A cancer-stricken newlywed's video plea for a meeting with pop diva Mariah Carey got the long-shot response Saturday she'd hoped, when she was whisked to New York City for the singer's Christmas show. Just before noon, the phone rang at the Podermanski home in Berlin. It was a Carey staffer, saying Carey would meet Larissa Podermanski Saturday in Manhattan, where the singer would be performing a Christmas concert at the sold-out Beacon Theatre.
By 3 p.m., Podermanski, 30, and her husband, Martin, were sitting in a black Chevy Suburban on their way to meet Carey. They got to the theater before 6 p.m., had dinner and by 8 p.m were in the theater. Podermanski was waiting to meet Carey, her idol since adolescence. They were expected to meet Saturday night, but it wasn't clear when.
"I can't believe it. I'm so excited," Podermanski said before leaving Berlin. She made sure she had her scarlet-and-gold Mariah Carey scarf, a beloved fashion accessory as prized by Podermanski as a Mickey Mantle rookie card would be to a New York Yankees fan.
Podermanski wore the scarf on the video she and her cancer-treatment clinic nurses made December 13, based on Carey's massive holiday hit "All I Want For Christmas Is You".
In the nearly two-minute clip, Podermanski sings of her wish to meet Carey. She belted out the song seated in a wheelchair, tethered to a chemo infusion pump. The video was made at the clinic where Podermanski has gone on Tuesdays since June for chemotherapy to battle stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. She was diagnosed in March and had a double mastectomy, but learned in May that cancer had spread into her liver and bones.
Podermanski posted the video on YouTube. By Saturday, it was on ellennation.com, run by comedian Ellen DeGeneres, and thepinkagenda.org, the website of a national breast cancer awareness advocacy group. More than 6,000 people viewed it. One was MaryAnn Tatum,a longtime Carey backup singer. "She told us," Derek Wilson Sr., a member of Carey's support team, said Saturday of Tatum. "We're glad she did. Otherwise, we wouldn't have known."
The whole thing began Tuesday when nurses at Starling Physicans heard Podermanski say she really wanted to meet Carey, her idol since adolescence. In 90 minutes, nurses got costumes, reworked the lyrics to "All I Want For Christmas Is You" and filmed the piece, with Podermanski singing lead. The nine nurses in Santa hats sang backup, holding Mariah Carey masks on sticks. They'd written the revised lyrics on the the back of the masks.
Martin Podermanski, who married Larissa in May, held a sign with contact information. He smiled in the video and wore a red Santa hat, but didn't sing a note.
On Thursday when Podermanski went back to Starling for medicine to heal her brittle bones, nurses flocked around her, congratulated her on getting the video online and predicted that, somehow, Podermanski's wish would come true. "Somebody with a connection is going to see it. I just know it," Starling infusion nurse Rachel Ackerly said Thursday. And that's just what happened.
(Hartford Courant)
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