Bitter and Twisted - Lyndall Hobbs' Blog

Dawn Black Out

2011-02-17T12:00:00.000-08:00

Valentine’s Day
Sprawled on my massive bed. Heavy breathing. A little gentle moaning. My hair in disarray. Hot and bothered, beads of sweat are forming. It’s hot. It’s really, really hot. Hate to be immodest but this cashmere has to come off now. And the t-shirt. I can’t wait any longer. It’s been too long. Way too long. AND I AM SO HOT!

I stagger up like a drunken sailor and head to the kitchen where I grab the giant scissors. Time for a dramatic gesture. I grasp two layers of fabric with one hand and start hacking away. Right up the

middle of my gorgeous navy v neck cashmere and my black t shirt. Voila.

Okay, so now I try to pull the left side off but with that arm hanging limp and useless, its not easy. I pull too hard and the blinding rush of pain is excruciating. I scream in agony, burst into floods of tears and collapse back into the bedroom with the destroyed cashmere flapping open to reveal that witty old post mastectomy bra—nice and flat on one side as I don’t even have the energy to stuff it with an old sock these days.

WHY am I in such pain? Because four days ago I blacked out at 630 am in the morning and broke my bloody collarbone and gashed my big fat head as I caught the sharp metal corner of a chest on the way down to the icy Spanish bathroom tiles. The pain really is brutal and since then have not been able to remove aforementioned Tshirt and sweater. The clothes I went down in have not left my person since. That’s how it is for single mothers. I’ve been too unwell to mind and the one bit of good news about an unruly, hormone-raging, mood-swinging teen is that they really could care less if you wore a sack for a year. A couple of times over the long lonely weekend, I tried to work out how to disrobe but the concussion kept me too dizzy to even stand for very long. And yet the balmy heat this Valentine’s day is suddenly suffocating and I must SHED these garments now!

Why did I black out 4 days ago? Well, in full martyr mode I was preparing the morning bowl of three weetabix, sliced bananas and honey for the sleeping teen (yes, capable of feeding himself but you try persuading a lumbering 15 year-old to whip up breakfast AND get to a bus that leaves at 7.05 am) but as I poured the organic milk, started to feel amazingly nauseous and light-headed. Thinking I could just deliver the cereal before hitting the bathroom, I hurried into Nicks room but the cereal bowl slipped through my fingers onto the wooden floor and I screamed out “Sorry—I’m FEELING SICK!” as I lurched into the bathroom. And that’s all I remember till I woke up a few seconds later unable to move with the teen looking utterly horrified and deeply traumatized by his prone bleeding parent.

It was a first. I’ve never fainted in my life. Frankly, I think it’s a pretty lame annoying thing to do. But in my defense I’m able to point out a few extenuating circumstances …More reconstructive surgery (seven hours and kicked out immediately with no preventive antibiotics) on December 15 that – yawn, yawn, led to another staph infection that led to emergency surgery on january 3rd for removal of the implant thus leaving me a mono-tit once again !! Of course, being extra careful once the damage is done, ‘they’ then ordered six weeks of IV antibiotics followed by two weeks of oral antibiotics but that witty little course did not prevent me from getting the worst case of flu in many a year which brought on a stupendously bad cough which led to last Thursday night when I truly could not face the tedium of another sleepless night of painful hacking so I took my evening antibiotic and then downed an Ambien which didn’t even work and when I woke up an hour later coughing so hard my ribs hurt I popped half a vicodin and okay—two hours later, still coughing, I polished off the other half.

So that’s what did it. A drug lightweight. As I regained consciousness, I felt bad. As in sick, dizzy and in pain. I couldn’t move. I haven’t had such rapt attention from my big loveable lug of a kid for—well a really long time. He hovered and did as I asked. I was so cold on the tiles and my head was pounding. He put towels over me. I tried to get up but as I did a searing pain sent me back down. Now Nick’s a pretty cool customer and not squeamish like his old mum but I could tell by his wide-eyed staring at my forehead that some damage had been sustained. He played it down though and quickly came up with the huge bin containing our first aid supplies. He tried to swab me with disinfectant stuff but I asked for the spray and then he deftly found a big bandage to put over it – ordering me very firmly “Just don’t look at it mum”. After several attempts, he finally managed to help me to my feet and back to bed but this pain was pretty scary. I thought I had dislocated my shoulder. The room spun around a bit and suddenly, even though I hate Nick growing up, I wished he was older and had a license. I asked him to call his sister who could perhaps get him to school but no answer there.

There was nothing else to be done. Help me on with my Uggs, I pleaded. He had two Finals starting in about 25 minutes. I had to get him to school. He’d already missed the Spanish Final on Monday due to the flu he’d passed on to me and it had taken several indignant emails to higher-ups to persuade Senora Salazar that her nasty message telling me that no Finals could be retaken was incorrect. Steering one-handed I drove like a bat out of hell all the way to school down near Venice on Robertson. “Just don’t look at your head” Nick begged me again as he hopped out of the car. I promised and headed home –feeling weak, woozy and tearful with pain.

And here’s the really bad part. I had no cell phone. The night before, despite my raging flu, I had driven Nick to his weekly 8 pm therapy appointment. Instead of going in to the session and at least complaining bitterly about his lack of studiousness, I was thoughtful and didn’t want to infect anyone with the flu and instead drove around like a moron getting things like toilet paper and printer ink. I was desperate to discuss some of the more egregious things on Nick’s Facebook page (pointed out to me by my hawk-eyed therapist) but no—I left them to their own devices and Nick subsequently admitted that they discussed the BBC car show TOP GEAR- and only TOP GEAR for the full hour.. He could discuss Top Gear with his dear mum and save her a grueling trip out on a chilly school night.

Anyway, on the way back, we stopped at McDonalds for grub and I actually put my phone down to get a very unhealthful drink to go with my Super Size fries before guiltily hurrying out. I called Mickey D’s as soon as we got home but knew it was a ludicrous waste of time – as confirmed by schoolground photos emailed by the thief from my iphone the next day (and recorded, as they are, on my gmail).
Soooooo, no longer knowing anyone’s number cos they’re all so safely stored on one’s phone, it took me another 6 hours to rustle up a friend to arrive. It was one of the few numbers I remembered – an old home number imprinted on my brain and by some miracle the owner of this number, my dear pal Brooke, had just arrived back from NY and so I was finally rescued from my bed of pain.
(Daughter Lola was quite adamant that I should have called 911 – but I’ve never before broken a bone and who calls 911 unless things are very dire? I’ve called enough ambulances for dad in my time. I was NOT about to call one for myself) So Brooke took me to her Toluca Lake chiropracter who xrayed me with an ancient machine but it displayed most definitely a sad and broken collarbone and then it was off to my family doctor get ten stitches in the huge gaping hole I had only glimpsed at about noon.

Rather worryingly, doc kept asking “Don’t you want your plastic surgeon to take care of this?” and in fact he looked distinctly like he could live without this grim task- but it was now after 4.30 and I had to admit I’d been given the complete cold shoulder by Dr Bob—He was in surgery all day but I’d pleasantly emailed the office and Dr Bob asking if he at least could recommend a colleague to repair my face. Treating me like a stranger, they told me to go to an Emergency Room.
“I mean just because you’ve left me titless not ONCE BUT NOW TWICE --don’t feel like you owe me the courtesy of a phonecall or a follow-up,” I thought to my bitter self.

So after about 5 numbing injections to my noggin, the doc did a stirling job of stitching me up---and we headed home whereupon my darling son has never treated me so sweetly and divinely ever.
He told his sister that the scene of me collapsing to the floor had replayed in his head throughout the day. He was too far away to stop me falling and help in any way and he clearly felt impotent and more than that-scared stiff. He’s already confided to his therapist that he’s terrified I will die and so by the time I was in bed at 8, Nick was hovering like a hawk.

I asked him to pass the hand cream. He squeezed it out and gave me a hand massage. I asked for a pillow and he brought six of them. I asked for a glass of water and he brought it with slices of lemon cut up. He gave a demonstration as to how I should sleep on the one side I was permitted and kept asking—maybe sixty seven times- if I felt okay. “Do you think you might faint again?” and when I staggered up to pee, he followed and stayed outside the door, listening for a telltale thump. SOOO touching and sweet but suddenly this heavenly display of love just made me want to cry. The guilt! It’s enough that he’s adopted, father-less and has learning differences. Do I have to scare the living daylights out of him as well?

At this point I am hyper aware that folk must be thinking me one of the dullest, sickest old bores alive since it is patently true and one friend one australia did actually confirm this fear, only faintly disguising her frustration with a text saying "You poor bugger. Have run out of commiserations."

So I’ll be fine. It’s all relative. Coulda been much much worse. The concussion factor has been dull though—dizzy and faintly nauseous for an entire week and worst of all—I HAVE NO SENSE OF SMELL OR TASTE AT ALL. A classic concussion symptom. I’m truly hoping they return. It’s very odd having not a clue what I’m eating. Last night Nick did a taste test- He mashed up sausages, yam and baked beans and I shut my eyes. Absolutely not a clue what I was eating. Got it wrong every time but we had a good laugh. And that’s the kinda good times I enjoy of an evening now.
A far cry from some of the glam evenings that are highlighted in a spread of my old photos in British Vogue this month.

Chemo is crap --The Two Percent Factor.

2010-08-24T14:16:00.000-07:00

SO, MY NEW HERO IS SUZANNE SOMERS.
Seriously. Her books are truly amazing and I feel like such a nincompoop for not having listened to a pal who suggested reading them a year ago, Like the unenlightened naive twerp I was, I didn't associate Suzanne with cutting edge views on cancer and staying well that are now shared by so many leading doctors, oncologists, radiologists and people like Ralph Moss PHD who is not a doctor but has devoted his life for the past 40 years to cancer research. Do yourself a favor and buy her latest book Knock Out which is a series of interviews with all these doctors and without any preaching, the message is deafeningly loud and clear and truly quite devastating. Chemo does not work for breast cancer. Time and time again these reputable people, and I'm now familiar with many of them from reading so many books, say the same thing. Chemo will help your chances of survival by a mere 2%.
Two per cent. That is it.

DESPITE ITS REPUTATION AS THE GOLD-STANDARD CANCER TREATMENT, CHEMOTHERAPY HAS AN AVERAGE 5-YEAR SURVIVAL SUCCESS RATE OF JUST OVER TWO PERCENT FOR ALL CANCERS.

A 98% chance that it will do absolutely fuck all. And worse. It will all but destroy your immune system for a year or two or more and actually increase your chances of it returning.

The STANDARD OF CARE is crap. As Julian Whitaker MD states in the foreword to Suzanne’s book, “conventional medicine’s approach to cancer prevention and treatment is a debilitating, often deadly fraud.”
It’s simply all about money. Cancer is big business. It’s all about cookie-cutter treatment and maximizing profits -with big Pharma funding a lot of medical schools and paying established oncologists to speak at seminars recommending the benefits of a particular new drug.
A new drug, for instance, like Avastin—which just had, in a very rare move, it’s approval for breast cancer treatment rescinded as it DID NOTHING TO prolong life – but not until the drug company concerned had made a few billion.

The book just makes you gasp every few minutes – with rage and sadness but total appreciation for Suzanne and her passionate challenging of the conventional cancer treatment paradigm.

Oncologists, alone among all doctors in America and any other industrialized country, get to BUY chemo drugs WHOLESALE and sell them to patients at RETAIL PRICES. Eighty percent of their income comes from prescribing poisonous chemo drugs to we patients – around 600,000 of us each year. And by and large, it simply doesn’t work.
Chemo, it has been proven time and time again, truly works in only three types of cancer-testicular, childhood leukemia and some lymphomas.

And so when an oncologist or the American Cancer Society says that chemo works—they are generally referring to ludicrous statistics like 25% shrinkage of a tumor that lasts for a couple of weeks –or patient survival being ONE month longer than they might have had without the drugs. But a month or perhaps two where the patient is so ill and depleted that quality of life is virtually non-existent.

Suzanne points out that “The FDA did an internal investigation of itself last year where they declared themselves incompetent, unable to keep up with the science, understaffed and ineffective.”
Dr Ralph Moss adds that “The FDA was originally created to stop quackery and to allow for more scientific drug development. So they have this attitude that that if something is coming from small developers whose ideas are not mainstream and who don’t have deep pockets, then there is a presumption of guilt…They are very much disposed against the individual or small company that has a bright idea in the cancer field.

They HAVE NEVER approved any non-toxic drug or herb for cancer. The rule seems to be that nothing of a nonpatented, less profitable nature gets through the FDA system. The only things that get through are these synthetic patented agents that are generally very toxic and ineffective. They are so ineffective that the FDA keeps lowering the bar and allowing things to be approved on lower and lower standards of effectiveness and lower and lower standards of safety. “

It just gets more and more depressing….and appalling….but it’s all stuff we NEED to know…

Ralph Moss again --“The government and the medical establishment have a high standard of proof called “increased overall survival through randomized control trials”. The problem is that this standard is rigorously upheld only for the nonconventional cancer doctors; it’s bent for the conventional doctors….you don’t have a level playing field. In fact the people who are least able to afford to perform these trials are the ones from whom it is most often demanded….
There’s a terrible injustice to the way that drug development is set up. It’s an injustice to advocates. New, less toxic and more promising treatments are never adequately researched to the point where they could be scientifically confirmed…The FDA act like the loyal enforcer for Big Pharma. And that’s what they are.!”

So anyone who thinks they may be taking too many prescription drugs—rest assured, you probably are. People from other countries are stunned by the number of drug commercials- with those extraordinary lists of side-effects, that bombard us on TV screens here.

But what I’d like to stress is that if anyone has cancer---or just in case it comes knocking---TRY TO REMEMBER IN THE CHAOS and FEAR that follows diagnosis, that chemo is not necessarily the answer.
And just because so many doctors and hospitals and specialists SAY TO DO IT, DOESN’T MAKE IT RIGHT.
Don't take my word for it. Read the book. It's there in black and white, stated over and over again. I felt like I was being beaten over the head by the horrifying statistic of TWO PER CENT. And people simply need to know!
And they need to know it before sitting in that little room and hearing the fateful words 'you have cancer' at which point, certainly in my case, one is in complete meltdown Panic and Fear mode and doesn't feel like one has time to see lots of different oncologists or bone up on all the newest statistics.

In my case several people all recommended this one oncologist I saw and she said it would improve my chances by 40%. Seriously, that's what she said and my 23 year-old daughter was a witness. Although reluctant I felt I had to do it. I HAD to. For my kids. Months later, I started on the path of knowledge and went to see Dr John Glaspy at UCLA. The first words out if his mouth after looking at my chart were, well tactful.

He said “Well if you'd come to me not wanting chemo, you wouldn't have gotten an argument from me.”
It wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted to think I’d done exactly the right thing – although I was beginning to have a sneaking suspicion that I’d just finished poisoning myself for absolutely NO good reason. I had just read the figure of 2% in a 300 page Moss Report on breast cancer that I’d bought.

‘Why not?’ I asked Dr Glaspy.
‘Well because it only increases the survival rate of people with breast cancer by two per cent!!’
‘Oh my god, really? I just read about that two per cent figure in the Moss Report. So you agree with him?’
‘Yes, I'm afraid so’ But, an incredibly kind, lovely compassionate man, he could see the tears sprouting from my eyes and added.
‘Think of it this way. From now on you’ll do everything right.’

I drove home after that first consultation with Dr Glaspy –who I decided on the spot would be my new oncologist and knew I had at least found someone who was savvy enough not to follow conventional wisdom.

But I also knew it would now be hard to get rid of the feeling that I’d FUCKED UP and put my poor body through hell. I mean, I tried to bury it and forget I'd ever heard the TWO PER CENT figure and told myself all manner of trite idiotic truisms like 'better safe than sorry’. And then it started cropping up once or twice in books I read. Only to practically jump off the page, no longer allowing me to ignore it and live in any kind of denial, once I read KNOCKOUT (which was the NY Times Number One Best Seller for months.)

By the end of the book, I can’t imagine anyone not convinced that, except in rare instances of stage four cancer, chemo just doesn't work for breast cancer.
And I now know that through ignorance, I did myself and my body so much avoidable harm. I did both chemo and surgery- something else the book discusses – VERY negatively- in the last chapter. And now, as I discovered here weeks ago, I need yet another surgery – as one breast has ‘collapsed’ and needs more reconstructive surgery.

And good ol Dr Bob—when he told me how it was best that we get this next surgery done soon – then announced that as of a few weeks ago, he no longer accepts my insurance. But far worse was the fact that when I mentioned that if he was opening me up again, could he perhaps this time put in smaller implants, since all along I have begged for small breasts—he looked at me as if I had not in fact mentioned it about eighteen times—always very politely, as one is to the person who will wield a scalpel as you lie there like a lump- yet again the unconscious party. Indeed, he looked up at me in what resembled shock – as if it were the very first time I had made the small tit request and it hit me hard then and there. I had gone unheard and short of writing in Sharpie on my forehead – SMALL TITS PLEASE- I had been helpless and ignored by the arrogant surgeon and my blood boiled.
Oh, don’t think I haven’t tried to find another surgeon—and the quest is ongoing but the trick is to find one who takes my insurance AND might be prepared to take over what has now become an epic saga of surgery. So far two have pleasantly but firmly refused to go anywhere near me with a knife. It may end up being Dr Bob. A sixth surgery. Fan-fucking-tastic.

It’s all pretty depressing to say the least and hasn’t helped my recovery in that it’s hard not to dwell on the damage that’s ongoing.
My hair –to give just one small instance—has almost stopped growing altogether….about 2 inches in the fifteen months since it came out and absolutely nada for months now (And yes – I actually have resorted to measuring it with a cotton tape measure to prove I am not paranoid and crazy) and alas, there is no denying that’s it just a tad slower than the average rate for humans of half an inch per month. I should have seven inches of lovely style-able locks. I don’t. Not sure why but it makes me sad. And I know that if I had tons of dough I would be having vitamin infusions and acupuncture and various treatments that would probably help—but, who has tons of money?

The book continues to amaze and gobsmack you----
There are tests available now that can tell if you will even benefit from chemo at all!! Not given here in the United States.
There are supplements given in other parts of the world that have been proven to help counteract the effects of chemo. Not given here.

It’s impossible to do the book justice. I simply say BUY IT. Get informed. There are some amazing ‘alternative’ doctors (who’ve been vilified and attacked and shut down for years) out there who ARE CURING PATIENTS. Particularly in cases of people with stage four brain, liver and pancreatic cancer (who have tried all the conventional methods with no success) they are giving these people year after year AFTER YEAR of life with no cancer.

And yes, of course the book goes out of its way to point out that conventional medicine can often work very well.
Are there drugs that save lives?? Of course. Do quadruple bypasses and all sorts of surgeries give people a new lease of life? Definitely! My own brother had a heart transplant in Australia that saved his life! And ER doctors must be applauded for saving lives every minute of the day. It's just that too many doctors prescribe too many drugs that are toxic and we need to be informed, ask the right questions and keep asking til something resonates and truly feels right. Doctors are not Gods and must not be treated as such. We need to be our own advocates.
Too late for me but not for others.
And the summer marches on—no energy to go anywhere….the teen working hard right through the summer as a camp counselor in training and my daughter Lola just back from a fabulous adventure in Argentina back-packing and traveling in rickety buses through the country. Having announced to me via skype a few weeks ago that she had decided she was NOT, after all, going to law school and that I should try to get a refund on the witty graduation gift of an 8-week study course for the L Sats, she’s wondering what to do with the rest of her life.
Funny, but so am I.
I have ideas for TV shows, a documentary on cancer, a movie, a book…but hard to keep pushing the boulder uphill. One can do nought but keep on being grateful for what one has and I have plenty.
What I don’t have is a date---or even the prospect of a date and after three years MINUS a date you’d think that I’d be grasping the concept that my dating days are over but nooooo, I had to go and renew some idiotic subscription with Salon.com’s dating site. It was their 900th email asking me to renew a long-dead subscription and so, in a wild moment of lonely late-night hope and desperation I did the deeply tedious and gave them my credit card details.

Sure enough three days later they announced- in definitive terms- they had FOUND ME A MATCH.
With eager anticipation, I opened the email—to find that some dickhead was ‘looking for a ménage a trois – preferably with mature, experienced, married women.” !!!!
So a big THANKYOU SHOUT OUT to the folks at Salon who are almost certainly so moronic that they wouldn’t know a ménage a trois from a hole in the wall.
I even wrote to them saying as much and guess what—they didn’t respond or apologize.
If I had the energy I would call and demand my money back –but I don’t. It occurs to me that no one I know will ever set me up on a date again. I have been tainted with the "she has cancer" stain. Does it ever go away?
I have just doubled my anti-depressant dose. On MY orders.

An old friend dies/ life blooms as a daughter graduates

2010-05-23T14:47:00.000-07:00

So---13 days and no son to look after. I fall into a heap for a day or two---constantly emailing and calling to see about the bone cancer results—but nada till two days later when it comes back- NO SIGN OF BONE CANCER. HOORAY !! I’M A HAPPY CAMPER. I try to think of who I can call with the fabulous news that the cancer hasn’t spread to my bones. Ah. No one. Funny thing about being single. There’s no significant other to give a fuck whether the cancer has returned or not. And of course one tries to NOT carry on about it all with one’s poor kids who have been put through enough I think..
And YES says the assistant to Dr Glaspy, responding to one of my emails, I should now have a bone density test to check out the current state of my bones since Arimidex will rob them of whatever it is that makes them strong and actually GIVE you osteoporosis if they’re in any kind of weak state.

Oi vey. But when I go to get it over and done with two days later, it’s such a doddle compared to the bone scan that was checking for a cancerous tumor in the bone. Ten minutes and I’m done. What a breeze.
But what must really be attended to if I am ever to walk out of the house again and engage in any social activities is vile ratty blonde brittle stuff on my head that is meant to be passing for hair. The fringe is all breaking off in big pieces and I can think of nothing to do but appear yet again at the hairdressing joint that used to tend to my lovely long straight ‘sunkissed’ locks where the clientele is so youthful and healthy that chemo-ravaged hair is a tad on the wild side.
“What ‘appened to you love? asks the British owner who thinks he's as cute as Jamie Oliver but ain’t …”Let me guess - a perm gone wrong and now you started cutting it off yourself?”

‘Um, no, I had cancer, remember, and it all fell out. And then, when you were on holiday, Sally dyed it blonde.”
He clearly has no recollection whatsoever despite always remembering to tip him. Half-witted bastard. Much to his horror I break the news that we must go back to the color that had first sprouted from my bald head and indeed the color that is now on a good inch of roots---an odd shade of dark poo brown. But I must ‘own’ it – that’s my color and perhaps it will feel better in its natural hue and stop acting like a crack baby jutting out in all directions and making me look like a mad woman who can no longer find the time to groom herself. It bears very little resemblance to my once soft and manageable totally dead straight hair. It’s hair from another planet called Chemo and it’s the unmentioned booby prize you get.
He claims, clearly lying, that he has an emergency client to tend to and some gloomy apprentice is assigned to me – clearly in the hopes that I’ll never darken their doors again. She does the job with something less than enthusiasm but at least there’s no phony ‘oohing and aahing’ once it’s done. This is not a look they want to promote and I’m surprised I’m not ushered out a back door. I slink out of the salon a broken woman –no more the ‘gay carefree blonde’. It’s silly—and deeply shallow—but hair color can cheer you up or depress the shit out of you.
From that day on I stuff a hat on my head pretty much every time I walk out the door. I try to forget I even have hair and I really see for the first time how someone can let themselves go…..over a week goes by and I don’t even bother to wash it. It’s so dry and unhealthy that there’s no need and I actually feel nostalgic for the good old days when it was greasy and vile after just 24 hours.

