taking such high dosages, it would make me vomit throughout the day, sleep all day. I was pretty sick,” she says. “That went on every day for six weeks.”

Moving Forward

Today Somers’ resilient life story is being transformed into a Broadway musical (The Blonde in the Thunderbird), and her commercial web site (SuzanneSomers.com) launched as a direct response to fan demand, draws 10,000 hits daily. Her Somersize food line – an estimated 6-10 million devotees strong and anchored by a SomerSweet all-natural sugar substitute five years in the making – boasts 52 available products with 150 more in development. Poised for expansion beyond Home Shopping Network and web site markets, the products are soon headed to retail stores.

Raised by an alcoholic father and a loving but enabling mother, Somers penned two critically acclaimed autobiographies, ground-breaking Keeping Secrets (1988) and After the Fall (1998).

In December, she released the fourth book in her Somersize series, Fast & Easy (Crown Publishers).

Somers also recently celebrated a pair of milestone anniversaries – her 10th with Home Shopping Network and her twenty-fifth with husband Alan Hamel. Somers says she trusts in her inner voice and uses it to guide her life. “We all have the answers within us, we just rarely listen. Most of us are deaf, and I’m deaf too much of the time. But when I do allow myself to hear, it’s just incredible what I can do.”

Kim Byrum Skinner is an award-winning Ohio-based, freelance journalist who regularly writes for Columbus Parent Magazine, Four Columbus Magazine and the Dayton Daily News.