In the past few months, Dana Reeve seemed to be kicking her already busy schedule into high gear—swaying to a salsa band at a Sagaponack, N.Y., charity event, speaking on Capitol Hill in support of paralysis research, promoting a children's book and, as recently as mid-June, performing her cabaret act at a Manhattan nightclub in a slinky black cocktail dress. "Her smile lit up the whole room," says BackStage critic John Hoglund, who was in the audience that night. "She has an enormous voice. She can hold notes forever."

All the more shocking, then, was Reeve's announcement Aug. 9 that she had been diagnosed with lung cancer, a disclosure that came just 10 months after the death of her 52-year-old husband, actor Christopher Reeve, who was paralyzed in a 1995 riding accident. Though Reeve, 44, who's raising the couple's 13-year-old son Will while overseeing the foundation named for her husband, released no details of her illness, she is not a smoker, according to a spokeswoman for the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation (see box). Now that Reeve has begun treatment, in the words of foundation president Kathy Lewis, "we're sure she's going to face this challenge with grace and dignity, the way she faces everything else in her life."

In her statement (excerpted above), Reeve professes that she is already drawing strength from the late husband who still seems close by her side. That much was apparent even as she was performing her nightclub act, recalls Hoglund. "She did talk about Chris, but nothing maudlin," says the critic. "She sang 'I'll Be Seeing You,' and at the end of it she blew a kiss to heaven."

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Women & Lung Cancer
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among women, killing some 65,000 a year—more than breast and ovarian cancers combined. Most of these cases are due to smoking, says Dr. Ruth Oratz, a spokeswoman for the American Lung Association. But 10 to 15 percent of lung cancer sufferers have never smoked—and a majority of them are women. Why are women at greater risk? Smaller lung size and estrogen may be factors; so are genetics and secondhand smoke. Another problem is that many nonsmoking women—and their doctors—are unaware of the risk. Though her father and brother died of lung cancer, nonsmoker Sandy Phillips-Britt, 47, of Alameda, Calif., says that even her abnormal chest X-ray failed to alarm physicians. "The fact that I never smoked really worked against me," she says. Now battling advanced lung cancer, she is well aware of the odds: 85 percent of patients diagnosed in the disease's middle stages, says Oratz, will survive for no more than two years.

For more on Reeve's foundation, go to www.crpf.org; for lung cancer info, www.lungusa.org