So with the teen in Italy there’s no longer the routine of having to drag him out of bed every morning -a daily ritual that begins with my iphone playing the blues at 7am whereupon I literally drag myself up, enter his room, shake him a few times, ask for a verbal response to ‘YOU AWAKE NICK?’ and then turn on his heater so the darling won’t be chilly when he gets up. I then repair to kitchen to make his lunch and get some tea and then I run back to bed till two more ‘snoozes’ have been pressed on the iphone then I pop back in a carefully-timed 18 minutes to give him morning pills and vitamins. This time he must actually sit up and swallow the pills and I make sure the little blue Adderall is not dropped into his pit of a bed so that hopefully the speedy effects of this actual amphetamine I give child for his ADD will crank him into action. Then I rush back to kitchen and prepare one of his Top Three breakfasts—soft-boiled eggs and toast ‘fingers’ – thus named because the toast is cut thin enough to dip into the runny yolk and then straight into mouth—OR fried bread dipped-in-egg OR three Weet Bix and honey, milk and some berries. And yes, I lurch into his room with breakfast and he eats in bed. And then, a five minute insane dash to get dressed, load his backpack and run down to the car. (He bathes at night)
Ludicrous behaviour on my part? Undoubtedly. But it actually forces me- an unmitigated sloth of a morning, to get going and if I don’t do it this way, he’d be happy, as oft has been proven, to go to school on an empty stomach. I feel the least I can do, having failed to find a Prince Charming who would marry me and happily become father to my child, is send him off to an institution he loathes, with a bit of sustenance in him.

But without Nick around I sleep in to appallingly late hours and my body clock immediately re-sets to its natural rhythm- which is to stay up till 1 or 2 or even 3am and sleep in till 11.Or later. I’m not proud of it. My need for endless sleep (a good 9 hours which I never get) has been the bane of my life and even more so since cancer came knocking. But on the fourth morning I must drag my weary body up at ungodly10 am to go back to Dr Charney who has the results of my Complete Hormone Profile. They’re not good. It seems my body is ‘breaking down’ faster than its ‘building up’ and she patiently shows me the four pages of results trying to explain anabolic versus metabolic and the colored graphs and charts. I’m never in the good zone and bottom line is my adrenals are shot, I’m not in good shape and there’s a reason that I feel so staggeringly awful all the time. (Like I might have had some actual fun and am in the midst of a permanent truly shocking hangover.) We briefly discuss the dreaded Arimidex that I’m taking. She’s not a fan but legally cannot tell me what to do as she’s not an MD. Se suggests waiting for the Bone Density results.

She also gives me fairly costly supplements (and advises I throw all the crap I’ve just stocked up on from Trader Jo’s) and that I should try to eat really well, exercise or do yoga, meditate and above all try to de-stress. The last suggestion seems utterly impossible given my dire financial straits and it seems to me that the odds of getting actual paid employment, despite sending out countless emails, are terrifyingly slim. How exactly does one de-stress I ask her, when I was last paid as a writer/director in the Stone Age, when I have no pension plans, no Life Insurance, no savings and …okay, I remember in the nick of time she’s not my therapist and promise to return 2 weeks later for a detoxifying far infra red sauna.
So, feeling worse and worse and with more aches and pains as each day goes by, and convinced it may be due to the Arimidex I email Doc Glaspy’s to get the bone density results. After a week still nothing. I call and am told there are no results because I did not have the scan. I convince them I was not imagining yet another deeply tedious trip to St Johns and could they please check again.
I receive an email the next day from my oncologist. “Your bone density test was a baseline. There is no result. It’s for comparison in a year to see if you are losing bone.”

No result ? When I tell Clara Charney this she has her assistant call and insist on results being faxed over immediately. Shockingly, it gets done. Guess what? There is a result. There’s two pages of results. I HAVE OSTEOPENIA. It’s a THINNING of the bones, a lower than normal bone mineral density—the PRECURSOR to osteoporosis- or as one expert I googled said simply “Anyone with osteopenia is on the road to Osteoporosis.” I am so upset with the good oncologist.
Why tell me there is ”NO RESULT”. He is asking me, someone with thinning bones, to take a drug where the MAIN SIDE EFFECT IS BONE LOSS. What other effects are not yet known as then drug is relatively new and thus hasn’t been round long enough for the full story to come out. And in a year, when my bones are even thinner and osteoporosis may be setting in, Dr Charney says the likelihood is that I would be given Fosomax which apparently makes it appear that your bones are building up again but it’s a false reading as its just rotten old bone which then shatters rather than breaks. She admits that if she WERE ME, she would NOT be taking the Arimidex but keeping a close check on estrogen levels and doing everything else in my power to stay healthy.

It sounds so completely sound and sensible as I walk out the door. Skip the poisonous Big Pharma drug and stay healthy the natural way. But the darndest thing happens by the time I’m home. My new pal Mr Fear has a word in my brain.
What IF pain and aches and osteoporosis is the price I have to pay to stay healthy and cancer-free? (BECAUSE, if I was a rabid conspiracy theorist, anyone with an answer to cancer has been drummed out of the business, sued till they were on their knees – or threatened with death as the beady-eyed Vitamin Section clerk at Erewhon told me yesterday as his eyes darted hither and thither to see who was spying on us before he furtively went into a corner and wrote down “ROYAL RIFE” in caps on a post-it note. “This guy invented a cure for cancer in the forties but the drug companies had his medical license taken away. Look it up on the internet. There’s a guy here in LA who has made the machine. Come back when Megan’s here and she’ll put you in touch.” I’m ready to believe anything at this point but when I google him up, the guy, who still has some followers, does SEEM to have been a total nut job. I just need to ‘man up’ and make a decision about this drug.

And speaking of men, it sure looks like something close to a man walking out in the airport lounge as my boy, not yet 15, appears back on American soil after his 16 day trip to London and Italy. I’m thrilled to have him back. Routine again. Breakfast in bed for the sleepy teen and nagging about homework by night. I missed it.

And suddenly, like a bolt out of the blue, I realize that it’s been weeks and weeks since I got out my trusty Rite Aid phone card and called my oldest friend in the world in Melbourne who’s been desperately ill with pancreatic cancer for well over two years. Her dear husband Graham answers with panic in his voice “So you’ve heard? ”

“Heard what?” I ask as my stomach lurches violently and I wish to God I wasn’t such a selfish bitch who’d forgotten to call.
“She’s not good. She’s back in hospital and she doesn’t know anyone. The doctor took me aside me today and said “Well this is it. Brace yourself.” he confides, his voice breaking. I want to scream. I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach but utter the usual platitudes about how deeply sorry I am to this man who has said, in the past, that if she dies he’ll go off somewhere and never been seen again, ending it all. They had no kids, just two divine dogs—a dachshund and a Labrador and after falling in love with her in their early twenties, they rekindled their affair twenty years ago and have been together every day since.
I call Graham the next day, much earlier. He answers quickly again.
“Hi Lindy, have you heard?” he asks, his voice quite calm. My hopes suddenly soar. Perhaps the antibiotics have cleared up her lung infection, she’s snapped out of it and soon I’ll be having a good ol’ natter with Mand again.
“She died at 4am this morning. It was very peaceful. I talked to her all night. The doctor said that hearing is the last thing to go.” It’s just too much to bear. My oldest friend, the girl I met in first grade and have been so close to for fifty years, is gone. With pancreatic cancer that spread to her liver and lungs, it’s not surprising but it’s utterly devastating. This is Monday and the funeral will be held on Friday at St Andrew’s church in Middle Brighton, the local church that was associated with Firbank, my Church of England Girl’s Grammar school. The church we attended for Easter and Christmas services, the church where I was confirmed, where my brother got married, where I’ve been in recent years to endless funerals.

As I’m researching flights on Expedia to see just how much it would cost to get there, I realize that it would mean missing my daughter’s Final Art Show and graduation from Otis College. I just can’t do it. I make constant calls to Graham and my cousin and other old friends, weeping as they tell me that they’ve decided on the church music – John Lennon’s ‘Stand By Me’, Dusty Springfield’s ‘You’ve Got A Friend’ and Rod Stewart’s ‘You’re In My Heart’. Heavy-hearted, I decide to write something that will be read by my old pal Meredith.

“Nine two seven double six Oh (927660). I know those numbers as well as I know my own birth date. It was the number I called every morning at about 8.30. Just two rings and then I hung up, ran out the door and jumped into the old grey Vanguard with mum at the wheel. Off we shot, usually late, mum driving like a bat out of hell, to the top of Grosvenor Street to pick up my best friend who, almost certainly, would NOT be waiting there as planned. Mum would toot the horn, whereupon Mr Zach would appear, give us a harried wave or an exasperated shrug and then finally the wildly witty, whipsmart whirlwind that was Mandy Zachariah would fly out the door, grab the blazer and school hat Zach was holding out like a valet, and run to the car. In her hand, freshly-ironed green hair ribbons- as was de rigeur Firbank dress code- which she would tie around her plaits as we headed to school. Sometimes, if I begged, she would put her hair into a single plait and give one to me, her ribbon-less pal.

IN later years, if we had time, we'd head straight to the toilets next to the tuck shop and light up a quick Alpine as we'd suck on a Steamroller to hide the smell and chuckle at the thought of her big sister Sue, the school sports mistress, catching us in the act. Bizarrely, we never got caught. But we did get caught for many other misdeeds that generally involved the passing of notes and us laughing so hard and hysterically that we were in danger of exploding and we would be sent out of Assembly, or out of Divinity Class--or pretty much OUT of any class you can think of- on a fairly regular basis. We were easily amused but it's not a bad habit to have..

We were part of a jolly--and I'm afraid I must boast, a VERY cool gang that included my dear cousin Jane Parkes, the mischievous Meredith Walsh, Nicky Dearie, Sue Fooks, Jenny Pullman, Vickie Britten, Paula Kane and Julie Sturrock. Once we were too sophisticated to climb the Broken tree or play horsey by hanging onto the overall strings of the other girl and screaming "Giddyup", once we were way too old to play Skippy or Hoppy--we would lounge around on the oval, seeing who had the shortest uniform, who had the brownest legs, how good Lizzie Putt's hair looked, what we were going to wear to Dancing Class and how most of the Prefects were annoying, tell-tale goody goodies.

Mand and I would walk home to her place where her mum Joan would feed us huge thick slabs of fresh white bread slathered with butter, sliced bananas and white sugar which energised us sufficiently for a strenuous, shoeless dance session in the living room. Mand , ALWAYS a great dancer, was desperate to get on the TV show Kommotion and so sheds pop on a 45 and we'd get down. Mand had a lot of great moves that left me for dead. The SWIM and I think something with a lot of head tossing called the Pony. We were pretty even when it came to Chubby Checker and the Twist- though we'd often collapse with a stitch after our massive snack.

Friday nights Mand often made a beeline for our place as she was very partial to the delicious Pine Burgers and chips that dad would bring back from the joint on St Kilda street opposite the yacht club. He'd often bring Minties and Jaffas too. We'd lie back, eat our Pineburgers, watch black and white TV- happy as clams. Then we'd go and practice our Twiggy-like eye makeup. Big black crease lines, white highlighter under the brow and for Mandy, who already had those great big brown eyes, painted-on lashes underneath. And very pale pink -or white lips. I told you- we were cool.

Then on saturdays, Mand often joined mum and me on trips to Church Street to look in the shops. We were mildly obsessed with the aforementioned Dancing Class outfits. To my amazement, Mrs Zach would actually whip up a dress on her sewing machine for Mandy in a day but after a while, Mand despised them and insisted on store-bought dresses. But she did already have her first pair of heels, in gorgeous white patent leather - and I was now on a desperate mission for heels too. Mand had spotted a pair in brown-with teeny-tiny one inch heels and a very cute bow. They were called Teena Dolls. They fitted to perfection and would match, as Mand pointed out, my itchy brown wool dress. We found mum and dragged her in but she was underwhelmed and refused to buy them. All the way home I whined on and on about the Teena Dolls and even the loyal Mand tried to convince mum that the Teena Dolls were a must. But with Mand in mid-sentence, she suddenly lost it, took the Peter Stuyvesant out of her mouth, turned round and screamed 'I'LL GIVE YOU GIRLS A TEENA DOLL!!!"

Well Mandy just thought that was one of the funniest things she'd ever heard and started to shriek with laughter, turning the disappointment into hilarity. Even mum, who adored Mandy, was soon hooting with laughter too.

Now, it's a silly little anecdote BUT it pretty much sums Mandy up for me. She had the most brilliant, infectious, finely honed sense of humor, with a wonderful appreciation of the absurd and for the NEXT FORTY YEARS, on many different continents, she would suddenly, out of NOWHERE, shout very loudly " I'LL GIVE YOU A TEENA DOLL!" and we'd laugh and laugh and laugh.

She always made me laugh. Her charisma and intelligence and love of a good time made her such irresistably good company. Whether it was down at Lorne discovering a fabulous band called The Groop with it's gorgeous lead singer Ronnie Charles- or hanging with Meredith at Bev and Nick Walsh's house by the beach in Angelsea or having a BBQ in the back garden with Zach and Jane at Airie's Inlet or sneaking into Molina's Pub on Church Street with Jane and hoping not to run into brother David who didn't approve or getting ready to head off to Dancing Class and trying to ignore the teasing of big brother Richard and his pals....whatever, wherever, it was fun with Mand. A sweet, kind and empathetic friend, she was generous to a fault and a bloody good journo, as well as a devoted wife to the wondrously sweet and adoring Graham whose wicked sense of humor and brilliant wit meant a match made in heaven.
He's also been one of the most caring, darling husbands on the planet. A fantastic bloke. They don't come any better.
When I suggested that Mand’s dad Mr Zach would like the Classic where my dad was living, I was thrilled when it all worked out as I got to see much more of Mand and Graham and all the Zachs...but it never felt enough. I adored hanging with Mand. As did SO MANY. There's a reason that she had such devoted friends and her dearest sister Nane around her till the end.

She was the life and spirit of the party. She liked to be happy, enjoy life with a lot of white wine and have an excellent time. She wants us to be happy and THUS, we must honor her wishes and try bloody hard to go on having a good time.
Love you Mand, my darling friend of 51 years and I send my love to everyone.

Lindy."

My cousin Jane calls at 3 am friday morning (Melbourne is 19 hours ahead of LA) to tell me that the funeral, amazingly, was not really sad at all. A huge turn-out, lots of laughs and a tremendous tribute to a darling girl. All the clichés in the world flood my brain as I sit up in bed, crying yet again and talking to my dear cousin. Seize the moment. Try to find the joy. It’s all over soon enough.
Twelve hours later it’s time to get ready for my darling daughter’s Final Art Show down near the airport at Otis. I haven’t seen her this excited since ….well I don’t know when. She and her fellow graduates have been slogging away at Otis for weeks- till the wee small hours cleaning up their grubby, chaotic studios, repainting them and turning an entire floor of the building into pristine, professionally snow white galleries to show their work. Now she runs round the house, getting dolled up and without warning, trying on her cap and gown for me to see. I hadn’t known she even had the outfit here and as she spots tears springing to my eyes, she quickly whips it off and tells me to ‘get a grip’ before proceeding to work on her outfit for the evening which invariably means trying all manner of cute, glam, sexy outfits before opting for her much-preferred laid-back look.
These days, it takes me a full three minutes to get ready. Black pants, a jacket from 25 years ago and a hat. Who knew one would feel nostalgic for those heady times when clothes were thrown around the bedroom as one frantically got ready for a date or a party? Hands up who’s even has been to a party lately…

So soon we’re hurtling in witty Friday evening traffic with our dear friend Tim Curry to this place of learning where my darling has been closeted for weeks, months, years. And I’m as happy as I’ve been in a long time. And soon, about ten feet from LAX, we’re at Otis College---and we’re rushing from fabulous room to room and she’s pointing g out her work with a giant grin on her face and greeting people and being charming and standing in front of her work for her deeply annoying camera-happy mother and I’m not getting the clear shots I want but it’s okay and she’s gone and we’re trailing behind as she points out the three gorgeous watercolors … and then there’s the truly beautiful installation she’s done of stunning crystals that won the Juror’s Prize last night and next, three giant drawings of sumo wrestlers that are so fine and beautiful my heart is just bursting.
…..Oh my goodness and here’s the infamous and electrifying knife installation—all manner of shiny, luminous, sparkling knives and right at this moment her father appears and ever the joker, loudly insists they’re all his missing knives and makes to start pulling them out …and so it goes with friends and ALL her extended family all appearing which includes one mother plus her two stepmothers, her dad, her half brother and sister and even Nick Hobbs and a school friend are soon seen casually strolling in, having just arrived back from a school trip to Washington DC. It’s a great night and I just love her work though the fact that someone has decided to put names of artists on a list at the door and NOT next to the work itself is, in my humble opinion, moronic.

And on Sunday morning we are back at Otis as my dearest girl- totally ‘rocking’ the glam/professorial look in cap and gown, dark red lipstick and a stunning gold sash that signifies she is graduating with Honors – a minor detail she incredibly modestly just happened to tell her mother last night. And it’s the picture-perfect graduation you see in American movies, the first I’ve ever been to and it lives up to the build-up with a fabulous procession of faculty and students, rousing speeches and all the appropriate pomp and circumstance. I’m in a muck sweat, standing on my chair trying to work out whether I should use my new Canon bought specially for the occasion to just photograph or video the moment her name is called and she walks on stage. At the last minute I opt for video and run half way down the aisle and fight my way through a throng of similarly crazed parents so I can really capture the Kodak moment. It doesn’t disappoint. She glows and I am just the PROUDEST MUM EVER.

Moments later, as caps are even flung into the air-like in the movies, I realize I’ve done something very right. I have an outstanding, wonderful, sweet, kind, clever and talented daughter. Her beloved mentor – one of the best sculptors in America- the late Robert Graham who she took a year off college and worked for, transferring from Chicago Art Institute to be at Otis close to Bob’s studio in Venice, would have been SO utterly delighted and PROUD of her too. Congratulations Lola darling. I love you so much.

And the graduation gift from her mum? Not very thrilling. Not a groovy vintage 'woody' Le Baron car. She bought one herself a few weeks ago. Not a stunning new wardrobe from Barney's or a trip to Prada or even a holiday in France. Nope
A 2 month Kaplan course to study for the LSATS—so she can go to Law School next year. ‘No dough in art’, I keep telling her in stunningly philistine fashion. ‘GET A LAW DEGREE BABY!!! (Check out my first VIDEO at bottom of page--Lola graduates!!)

How to embarrass your teenage son...

2010-05-04T21:02:00.000-07:00

Okay—back to the pressing question of “Do I take the anti-cancer drug Tamoxifen for the next five years or not?” Yet again one feels very much alone and somewhat abandoned since –well put it this way-- God forbid there could be any CONCENSUS OF OPINION ABOUT TREATMENT WHATSOFUCKING EVER !!. These days I think of doctors like face creams—most are expensive and full of shit. Which one do you trust ? Total crapshoot! As for the insurance companies …not unlike an expensive matchmaking company I checked out a couple of years ago when I first arrived back Stateside (I love that silly expression- so outré but am citizen –can say what I like) from Melbourne. At the urging of a friend I went in for a consultation, lied about my age and worried desperately that I looked old in the nasty sunlight streaming through some dull conference room in a tedious Century City high rise. Point being—they asked way too many personal questions, had countless nosy forms to be filled out, were refusing to guarantee anything AND WERE asking for A TON OF MONEY.

My original oncologist—the one who looks like Morticia with her perfectly groomed long black hair and suits and high heels , has said that I need to start the anti-cancer drug, Tamoxifen. She’s the one who half scared me to death with her dire predictions of what would happen if I did NOT have chemo (and yes, I immediately SIGNED UP for it because I was terrified and my daughter was in the room softly weeping and I knew no better, too panic-struck to do my homework and waste another minute waiting for appointments with other specialists.)
Two months ago she told me to start Tamoxifen right away. She claims that somehow it will reduce the ‘original risk of recurrence’ by 75%. The good oncologist definitely favors the BIG statistics which are confusing and according to Ralph Moss, the famous cancer researcher, misleading and not remotely ‘honest’.
BUT, I try to do my homework these days. I have a friend Carrie, diagnosed just a few months ahead of me, who had a very similar breast cancer profile though she went the radiation route. Before the surgery I call up to see how she’s doing and she tells me that she’s taking not Tamoxifen but a newer drug called Arimidex.
We have the SAME oncologist. So I email the doc asking why she didn’t prescribe Arimidex for me. I wait a few days, email again ---but NOTHING. I have noticed now time and time again that doctors are not very partial to questions asking them about their opinions/actions. TWELVE days later she finally responds to my third email and says she thought she had already responded and promises to check my records. Hmmm. Wildly unacceptable. Two days later she emails that she has phoned through a prescription for Arimidex instead of Tamoxifen. In other words, she had MADE A MISTAKE but HAD NO INTENTION of admitting it or apologizing. Not happy Doc. Even unhappier when I hit Rite Aid the next day to collect my anti depressants. My Arimidex are there too. IF I fork over $320 since I’ve not yet met my Anthem Blue Cross deductible. I tell them “no thanks’.

So I go to see Dr John Glaspy- the oncologist at UCLA.
I had imagined, and hoped, that since he pooh-poohed the chemo when I first met him and inferred that I HAD JUST POISONED MYSELF COMPLETELY UNNECESSARILY with it, he might just say take some DIM (broccoli extract pills that health gurus are very high on) and live your life---but no, I discover that he is a big fan of Arimidex and he says there’s NO question about it – Arimidex is the way to go. And if I’d gone to see him after first discovering cancer, he’d have suggested Arimidex INSTEAD of CHEMOTHERAPY since it’s his firm opinion that it staves off a recurrence far more effectively than chemo and that that is ALL he would have given me. (But I didn’t hear of him till after chemo was over and thus it was too late.)
Yes, he admits, it can cause bad joint pain on account of it squeezes very last drop of estrogen juice out of you---but he says NOT everyone suffers the join pain and you’ll know in about a week. He finishes by saying that I have a 10 % chance THAT THE CANCER WILL RETURN but if I take Arimidex it will be cut in half to 5%. And following the unwritten rule that the longer you wait, the quicker the consult, he’s gone in five minutes.

I now have a 10% chance the cancer will come back? But when I first went to see him for his opinion about surgery, he’d promised that a double mastectomy would reduce my chances of recurrence down to well under 2%. I loved his conviction and his adorable smile. I had been warned and it was a fact. He was Mr Charm and he even seemed to like women. There and then I made the fateful decision to go ahead with the surgery. I even went back with my dear pal Richard and he repeated his opinion once more. Never once mentioning that I would then need to take a strong drug for five years.
So I email and ask why the number has risen from 2% to 10% in just seven months. It takes a couple more reminder emails before he finally realizes I am not letting it go and his response, just a tad patronizing, finally arrives stating that “there is no difference between these two numbers. 2% and 5% are the same number” he insists. Well fine. I get it—they are just statistics. But it has gone from 2% to 10 % according to you--not five, so just stay CONSISTENT for fuck’s sake. CLEARLY, BEING TOLD THE DOUBLE MASTECTOMY would lower recurrence to 2% or less was pretty PERSUASIVE. So again---do me a favor and don’t be so cavalier now. I listened to you—put my trust in you, had the double mastectomy and endured all the crap that followed. Maybe I should have listened to Morticia, skipped the double mastectomy and just opted for radiation.
As I am waiting for his email response, I decide I should seek another opinion and go to see Dr Watson, the gyno/wholistic doctor in Santa Monica, who gave me Vitamin C infusions during chemo and the staph infection phase to build my immune system. She says “Weeeell, Arimidex will rob you of those precious estrogen elements and leave you dry as an old pile of sand up THERE. You could take the DIM”---or, she muses, as if this really might appeal to me –“What about just taking it two or three times a week..? You’ll still be getting a dose but not the full one.”
Excuse me? This seems like odd advice. I’m all for alternative but her complete lack of conviction either way doesn’t strike me as the best way TO FIGHT SOMETHING LIKE CANCER which has defied a CURE from smart folk around the planet for a good SEVENTY or more years.

I mean how does that work? Take it on Tuesdays and Fridays? Or just when I remember to do so? And does it mean that because of my MASSIVE AMBIVALENCE ABOUT ANTI DEPRESSANTS, I should start taking them every third day –or just on high days and holidays?
“NOT HAPPY, DOC! “ I find myself wanting to scream from the rooftops, a la William Holden in “Network…”NOT HAPPY!!”

Now this ‘due diligence’ all took place BEFORE my surgery on March 11.

About five days after the surgery I’m still wondering what to do and decide it’s time to go higher up on the alternative chain so I visit Dr Charney, my lovely naturopathic/muscle testing doc on Robertson says “OH NO…let’s do a Complete Hormone test this week to see where your levels are and then we can determine how to proceed and if you do take the Arimidex (which she is open to) then at least we can see what EFFECT IT IS actually having on your estrogen levels”…Makes sense to me.
And I have faith in her. Not only is she incredibly informed and able to explain cancer and its progression well but she was testing Vitamin D levels – all the rage now- and giving it to people four years ago—as was Dr Watson—so basically you can assume they ‘re about four years ahead of the curve and in a few years even oncologists will be doing Complete Hormone Level Tests to get a sophisticated and accurate level before proceeding with drugs that can leave you with brittle bones, osteoporosis and a dried-up fanny.
A word of warning –Do NOT bother to check the Arimidex website. Firstly it will SCARE THE SHIT OUT OF YOU with its list of about 900 side effects---everything from bone loss and joint pain to depression, weight gain, blurred vision, nausea, chest pain, swelling, insomnia, nausea, racing heartbeat and yet MORE hair changes. Whoopty doo---MORE hair changes.

This dull big Pharma website then proceeds to treat we cancer folk who’ll be helping ASTRA ZENECA get RICHER and RICHER (they’ve made well over two billion bucks so far)as if we’re sub-human simpletons and under the heading “HOW TO COPE WITH BONE LOSS” suggests that we ‘consult with a doctor before starting a regimen of walking.’ You got it! I would never take a stroll without consulting the medical profession first.
It gets better. If you’re suffering from WEAKNESS OR FATIGUE, they confide that you might want to try the very novel concept of eating nutritious meals, plenty of water, and restoring your concentration with a little gardening!!
No, no. That’s not all !! They then generously share yet more nuggets of riveting, life-changing information. Here’s one. Wait for it…..It suggests that when the drug’s side effects have left you wimpering with exhaustion, barely able to move a muscle, you should try to ‘PACE YOURSELF.’ And if that doesn’t do the trick, and you’re still unable to get out of bed or think straight–then their cunning plan is to either ‘ask friends for help’ or ‘RESCHEDULE YOUR ACTIVITIES’.

They stop short of suggesting that perhaps the NEGATIVE side effects of the meds are perhaps outweighing any benefits and that you might try to STOP taking them!! FUCKING BIG PHARMA FUCKS.
Oh no wait, I’m sorry. They do take pains to say that if you’re unlucky enough to have NO health insurance to help pay the $400 for the 30 pills you’ll need each month, you can try to contact them to ask for financial help. Good luck with that.
So I take the pee test for the complete hormone profile and send it off and the plan is that we will wait for the results Dr Charney and I will CALMLY decide TOGETHER if I should take this cancer drug or not. Yes, good to have a plan.
And yet ..and yet…like the best-laid plans, it’s doomed. . Two or three nights later I wake up with serious pain in the middle of my back. I’m not imagining it. Three Advil have no effect. Two hours later I take a Vicodin. The pain continues and then I lie there, silently weeping. I know what’s happened. I am convinced of it and the idea that I won’t see my daughter’s children or be there for my darling fatherless son is just excruciatingly upsetting.
For a start, because of all the surgeries, I realize that about 6 months have been wasted when I could HAVE been taking the Arimidex. Re-reading Astra Zeneca’s Website for Halfwits again the next morning, just confirms my fear…
“During surgery, doctors try to remove as much cancer as possible. Still, it is possible that some cancer cells may remain in your body and could continue to multiply. Recurrence is the term used to describe the return of cancer following primary treatment (for example, surgery), either in the same place as the original tumor or somewhere else in the body.”

… Basic, simplistic stuff---but for anyone who has been diagnosed with cancer, they are HORRIFYING WORDS….I decide it’s a good bet I’ve given some of those stray cancer cells a REAL BREAK by not being on the drug and that WITHOUT A SHADOW OF A DOUBT, it’s growing up a storm. As soon as I get home from dropping the teen at school, I email Dr Glaspy and simply say “I‘ve had a lot of back pain and am worried I may have bone cancer.”
I’m relieved to report that this email attracts a very speedy response and just two days later I’m at UCLA having a full body scan.
Tightly swaddled in sheets to stay warm, even my feet are taped together so they don’t move at ALL. The full horror of thrusting myself into this alien universe where only dangerous rays-killers in themselves- can detect the dreaded bone cancer hits home and any moment one expects some scary drugged-up Dick Cheney look-alike radiologist to appear who will absent-mindedly ZAP me with double or maybe TRIPLE the dose—as they recently discovered was occurring for---ohh, let’s see—about a year and a half with incorrectly-programmed machines at Cedars Sinai .
As the gurney starts its journey, I’m tempted to do a runner but the NEED TO KNOW is fairly strong. I stay put and shut my eyes, only opening them when I’m sure about twenty minutes have passed and I should have entered the tunnel and come out again. But no, I AM fully ENCLOSED and the top of the tunnel is just about three centimeters from my eyelashes. FUCK! Adrenaline-pumping fear floods one’s body despite the warnings and even knowing in advance from last time that claustrophobia is inevitable and deeply unpleasant. But I try to think of worse things that could be happening. Like water-boarding.

No actually, I tell myself not to be a pathetic whining wimp and think about people a THOUSAND times worse off—like THOSE who are paralyzed from the neck down or blind or trapped in an underground mine or wrongly sent to jail for life. That helps. (And I promise myself a half Vicodin and a vodka in bed later when the teen’s homework is completed.) I finally dare to open my eyes and there’s nothing but a ceiling about 8 feet above me. Bliss. But then the kind Indian technician comes in, asks exactly where the pain has been and I tell him that it was the middle of the back. Annoyingly, not the remotest twinge right now.
But he says I must now lie still again while the machine does an extraordinary 360 right around my body—focusing on the middle of my back for another forty five minutes. In what may qualify as the dullest ninety minutes I’ve spent all year, I decide my future may lie in inventing a sort of exhilarating 3D light show/movie experience for those who must lie still whilst being tested and scanned, x-rayed, given chemo or IV infusions. Bed-ridden hospital patients –from kids to old folk- would love it. Couldn’t I invent something like that and make millions? If only I had follow-through.

Next day as I wait for the results I learn about a friend who took the drugs for just one year after her breast cancer and then stopped. Five years later the cancer returned. In her bones. I run to the kitchen and tear open one of the trial packs of two weeks worth of Arimidex that Dr Glaspy gave me and swallow one. My plan to wait for the Complete Hormone Test results are out the window. Fear has taken hold.
And now it’s ten days after the surgery and I have very cunningly booked tickets for myself and Nick to head off to Europe for a skiing holiday in Italy leaving in three days. I would have preferred it to be two days later but flights are crowded and it’s either now or never since Spring Break begins in five days and Nick has been wanting to go back to my best friend Gael’s stunning log cabin-style ski chalet in the Italian Alps since he was six when he first learnt to snowboard. I’m too nervous to ask Dr Bob what he thinks – and too horrified to even think about telling Nick that the trip is off. His giant snowboard bag has been packed for a week with the multitude of long johns I’ve insisted on buying and snazzy never-worn white boots plus the precious virgin snowboard that he’s painted pink and green.
And lest anyone rush to judgement let me make it very clear that I had no intention of hitting the slopes. My plan was to chill inside and read a thing called a book. But I am still shattered and so very, very tired. I have to lie down at least twice a day and the thought of packing and vile economy travel via Chicago to London fills me with such dread that even I come to my senses and realize perhaps he can go alone. The giant teen already flew back from Australia alone when he was about 8 and wearing the unaccompanied child tag will mean he’ll be helped with connecting flights and almost certainly make it to his destination despite the horrors of Frequent Flyer travel. When I deliver the sad news that I may not be coming, his obvious joy and excitement are downright unseemly. Not a whit of disappointment. The little bastard’s deliriously happy and I hear him telling a friend that ‘it’s so stressful traveling with mum. It’s gonna be great going on my own.”
By the time we’ve made it though impossible lines just to check in—and reached the Departure Lounge, he’s complaining bitterly that he looks ’like a retard’ wearing the Unaccompanied Child Info in a pouch round his neck and livid that I’m trying to sneak extra water and bananas and cough drops into his backpack! As he puts the ipod earphones into his big manly ears and tries to ignore me, I suddenly realize I’m sending my darling only son off on some ancient American Airlines plane on his own and what if something was to happen…I SHOULD BE GOING WITH HIM! Needing a distraction I whip out my iphone and start to take some photos. He ignores me as I ask him to smile about 7 times and then finally turns and gives me one of his big goofy adorable grins. That’s all it takes. I’m now in floods of tears and Nick, used to his sentimental slob of a mother weeping at the drop of a hat is merely amused. Just as he tells me he’s starving and dying for a double whopper from a Burger King he’s spotted in the distance, there is an announcement demanding that Unaccompanied minors who are being sent off alone by their callous, uncaring mothers, must board the plane immediately. I’m allowed to bring him right on board the plane which he keeps insisting is NOT necessary but I see him to his seat, try to hug him about five times – and finally, weeping again, take my leave. But as I’m working my way through cranky passengers all heading in the opposite direction, I hear an announcement that cash is no longer accepted on international flights and that meals can only be purchased with credit cards. What ??

My poor son, THE only child traveling without a mother on this flight, has NO credit card. He will starve to death. I have no choice….I make a mad dash to the Burger King, and after anxiously waiting what seems like hours (desperate to cut the line, but not quite bold or insane enough to try at an airport )I order some whacking great Double Whopper burger that upsets me a great deal having just seen the documentary Food Inc- but a starving credit card-less teen must be served and soon, holding the burger, fries and a truly massive Coke that could strike diabetes into a giant, I’m dodging cranky travelers in a mad sprint back to the gate- terrified it will have closed and I’ll be forced to consume it all myself.
The woman punching in the boarding cards, the one who took us on board earlier, is very, very busy and so I just I run on through, down the tunnel and up to the plane door. The stewardess there sniffs enviously at the fries and sweetly offers to deliver them but a pilot appears and she’s immediately distracted. Don’t want the lad to get cold fries and so off I dash, past dull folk who spend hours stowing bags in the overhead bins, past lots of jokers asking if I have a spare grub for them and finally, I spot MY BOY!
I stop a few feet away and hold up the burger and drink in triumph…Several passengers break into a spontaneous cheer but Nick’s expression is one of utter horror. Did I change my mind? Is HIS MOTHER NOW COMING WITH HIM? Reddening with humiliation, he whips ipod wires out of his ears, and gives me a beady-eyed stare that in an ideal world would make me invisible but luckily, the smell of fries and burger reaches his nose in the nick of time and he manages a small smile as I hand it all over and reassure him “Just delivering honey. Don’t worry, I’m not staying.” He manages a “Thanks mum. Love you. Bye” before popping in his ipod and starting to inhale the grub.

I take my leave, politely asking a passing stewardess if she could possibly give the teen without a credit card some free food on the flight. She kindly agrees and I make it off the plane and out of the terminal before breaking down sobbing as I realize that yet again, cancer has won out. It’s robbing me not only of a long-anticipated holiday with my best friend but of precious time with a son who’ll soon resist even the idea of holidays together. It’s robbed me of memories that can’t be repeated. It’s also taught me that airport security is pretty darn slack and that one surefire way to annoy a teenager is to appear on a plane with food when he thinks he’s already escaped his mother for two weeks.

Fuck the cleanse-vodka, a stale fag & sardines on toast!

2010-04-19T21:43:00.001-07:00

Now there are some people who thrive on the discipline of diets and fasts. They truly function better when told what to do and when to do it and it’s funny. ….they actually see results and have something to feel proud about. Smug bastards. Then there are those of us---and I personally blame the Aussie convict gene—who are shocking scofflaws. I’m not proud of it but it’s a fact and I must learn to live with it and more importantly come clean. About ten minutes, for instance, after vowing to commence a healthful regime of avoiding all white and fried food for the next two weeks, I will be MOVED by some invisible spirit force with the strength of a thousand horses, to CHEAT and whip up an Elvis Presley special---a fried banana, peanut butter and bacon sandwich.

YES, I admit it. In the spirit of that good ol’ AA introduction, I would like to say here and now for the record, HI, MY NAME’S LYNDALL AND I’M A CHEATER. Which makes it all the more moronic that I thought I could handle five food-LESS days. But I am a silly old Pollyanna, hope springs eternal and if it wasn’t for the midnight meanderings I might just have swung it. My nocturnal wanderings are not sleepwalking exactly—but I do seem to behave like a zombie in a trance.

That is to say I wake up, at least two or three times every night, and immediately head straight to the kitchen, knowing that trying to get back to sleep without popping something in mouth will be useless endeavor. So I slide in to the kitchen and try to eat something simple and not calorie-laden. Rice cakes and peanut butter, a handful of almonds, an oatmeal cookie, a tangerine—or more often than not—dark chocolate in any form. If especially peckish (hungry where I come from) I will even go as far as Vegemite on toast. But the salty yeast extract that is our beloved Vegemite requires an extra large glass of milk and that will ensure having to get up and pee in about 30 minutes so I try to limit toast and vegemite to Friday or Saturday nights when I can sleep in.
So on night two after surgery, as I automatically stagger to kitchen like poor old Pavlovian dog, I find myself popping salty chocolate almonds (try them- Trader Joe’s—brilliant big chunks of sea salt on the choc almonds) before I even REMEMBER that I am meant to be cleansing my temple/body. I could spit them out and pretend I didn’t swallow two already but it’s a tough decision…and what a waste. So it’s decided then and there…this will be a semi-cleanse. Or half-assed –whatever you wish to call it. From then on ….. just a little benign nibbling at crackers and nuts…oh and the odd apple slice with big fingerfuls of peanut butter and apricot jam right from the jars.. plus plenty of that anti-oxidant packed dark chocolate….not so bad…and I shan’t bother to mention the midnight snacks—since I have decided they don’t count when your skin suddenly starts to ITCH AND BURN LIKE A CRAZY MOTHERFUCKER !!

Wondering if it’s some dangerous allergic reaction to the foul, poisonous Chinese tea crap that I‘ve been bravely continuing to imbibe, I consider putting in an emergency call to the man who runs the cleanse but cannot remember where I put his number and so I stumble round the apartment looking for Benadryl which I find about two hours later in the carefully labeled clear plastic box -MEDICINES ETC -under bathroom sink. Have no idea when I organized such a brilliant thing and in fact don’t remember it existed—so what exactly is the point of being organized when you can’t recall that you got organized in the first place??

But Benadryl doesn’t work and by about 6 am I am ripping off the stretchy bandages that my tits are wrapped in….as I peel it off great big patches of oozing sweaty, blistery skin peel off too, leaving gaping areas of red raw epidermis. Niiice. Time for some more Vicodin which despite my greedy snack addiction, I am always very moderate in taking….and because I am a drug lightweight, leave me completely stoned within about ten minutes. That in turn leads to some slightly impulsive emails to my good pal, ol’ doctor bob. I temporarily forget I am to suck up to almighty surgeon no matter WHAT, and I tell him I am in agony, ask for an apology for hurling me out of hospital the same day, and generally try to convey how traumatized and upset I am. This does not go down well.

Popular surgeons do not seem to appreciate constructive criticism. And he leaps into email action and is frightfully mean and bangs on about wanting to save me money cos Blue Cross consider major reconstructive surgery an outpatient procedure! And if he had kept me overnight at St John’s they might have objected and charged me a quick $20, 000. Oh really? Not what happened the last two times you operated on me….and how much more could St John’s charge ??

I just saw the bill ---$58,000 for the whole procedure with a mere $24,000 for the pharmacy bill. EXCUSE ME?? For what? Some Propofol?? That’s it. I paid for own Vicodin and antibiotics. How about the pharmacy try to act less like criminals and charge a smidge less and let me stay overnight! The whole thing is too infuriating for words. Thinking about health care could make one very ill. (Note to self—query the 24 grand fucking pharmacy bill!)

I make sure to have a friend meeting me there the next day when I go to see Dr Bob since I now sense some unfriendly vibes after committing medical treason and questioning my standard of care. Sure enough, a very chilly atmosphere. I don’t dare say a word about anything and try to be very polite. He coldly says I have had an allergic reaction to the adhesive bandage and after I am inspected and re-wrapped, he launches into a seemingly very rehearsed defense, once again, of his actions. I very simply point out that he told me I would be staying about ten minutes before the operation and he denies it. But why would I want to wake up in recovery and have no one there to take me home?? I swear on my children that he told me I would be staying and even let him off the hook by saying “Perhaps you were just very focused on the surgery and didn’t remember what you said…” In some sort of roundabout way I THINK he finally concedes that it’s conceivable – but NOT likely.

Anyway, I’m over it. I’m over it ALL. Sick to death of my health and talking about my health and the whole friggin box and dice, I drive on home and crawl back to bed for a few hours, utterly exhausted by the trip and ready to weep that, as some sort of punishment I suspect, he ordered me to stay on antibiotics for TWICE as long as originally planned. Within the hour trusty Rite Aid are on the blower telling me that my meds await me.

Day Four. I realize I ‘m weaker than I’ve been in over a year but by this point, everyone, quite rightly, is bored out of their minds by my endless surgeries. The fact that this is the worst I’ve felt throughout the whole ordeal, is unfortunately, not something one dares mention to anyone. Except one very, very old friend, a dude, who emails and asks how the surgery went. I email back a day or two later that I simply feel like crap and that this has been the worst recovery ever. To which he replies, as if I’m the whining nightmare patient from hell…”Be grateful you’re not six feet under!” Oh gee thanks.What a sweet, empathetic thing to say. I loathe 'friends'(who haven't actually visited one single time in 15 months!) like that.

And now it’s time to put on my happy face, my Uggs, a hat on the dry, frizzled up old white bleached hair and get me to school to pick up the gorgeous great big teen of a son who’s been staying with friends and seems to have grown a good inch in the last 5 days. I’m so happy to see him that I try to ignore several facts.

1It looks like he may be wearing the same t shirt I last saw him in..

2.I’ve already had emails from two teachers about missing homework..

3.Teeth look a lovely shade of yellow under the braces and it’s funny how I noticed his electric toothbrush still in his bathroom..

4.He left his novel at home and clearly is now even further behind with reading…

But instead of nagging, the mother who has been out of action for 5 days nobly takes him to his favorite Cactus Taqueria on Vine and get him 2 fish tacos and whatever else he adores…some odd milky drink and a huge bulging burrito that must be about 1000 calories. He wolfs it all down before we’re even home. Once in his bedroom, we finally get to hug, though he knows he can’t really give mum a big bear-hug. Just a very gentle one. I suggest oh so sweetly that he get down to homework soon since mum needs to drink a foul version of a protein drink on my cleanse and then go take a nap. He promises faithfully that he will. Everything is hunky dory. I vow not to fight with him all week.
I wake up over two hours later and he’s under the shower. He takes showers that last forever. What do teenage boys do under the shower for that long? Exactly !!Let’s not dwell on it. And there’s his huge whacking great school bag on his bed, yet to be unpacked. That means ZERO homework has been done during my two hour nap. He is SO not to be trusted!! I take the Playboys from their hiding place in his third drawer as punishment and chuck them. And the yelling begins.
But the bathroom door can be locked and he hides in there for hours with his computer and cell phone and knows I can do nought about it. (Not until late at night when I stealthily creep into his room and take his computer and hide it in my room. But the truth is he’s way sneakier and smarter and should seriously consider a career as a spy. He senses missing items and before I know what’s happening, has crept up behind me, stolen my cell phone and then refuses to give it back till I tell him where his computer is. You can perhaps sense what exceptional control and authority I have with my teenage son---but you try it. They’re relentless, stubborn and always up for a good battle –and these mad chases round the apartment are oft before we’ve left for school and I’ve made it to Starbucks.)
So, as the shower drones on, I drag a chair into the kitchen to search the top cupboard where I sometimes throw the American Spirits in disgust. Eureka !! I find them and light up a lovely stale fag and open the freezer for the vodka. Well it is meant to be the purest of alcohols so that fits right into my purifying cleanse. Then it’s half a xanax in a noble attempt to stay calm and not fight with the teen. And since I’m such a cautious soul, drinking on an empty stomach is unthinkable and thus it’s time for my version of cooking—opening a can of sardines and the making of some toast. And VOILA---the FEAST fast is over!

Juice FEAST my ass...

2010-03-26T16:33:00.000-07:00

Sunday 21st march
Well I truly don't wish to sound like a sniveling, whining jerk, but I do suspect that the bastard cancer –or at least its repercussions -has finally beaten me into submission. It has had its way with me and I now officially feel—as my old mum used to say – like I’ve been hit by a ten ton truck. I am also somewhat gobsmacked by what happened just a few days ago after my major reconstruction surgery. Yep, there I was, regaining consciousness and entering that netherworld state that, for a little while, resembles a bad trip with nausea, dizziness and just plain terror mixed in for good measure. (“Where am I ? Am I alive? Did I lose any limbs?? PLEASE DON’T TELL ME THEY HAD TO AMPUTATE!”) when a cranky, business-like nurse appears and asks, as if she’s just finished my leg wax and now has another client waiting, “Is somebody picking you up? Your daughter is listed to call but I’m not getting any answer.”

WHATTT? I look about and notice that I am not in nice cozy hospital room of own but on the factory floor-like Recovery Room.
I try to focus. “My daughter’s in Bali. Why would you call her?” I ask but the penny is starting to drop. I’m being hustled the hell out of dodge and good old Dr Bob has outdone himself and somehow forgotten or not bothered to sort out whatever the hell needs to be sorted out with Anthem FUCKING Blue Cross. Because the bastards at the preposterously profitable Anthem, who, what a SHOCK, have just seen fit to raise my monthly premium by 40% due to my unfortunate cancer episode, don’t let double mastectomy reconstruction patients stay for several nights in hospital as is de rigeur in civilized joints like England and Australia, it means Dr Bob is meant to put in a request. At some point on the day of the op he just tells them I need to stay. Seriously. That’s how it works. (In the UK reconstruction surgery patients are kept in hospital 3-5 days though that may be gilding the lily somewhat.)

So when Dr Bob finally appeared that morning prior to surgery to start carving me up with his permanent marker, I pathetically and very sweetly ask him once more, (I’d casually called, texted and emailed him about it in recent days) if I will be having a sleepover at St John’s or do I need to desperately text up my friend Andrew to be on call to ferry me home later ? It takes him a good thirty seconds of concentrated staring to decide where the middle of my torso is before starting to draw from my collarbone on down. It seems I’m assymetrical. (And I could care less at this point about being naked from the waist down. It’s having your bum flapping in the breeze that really bugs me- as the security guard hovers behind me writing down endless receipts for my belongings)
“No, no, you can stay” he finally says, in a monotone faintly reminiscent of Yul Brynner in The King and I. (As in -I am a surgeon, I am God. You may stay.)

And yet and yet. Here I am, nearly five hours after being knocked out with a good old dose of trusty Propofol and I’m racking my brains to think of whom I can call. By the time the OCD security guard shows up with my wallet and phone – the same fool who insisted on counting every dollar of my money and then separating the credit cards and receipts before putting everything into separate clear plastic bags, I grab my phone and call the first person I can think because I feel guilty about the friend I already told I would be staying overnight… …and….she’s getting dressed to go out to dinner…and then I call an old boyfriend and it goes to voicemail---and sobbing hysterically by now, I call poor Andrew who thought he was off the hook and he foolishly answers the phone and yes, he very sweetly agrees to come get me.

APPARENTLY, I managed to get dressed and into my pal’s car and home though I have, literally, NO recollection of this. (I’m sorry Andrew—I still appreciate it so much!!) I must have also turned on the TV, taken off boots and gotten into bed but alas, did not manage to empty those dreaded drains because I woke up at about 4am and saw that the stopper to one drain had accomplished amazing feat of escaping and was dripping out onto my ---LUCKILY !!_identically-colored red cotton jersey sheets. (For the uninitiated …it works like this---they somehow thread a tube from inside your tit, up inside the body and then it appears in the armpit where it then extends for about 15 inches down, draining the excess fluid into a big plastic bulb, safety-pinned to some part of clothing like your sweat pants or bottom of bra and the bulb MUST be carefully squeezed in tight whenever you empty so that the pressure or something makes ‘em fill up again. )

Okay. So I wake up at about 8am and any semblance of numbing medicine has gone from my system, leaving me in SEARING pain. Not totally surprising since yet again my tits have been sliced open, right under the nipple again, expanders have been dragged out along with scar tissue and brand new gel implants have been whacked in. And this is where it is stunningly upsetting to realize, once more, that had I been still in hospital I would have still been hooked up to an IV and I would have simply squeezed a button, thus releasing pain medicine into my system for a day or two.. Like last time.
But nooo, I now have to swallow Vicodin like crazy for relief—thus ensuring a sure-fire state of constipation for a week at least. (The IV meds bypass your stomach and thus—no constipation). I walk like a hunched-over snail to the kitchen to start guzzling both the pain-killers and the dreaded antibiotics I have on hand, and realize that to avoid nausea one should eat something with them.

And THEN IT HITS ME. Despite being quite convinced that I am of reasonable intelligence –except when Buck Henry points out my grammatical errors in the most annoying, schoolteacherly way imaginable, it seems I was wrong. Apparently I have gone along , erroneously thinking I was fairly bright, cheered by school reports and teachers who noted that “Lindy is very intelligent. If only she could settle down and focus she could go far” Yes, reasonably on the ball, I thought... Not emotionally smart or even cunningly intelligent in a way that might have somehow hooked me a man or a job –and yet, when some CNN dude asks his guest why they think so many Americans are terrified of Obama’s health care bill, it’s only right that I condescendingly scream at the TV –“BECAUSE THEY'RE COMPLETE MORONS, THAT’S WHY !!”
But if I am so fuckin’ smart, how come, in my infinite wisdom, my smart-ass clever clogs self thought it was a nifty idea to choose THIS precise day, after yet more traumatic surgery, to start a cleanse …A JUICE FAST THAT CONTAINS NO ACTUAL FOOD, FOR THE NEXT FIVE DAYS???!!!

I imagine you see where I’m heading with this. The sad truth must out that I am in fact a complete and utter fuckwit with the common sense of a senile slug. Why today?? Must I deprive myself of some wholesome goodies and treats the day RIGHT after surgery? In my own defense, it did, and still does seem smart to do this (a gift from a friend who had signed up for 14 days but gave up after 9—thus passing the five day credit on to me) with both kids away. Lola still swooning about in Bali with her young Aussie stud and Nick Hobbs away with dear pals in Cambria till Monday night. Much the best time to suffer through the horrors of a cleanse whilst no eggs and bacon or delicious pasta are being whipped up by my clever kitchen kiddies. And God knows, someone who’s had the toxic load of IV antibiotics, chemo drugs, Vicodin and anesthesia that I have in the last fourteen months could do with a nice healing cleanse. But the day after surgery??

In a state of horror at my ludicrous lack of timing, I stagger to the front door where a cooler of liquids should await me. I pray that they’ve screwed up and nothing is there. I could swing back towards the kitchen , swallow some gorgeous organic minty dark chocolate and stuff almond butter on toast with sliced bananas on top down my throat before having a nice 4 or 5 hour nap.
I open the front door but I’m outa luck. IT ‘S RIGHT WHERE IT SHOULD BE. The black cooler that weighs a ton and must now be gotten to kitchen somehow. I manage to inch myself down to get the strap and then drag it behind me, feeling like an ancient wench dragging some rock to Stonehenge. Me and the cooler make it to the kitchen. But it’s still on the friggin floor and I have to get it to bench. Wishing I had paid more attention to Nick’s current science studies about inclines and levers, I try to think what could help raise it four feet. But I’m hardly up to devising some cunning lifting apparatus in my state and so I pick the bastard up and heave it onto kitchen bench and unzip it. There’s an annoying letter welcoming me to this crappy cleanse and I see that it gives you the order in which to ingest your ten bottles of liquid. It starts off with a half jar of ANU water. Not even a freakin juice. Just some really hearty, filling, satisfying hyper-mineralised WATER. Does the fun ever stop ?

So I manage to unscrew the top of this annoying jar, drink the water and PLEASE, you have to believe me when I tell you this water tastes bad. I spit it out and check what’s next on the list. Should have guessed. My least favorite thing in the world. Super green juice. I despise green juices. They annoy me almost as much as people who don’t drink coffee. I have a swig, spit that out, feel guilty, swallow some more and try to keep it down. The gag reflex is strong but I fight it, whilst vowing to never let the “plethora of synergistically bound, organic green nutrients” touch my lips again.
I stagger back to bed, and pick up the 3000 page Izocleanze intro that I downloaded from the internet and printed out. No wonder it tastes like crap. It contains, amongst other things, Barley Grass juice, Oat Grass Juice, Broccoli juice, Alfalfa juice, Parsley juice, Moringa leaf, Nopal Cactus, Nori, Alaria, and Bladderwrack .
BLADDERWRACK, you ask? What dat? Oh for heaven’s sake, it’s that well-known member of the “Wild-Crafted Aquatic Vegetable Family”. Huh?

Time for a Xanax and a nap. I wake up around two. Not really hungry to be honest but bored out of my mind and in need of soothing treat. Gosh, I wonder what the Juice Feast (I swear- they call it a FEAST!) has in store for me now. Could it be that a genie will suddenly slip out of one of the bottles and whip up some steaming hot raisin toast slathered in butter? Perhaps he’ll appear with samosas and mango chutney … or will it be chicken pot pie with a crisp flaky crust?

OR… it COULD be a Chinese herb tea called ACTIVATE that enhances metabolism by way of “tonifying the spleen”. With things like Codonopsis, Proia, Jujube Date and Lo Hang Go, it’s a humdinger. Bitter, acrid, stinky and utterly foul. (I later read the directions properly and see that I could have actually heated it(ideally by putting it outside to ‘catch the blessed rays of the sun’ says the brochure) but like that would have made a difference !! I force myself to swallow at least half the bottle, freezing cold and realize that it can ‘tonify’ my spleen, purify my aura and metabolize my digestive system all it wants BUT how do you control the urge to SHOOT YOURSELF or at least shuffle one block to the scarily close 7/11 for cigs, a couple of the new dark chocolate Snickers bars and a Starbucks mocha iced coffee from the refrigerated section. Will I last the 5 day-distance? Wildly unlikely!

"God is our employer and he can't fire us" .. WHAT?????

2010-02-16T12:23:00.000-08:00

Two Weeks later.
How the hell did it get to be February again ?? In twelve days it will be March.
Okay—so going blonde may have been a teeny bit rash. While it has indeed lifted my spirits a little – there is a price. The good news of course is that a body that only six months ago shed every hair on its head and elsewhere —is now growing excellent quality new shoots of dark brown hair rapidly and efficiently. As I say to my body, when I infrequently think to do so – “Good job, body!” BUT, the bad news is that just about ten days after the dye job, those bloody roots pop out of my scalp like determined little killjoys and just ruin the whole look. It means maintenance every three weeks and my rapidly-growing arsenal of new skills (leg waxing with strips from Rite Aid and clothes dyeing to name just two) is now going to have to include learning how to mix a mean bleach.

But looks aside, there’s the spiritual side that’s also in dire need of a massive makeover. And whilst at it, I wouldn’t mind if my empathy levels could be ratcheted down a notch or two. I find myself identifying with any sad soul I see –from the man who sleeps on the sidewalk in a big cosy mess of duvets outside the Papa John’s Pizzeria on Beverly and who, upon waking, then sits all morning in a camp chair across the street right outside the Starbuck’s. I wave every morning and smile sweetly but can’t help imagining I AM HIM and what it would be like to bathe in public restrooms and sleep outside in winter.
I also think I am every sad little old lady sitting at a bus stop or schlepping big grocery bags back to her lonely cold apartment. And if I believed in reincarnation and had a decent voice, I could almost believe I’ve come back as a poor relative of Paul Robeson as I find myself driving round moaning (it definitely could NOT be called singing) that old song from Showboat- “I get weary and sick of crying, fraid of livin, but scared of dyin’….but Old Man River just keeps rollin’ along.” I do. I spend long periods in the car alone. Who’s to know?

But I truly do wish I COULD sing. I’d like to be known as “one of the Gospel Greats” and be able to belt out Amazing Grace with enough soul to make Mahalia Jackson look lame. That would reboot my anorexic spiritual side. Give me a center. But, devoid of any musical talent WHATsoever, and pretty light on emotional intelligence as well, I find myself heading off to the La Brea Showcase Theater where Marianne Williamson is once again, after a long absence, lecturing on the Course of Miracles every Tuesday evening. I had never seen the New Age guru the first time around so I was keen to check out her spiritual evenings which are half lecture, half Q&A with the audience, plus two prayers and a quick ‘imagine you are bathed in golden light” meditation.

Meditation, Marianne tells the standing room only crowd, is the key to EVERYthing. She says that a mere 5 minutes of meditation in the mornings is enough to raise your thought patterns to a higher vibrational level to put “your thought forms in the care of God” for the entire day. Jesus. How hard can that be? And if it’s really that easy, why the hell have I never been able to focus for five measly minutes in order to meditate. It’s a tragic indictment of that dark, scary swamp known as my mind. I go from feeling elated to a loser in an ADD flash.
But wait—it gets even easier and more seductive. While meditation is the way people listen to God, prayer is the way they talk to God. Williamson says that “prayer is the medium of miracles”. She explains that there is no order of difficulty in miracles. All people have to do in order to receive a miracle is be willing to ASK.

Not very hard. Just ASK. Got that? I plan, from here on out, to meditate and pray. I may have the two words tattooed on my arm since I don’t really trust myself to remember.
No, wait. A third word might have to be added. LOVE. “Love is to fear what light is to darkness,” she explains “Let the love in and fear disappears.” Yay. I am up for that. And I can see it on a bumper sticker. Can I make money with this? But just as I’m beginning to think this might all be a teensy bit simplistic and too easy to be true, Marianne swings into Question time and somehow love flies out the window.

She’s very crabby and wildly impatient with anyone who asks a dopey, annoying or long-winded question. “What are you asking?” “Get to the point!” or “Do you actually have a question??” are snapped at dull folk with her rapid-fire delivery and one guy who dared to mention his theory that a “mafia of women” was refusing to hire him for a job was leapt upon with just a hint of glee. “You’re not getting a job because there’s a MAFIA OF WOMEN? Is that what you actually said? Are you SERIOUS?”” she demanded, to peals of laughter from the largely female and gay audience.

She’d been talking about career on this one particular night and she managed to lull us all into some mass feeling of bliss as she explained that our careers were really to act with LOVE and that all would follow from that. If only we LOVED, the gig would follow. “And when God is your employer, you can’t get fired!” Yes, but what if you didn’t get hired in the first place, I wanted TO SHRIEK ??? Huh? What then?
A jolly-faced blonde of about 25 suddenly stands, is swiftly handed a mike by one of the scurrying nervous assistants (MW has made it crystal clear she doesn’t like to wait for those radio mikes) and she beams at Marianne as she says, with the Aussie twang of someone just off the plane, “Hi Marianne, since you’re talking about career, I thought I’d ask you for a job. I’m a singer and I’d like to join you on tour. I’ve got a tape I’d like to give you.” Another huge innocent expectant smile and a nervous laugh.. Well, let me tell you- our guru is not amused. She immediately launches into a very put-upon moan about not having enough time to listen to tapes and how she’s not even ON tour. No, sorry. No time.

But our intrepid gal is not put off and with the smile at high-beam she says “Well let me just sing you TWO lines” and astutely not waiting for permission, she begins to sing with enormous gusto—in a truly stunning big, soaring voice that sends shivers down the spine. I adore it and could listen for another hour. But she politely sticks to the two lines and then sits –to raucous cheers and applause. But does Marianne even acknowledge the girl and her lovely voice with a “Well done—great pipes. If there’s anyone here who is in music, perhaps you could give her some advice”.
Nope. No acknowledgement whatsoever. She turns on her heel and heads up the aisle with her mike and picks on – sorry, picks- the next questioner. But having now dished about the ‘cranky mean bitch’ side of Ms Williamson, let me just say that I’ll be back. Definitely. She is very entertaining, smart as a whip and let’s not forget – as my pal Brooke reminds me on the way home, it’s the message—not the messenger that counts here. I could sure use reminders to meditate and let the love in – especially if it does send the fear packing. I need a cheap life coach—even if it is a group session with 800 others.

So in an effort to put it into practice and SHOW the love, I decide that despite one of those torrential downpours of late, I must show up at the soggy ceremony as my dear friend Anjelica Huston gets a much-deserved Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I do so and am glad. It’s not every day a pal gets a star. It’s very, very wet but we feel very intrepid and rather selfless and fabulous as we stand listening to speeches by Danny Huston, Wes Anderson and the gorgeous, talented star herself under a tiny dripping tarp.
Unfortunately,at the risk of sounding tedious, I must note that the love comes back to me in the form of a foul cold/flu that descends a day later and lingers a week. Right through another breast-draining session courtesy Dr Bob who still won’t agree to schedule the next surgery due to this fluid build-up ! Wait—is he in love with me ?? Does he want these charming sessions where my left tit is swabbed with betadine before being assaulted with GIGANTIC needles that would scare a liger to go on FOREVER and ever and ever? Apparently.

2010-01-28T13:20:00.000-08:00

Jan 1 through 4
A few more days of peace and quiet down at gorgeous unspoilt Whale Beach(about an hour from Sydney) with Rachel and a dear friend Lydia and on my last day in Sydney I actually wake up feeling somewhat refreshed and not unlike a human being – but no rest for the wicked. One hour later, after a lightning visit to a fabulous local artist Bruce Goold, I am heading back to Sydney to pack. Me and my boy wrench ourselves from the sultry Sydney summer back onto the plane and a few hours into the tedious flight back, memories of penguin watching at twilight and xmas lunch with all the cousins and the dinner party of oysters and artichoke pasta at frank’s and vegemite on toast at Janey’s are beginning to fade.

By the time we're waiting for our luggage at LAX (why does your life flash before you in such a deeply depressing way as you wait for luggage?), it’s hard to believe that we were in another hemisphere and another season this very SAME day (due to the 19 hour time difference) with lovely folks we won’t see again for a good long spell. Traveling is very fucking weird and I am thrilled that Lola is in fact still there – having decided to stay on for another ten days to go on a road trip to Queensland with her bff Matilda Brown.

Jan 5 –Next day.
The alarm goes off at 7am after what seems like ten minutes of sleep- and I wonder for that weird couple of moments where the hell I am but I look down at the floor beside my bed and it all comes back to me… a frenzied session of unpacking Nick’s bag at 3am resulted in a sandy pile of stinky damp clothes on the floor which I step over as I stagger to his room and try to wake him. And it’s now that I remember the poor child has a science test today and yes, the relevant pages from his science text book that I conscientiously Xeroxed for him are still packed neatly in his back pack – having naturally not been perused by student ONCE during entire vacation. What a shock. I feel genuinely sorry for him and it’s tempting to say “Go back to sleep honey, you can skip school today” and run back to bed myself. But he’s already missed a day of school so, setting a dangerous precedent, I take him Weetabix and hot milk in bed along with his Adderal and beg him to sit up and eat.

As we drive to school in the biting cold we’re not used to after a spell of summer downunder, I try to jolly up the sleepy teen with thoughts of how cool his new buzzcut is and how his pals will probably like it. (Blow me down if after two long years of unsuccessful threats mixed with cash bribes if only he would cut his shoulder length hair, he doesn’t slip out one morning three days after arriving in Melbourne with cousin Jane to the same barber my dad used to go to and get his hair buzzed within half an inch of his head!) Well, the bad news is –he failed the Science test. The good news is that YES, his pals dug his hair cut and by Friday, not one – but THREE of them had followed suit and gone from long flowing locks to short, crisp crew cuts! My son the trend-setter. I was disproportionately proud of the giant child who grew half an inch over Christmas. But trying to keep some perspective, made him retake the science test and after long nights of jetlagged study, we got a C.

Oh my God. The jetlag. Ferocious. For days I could not stop myself from running to Starbucks after dropping him off before falling straight back into my bed. The guilt, the self-loathing as one finally comes to at 1 in the afternoon realizing there is a good two hours to get anything accomplished before picking up child and starting the tedious homework/dinner routine all over again before another night of tossing, turning, getting up for snacks (Janey—desperately need more Vegemite!! PLEASE SEND MORE!) and finally, more often than not, taking a friggin half an ambien at about 3am.
Oh, an update on the tits.

So the first day back I am down in Santa Monica seeing Dr Bob at 10 am sharp. He’s not too thrilled with the amount of fluid he has to drain from my left breast. Nor am I for that matter as despite an almost complete lack of any feeling whatsoever, one feels the dragging and sucking as the giant needle ‘vacuums’up the liquid. He tells me to try and do NOTHING strenuous before coming back in a week—and when I return, it’s the same story. There is a large fluid build-up which is of some concern and this time he tightly bandages me up to try and stop fluid from collecting. He explains that he can’t pump the expander with any more saline to fill up the breast as it is already twice as big as the other. I could have told him that. And then he informs me that not one but TWO more surgeries will be needed in trying to replace the expanders with permanent implants and get it looking half way decent. Two, if we’re lucky. Could be more. Greeeeeat.

The combination of realizing that I have two more surgeries, an immune system to repair, five more months of 8th grade homework, no job, no money AND mouse shit brown hair leaves me, along with the jetlag just a tad depressed. Oh- and the lovely Tamoxifen waiting for me at the local Rite Aid which my oncologist says I need to start taking now FOR FIVE YEARS. An anti-hormonal drug that “is for the risk that anything could microscopically have spread and adds to the chemotherapy to give a combined 75% reduction on the original risk of spread of the cancer” is how my oncologist put it to me in an email last week. But it also can lead to bone aching, joint stiffness and soreness, endless hot flashes, uterine cancer and should “be avoided at all costs” according to my homeopathic doctor. What to do???? I make an appointment with the UCLA oncologist I have been meaning to switch to –but exhaustion, reluctance to drive so much further to UCLA and fear of asking my current oncologist to send all the records have so far stopped me. But this is a fairly crucial decision. I need more input. And that means more than talking to one or two friends—both of whom refused to take it for fear of just ‘putting more chemicals “ into their bodies. And so –a teeny bit low and weary that I have to make more drug decisions as I gear up for another surgery, I DECIDE TO CUT MY HAIR EVEN SHORTER AND GO WHITE BLONDE.

It was a rash, somewhat impulsive move– but hideous hair and an invitation to the G’DAY USA awards for FAB AUSSIES WHO’VE DONE A HECK OF A LOT the next night calls for tough decisions and I’m pleased to say I was up for the challenge. I made the call at 11am friday. And was with my old hairdresser pal Mario by 4pm that same day. And by 6.30 Saturday night I was heading—alone of course- to join some Aussie pals at the big black-tie bash promoting OZ/USA relations in trade, showbiz and whatever else they can think of—to honor my friend Simon Baker (star of The Mentalist) along with Toni Colette and Greg Norman the golfer. And shallow old tart that I am, I gotta say I felt a hell of a lot more attractive as a blonde than as Ms Mouse Brown. A tragic attempt to recapture my youth when, a mere quarter of a century ago, I cut my hair and dyed it blonde ? Yep. A toxic overdose of chemicals onto my poor old scalp that burned like hell as said dye did its thing? Perhaps. Although both oncologist and homeopathic docs said to go ahead and do it! So what the hell?

My kids both approved wholeheartedly and at least heading off to the Hollywood Highland center to celebrate the Aussies, I felt like I’d made an effort and could hold head up high. And it was a ‘bloody good night’ as the very sweet and mighty cute Simon Baker was introduced by his old friend Nicole Kidman who clearly felt comfortable surrounded by fellow countrymen and she proceeded to tell us all that she took pride in being the one who had convinced the young jack-of-all trades but generally unemployed Simon and his wife to come over to LA about 15 years ago and ‘give it a go”. They followed her advice and some good parts finally followed. But then, about three years ago, they felt it was time to head home to Sydney and they sold up here and bought a house there. But six months later they were all homesick for LA – and they headed back-three kids in tow – to LA at which point the again-unemployed actor got a new gig and hit the jackpot. As lead on the top-rating show THE MENTALIST. Niiice.

Nic and hubby Keith Urban then serenaded Simon with a fabulous version of Men At Work’s “A Land Downunder” singing witty new lyrics of their own all about Simon and his wonderful wife Rebecca and their three kids. It was a revelation to see “Nic” kicking off her shoes in gay abandon as she danced around behind her hubby and rather touching that so much effort had clearly been put into the very personal new words.
"He's got a plan this quiet achiever.
And Becca is his dream believer."
Simon blushed adorably -as did Rebecca when the lyrics focussed on her- but it was an amazing tribute and certainly had a verve that the globes and oscars can only dream of - and I was thrilled to be there amongst the fun-loving, irreverent, champagne-swilling aussies till I looked up and saw myself on the two mega giant screens televising it all. At first I truly thought – ‘who is that sheila smiling goonishly behind Simon with a very shiny forehead and something resembling a wig hat on her head?’ before realizing it was me. I then tried to hide behind Simon but kept dodging in the wrong direction. Mortifying. Though by the time I woke up late the next day there were some nice emails from Australian friends saying they had seen it all on Channel 9 in oz and how much they liked the new ‘do’. Almost certainly fibbing. But it’s a funny old world. Hard to keep much to yourself.

Christmas/New Year with my people....

2010-01-22T17:31:00.000-08:00

Dec 28th
Loyalties torn and divided, we sadly leave Melbourne and cousin Janey's cheerful face at breakfast after a fleeting 9 days and head to Sydney where there are more lovely friends, warm breezes, cockatoos overhead and the heavenly smells of all the Frangipani trees. Our stunning hostess Rachel Ward (she of Thornbirds fame and more lately a fabulous director) decides we should stop on the way back from the airport at the Fish Market and check out the huge whacking great barramundi and gleaming freshly caught snapper and all manner of Aussie seafood – some still alive and kicking, freshly arrived here at the wharf. Minutes later we are lunching on fantastic sushi and then we buy fresh prawns and oysters and sardines to eat the same night under the Sydney stars in her beautiful old sandstone house right on the Harbor before retiring to my own little guest house at the bottom of the garden just feet from the Harbor itself and their own jetty for speedy morning getaways by boat to nearby cafes for more lattes or a swing past the Opera House. It’s some sort of extraordinary flexible jetty that sways with the waves made by adorable little tug boats and swanky lit-up cruisers that pass all through the night. My first night in Sydney-a full moon, a Southern Hemisphere sky that is ablaze with stars and the softly-twinkling lights of the famous Harbor bridge Not too shabby.
The next morning I discover I have moronically packed just one of my weekly vitamin boxes with the anti-depressants, antibiotics and all manner of supplements to restore my immune system. Must have left the other two behind in my rush to get out of the USA to my mother country. Ah. This is dull. I’ve taken 10 days of antibiotics in Melbourne and that should do the trick, topping up the staggering amounts I’ve swallowed for four months. (Never did believe in the theory that you must finish every single course. WHY??) Anyway—no sign of infection. All seems fine down there as long as I wear baggy tops to disguise the fact that one boob is twice the size of the other. But another week with no anti-depressants? Now that could be a problem. Ever tried quitting them cold-turkey? Incredibly inadvisable due to nausea, shocking dizziness, headaches and major urges to go to bed and never get up again. But a good friend (and this is surely the definition OF a good friend) suggests she pop in to see her pals at the neighborhood chemist and get some more of her Effexor and switch to those immediately. It does the trick beautifully and soon Rachel and I and Lola and heading over to my friend Nell’s house in Longueville, a North Sydney suburb where Nicole Kidman grew up. (Rachel’s gorgeous daughter and Lola’s adored lifelong pal Matilda, 22, is editing her short film for the Tropfest- which is a film festival for short films under 7 minutes that gets hundreds of entries a year. She has written, directed and starred in it—as twins-and it is fantastic. If she gets to be one of the finalists, it will be shown at a wonderful evening under the stars in Sydney’s Domain- an inner-city park and it could jump-start her acting or directing career. There’s such a can-do spirit in some aspects of Australian life and young filmmakers are encouraged in all sorts of ways by both their peers and the government –with endless grants and tax brakes for writing and making movies that simply don’t exist in America.
We arrive at Nell’s new digs- just a teensy bit far for me from the city proper –but discover she has moved back after thirty years in New York where she acted and ran restaurants and her own wildly successful nightclub NELL’S and embraced a whole new life. The house is a true haven, backing onto gorgeously green bushland and is totally surrounded by a virtual forest of trees and kookaburras and her own pet water dragon Jimmy who appears daily now for raw carrots and any tasty leftovers. She has done a spectacular job of renovating what was a simple brick house and added verandahs, an amazing kitchen and, like a girl after my own heart, has cunningly installed all Ikea cabinets and sliding drawers and roll-out closets with custom made door fronts. And the garden is brilliant with native plants she has hauled from miles around. And so, I kept thinking over the home-made hummus and the roasted snapper and heavenly salad …why couldn’t I make a go of it in Australia ?? Why did I spend four years there and then rush back to LA ? Well, unlike Nell who has an adored mother and two sisters and a brother in Sydney, I had family in Melbourne, most of my pals in Sydney – but most importantly, my dearest daughter in LA. It made sense to return, didn’t it? My second-guessing of myself and the constant recriminations and regrets must stop soon. They must. Memo to self. Talk to LA therapist about my endless lack of feeling good about my decisions, restlessness and underlying flat-out panic about the future. Just because I’m a single mother and have no job, no prospects, no savings, no pension to look forward to and no partner...
And I keep thinking back to Mandy, my childhood best friend from our all-girls school Firbank who I’ve had fun with on every trip back home – at least thirty of them, since leaving Australia at 20. But this trip was very different. I visited her twice in Geelong, about an hour out of Melbourne and after two years of pancreatic cancer, she’s not a well girl. Every fiber of my being wishes I had the money and resources to somehow magically produce the perfect holistic team of acupuncturists, reflexologists, chefs, and yoga teachers on her doorstep, easing the need for painkillers and anti-nausea drugs and giving her a life and immune-enhancing concoction of food, drinks, meditations—and the STRENGTH to keep fighting. I’m sure the Aussie oncologists are as good as any in the world---but that basically means well-meaning folks who are trained to prescribe toxic drugs and nothing else in the way of complimentary treatments, nutrition or supplements. No one had ever even mentioned the concept of smoking or somehow ingesting pot to help with the nausea. Her weight is very low due to endless vomiting caused by the acute nausea and she should at the very least be trying out SMOKING SOME WEED !! I told her how I had been convinced by Melissa Etheridge talking on Ellen or Oprah about pot helping with it---and she seemed open to it – but in Australia no doctors can prescribe it and she said none of her friends partook of same. It’s tough to be a know-it-all bossy boots caretaking type but not live in the same country and unable to come by more often for a fab barbey(BBQ) of snags(sausages) and chops thanks to her darling hubby Graham and just two days after weepily waving goodbye to her I was far away in Sydney. But wishing her the very best in her struggle as I realize how lucky I am.
And just a few days later another year –a challenging one– was about to bite the dust. New Year’s Eve day in Sydney was a flurry of activity as the perfect hosts, Bryan Brown and wife Rachel are preparing their house for their big bash that evening on their verandah and back lawn overlooking the Harbor and thus we, the guests are thrilled to help in anticipation of yet another of their famous NYE bashes with the fantastic free view of the amazing fireworks show that Sydney puts on for it’s inhabitants each year now. It’s a bloody beauty!
There’s a lot to be done….no lolling about reading novels or watching dvd’s today…We drink lattes and as the caffeine kicks in, we rise to the occasion. Suddenly gorgeous Turkish rugs and oversized cushions are being flung onto the lawn, verandahs are swept, bushes are pruned, fabulous throws and Indian quilts are put over outdoor sofas, tables are laid, lanterns and candles placed, incense is lit and within a couple of hours we have ‘staged’ the joint beautifully. The blokes (Nick and Joe Brown being directed by the very bossy but witty Bryan Brown) have been doing bloke work—carrying boxes of grog all over the place and putting out big bins lined with trash bags to hold copious amounts of beer and wine…and now it’s time for some food prep before joining Lola and Matilda for a fun, old-fashioned massive trying-on of frocks session.
Hard to remember ever being that young and gorgeous as they inspect themselves in a full-length mirror and reject one fantastic outfit after another. I borrow a long arm and leg-covering dress from Rachel and try to not look in the mirror more than absolutely essential. And then suddenly, as the wind dies down to nothing and a stunningly warm evening presents itself as the last of 2009, we realize we have about ten minutes to get dressed as folk appear, champagne corks start popping and the party has begun against one of the best backdrops in the world. Well certainly in the Southern hemisphere. (This spot is such a hot ticket that the entire neighborhood is blocked off by police so that people wanting the view in nearby parks have to come by foot so that bedlam does not ensue).
Lola and Matilda appear looking like the exquisite young things they are – each wearing one of the other’s outfits. And it’s startling to realize they are no longer awkward or shy but totally confident and charming young women able to make small talk with the best of them and welcome guests like old hands. They no longer need us for practically any bloody thing and in fact would not even notice if all we oldies snuck out of the party right this minute. And if they did notice, they'd be deliriously happy. For a few moments there I start to wallow in the tragedy of getting old and redundant and not having a hope in hell of ayone flirting with me tonight (as if ) but try to pull myself together as an old Aussie pal I dated in London makes his way towards me and announces, very loudly, "You're alive!! I'm so pleased."
But most people downunder, though candid, are also discreet - and no one else has even alluded to the Big C. Or else they don’t care. But I think it’s the former - a natural tendency not to pry or invade anyone’s privacy which is a giant relief. Though I realize they can lie through their teeth with the best of them when they tell me how swell my stunningly dull, mouse shit brown hair looks….about an inch and a half all over and now with an unmistakable wave that it never possessed before. “Wow, it looks FANtastic“ they splutter as their eyes bulge in shock and horror. But it’s okay. The last year has cured me of pretty much all but a shred of vanity and it’s such fun to see folks I haven’t seen in well over two years…AND we get to see the fireworks TWICE…there is a 9pm show for young kids who can’t stay up- and then again of course at midnight. We’re riveted both times ---nothing like watching them from the comfort of our own party as we eat sushi and garlic prawns. At midnight a lot of us head down and watch from the jetty as the water reflects the flaming lit-up sky and suddenly lots of the young folk—led by an inspired Matilda Brown, jump into the Harbor, clothes and all. Shrieking, laughter and the roars and whistles of the fireworks. Such fun. Yes, my two leapt in too and were extremely pleased with themselves. We oldies mutter to each other about sharks but the young ‘uns are having a blast and certain daughters even have a first kiss with a very cute local right there in the harbor as the fireworks explode overhead.

But it’s funny how things can change in the space of a few days. One minute I’m thinking how cute and adorable it was to see Nick walking round the block in Melbourne to see the pals he’s known from the third grade—reverting to the childhood habits of cruising the neighborhood on bikes and then a few days later he’s a drunken oaf throwing up like a great big revolting teen who, to my horror, admits as he hangs his head over the toilet for about an hour at 3 am, that he’d downed TEN beers—apparently between midnight and 2am when I saw him heading for bed. I am shocked and very upset to think that had I not gone up to check on him – only to discover him lying in a huge pile of vomit on the pillow — he could have choked to death! It’s frightening and alarming and I berate myself for not keeping a closer eye on him but when a shitload of free beers are lying in bins all over the place waiting to be drunk, what can you do? I truly pray that it taught him a lesson and as I watch him like a hawk all night and put my hand on his back to make sure he's breathing –as he snores happily in my bed- I remind myself to tell him, about fifty times over the next few months, that shockingly, teens die of alcohol poisoning all the time.
As he happily tucks into bacon and eggs the next day at noon with the rest of us, (after a lot of hosing down outside on the lawn of the stinky sofa bed he slept on) and silly, somewhat inappropriate tales are swapped of the first time others got drunk, I know it’s a New year’s Eve he’ll remember for a very long time.

I bloody well am going downunder--good move!

2010-01-11T13:49:00.000-08:00

Few hours Later- dec 16th
I’ve gone home, collapsed on the bed amidst all the half- packed bags and chaos of wrapping paper, presents that are not nearly good enough for cousins and adorable old pals I’ve known for thirty years and wallowed in the guilt and panic of not even having found a single present for my best and only daughter. I lie there and a vision of the next 18 days alone, with not even a plan for Christmas day, flashes before me! Self-pitying sentimental slob that I am, I just can’t bear the thought of it. I simply can’t. And my oldest best school friend, who’s had pancreatic cancer, which has spread to liver and lungs, is expecting to see me and I would dearly love to see my favorite uncle who is not AT ALL well. Fuck. It doesn’t seem wildly indulgent to wallow in self-pity for an hour before school pick-up. But suddenly I remember I am in possession of a letter from Dr Sam who HAS said that if I can put the flight off till Monday, he might be able to give me the go-ahead. I call the travel agent and tell him I have a letter from my infectious disease Doctor saying I should not travel till the 21st and could he please see if there is a seat then. He practically snorts with derision saying that unless I have an immediate family member who has died- and I have a DEATH CERTIFICATE ON MY PERSON, tough titty.
Over dinner I tell my kids I probably won’t be joining them again this year and they are sweetly sad but it doesn’t seem to occur to them to say they won’t go either and I can’t blame them –nor would it make any sense for us ALL to sit around feeling lower than a snake’s belly. Or some such local expression from downunder. I never get them quite right. That’s because I’m a disenfranchised bloody aussie with an American passport as well, not to mention two American children who no longer has a place she calls home and despite loving and always weeping when I hear Peter Allen’s stunning anthem “I Still Call Australia Home”, I’m afraid it’s been about three decades since I felt that to be true. I have no place to call home. It’s true and it sucks. It would be nice to feel one belongs somewhere.

24 Hours Later
I lie in bed wide AWAKE all frigging night wondering if I should just defy doc’s orders and jump on that plane but it’s hard NOT to imagine the nightmare of fifteen hours in the back of the plane. Something about staggering up for the ninth time of the night to pee and feeling the deep, deep fatigue of a year of chemo, surgeries and crap make the thought of same flight seem utterly horrifying. I’m TOO OLD for fucking ECONOMY, I tell myself sensibly. It’s just plain wrong.
But by next morning, after dropping the teen at school, I know that staying will be too wretched for words and so, I give it another try. I call to see if there are any labs back yet from the fluid tests they did yesterday and blow me down if Dr Bob doesn’t call right back and say that preliminary results indicate there may not be any infection but best to wait till Monday so I can come back and be drained again and get the official results. I tell him that it will cost $1700 to change my seat and start to cry. Basically resigned to stay, I blurt out that the left breast is twice as big as the right today anyway but he explains that it was like that yesterday because he filled it up SO much so that no more fluid could enter.
“Well it’s your decision. It’s up to you “ he announces…
“I can GO?”
“Double the dose of antibiotics and take them for two weeks-not just one and jump on a plane and come back if anything starts to look weird”
Having one breast twice as big as the other is already in the Weird department but clearly not what he means. What DOES he mean? Who cares at this point?
“So, just to be clear, you won’t disown me as a patient if I go to Australia? I ask
“If I was going to disown you I would’ve done that a long time ago!” he laughs.
“God that is so MY line”, I want to yell---but give an already smug surgeon an opening and suffer the consequences.
“Thanks so much Dr Bob “ I say—and actually mean it.
Well it’s four hours to go till my ex-husband’s very sweet third wife and Lola’s second stepmother arrives to take us to the airport. BETTER GET MOVING.!!!!! And so follows a wild few hours of all the manic packing I should have done over the last 48 hours. I try to pretend a camera is recording every move so that, with laser-like efficiency and focus, I will stick to the tasks at hand and manage it all—passports, both aussie and American, my son’s packing which is to include rash vests for surfing, his acne medication, rubber bands for his braces, swimsuits, flip flops, his skateboard and thoughtfully Xeroxed pages of his upcoming science and history chapters so that he will be a step ahead when he arrives back at school a day late, jetlagged, with a science test in the first period and a history one the next day. (Mothers must be optimists..…but yes, a MASSIVE waste of time.) And then I nimbly stuff three weekly pill boxes to the gills with all the supplements and antibiotics and anti depressants I am meant to take, hurl about twenty tank tops, 4 winter jackets and two pairs of jeans into the case with my usual lack of flair for packing and pretty soon, after weighing and reweighing all the bags till my head is spinning, I am sweating and fretting, and desperate to find something to wear for a New years Eve bash we are going to in Sydney but too late- our ride has appeared, and we’re off to the airport via Otis College to pick up Lola who is meant to be giving an end of year Performance Piece for her teachers in about ten minutes. But some people don’t bother to read the itineraries their mothers send them on repeated occasions and thus have to skip out of school a day early. Soon we are delivered safely to LAX. Okay- so we’re on the wrong floor at Arrivals and it’s also the wrong terminal. But we’re close and after a frantic 15 minute schlep we are in the correct LONG line. And soon it ‘s time to stand by as my fabulously strong son heaves bags on and off weighing machines, not letting his dear ol mum lift a finger.

As we hit the first passport checkpoint, an immigration officer looks at me, looks at my passport picture and then back at me. “You looked better with the long blonde hair. You might want to grow it again, “ he offers as he snaps it shut and takes up the next passport. I am gobsmacked. Rendered temporarily speechless, especially as Lola who often thinks she’s the bloody grown-up, has ordered me just moments ago to be polite to everyone. I am known for a certain lack of finesse at airports where my colossal impatience has been known to rear it’s ugly head- especially when power-crazed women start ordering you to take off not only shoes, but belts, scarves, sweaters, beanies.” FUCK! Should I JUST STRIP OFF COMPLETELY? Look, under my beanie –what am I hiding ? NOTHING! ” I seem to recall shouting last time I flew in June, still bald.
But Lola is incensed and jumping to my defense, immediately pipes up with “Well you know, it’s funny but when someone has chemo and LOSES ALL THEIR HAIR, they don’t have much choice about their hairstyle for a while!” That’s my girl.
The moronic officer is not remotely embarrassed and responds “Well I wouldn’t know about any of that!” before waving us on and shouting “Next!”
“Dickhead” mutters Lola and Nick sweetly puts his arm around me as we march on with the eight pieces of heavy hand luggage I vow to eliminate each year. Unsuccessfully.
Three pilots then hover next to us, trying to jump the queue as we approach the x-ray machines.. I politely ask if they’d like to jump in ahead of us and they accept the offer and walk through without taking off their shoes. I decide to leave mine on and casually walk on through before a cranky female screams at me to go back and take OFF THE SHOES! “Well they didn’t “ I reply indignantly pointing to the pilots hurrying away. The woman’s partner, packing heat, booms out “When you learn to fly a plane, you can keep your shoes on too!” I’m tempted to snap back that I have a flying license too but sensibly decide to resist my juvenile anti-authoritarian urges.
And then, naturally, I am taken aside to some holding area after putting same hand luggage through the x ray machines because I have idiotically packed three expensive green drinks from the health food store into one of the bags. The female recovers all three drinks plus a gorgeous hydrating face spray and holds them up as it was a cache of heroin and a home made bomb. “Well can I drink them now? I plead as Lola hisses “Jesus mum, they’ve only had this law for about ten years. What is your problem??” Feeling utterly brainless I respond loudly with “Well what the fuck do they think will happen? I’ll drink them and blow myself up on the spot?” Lola yells back and soon she and Nick and I are all shouting at each other. Another gun-toting dude then tells us all to pipe down or we’ll be taken “to another area”. That shuts us all up.
As we wait for the flight, now laden down with even more bags of magazines, sweeties and water, my cousin from Melbourne calls me on the cell to say, without even a hello, “Well I hope to God you’re not coming!” She’s just read my latest blog and apparently feels I should get a grip and follow doctors’ orders. “Janey, don’t be mean, the doc changed his mind and we’re about to get on the plane. Sorry!!! “ She sighs and says she’ll be at the airport to meet us. Dear cousin Janey. I do love her.
The flight is in fact even more horrendous than I anticipated and after watching four films in a row suddenly realize that both my right leg and arm are completely numb. Seriously without feeling. I manage to stagger up and head back towards the toilet where I shake and rub and suddenly remember cousin Jane’s warning that I could get a BLOOD CLOT after all the surgeries. None of my doctors have ever mentioned such a possibility but I suddenly panic ever so slightly and ask a stewardess what the symptoms of DVT are…
Well to cut a long tale short, within minutes I am surrounded by about five airline personell, my blood pressure, temperature and oxygen levels are taken and a Medivac team in Australia are called for their advice. I then excitedly overhear one steward whisper to another “Are there free seats in Business or First?” and my spirits momentarily soar as I imagine a good lie down for the next eight hours. “NO, nothing at all” comes the reply and by now I am over it all. Feeling has slowly returned to limbs and I’m ready to go back to my seat. But now they’re checking the manifest to see if a doctor’s on board and failing that they promise to make a loudspeaker announcement to see if any doctors present themselves. Jesus wept. I insist they not bother but sure enough, a few minutes later they locate a nice Asian doctor who questions me endlessly before I am finally allowed to go back to my seat. That’ll teach me. But very nice to know that apparently about 95 % of the time there’s a doctor on board any and every plane.
An ambien, an ativan, 8 Melatonin and still not a WINK of sleep – so another couple of movies, a couple of weepy moments from Lola who is so overtired after her week of work and exams and BOB’S YOUR UNCLE, (one of my favorite local expressions meaning ‘it’s all okay’) - we’ve landed in Oz. Well in Sydney—so just a few more tedious hours of recovering luggage and checking in again before a bus from the International to the Domestic terminal and then another plane ride and we’re in Melbourne. We grab a latte—even the fabulous airports in Australia are full of fantastic stores and juice bars, sushi cafes and the BEST COFFEE in the world and then out into the stunning fresh Aussie summer air and a ride with dear Janey back to her place in Sandringham, a few minutes from Port Philip Bay and the beach in groovy, hip Melbourne.
Within about ten minutes Nick is off on foot to walk round the corner and look up some of his old school mates from the primary school, a stone’s throw away, that he attended for three years. Five minutes later Lola is sunning herself by the pool in the back yard with my gorgeous 18 year-old niece Nikki who has completely grown up in the two years since I last saw her. Already I’m feeling sad as Nick loved Melbourne and the genius aspect of having pals a few blocks away. He would have been very happy to stay and live here. But I decided to return to LA and Lola after spending four years in my home town looking after my dad. It’s my first trip back in just over two years since he died and it’s odd not to feel the constant guilt I experienced whenever I wasn’t by his side. So we tuck into our favorite charcoal grilled chicken and gorgeous salad and fruit that just tastes so much better I’m afraid to say than American salad and fruit. The mangoes, the passion fruit, the pineapples—just utterly delicious and sweet and fresh. Dunno how or why—but they’re simply superior. Go figure.
For some reason the jet lag is almost non-existent and when one does inevitably wake at some ungodly hour there’s always the comfort of a glass of Milo and Vegemite on toast. My brother Geoffrey kindly lends me back my ancient old Ford Falcon station wagon- and since I was safely back in the USA while my license was suspended for 12 months, I’m free to thunder round again in what my kids called The Moose. (Only lost my license for chatting on the cell phone a few too many times- they take a dim view of cell phone use here and made it illegal about four years before America did the same thing. Oh and then I was wicked enough to drive WITH a 6 month suspended license and that’s when a judge decided I should be deprived of driving privileges for 12 months. At least they didn’t fine me as well. Once, driving from Sydney to Melbourne, I was wildly unlucky. Caught for speeding twice in six hours and given on the spot fines that you need to pay ON THE FRIGGING SPOT. As in – hand over cash or a check. The first was for $200 and then a few hours later, I rolled through a town and some rogue cop with a thick Scottish accent, possibly a plumber posing as a copper, insisted I was going 85 in a 50 km/hr zone and demanded FIFTEEN HUNDRED SMACKERS. I wrote a check- and it was good. Annoying since I was trying to be thrifty and not spend dough on airline tickets.
So naturally despite endless pacts not to buy each other xmas gifts, we manically run around buying far too many last minute pressies. And it's a treat to see nephews and nieces and their gorgeous offspring. And have endless Australian lattes. I cannot get enough.(Apparently the head of Starbucks flew to Sydney to work out why they'd had to close down all the Aussie Starbucks. Apparently he had a coffee at the airport and immediately understood the problem. Aussie coffee is sublime. On EVERY corner!! In the cutest, hippest cafes and bars and restaurants everywhere. In many, many ways,(food, design and coffee to name three) Aussies are so beyond hip and stylish and way ahead of America. And then,it’s already Christmas day. Very confronting to realize we are the grown-ups now. No parents are there. The last Christmas in Melbourne there was my dad, cousin Jane’s parents- my dear Aunty Pat and Uncle Ab- and my cousin Rick’s wife’s mother Dorothy. They would trundle round on their walkers barely able to move or speak and clearly making the most tremendous effort ever. But it made it worthwhile. They probably all wished to God they were home having a nice nap but we would get them into the cars, put on their best sweaters and their arrival would be met with much fanfare and kisses from grandchildren whose names they could barely remember. Beers and shandies and wine were brought to them, chips and dips offered and over their heads we would exchange meaningful, anxious glances. But now Dorothy and dad have kicked the bucket and poor Uncle Ab is not remotely well enough to come (with Parkinson’s, throat and lung cancer) and dear Aunty Pat insists on faithfully staying by his side. So COMES THE CHILLING BUT OVERDUE REALIZATION THAT WE ARE THE GROWN-UPS now…me and my three cousins –Jane, Rick and Bun, Rick’s wife Sue and my brother Geoff.
Who knew I was this old? Why are we even doing this?? Cos it’s bloody Christmas and that’s what you do and in fact it’s a very jolly one with seven kids between 14 and twenty six who know how to party and drink champagne and beer like it’s going out of style. Nick tries to casually walk away with a beer at one point till I put my foot down and tell him to put it down immediately- no ifs or buts! Mother Lola interferes and says ‘it’s no big deal” but I am adamant. Nick even reveals that my pal Frank who gave me a gorgeous dinner party a few nights before had given him a beer. And he drank it! Honestly Frank. He’s a child. Okay, a man-child. Aussies and their drinking – hard to keep ‘em apart. But I stick to my guns and if Nick drinks it’s behind a bush and there are those who think it’s better out in the open but at 14?? Doesn’t seem right. By 5 pm 18 of us are finally sitting down to eat our wonderful Christmas feast. Very traditional. Turkey, plum pudding –the lot, thanks to Sue who is ruffled by nothing. I stand up and try to make a toast to missing friends, my dad and Uncle Ab and Aunty Pat but am immediately in tears and unable to speak. Young Tom, 25, gets to his feet and rescues the moment—with great humor. By 6 .30 we’re dancing like fools to some great oldies that our fabulous DJ Rick always provides. And by 9 the washing up is almost done (thanks Janey) and we stagger home. Very, very glad I came. A genius decision for once.

Doc puts the kibosh on trip downunder !

2009-12-17T16:11:00.001-08:00

Four Days Later
Onwards and upwards?? Wrong ! Should have been a little more like Slowly Does It or something else alarmingly simplistic but effective called Take It Easy ….but no…I did not do that. I OVERdid it and somehow, tricked into thinking I am still the smartass who had never spent a single solitary night in hospital till 6 months ago, zipped hither and thither for about four days straight, actually not feeling TOO bad. And in all fairness some of it was sensible and justifiable. A trip to the homeopathic doctor who is soothing and seems to totally understand the toxic effects of all that cancer patients go through with conventional treatment…It is such a relief to have someone who tells you what your organs are going through in a truly empathetic way and actually SUGGESTS remedies and potions and pills to take. The relief is somewhat dissipated when one hands over the credit card fro a mighty big tab---but what price health and feeling good eh?? And at least no going off to Rite Aid to fill prescriptions where I reckon they now suspect me to be some kind of junkie. Though once back home I get a blistering headache as I try to sort through the tons of supplements I have gathered in the last few months and put them into weekly pill boxes divided into morning, noon, evening and bedtime !
So that’s the body sorted---now it’s time for some spiritual sustenance and I beg Nick to do his homework solo for once as mum heads down to Venice for an evening with about 60 folk listening to an Indian mystic named SAHDGURU. He has admittedly, a truly beautiful face with luminous shining eyes and a preposterously peaceful blissed out demeanor that was very lovely and calming. He began about an hour late though and having scoffed about eight little healthy oatmeal cookies I suddenly had a shocking gut ache and my calm turned to panic as I realized the Indian gent was in no hurry with his spiel which began with his childhood and then segued into his early manhood where he realized that he could sit down cross legged to meditate and wake up EIGHT DAYS LATER to find stunned onlookers camped out waiting for him to return to consciousness. A tiny bit boastful but impressive nonetheless. I tried soo very hard to concentrate and take in some pearls of wisdom but next to me sat a heavenly old friend from New York whose son had died about six months ago. I was so stunned and horrified as I tried to imagine her grief and think how I would feel if the unthinkable happened and I ‘lost’ one of my children. It was simply terrifying and made my problems seemed ludicrously miniscule and insignificant just as it rendered the guru’s words impossible to hear for the most part. I recall he said that we must not give others the privilege of being able to hurt or upset us with their behavior or words. Not unlike the message back in the old days when I went to Kabbala . DO NOT REACT. Don’t be reactive. Uh huh. Yeah right. AS IF!
As the hours wore on and I imagined Nick stretched out on my bed watching TV, I regretted very much the fact that I had left my handbag about eight rows further up with another friend. I was trapped and that was all there was to it. Then Question Time began and someone asked about Death and dying peacefully and all that nonsense. I’m not afraid to admit it. I have NO faith and am terrified of dying. But then our man told us we had to make our death a real occasion. We must die with a smile and in great style. He repeated it several times. Yep, we had to move on out with a LOT OF STYLE ! Jeez louise—talk about pressure. Not only with grace but STYLE as well?? Give me a break! It was midnight before I made it back to Hollywood, exhausted beyond belief, so sad for my friend – but at least not filled with too much jealousy for those who could afford his costly four day seminars in LA or month long stays at his Indian ashram. I think it’s fair to say I am SO not spiritual.
Next day I stagger back to santa Monica and am back baring the top half for Dr Bob who frowns and informs me that I have tons of fluid around my huge swollen breast and must be drained immediately. And with no further delay the GIANT horse needles are produced as he totally BLAMES me for it and says it is crystal clear that I have been doing too much. I naturally protested vehemently. Alas, the darling but disloyal daughter told him that I was a shocking liar and that I had spent hours in the garage a day or two ago heaving boxes and looking for paintings and generally acting like some pumped-up circus strong man. He was deliriously happy to hear that his suspicion was right and he ordered me to lay low and START ANOTHER COURSE OF fucking ANTIBIOTICS. Then my Brutus of a daughter mentioned that we were all planning a sortie to Australia the following week and the mild-mannered Dr Bob nearly has a conniption. WHY? He demanded. Because I have family and friends there and I booked it eight months ago I said. And I didn’t get to go last year, I added plaintively. It’s true. Last December was when I felt the lump and the mammograms and biopsies began and then I got the flu and had to move out of my house to rent it and thus, at the very last minute, I drove my children to the airport and being lifelong travelers, especially to Australia, they very happily headed off by themselves feeling rather thrilled I imagine not have an overloaded silly mother tagging along. I wept bitterly and spent Christmas in LA sick as a dog, house sitting in Silver Lake and bawling every time they called. Which was not often.
So I get home, retire to bed, wake up and can’t find the prescription he gave me and dig around for some old leftover antibiotics. Any old ones will do surely to God. And then I do too much and then I lose the bastard antibiotics two days ago somewhere in the house or under my bed but who can tell and then I am back at Dr Bob’s today and I am hugely swollen again and he drains and then, like last time, gets a magnet to find the matching magnet in my expander so he can pump it up through the port – so as not leave any dead space for more fluid to gather and declares that I have obviously have been doing too much and going to Australia tomorrow is out of the question. I weep hysterically with self-pity and obediently head back to Cedars to have it all confirmed by the infectious disease dude—but what’s new? He is beyond conservative…and that’s where it stands…
I AM sad and it sucks…and did I keep the receipts so I can take some of the pressies back for pals downunder???

Toxic Wasteland...thanksgiving and beyond

2009-12-14T22:21:00.000-08:00

TEN DAYS LATER
Not unlike Roman Polanski---certain post-surgery patients should be fitted with some sort of electronic security anklet-to make sure they stay PUT, preferably in bed, once back home. So that, trying frantically to make up for lost time, they don’t hit the streets a few days later with a list of errands that would exhaust a driven, wildly ambitious Personal Shopper on drugs and thirty years younger in some TV Reality Show a la Amazing Race.
One of the main problems here? I’m a moron. Why do I imagine I will have more energy than after the last surgery—especially as there clearly must be some sort of cumulative effect now after about 12 hours of general anesthesia during 4 SURGERIES in 10 months. And even worse, as I may have mentioned before, a grand total of about FOUR MONTHS OF massive doses of ANTIBIOTICS that would bring a wild rhino to it’s knees.
I am now officially a TOXIC WASTELAND. Can the antibiotics even be remotely effective after all this time. Surely fucking not!.
Three days before the surgery- two varieties of antibiotic delivered via very large pills—as a preventive measure. Then a week of IV antibiotics - 3 days in hospital and another 4 days of it at home thanks to my trusty 6’ 6” Russian nurse Vadim who obliged again by coming to rouse me from my bed to deliver the I V. And now, another 7 days of pills.
I have officially never felt WORSE. Not during the entire nightmare year have I felt sicker than I do right now. It’s as if I wake up every day with a massive hangover. Imagine being force fed three enormous Indian meals in a row, about half a dozen donuts and then drinking two bottles of champagne and five rum and cokes. Think how you would feel the next day. The blinding headache. The bloating. The gas. The total hideousness. And…the depression.
Got the picture? Well multiply it a few times more and that’s how four months of antibiotics makes you feel.
At least feeling as revolted and revolting as I do means that the day alone on Thanksgiving was sad but I felt no hunger. And there was no pressure to perform any motherly duties. Son Nick in New York with his beloved godmother –ice skating, Broadway show and slices of ‘the best pizza ever.’ And Lola spent it with her second stepmother and half brother and sister. (She veery sweetly brought me a bag of very good leftovers.) Hey, I’m an Aussie I kept telling myself as I lay in bed in a lot of pain, taking half a Vicodin every few hours and emptying the bloody drain- what do I care about Thanksgiving – but these annual family rituals- the accompanying brainwashing TV ads and movies picturing jolly celebrations with your clan have a way of seeping into the consciousness and despite any extenuating circumstances, make the lone twit in bed feel like a miserable old single failure. Yep, well aware that feelings are not facts but my brain can seem like a mighty powerful and willful bitch of a thing sometimes—leading me down very thorny, overgrown paths of sentimental and undermining beliefs.
And what if feelings ARE facts??
MUST read Power of Now again immediately. Though the last time I had the energy to read seems long ago and the voice of Eckhardt Tolle (yes, even bought the book on tape) is unacceptably tedious. I will Google it and see if there is a riveting sentence or two I can memorize. My daughter points out that I have a stack of books written by cheery folks who have had cancer and ‘seen the light’ along with books like “Change Your Diet-Change Your Life’. I know, I know, we are what we eat—Stay Alkaline and test your pee with the drawer-full of PH testers I have but how much frigging broccoli can one eat in a day? And who can cope with an acidic read-out every other day? Next morning I steal a couple of Marlboro Red from Lola, run down to the corner in my pj’s and Uggs and a coat where forty yards away sits a lovely Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. Order up one of my beloved Mocha Ice Blendeds, grab the National Enquirer someone has left and run back home. Bliss for about thirty minutes before the guilty goody-goody side of me has a field day.
So a day or two more of deep discomfort, bandage-changing and drain-emptying as the long Thanksgiving weekend drags on interminably and by Monday I have a list of things to do a mile long. Monday morning. Hopped into my car which had only one ticket due to the fact that I have yet to go to the 84 places necessary to get parking permits for my new address and realized I was not up to hitting the DMV to change the Rego address. Not today. Maybe never. But after dropping the over-exhausted teen (who loves New York and wants to move there) at school AND on time, I did, by some miracle, notice the yellow light indicating I needed gas and headed up Vine to fill ‘er up.
This is easy. I can do this. Keen on multi-tasking I make a call, hop back into my car to plug in the nearly out-of- battery-cell phone and get involved in a heated discussion of why the recent announcement that women get TOO MANY unnecessary mammograms is dead-on. These are not fly-by-night fools saying this. They are experts and have studied it all and I loathe the way the Obama administration is being raked over the coals for something that in essence will protect women from unnecessary radiation and then often, unnecessary surgery and chemo. But it’s a thorny issue and yes, there are exceptions but who knows if their lumps would not have gone away of their own accord if they were watched carefully….
Oh I could go on…but my friend is already bored and so I merrily drive off to the next task till I hear an almighty CRACK and realize I have omitted to remove hose from car. SHIT! I stop and see that it has at least come out of the gas entry-point of my car and done no visible damage. But the long snake of a thing has come out of the bowser—is that the right word – and is lying right next to MY car there as people stare disapprovingly. So I run inside and try to explain what happened to a foreign gentleman. Not sure he understands me. I repeat that the gas hose has come off it’s moorings. “Moorings?” Yes, I can’t put it back, I say, looking as sad and tragic as I can. But he waves his arms and says something I don’t understand but I feel I’ve done my duty and hit the road without looking back. A friend later says they’ll have filmed my car with secret cameras and to expect a bill for about $1000. That seems harsh and I beg my brain to file it under “LATER”.
And you probably won’t have a whit of sympathy if I tell you that three minutes later, stopped at a light on Melrose I look over as I chat on the phone and see a black man pointing at something in my car – or at me. I politely ignore him and keep chatting. My eyes flicker to the right again and there he is again, staring crossly and pointing as he shakes his head at me. Oh for heavens sake, I recall thinking—what’s his problem. Lucky I didn’t give him the finger. (My son practically faints with tension every time we drive together. He gives a running commentary as to what lane I should be in, slow down, put on your indicator MUM, NOW...MUM THERE’S A RED LIGHT COMING UP…stuff like that.) The lights change and off I speed only to hear sirens and a loud speaker moments later telling me to “PULL OVER. NOW !” I look back.
Oh, it’s the POLICE. That’s the problem with my foul, gas-guzzling Land Rover Discovery. It’s so high that when the cop car was right next to me I couldn’t even see it WAS A COP CAR. I make up a brilliant story about my young son at the airport calling to say the plane got in early and I’m running late because I’ve just been to my cancer doctor and the very sweet, kind policeman lets me off. I’m sorry but you can’t NOT use the cancer thing for as long as you can. Just lucky he didn’t rip my now out of date Disabled Tag off the rearview mirror and handcuff me on the spot. New Year’s Resolution. Throw out the Disabled Tag and never speak without a hands-free. (And don’t tell Nick—he will be livid. Out of guilt for some driving transgression of the day I sometimes let him drive the last fifty yards down the street. But only when it’s dark and there’s no one around. He’s a superb driver. And yes, I am a wicked, lying scofflaw. I’m going to change.)
And I vow to buy a new hands-free but I also need to get into the New Age and buy a new phone that can access email and so until that decision is made, how can I get a hands-free? I want an IPHONE but Lola says I won’t be able to handle it. I’ll show her!
I head to the nearest Starbucks for my venti latte with half a pump of mocha (it used to be one whole pump) and as I rush past some sort of Christmas display in my hurry to get the last Times, it catches my drain which I have pinned to my t-shirt in …It means the long skinny tube comes out of the plastic bulb and blood spatters on my jeans and a few drops on my shoe and the floor. This may well be one of the low-points of the month and I dash to get napkins, wipe the tiny spots off the floor and then run out the door mortified,NOT looking back to see if anyone noticed as I hold the tube upwards to prevent more spillage. Minus my coffee, I reattach the tube in the car—and realize it’s a bad day for tubing and I am still in desperate need of a caffeine hit.
So off to another frigging Starbucks-miles out of my way—and then come to my senses and realize I need to go home immediately and retire to bed for a couple of hours before heading back out for groceries and the teen. I sleep as if I’ve just done a marathon and wake up three hours later at 4 with that awful sick panicky feeling when you’ve overslept in the day and scarcely know where you are…I must dress and rush to Nick’s school.
My darling son tells me the evening’s homework ahead and we both visibly wilt at the prospect of math, science, english AND history – not to mention reading and coming up with a proposal for the bane of my life—the Science fair Project. I LOATHE Science Fair Projects with a deadly loathing and feel that this is where a guy could TRULY be worth his weight in gold. A man, a father, a boyfriend…even just a man friend. But they’re in short supply so what can you do? I have so far talked the teen out of something to do with engines and fuel efficiency since I argued it would be too hard to show that on one of those wretched display boards. And what is the hypothesis and how do we go about it and do graphs?? I want to shoot myself on the spot when I realize it’s due in a week. Just the proposal – but I know from experience that it will take us forever. Lola suggested growing crystals and at first he seemed excited but I think he now regards it as too girlie. Last year’s was about landslides and the year before it was How Long does Different Food last without Refrigeration before getting moldy and that, not surprisingly, was a humdinger. Rotting, stinking chicken, cheese and vegies in the garage that had to be checked and photographed every few days.
Anyway, he struggles with all this homework due to ‘learning differences’ (after much and thorough testing) and needs more time than most but his mean mother must now drag him to buy groceries before going home as I could not even achieve that in my hideously unproductive day. The guilt, the guilt...about anything and everything and when he sweetly asks “How was your day mum?” I don’t even know what to say. I must lie of course and not reveal that it was useless, I was nearly ticketed by cops and it mainly consisted of sleep. I don’t want him to worry. A fatherless adopted child should not have to worry any more than strictly necessary.
Well I can only imagine he’s been worried this past year. It’s hard to tell how much fear has swirled around the brain of a gorgeous 14 year-old who is growing like a weed, has size 13 shoes and who shaves, speaks with a manly deep voice but still gives very big hugs. He’s moved twice this year, nine times in his life, been to five different schools (two in another country), has tutors three times a week to help with failing grades and a mother who swears like a trouper. But… no boy has ever had a more doting mum or a more fantastic, loving sister. Lola was nine when ‘we’ adopted Nick and she definitely adored my genius idea that we were adopting him ‘together’.
Gosh - I get chills every time I remember the excitement as the birth mother’s due date arrived. We were on HIGH Alert. Forget the anticipation of Santa, Disneyland, the Tooth Fairy –or even her fifth Little Mermaid birthday party. Waiting for her baby brother (we knew it was a boy) to be born beat everything. She was deliriously impatient–and a joy to watch. Every time the phone rang we both screamed. Even Molly the Husky ran around in circles like a maniac. She didn’t want to go to school in case she missed something but I swore on everything holy that I would swing by Campbell Hall on the way to Valley Presbyterian. It was before Mapquest but I had my route worked out. Fortunately he came into the world at about 8pm on a Friday. We were standing by but still imagined it was a few days away. I had just cooked Lola and her friend from school who happened to be with us, gorgeous lamb chops and since I loathe cooking (have I mentioned that?) I’m not keen on any effort going to waste but once we got the CALL at about 7.30 saying “We just wanted to inform you that they’re about to do an Emergency Caesarian – you should come now”. That was it. Dinner was left on the table. We shrieked, screamed, panicked, laughed, ran around in circles and tore out the door to the Valley. Driving like a bat out of hell down Sunset and over Coldwater Canyon, we arrived in record time, taking a good fifteen minutes off my timed practice run. We arrived at the Maternity ward and were naturally sent to lots of wrong places before we ran down a corridor and bumped into a nurse carrying a swaddled baby.
“Is that ours?” shrieked Lola. The nurse looked up wide-eyed as if we might be crazed baby-snatchers.
“Is that the Hobbs baby?” I smiled politely. She confirmed that this was the baby for adoption and we all cheered. But she was a humorless human, was having none of our glee and promptly marched off to the Newborn Nursery, not even slowing down as Lola and Ally ran behind, DESPERATE for a peek. Unfortunately children were NOT permitted in the nursery and I sent the girls around the corner where they frantically jumped up and down to try and see through the glass window. I was still carrying the great huge camcorder bag which I had not had time to open….I followed the nurse as she put the drops in his eyes and rather roughly checked him and measured and with shaking hands tried to get out the camera. He started to howl and I was desperate to pick him up but I wasn’t about to grab him for fear of being sent out with the kids…I guiltily waved at them as they madly gestured for me to bring the baby over to them. I did finally get to hold him for a few precious moments and weepily took him over to the window so they could get a glimpse. Beaming faces. All very touching, All so very sweet. One of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
The adventure began and not an ounce of jealousy ensued. She relished the thought of him as ‘her baby’ from the moment she held him two days later in the hospital as I signed papers and we prepared to drive him home with us. From then on she would rush in from school, sneak into his room and pick him up even if he was asleep, against strict orders, to ‘watch over him’.
“He’s asleep Lola. Go and play in your room honey.”
“He was awake mum—he was crying” she would lie, bald-faced, thirty seconds later, having wickedly woken him from a major snooze.
As he got a little older she and her friends would spend hours fussing over him, giving him bottles, bathing him and dressing him up (often in dresses, like a doll, sometimes with lipstick- he didn’t mind) but always with extraordinary maternal finesse and expertise. (I could care less about babies at that age). Our place was a favorite hang-out and understandably. They got to PLAY with a REAL LIVE BABY who left the long-begged-for American Girl doll and her myriad outfits for dead. All her pals adored him. Especially our fabulous next-door neighbor who was exactly Lola’s age. Lauren, also adopted, was mad for Nick as well and would often appear, pretending she had permission, to help Lola give Nick a bath and then stay for dinner—often her second. There were endless calls from her mother insisting I send her home immediately – but we all loved her lively, giggling presence and I often fibbed that we’d begged her to stay so she wouldn’t get into more trouble than necessary.
Yes, with a mother and a sister who give and demand more annoying kisses than most, he knows he’s loved and gives tons of affection back–but it doesn’t stop the guilt. That’s who I am.
And now there ‘s the bloody guilt all over again that I decided to have a double mastectomy and DO this to my poor body. I’ve had a good look and the new breast is in fact fairly lumpy and odd-looking. A bigger scar than last time—but that’s to be expected. And I don’t care about scars.
I drag myself down to see Dr Bob the next day and he’s happy as a clam. He really just takes a quick peek under the bandages to make sure there’s no sign of a flaming infection again. Satisfied, he tells the nurse to change the bandages. As I realize he’s walking out the door, I don’t have the energy to speak up and ask about lumpiness or any other bloody thing. I’m over it.
And I’m over antibiotics. I’ll be finished in a few days but I’ve been awfully good. I take the pills on time like a regular goody two shoes. Okay—I gagged a couple of times this week and spat out several pills in fury as I dry-heaved and wept. But the prospect of another staph infection and MORE antibiotics has kept even a rebel like me on the straight and narrow.
Onwards and upwards.

Fourth Surgery this year ! dec 4

2009-12-04T14:04:00.000-08:00

Friday Morning – Three days later.
I have talked the darling daughter who has no college on Fridays and works every week at her coffee spot ALL day (as distinct from her dawn shifts) – into cancelling her daylong shift and coming with her mother to a far distant land in the San Fernando Valley where I have to confess I have had crap in storage for—gosh, let’s think, since I sold my Hancock Park house eight years ago. Even after selling many big pieces to an auction house AND a massive garage sale where I was utterly ruthless thanks to mean friends who made me sell things I regret to this day (like a vintage child’s coat stand I still miss that was SO adorable) there was still tons of stuff from a 6000 square foot house with a guesthouse and a pool house and two huge basements that had all been filled by yours truly, a serious hoarder - and so furniture and baby clothes and boxes of photos that I refused to part with all went to a 10 by 20 unit in the Valley eight long years ago. And then, when I returned from Australia two years ago after the four year stint to look after my dad – I had all the stuff shipped back that I had optimistically shipped there, thinking I would find HOME back in the wonderful Land of Oz but alas…it just didn’t feel right once my dad had died. Four years of hanging out at hospitals, rehab centers and retirement homes had proved less than scintillating and besides Lola my daughter dearest was back in America and so, along with Nick and I, BACK IT ALL CAME, at vast, vast expense, to join the stuff that had stayed behind in the Valley. They loved me at All Aboard Storage. Another 10 x 20 unit was filled. They were side by side. Very convenient.
And so, there we were, in blistering heat in Sun Valley, unlocking the units for the two foul-tempered moving men who stared at the boxes covered in about an inch of dust. It was pretty much impossible to be ‘in the moment’ and even remember what on earth The Power Of Now had tried to teach me as I already DREADED—with a mighty powerful dread, the unpacking and deciding of where all these reminders of bygone days would go AT THE OTHER END IN A FEW HOURS. Things I had totally forgotten I owned. Growing up poor, things I thought I desperately needed and MUST cling onto – hang the expense. As they piled it all onto the truck I tried to imagine where the big pieces of furniture would go—the lovely old armchair covered in green velvet my dad had sat in for sixty years, the loveseat covered in brown velvet that my mother had inherited from her mother and had prized her whole life….the black velvet bed from Central Park West, the gorgeous mid century sofa I had found in Sydney and had had re-covered in hot red wool, my granny’s favorite old china and the hand-carved bench her grandmother had made….where the fuck exactly would it fit? My brain hurt.

At the new apartment there are three bedrooms instead of two, because I need a bedroom for the angel pie daughter after she broke up with her boyfriend and besides, this is twice as big, much better value, and best of all, HAS A DOUBLE GARAGE out back where I can put all the stuff from storage, thus SAVING a truly embarrassing and shocking $560 a month I have been paying for two years. And half that much for the 6 years before that. Yep, lotta money. I am fool. We know this. I have clung onto tables and chests of drawers—NOT priceless gems, just weird funky chests of drawers from second hand stores and vases from Goodwill and pillow slips and blankets and towels from Target and plates and spatulas from Ikea that have now become THE most expensive pieces of crap of all time after traveling, I kid you not, from NY to LA to Sydney to Melbourne, back to deep in the Valley and now to Hollywood. Yep, that’s the kind of tight ship I run!! I realized the full extent of my sickness when the guys informed me that a second back-up truck was needed. It would not all fit in the first dirty big truck. A tiring nightmare of a day. A costly one. Lola cursed. I swore like a sailor and I nearly forgot to pick up the darling Nick Hobbs from school.
Two weeks later
Okay—so it’s been grueling period. I’ll try to keep it brief as even recalling it makes me want to slit my wrists. A week after the hellish move out of the storage joint to my new digs near Beverly, I then hired the same surly moving guys and we moved everything out of the apartment on Rossmore to join the stuff at the new place. The double garage I had loved so much was already UTTERLY FULL and when I tell you that discovering I had cleverly managed to HANG onto two large filing cabinets filled with fascinating things like AT&T bills from 1997 along with treatments and faxes I had sent to about two thousand producers, was one of those major self-loathing moments. I think you know what I mean.
Boxes of thirty seven different drafts of a script I had spent just six or seven years of my life on—a script that was as close as two weeks from shooting in Vancouver with Howard Stern having actually taken two weeks off his show to come and play a sleazy record producer and me and Lola and the entire crew all there in hotels totally overexcited as script, sets, locations were all locked!!!…..Before the dickhead producer had a meltdown and pulled the plug for NO good reason. And then lovely folk like Melanie Griffith refused to lower their fees to help get it back on its feet again and the adorable Howard Stern sued us for his lost two weeks wages and well…despite another six months of blood sweat and tears, it went down the gurgler and my second directorial effort never materialized.…
Love seeing those shooting scripts and music cassettes of all the fabulous gospel music that we had selected for my wonderful romantic comedy again….good times….years and years of my life down a very disappointing drain.
And then there were the boxes of Nick’s heavenly baby clothes plus an entire box of all his Batman costumes (he was a truly obsessed Batman and called me Robin for at least twelve months) and photos of my dad in his Spitfire and stupendously sad and brave letters from his days as a POW on the Burma railway that seemed to come hurtling at me like missiles out of the dust. And old passports of my mother and postcards she had sent me from Crete on her way to join me for the European holiday of a lifetime back in the days when I had it all and was a young whizz kid TV reporter fresh from Australia living in London with a glamorous and successful theatre producer. And BETA tapes of me on my TV show Hobbs’s Choice in London and huge one inch cassettes of short films starring Rowan Atkinson and written by Richard Curtis that I had directed—but NO machines in existence to even play them any more, They had to go. It all has to go…
But not the twenty five boxes of fantastic albums from my former life. They could become a book, perhaps. Photos of Jack and Anjelica and Roman and me and Mick Jagger and all of us at the Red Ball in Paris or lying on the beach in St Tropez or going to see Bob Dylan with Diana Vreeland or at the bull ring in Ibiza on acid watching Bob Marley and the Wailers or having Prince Charles to dinner in our swanky Knightsbridge home or interviewing Andy Warhol for my TV show…..
I yi yi .These memories rushing at you as we stuff yet more boxes into the garage and try to put them in some kind of order, TAKE THEIR TOLL. They can sap the life out of you. I have moved about 18 times in twenty two years. It’s too much.
The unpacking….I feel ill and hot and sweaty and still toxic and poisoned after a year of mammograms and missed diagnoses and botched biopsies and waiting and being told I am fine and then being told I am not fine and then more biopsies and guilty, lying gynacologists and a lumpectomy and chemo and steroids and four general anaesthetics and three surgeries and ten weeks of antibiotics and the electric sessions and the oxygen treatments and the Vitamin C infusions and the expanders being expanded and the needles and IV’s—so many needles….I just don’t feel too good. I don’t have a lot of zip in my step right now.
As far as the surgery decision is concerned, I have no more energy to give it and so very simply I decide to continue with Dr Bob and he schedules the surgery to try and restore my breast for ONE week later.
But I am just so deeply, madly tired that I do something I seldom do. A few days later I put the surgery off for two weeks so that it will be eight weeks from the last surgery and I can be uncommonly SENSIBLE and rest and do yoga and eat well and go to bed early and meditate.
NONE of which I do, naturally. I feel compelled to unpack every last idiotic possession and get the place totally together for the sake of my sanity and that of my kids. How can I come back home from yet another surgery with drains and pills and have to fight my way past boxes and suitcases full of clothes I forgot I had?
And here’s the one bonus for me with moving. I get to go to one of my favorite haunts – IKEA—where I can navigate the place like a pro and dart hither and thither quicker than anyone I know. Here’s the secret – go online, cruise the catalogue for about sixteen hours, make a shopping list, print it out and then enter through checkout, go straight to the gigantic shelves and JUST GO CRAZY. I decide to punish Nick for nothing in particular and drag him to Ikea with me on the way back from picking him up from a party. But because he is so cranky (it was a girl’s party I made him go to because I said yes on the Evite without asking him and he is livid but I feel bad and don’t want to let the gal down) and because he has been going to Ikeas on different continents since he was a small boy in his Batman outfits (try London, Melbourne, Sydney and Burbank) he has a hissy fit outside the store and insists he needs to skateboard for a while and he will join me in there. So I give up and rush on in and he finally remembers to join me hours later when I have heaved great boxes down from shelves and am now in the checkout line. He’s become an annoying clone of his cheapskate, miser sister and thinks he can bitch about my spending and guiltily I realize he is right about certain things and I angrily take them out of the trolley as he says deeply irritating things like “It may be only ten bucks but it all adds up mom !!” And by the time we are in the car I scream “It’s funny how you didn’t mind me spending SEVENTY dollars on your brand new purple suede skate shoes yesterday Nick ! Funny about that but I’m not allowed to buy a ten dollar plastic grocery bag holder from Ikea to help me save the environment !!” and then we scream at each other for awhile and like a very bad parent I even mention the money I spend on tutors which is unforgivable but I put it in the context of “You need to take some responsibility and do your share of the homework on your own” and then he screams that he doesn’t care about school and tutoring and he’ll “just live in a sewer” and then I decide to cool it and we don’t speak the rest of the way home. But I adore him and he helps carry everything inside and then apologizes later for not coming in to help me in Ikea right away and I am touched as I nearly always have to ask him to apologize but soon I realize it’s just because he’s sucking up and his beloved big sis has offered to take him and hear a band she knows because he loves music and he’s a drummer. And I don’t have the energy to say no and they go with a few of her friends and they have a ball and even drop into a black light party on the way home and apparently Nick dances like a mad thing and is very cool.
So anyway, about eight trips to Home Depot, Target, CB2, West Elm and Kmart later (a lot of it just research-not ALL compulsive spending) and I have bought yet more extension cords and picture hanging hooks, hammered and assembled and glued and stood on ladders and hung mirrors and fought with my kids and made their rooms look pretty darn great. I’ll be honest- I do sometimes wish there was a good man who found me gorgeous even with my ludicrously short hair and who would have the keen, cosmopolitan intelligence to appreciate my manic ability to make a wildly stylish yet COZY home. I mean it’s not everyone who has the foresight to bring their Aussie electric pizza maker and seven fabulous old lamps to America and then find the cunning store on Third that sells Oz to USA converter plugs. Am I right? Frugal AND a connoisseur of good lighting!
So at Sunday night at nine pm after running to get a Gift Card from Forever 21 for the girl who had the birthday party and then running to Office Depot for a math graph notebook and then hitting the Cactus Taqueria on Vine for our dinner and after barely stopping for two weeks straight, the gorgeous new Spanish-style apartment is looking pretty together and I relax for the first time in a fortnight as I watch Curb Your Enthusiasm with my kids in the living room with a fire blazing and stuff myself with toast and peanut butter (I HATE tacos) and hit the hay by midnight. Take the heavenly teenager to school and INSIST ON A KISS IN THE CAR – not usually granted - because he is staying the night with friends as his silly old mother has her FOURTH surgery for the year coming up in a few hours. I thoughtfully do extra nagging about homework and teeth brushing so he doesn’t think anything is different.

MONDAY NOV 23rd– 3pm A very kind friend Diantha brings me back to St Johns where I lie through my teeth about the last time I ate. It was 10 am not 9—what the hell—I’m an old hand and I was determined to finish my Starbucks. So here I am again and my dear friend Richard is here because he insists that there be someone with me during this time leading up to being put under the knife which is just so touching since it has occurred to no one else in my life..
And here we are at Admitting…again ….the taking of the vitals, the off with the undies AGAIN, signing many, many forms I NEVER read, remembering with guilt that I have yet to make a will, hoping that the letter I wrote to get out of that parking ticket will do the trick and that they’re not clever enough to check and work out that my Disabled Sticker has expired and I really should pay it….
And Dr Bob is late again and I run to the toilet to drink from the tap just cos I’m thirsty AND a rebel…but I’m really an idiot and have taken two Ativan—I thought it was one but I forget everything these days and I think I took another and I feel so groggy and out of it that I may vomit any minute and I just want to get on down to that operating room guys…Here’s the shocking truth. I look forward to the drugs and being put out. I NEED THE FUCKING REST. A quick cell phone call to my Nick and Lola and that’s all I remember folks.
WAKE UP AT 12.30 am and there’s my divine smiling daughter who’s been waiting for hours for her mother to wake up and be brought back to the hospital room. A daughter is a very wonderful thing and I am deeply grateful for having such a complete gem. Realizing where I am and what’s just gone down, my hand goes to my chest and yes, there’s seems to be something resembling a breast there. I sure as hell am not about to look under the bandages and the bra contraption they put on you but just feeling that fake titty mound makes me quite happy. If not drugged out of my mind and completely devoid of anything resembling a singing voice I could even be tempted to burst into song. Something corny. ‘I ENJOY BEING A GIRL” comes to mind. Lola tells me that she spoke to Dr Bob on the phone and he said it went well.
I feel great relief. It’s moments before Thanksgiving - a year since I recall feeling that small but quite hard lump in my breast. A really chilled glass of good French champagne would go down well right now, I chirp brightly, delirious for about 18 seconds before I realize I’m in some serious pain here. But bubbly is not on the menu and after about half an hour of chatting with my darling that I now cannot remember- I suddenly see that my poor angel who started her day at 6 am at the coffee joint and then had a full day at college till 10pm, is ready to schlep all the way home to Hollywood. She looks shattered and I wish to goodness I’d come round a little sooner for her sake. I kiss her goodbye and she’s gone. Lie there feeling guilty that I left home in Melbourne at 20 and never went back. Never hung out with my mother again. Except for stressed, tense, unreal periods during holidays. The guilt is monumental and seems to be fade-resistant.. And then I remember – or did I dream it—that whilst coming out of the anasthetic, I agreed to use a bedpan to pee – but couldn’t once they put it there and they took it away. THE HORROR…THE HUMILIATION. I despise bedpans and do not believe in them. I think it was the reason I had a baby at home—someone told me they had to use a bedpan after giving birth..I really hope it was a dream.
I also wish that for the love of God Dr Bob had been kind enough to give me that doohickey you just press and pain medication floods your veins. But noooo—I’m now in searing pain and here we go again with the pressing of the red nurse button which means you WILL be ignored for a good ten to twenty minutes before a grim night shift nurse appears and invariably expresses shock and confusion when you ask for your pain medication. I am not disappointed but eventually, two percocet are given and things calm down. I go to sleep –wishing to goodness I was capable of following orders and sleeping on my back but I simply cannot do it—my back starts to ache after about ten minutes and gets worse as time goes on which is why I can’t even enjoy massages. Sleep on my back is simply not an option—though I regret it even more when I read in Us magazine that Tom Cruise sleeps on his back to avoid wrinkles around eyes and neck.
Tuesday
Wake up in stunning pain and beg for the Percocet immediately. It’s only 6 am, have eaten nothing for about 24 hours and would love to have some food in my stomach. But no breakfast in sight.
What a decision. Risk feeling ill with the Percocet on an empty stomach or put up with a couple more hours of scorching pain? I go with the pills and when breakfast finally arrives I find it hard to hide my disappointment upon discovering that my two pieces of French toast are cold, grey and preposterously rubber-like. Now we all know that in 2009 hospitals have yet to equate nutrition and health in any way shape or form ---but this is taking ignorance TOO FAR. Are they SERIOUS?? This is my third stay this year at St Johns and I should know the score but I’m tired and grumpy and hungry and sore and I press my buzzer and ask if any other food can be found for me—food I could EAT. Well, about forty five minutes later a really mean, mean woman comes and yells at me that I hadn’t filled out a menu and I point out that I was in surgery and not offered a menu to fill out and she says well that’s not her fault and I LOSE IT AND YELL THAT IT’S NOT MY FAULT EITHER AND IS THERE ANY THING AT ALL I COULD EAT ? PLEASE ??
An hour later she brings eggs that have been poisoned I think—they taste like fucking dog food and they too are grey and I cannot possibly eat them and they’re cold and suddenly I am very sad.
But what makes me even sadder is that I have a raging thirst and have been drinking lots and lots of water and so about every ten minutes it seems I have to pee and that means I have to unhook both the pulsating, inflated leg cuffs I am wearing that prevent leg clots and then I have to unplug the IV stand and hook up the cord so it doesn’t get caught on the bed, like last time, and unplug my computer so I don’t trip over that cord, like last time, and put on my Ugg Boots since I have a thing about bare feet on hospital floors and and then drag the IV stand into the tiny airless bathroom and them empty the heavy dangling drain filled with blood and then pee and brush my teeth and put on some moisturizer cos I have a theory that having a general anaesthetic is ageing and then I have to shuffle back into my messy room to plug everything in including my legs and get into bed and drink some more water…and do it all again. EXHAUSTING. Well at least I am getting some exercise and it beats a catheter. I think.
Dull day. But blessed pills make me sleep for a lot of it. When I am not sending psychotic emails to folks.
7 pm The angel posing as my daughter brings delicious salad from Wholefoods with tuna and mint and beans and all sorts of goodies and I feel better immediately- (note to hospitals all over the globe—good healthy food makes you feel BETTER)—and even she nearly gags when she takes a bite of my turkey dinner and agrees that I’m not being paranoid and that someone’s trying to poison me. I soon send the baby girl home to hang with Nick who’s been shockingly sweet on the phone and has told me made himself Trader Jo’s Piroggi for dinner and is doing his math homework. Wow. Amazing how easily they just straight out lie. (I know this because math teacher has since emailed to say it was NOT done ).I give him about ninety two instructions for packing as he is being collected tomorrow at 10 and taken to LAX for flight on HIS OWN to NY to spend Thanksgiving with his godmother but he doesn’t listen as closely as I hope. If at all. I tell him to study my typed packing notes and the itinerary –and he knows enough to agree- but I would bet anyone now that he ignores them completely.
9.30 pm A VERY exhausted looking Dr Bob shows up after a day of surgery – he seems to be very popular right now—and he helps me off with the bra contraption and I suddenly realize it’s the MOMENT OF TRUTH as he takes off the bandage. Not completely but enough to see that IT COULD WELL BE A MINOR MIRACLE. HE DIDN’T LIE..MY BREAST SKIN SEEMS TO BE UNCRUMPLED AND IT LOOKS LIKE A NORMAL BREAST AND I AM VERY, VERY HAPPY.
“You are a genius “ I tell him and he smiles….”I told you…” he says..
I asks if he put Alloderm back and he says “Yes, just a little. I want to put more in later..”
Whatever…this is a GOOD OUTCOME…..I LOVE DR BOB…
He looks very tired and I tell him to go and get some sleep while I tidy my room again and try to straighten my bed. GOD FORBID they could ever make it. That’s what nurses are meant to do. There is little more pathetic than making your own bed in pain at 10 pm at night. But smooth tits are good too. BE THANKFUL I tell myself – and I am.

Time to Become Two Titted again....nov 29

2009-11-28T13:25:00.000-08:00

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Next Day.
Since none of what I have done is reversible, I must carry on in quest to restore myself to two-titted person so it’s back to Dr Rex, the young and very amiable one in Beverly Hills (very Dr McDreamy) for a second visit to see if I like him as much as I thought I did. One visit is not enough I’ve realized when sharp knives are involved. I’m shown reconstruction photos but these are not reassuring. Gruesome shots of grafts from the upper inner thigh, the stomach, the buttocks and the back with fresh livid scars leaping out at me. I immediately assume these photos mean the doc thinks I will need such surgery but he starts off by denying it, saying that he thinks my breast skin will SOMEHOW un-wrinkle and un-shrivel back to life. Maybe.
But what he REALLY recommends, to minimize the risk of re-infection is something different. He is suggesting taking both triangle-shaped latissimus muscles from my back – the ones you use for pull-ups or a mighty golf swing– and putting them into my breasts to support the implants. And because it’s my own living tissue, there’s very little chance of re infection and it will look better BUT---to make it look symmetrical he wants to do BOTH breasts-so that means two incisions under my arms – another two further down for the camera to enter my body and two more incisions where the muscles are slipped in. A four hour operation and 4 drains for a couple of weeks. FOUR BLOODY DRAINS hanging around yours truly. Two was charming. Four really sounds like fun.
He’s cute but not that cute. Jeez. And that ol dead people’s skin, Alloderm (which would support the implants –instead of the aforementioned latissimus muscles which I now realize I’m very fond of just where they are) is sounding good right about now.
Let’s leave back muscles where they naturally reside and pop some new nice clean Alloderm and an expander into my left and see if we can’t get back to where we were…and then wait two or three months till, God willing, I might be ready for the permanent implants and life again as I once knew it. That’s Dr Bob’s plan and it’s sounding good—especially when I discover that Dr Rex, contrary to what the girl answering the phone told me, is not contracted with Blue Cross and thus it would cost me a good deal of cash.

Two days Later
Dr Bob starts to seem like an even MORE APPEALING OPTION WHEN I go to see YET ANOTHER surgeon Dr John…a very well-known one at UCLA who does a heap of breast work and who many smart and well-heeled Beverly hills ladies all love and praise to the skies…I had seen him in my initial quest for MR RIGHT but passed him over when I realized I was basically penniless and HAD to go with the best of the lot who were contracted with Anthem Blue Cross but as a former journalist I am curious to educate self and get the lie of the land so to speak. At our first meeting he had concurred about expanders and finally implants as the way to go and now I am curious, IN THE LIGHT OF THE TEN WEEK STAPH INFECTION, to see if he suggests staying on the expander/implant path or might he be on the same page as Dr Rex and recommend the latissimus muscle removal- or perhaps even some other whacking great surgery.
By the way, just negotiating getting to UCLA is enough to put you off…Could it be any duller? Going to Westwood is massively dull and then getting a spot in the colossal car park and finding your way into the right building is not for the faint of heart. And though it should be comforting that the correct building, number 200, is actually named THE PETER MORTON Building, it’s not. Hard to say why as he’s one of my oldest friends since the London days and the Hard Rock on Knightsbridge (that really dates me!) but here’s my thought for the day. Once old pals become billionaires, things just somehow aren’t the same. And anyway, the last time I tried to get out of the PETER MORTON BUILDING, after seeing a wonderful oncologist recommended to me by the stunningly effective and clever movie producer Laura Ziskin (who raised $100 million in one night last year on TV in her STAND UP FOR CANCER marathon on all the networks) it was like trying to escape Fort Knox. It was about two hours after Michael Jackson’s body had been taken there and it was bedlam. The gorgeous male friend who actually accompanied me to see this marvelous man Dr John Glaspy (giving me an upsetting glimpse into how divinely comforting it would be to have a husband to go to doctors with, though, what if…. what if he disagreed with me and had ideas of his own and insisted I hook up with a doctor I didn’t LIKE---hmmm, maybe not so groovy) ….sorry, I digress…anyway my friend had been called by a music industry lawyer friend as we sat waiting for the doctor. This friend said he’d heard Michael Jackson had overdosed and died. It was hard to take in—as I feverishly studied my questions for Dr Glaspy who I was using as a final sounding board for my double mastectomy decision. I thought he was a good guy to go to for the TRUTH. When I went to see him a month or so earlier, at Laura Ziskin’s suggestion, I was blown away at first sight. This was a man with the kindest, wisest, loveliest eyes I’d ever seen – and a very charismatic, magical smile. I adored him on the spot. Husky, but definitely marriage material. Smart as a whip. A researching, groundbreaking oncologist. A winner…Okay, okay I’m getting carried away. I admit it.
Best of all, he was BRUTALLY FRANK. One of the reasons I had even wanted a second opinion was because although I liked the oncologist I had been seeing, she had basically fudged the truth. Or put a spin on it that is truly scary and horrifying when you are first diagnosed with ‘fast-growing invasive breast cancer. She had told me that chemotherapy would boost my chances of survival by about 30 %...and as my daughter and I sat in her office a few days after my lumpectomy she pretty much made sure of our business by adding that if the cancer was not ‘contained in the breast’ it was not going to be pretty. “If it spreads, there is nothing more we can do for you.”
No further discussion was offered or asked for. I could think of everything –but nothing to say and I looked over to see my darling daughter in floods of tears. So, although it seems moronically naïve and just plain moronic in retrospect, I asked not a single follow-up question. I was rendered speechless by such a definitive statement – and my own ignorance. Fearing she might lay something even scarier on us – such as, tests indicated I had six months to live, we fled. And about ten days later I embarked on my three months of vile chemotherapy. But as the weeks wore on and I lost hair and sense of self, I did start trying to catch up with the whirlwind and find out more information. I read books, I searched the internet and I bought the $350 Moss Report. He’s not a doctor but a very well-respected journalist/researcher who has written huge 500 page reports on virtually every type of cancer known to man.
But I must boast that by the time I started to wade through this very lengthy tome, I knew enough to to be able to email the assistant to Ralph Moss, pointing out that some of their facts about available breast cancer tests were out of date. She politely agreed, apologized and sent an immediate refund. But what is NOT in dispute is that most oncologists do present statistics in a way that promotes the use of chemotherapy whereas the true statistics are that CHEMO IMPROVES YOUR CHANCES OF SURVIVAL ONLY BY ABOUT 1-2%. YES, JUST ONE TO TWO PER CENT.!!!
So when I walked in to see John Glaspy and told him about my cancer he immediately responded with “Well if you’d come to see me sooner and told me you did NOT want chemo, YOU WOULDN’T HAVE GOT AN ARGUMENT FROM ME !!
Excuse me?? What kind of heretical talk was this?? I practically hugged him on the spot—simultaneously devastated that I had already finished the fucking chemo. And so I asked him if he agreed with the statistic that chemo only improves your survival rates by THIS ALARMING 1-2 % and he said YES. “But you never know’ he added, trying, I suspect, to simply comfort me,
‘Perhaps you’d have been in that 1-2% and it’s saved your life’. He smiled his ridiculously lovely smile and I found myself choking back tears- suddenly weepy, weary and touched by his kind manner as a flash of leaving one’s kids behind seized my brain.
Okay—well that was a flashback to our first meeting where he even discussed the advantages of complementary treatments like Vitamin C therapies and acupuncture etc. The guy was a veritable Renaissance Man. My kind of oncologist. And so I had revisited him to discuss the concept of the double mastectomy INSTEAD OF RADIATION and he agreed with me that the side effects of radiation were very much played down and that by using the new skin and nipple-sparing techniques for mastectomies, it was definitely a good option ESPECIALLY SINCE THE LYING PRICK OF A RADIOLOGIST – one of the top guys in Beverly Hills had lied to my face and said that he almost NEVER saw any side effects to radiation nor did he ever see problems with the skin of women who already had implants. Women like me. To my face he lied with an Aussie pal as witness who knows a lot about cancer and the whole ball of wax. She too was stunned given that it’s VERY WELL DOCUMENTED that the breast skin is fairly likely to ripple and get lumpy after radiation. Which is when I stormed off with my fellow Aussie and thought “Well bugger that for a joke” and embarked on my mastectomy research. Not that it’s actually turned out all that well of course….but still, getting an infection only happens to a small minority.
And SO it was now, after being reassured by Dr Glaspy that my chances of recurrence were down to 1-2% after a double mastectomy and that he would recommend it, that my dear friend Richard and I tried to leave UCLA. We immediately felt the buzz and panic in the air and at every turn came across hoards of crazed people running in all directions. We were assured by two nurses in the elevator that they had just been with Michael Jackson and he was NOT dead. But moments later, caught up in the drama of it, all we headed outside to see helicopters and paparazzi galore and well, the rumors now were that he had definitely died. It was ghastly and confusing and just so deeply troubling and upsetting. We had a coffee in the café and then---well, we sat in our respective cars for almost THREE hours trying just to get OUT OF THE BASTARD CAR PARK.
SO, WHERE WAS I?
Back at UCLA –about 3 months after my last visit with Dr Glaspy---to see a reconstructive surgeon, Dr John who I had seen once before. I had liked him but as I said, I chose Dr Bob as I both liked the look of his work and he took my insurance.
Well, this time round, the good surgeon takes one look at my breast area and visibly winces. He seems bad-tempered and I instantly blurt out “Please don’t hate me –I went elsewhere for the surgery because I couldn’t afford you”, but it doesn’t seem to appease Dr John. In fact I suspect he thinks the talk of money rather vulgar. He basically acts like a war general, telling me to man up and to jolly well ‘live with it’ (meaning the lopsided unibreasted phase) for about six months to “completely minimize the risk of reinfection” and stop worrying about the way I look – as if I’m some half-witted shallow vain fuckwit who is making a mountain out of a molehill. (Well I’ll be frank -I’m as vain as any middle-aged fool who still harbors just the faintest glimmer of hope that I’ll still meet my dream man and provide my heavenly adopted son with a father figure)
He then demands—with not an iota of the charm he showed the first time around, that I sit and bend slightly forward from the waist so he can grab the subsequent roll of fat and then concludes that in 6 months or more a ‘flap’ would be the way to go. He could take skin and muscle from my lower stomach, making an incision’ from hipbone to hipbone’ and use it to make a breast from scratch, nipple and all. Somewhat stunned, I ask if he doesn’t agree that I could just try having an expander put in again. No, there’s too much risk of re-infection he insists like some know-it-all-celebrated surgeon and besides, he bitches,” that’s all they know how to do at St John’s - you need to come to UCLA where we know how to do flaps.”
Only one tiny problem…I don’t want a fucking flap. (And by the way, I do not use the term ‘know it all’ lightly…fact is they have done NO studies or compiled NO statistics on any of this because I’ve asked all eight surgeons I’ve seen and it’s educated guesses ALL the way with half saying “Go ahead and fill ‘er up in 6-8 weeks---and the other half saying “Wait 6 months before putting back the expander.” So, let’s be very VERY frank - it’s a crapshoot all the way. And grudges against other hospitals are not MY BUSINESS Doc.
And by the way, this ‘flap’ thing they love mentioning …I totally understand that some women who had very large tumors were simply not able to have the skin-sparing mastectomy I was ‘lucky’ enough to have and this flap or skin graft – (taken from back, stomach. upper thigh etc) was an unfortunate necessity but I would prefer to go the simplest route for now…and once his very sweet assistant shows me horrifying photos of the huge long scars – about 14 INCHES LONG – on the stomachs of poor women who needed – or were talked into goddamn flaps, I really know I won’t heading back to UCLA for a little while.
But I do spend a fun evening at the Hollywood School House and help put up decorations for the Halloween Haunted House which is an 8th grade fundraiser and since the darling boy is in 8th grade and they are raising money to go on a fabulous trip to Washington DC I feel compelled to hit Vine American Party Store and buy lots of witty scary things—limbs and heads and bloody swords and cobwebs and you name it. All stuff I ALREADY have in a couple of boxes somewhere in the depths of my garage OR in storage but I have never boasted that I know where anything I possess actually is after so many moves so little things have to be bought over and OVER again..verrry frustrating. The kids have a ball and Nick flirts with the girls and even though they won’t kiss you in the car when you drop them off at school of a morning, Nick is clearly thrilled to see me and gives me lots of very adorable hugs and has a ball helping hang things and placing the coffin he’ll pop out of, in a prime spot. Some parent helpers get a kick out of me at the top of a very high ladder in very high bright red patent leather Mary Jane Manolo’s. What can I say? I’m chic. For an hour.

Taking to the weed...nov 23...

2009-11-23T13:08:00.001-08:00

IT”S TWO WEEKS LATER
And if I could afford it, I would double my daily Cymbalta anti-depressant dose as it sure doesn’t get any easier looking down at my chest when I shower or undress. It’s sad and flat and the skin is just as I imagined –crumpled and wrinkled and unrecognizable. And to think I could have opted for radiation and NOT A DOUBLE MASTECTOMY! What was I thinking? The guilt about putting my body through this knows no bounds. (I know, I know—soldiers and car accident victims lose limbs and are far, far worse off than me, complaining bitch…but I’m sorry—I just feel better putting it down and getting it out of my brain. I doubt anyone is reading now anyway.)
Occasionally, if heading out to socialize, I pop on a bra and stuff it with Kleenex, literally, and at other times I just stick to baggy sweaters. But here’s my big confession. I am truly demented at this point I think as I am still actually thinking of CHANGING SURGEONS…after all this. Because when I visit Dr Bob a few days later, he says he wants to book me in for surgery the following Wednesday to open me up again, put in more Alloderm and replace the expander. (Yes, he admits, that he will look like a ‘goat’ if I get an infection again, but he doesn’t think I will and wants the best possible cosmetic outcome).
Now in many ways that would be fantastic but appointments with both my oncologist and the Infectious Disease doc are both issuing dire warnings that WE MUST WAIT AT LEAST 4-6 WEEKS to make sure that no microscopic infection is left that could possibly burst into bloom again once foreign objects are inserted. And my gloom and doom oncologist, by the way, who says she’s never seen anything worse, is very doubtful that putting back the expander at ANY stage will result in a decent cosmetic outcome. She’s talking about removing what skin is left and having skin and muscle grafts instead. Hot diggety dog—that sounds like fun…cutting off skin and muscle and moving it round my body.
SO, having heard of yet another great breast surgeon, I head off to Beverly Hills to meet him, desperate to hear if he thinks my breast skin will survive if I wait the month or will I need skin grafts. If he says what Dr Bob says, then I will relax…maybe. Well, it’s a tedious 95 minute wait cos Dr Cutie (he is very, very attractive this guy—looks no more than 30 but who can say for sure?) was in the back doing liposuction on some woman who had a lot of silicone injected into her butt and breasts that needed to come out. “I’m a perfectionist” he boasts and I believe him. Within moments, like the pathetically compliant person I’ve become, he drains the small amount of fluid I’ve told him that Dr Bob put in there to keep the breast skin from sticking like super glue to the chest wall and HE says, and this is where I can’t help but wonder if he is not just saying it to diss Dr Bob, that all fluid must be drained to avoid any infection breeding. BUT now, it’s like a GIANT industrial vacuum has sucked the life out of me and I am left, just moments later, CONCAVE…with a little mound of skin still above my nipple and so when I look down, I cannot see it. It’s like a very dried prune and how this can end well I have NO IDEA. He does say that he has seen skin come good again once it is inflated with the expander but I DO NOT BELIEVE HIM.
How can I wait another six weeks? I will go crazy because here’s the thing- Like a phantom limb that people claim causes pain, this lack of breast actually hurts. I swear it and now that the air has been sucked out, I actually feel a straining tension every time I breathe. IT’S DEEPLY DISTURBING AND SO, within days it’s back to Dr Bob and I mutter something about going to the acupuncturist and getting a massage to explain why the antibiotic fluid he put in has now disappeared. LET’S GET THE SHOW ON THE ROAD DR BOB, I SAY …CAN WE GO BACK IN AND DO SURGERY AT THE END of the week?
But blow me down if someone hasn’t got to Dr Bob and he’s now changed his tune and says we HAVE TO WAIT for 6 weeks at least. “So what about the fact that you have been saying how nervous you are that the skin will not survive this wait?
He claims, in a veerrrrrrry soooothing voice, that he is sure the skin sticking like glue situation is NOT irreversible. I DON’T BELIEVE HIM. I wish I did .I’m sad. He is now just playing it safe and the truly upsetting thing is that because of that, I may end up having to have tons more surgeries—skin grafts, flaps and endless opportunities for infection. I’m fucked. Whatever. Life goes on. Like the insane half witted moron I am I have yet another appointment with Dr Cutie in three days—just to see what he says.
I know I know,I need to get a life and start making money and find a guy.
So I have a lovely friend –a writer, actress and painter whop attributes her endless creativity to pot. Marijuana. Weed. She calls it pot as she is old like me. She’s been, like many others, urging me for months to take up Bikram Yoga, meditation and pot. Since I am now officially a sleeping pill addict – Ativan and Ambien definitely do the trick as distinct from the 12 melatonin a night the homeopathic dame suggested –which I did try for a few days but they did fuck all and I do have a crumpled up prescription from my Santa Monica doctor Cynthia so I decide that despite my abiding fear of pot due to several horrifying experiences over the years, perhaps I should give it a try. But I have to say I am terrified.. I truly am a ridiculous lightweight and just one or two puffs can render me comatose One dinner party I gave an English friend about a decade ago might give you some sense of my low tolerance.
Back in the days when I had some dough I had invited a dozen people over for a lovely sit-down dinner and there we were – in the huge living room of my stunning Spanish house in Hancock Park (painted walls and a double height ceiling, a Romeo and Juliet balcony – those were the days !) sipping Cosmopolitans when a music producer friend of mine lit up a joint. So as not to be a party-pooper when handed the joint, I took one hit, ONE, and within about three minutes felt very odd and thought I should perhaps check on how dinner was coming along. I staggered to the kitchen to see how my housekeeper was doing with the roast chickens (yep, used to have a housekeeper) but found myself unable to speak and felt really, really strange so I managed to retrace my steps to the divine Malibu-tiled staircase in the gorgeous circular foyer and climb up them, into my office at the top of the stairs on my way to the bathroom to splash water on my face. But as I entered the office, I found I could move no further and had to lie down IMMEDIATELY on the office floor- no longer able to function or MOVE. Not sure how long it took for someone to find me – but suffice it to say that I spent the ENTIRE DINNER PARTY on my office floor. Every time I tried to move I collapsed again, sometimes vomiting into the bowl someone had thoughtfully put next to me. I could think a little but only horrifying thoughts of never being able to move or walk again and at least three times I muttered “Ambulance, call an ambulance….need to go to hospital.”
At that point in my life I had never spent a single moment in hospital and have an abiding fear of them but I truly thought that with this one puff of a joint I needed to be there. Fortunately they all ignored me and even my horrified but cool under fire daughter Lola, 13 at the time, had the nous to say “Mum you’ll be fine, no need for an ambulance.” Naomi Watts, one of the guests, was the most capable and she spent a good deal of the dinner holding frozen peas to my head. Several other people popped by for a glimpse but only momentarily. They were having a ball in my gorgeous dining room and didn’t need to dwell on the downer hostess. Lola was brilliant enough to get Nick, then only four, to bed before joining the adults at the table and laughing over ‘silly old mum’. By the time I could move a muscle again and get to my feet, ( I had been motionless for almost four hours, not able to move ) the dinner was over and everyone had left, including the guest of honor – a former boyfriend from the London days who knew my lack of oomph as a pot smoker and hadn’t batted an eyelid or been in the least bit worried. “You shouldn’t smoke, you know better” he chided as he headed off into the night. It was tragic and humiliating and I had missed all the fun. I was furious with myself.
And yet and yet—maybe chemo had toughened me up. And so off we head in my pal’s electric car to a “Pharmacy” on Western. It’s surprisingly neat and clean – not the grubby den of iniquity I have imagined but still I feel completely wicked though my friend reminds me that it’s just been announced that they’re not even bothering to bust these joints any more. Oh, how civilized of them to come to this conclusion. Doctor’s letter and drivers license are handed over and forms are filled out and I start to feel as I’m waiting to see another medico. Not quite sure why we have to wait since there isn’t a soul there on this Tuesday morning but finally we’re ushered into the inner sanctum where my friend is greeted like a long-lost friend by the three smartly-dressed very sober dudes in there. They ask me to describe my preferences and my pal quickly steps in to explain that I’m ‘not a smoker’ – but that I’ve been through ‘cancer, chemo, you name it’ and need a little cheering up.
Any pain, they ask. Nothing dramatic I say, emphasizing that I truly do get stoned with alarming speed and thus want the lightest pot they have.
Any depression, I’m asked? Yes!! Trouble sleeping? Absolutely, a big problem!! And perhaps something to get me going in the morning I suggest, suddenly rather thrilled at the prospect of these precision strains of pot. From under the glass counter jars of pot are produced for me to sniff. They all smell rather lovely but the different aromas are utterly meaningless – I’m hardly a weed sommelier. “Just something light and breezy” I keep repeating. “Nothing too strong!”
They look at me quizzically and I finally suggest “You decide, I trust you”. It’s odd when words come out of your mouth that you simply didn’t plan. Whatever. They are happy to be in charge and I am given three containers with different labels
Morning – “Big Wreck”
Day –“Blue Haze”
Evening – “Sonoma Black”
Not sure I want to spend the day in a ‘blue haze’ but too late she cried… now we are ushered over to the refrigerated section. The stress of my first purchase over, I’m now on a roll. I buy liquid pot – some sort of lemonade soda that boasts a warning “This bottle contains two strong doses”, a pot brownie and a sort of chewie thing that’s ‘like a protein bar with a kick’.
They then ‘gift’ us both with a gorgeous colorful glass pipes – or is it called a bowl? Hand over my credit card, am given my future discount card and it’s out the door with my score like a giggling schoolgirl. Head back to my friend’s house and she shows me how to load the bowl, put my finger on the hole and light ’er up. (Strange, I know –to be such a totally hip sophisticate in so MANY areas – just not the dope-smoking one.)
I take one tiny puff, then another and feel completely fabulous in about thirty seconds. Mainly with the anticipation of having fun -such a novel concept. Am too scared to go home and face the boxes I am meant to be packing up for my big move to new digs in a week so I drive off to the local Thai Massage Parlor for one of the 40 buck sessions I have been meaning to try for the last year. But it’s only once I’ve been directed next door to the Peruvian chicken joint to use their ATM machine and come back and forked over the cash that I remember why I’ve been avoiding a massage. It’s because I can’t lie on my stomach and I am wary of arms being pulled and really only want my head and and legs and feet massaged, lying on my back. My masseuse apparently speaks NO English and I am finally forced to pull up T-shirt and show ghastly lack of breast and mime that it hurts so she will understand. By the time she finally summons the cashier who speaks English and I go through it all again, I feel fairly straight and I start to notice the place is hot and stuffy. A cup of tea and some toast at home is sounding good but I daren’t hurt her feelings so I lie there tenser than I’ve been for quite a while she tries to rotate my arms and do other painful things. But when she starts to walk on my thighs, approaching my stomach, I draw the line and make a run for it – pointing to my watch and pretending I’m late. She gives me a filthy look, realizes she ain’t getting no tip and I’m outa there.
Home Sweet Home. For that much-needed cup of tea and well, it’s downhill from there. I begin a very unfortunate read of the New York Times which has me in a white hot blaze of anger within moments as I read a truly horrendous story about how mammograms are next to fucking useless and how the bastards at the American Cancer Society now admit that the benefits of mammograms have been OVERSTATED. The American Cancer Society now actually admits that mammograms “mainly detect innocuous tumors that will never become life-threatening while they FAIL to detect most of the dangerous tumors.”
Oh REALLY !!!????? That’s great guys…well done. Fantastic work. So you’ve made a bunch of radiologists and oncologists and drug companies and surgeons rich because of INSIGNIFICANT TUMORS THAT HAVE BEEN DETECTED and silly bitches like me have rushed off to be opened up, blasted with chemo, radiation and whatever other shit a bunch of dinosaur doctors can come up with. I’m so angry I have to get the stepladder and reach up to the very top of the kitchen cupboards and find the American Spirits and light up immediately before heading off to pick up the teen from school. I sure as hell don’t dare take a hit of pot and risk freaking out as I ponder whether my tumor would in fact have finally dissolved of it’s own accord or been of no danger whatsoever. HAS THIS WHOLE FUCKING YEAR BEEN AN INSANE WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY AND TEARS??
What can I say? Another night of takeaway, history homework and Ativan. Who knew that the Duke of York both named and used to own all of New York and treated the farmers like shit, charging them huge taxes. Men can be foul. What’s the bet it was a bunch of guys and not a female who decided we ALL NEEDED TO PUT OUR TITS IN THOSE CHARMING MAMMOGRAM torture machines and then get diagnosed with cancerous tumors? When the darling daughter finally gets home exhausted from college at 10.30pm, I give her a Tiger Balm neck massage. And then she gives me one. That’s the kind of fun-loving folk we are.

Am now a mono tit ! nov 15 09

2009-11-15T20:48:00.001-08:00

Monday Oct 5
And so, the former health nut who prided herself on never having spent a single solitary night in hospital (gave birth to daughter squatting on bedroom floor, seriously!) is now packing for another two nights at St Johns and wondering just how many moisturizers I will have the energy to slather on. It’s very drying in hospital rooms and a gal can’t help but feel that a general anaesthetic sucks the life out of both body and facial skin..And here’s the good news, no school lunches or homework to nag about for two days but could there be anything more aggravating than a 7 pm surgery and an entire day without FOOD, water or coffee . A friend comes to collect me and am teensy bit tense and irritable as we fight our way through peak hour traffic from Hollywood to Santa MOnica and I realize that I will in fact be there long after the 5pm check-in time. As a result everyone seems to have clocked off for the day and the place is like a ghost-town…There are two other very sweet friends meeting me inside the hospital and we’re all non-plussed as we wander up and down, take the elevator to different floors and resort to calling out “Hellloooo”, literally, trying to find some humans who might be appropriate to the situation.
Twould be laughable if I wasn’t dying for a vodka and a fag – but finally, passing janitors and floor-cleaners, we come across a dimly-lit admitting desk in an inner lobby straight out of the Shining. The gals there seem cranky and crabby and when they realize that no pre-op bloodwork has been done they start to whisper and I find myself defending Dr Bob and explaining that as he thought my breast was about to explode there simply had not been time for any pre-op niceties and besides, I say, I was here a few weeks ago. I am very healthy – “Except for the exploding tit” snickers one of my pals and they both collapse in hysterical laughter. A humorless scowling nurse hustles me into a pre-op cubicle and her colleague joins in and vitals are taken. I point out that they were taken a few hours ago at Tower Oncology but they ignore me and the usual dull questions are asked about allergies and crap and then they ask who will be driving me home and I say that I am to be admitted for two nights and all hell breaks loose and they insist they have NO knowledge of a sleepover whatsoever !!! They are very indignant about it and I actually scream as one of them, who may or may not be trying to emulate the drug-crazed Nurse Betty on the new TV show, inserts an IV with all the finesse of a panda bear wearing snow mittens. My two pals appear in the doorway as the other nurse repeats over and over that there is NO paperwork that will allow me to stay the night and I keep insisting that Dr Bob said I WAS!! It’s farcical and surreal but TERRIFYING too and both pals are now suggesting, with total candor, that perhaps it’s best “we leave now and come back another day”. I am sorely tempted but Nick is now staying the night at a friend’s and I would hate to waste that. And then I’m asked the dreaded question –“What procedure are you having?” and I have to say in my own words “Well they’re taking it all out – the expander, the alloderm and leaving me …empty.”
And in the nick of time, here comes Dr Bob –or God to the nurses and both women seem to relax. One of my girlfriends, a New York toughie, demands to know why it all seems so chaotic and disorganized. I am mortified. He’s a SURGEON, for fuck’s sake. You can’t demand to know anything. But Dr Bob really doesn’t have any of the arrogance or sense of superiority that so many have and he is totally unruffled and pleasant as he tells soothingly it’s all ‘under control’. (So he lies a little..) He confirms to the nurses that I am indeed staying and that’s that. Indeed, I don’t have the energy to go home and come back another day- even though, Dr Bob has bags under the bags and I ask him when he last ate. He just smiles and attends to paperwork and I search feverishly in bag for a protein bar thinking that may revive my flagging surgeon. Damn. Nothing. I suggest a cup of coffee, prepared to personally run to the nearest Starbucks—but he doesn’t seem tempted. Well just give ME some drugs then, I shout to noone in particular. Am ignored. Pat on some eye-cream and rub lotion on hands and then it’s off with the goddamn ’undies again. I make one last cell phone to call Lola and then, as the girls are now chatting merrily, already charmed by Dr Bob, I try to get their attention for a farewell. But they’re distracted. They want to make sure they have an ‘in’ with someone who’s renowned for doing stunning faces and eye jobs.
It’s so late in the day, no one bothers to put me under before I am wheeled into the operating room which is scary and messy with boxes piled in one corner and the white tiled walls are a little dingy. It’s certainly not as gleaming and groovy as on Grey’s Anatomy. At least there’s a gloved, masked person attending to very large long sharp instruments—but where are my drugs?….Ah here’s the drug man and all I can think about as he chats wearily to me is that it is nearly 8 pm and aren’t all these folk tired and hungry and desperate to get home?? They must HATE me.
And I’m out.
But only till midnight when I come around. This was a quickie—just a 90 minute surgery. I don’t feel so bad—but then I remember – and like some tragic amputee, I feel for where my left breast was… Nada. Flat as pancake. GREAT! Even though I knew it was coming, it SUCKS.
And on top of it all, I am bloody starving and all they can find is a cranberry juice and some dry stale crackers as they give me yet another round of IV antibiotics. I try to tell them that I’ve had my antibiotics as 2pm but have no energy to argue and thus can’t even go to sleep till about 1.30am.
Okay—I’ll admit it. This is no longer fun. The nurses barely come anywhere near me for over two days. The lunch ladies come in and give me food. But two or three times I have to get up and make my own bed so I don’t have cold tootsies. Aren’t nice cheerful nurses meant to do that? One tit and cold feet. Give me a fucking break.
And when two sweet friends do come to visit, it ‘s so tiring having to chat and entertain them that I suddenly have such guilt at the amount of time I spent trying to divert and amuse my old dad during his endless stays in hospital.
By 2 pm on Wednesday I pack up and wander off past the nurses station to meet a friend who has come to pick me up who is waiting in the car park. I don’t even bother to say goodbye to anyone—they don’t seem to care.
It hurts like hell as I, A NEWLY MINTED MONO TIT, schlep all my belongings to the car and head off home. Moments later I make a dash to pick up the teen who grumbles a lot but I can tell is secretly pleased to see his mum. But I’m embarrassed when he gives me a gorgeous giant bear hug back at the apartment and I shrink back slightly so he doesn’t feel the lack of a bosom on one side. Does he even know what has happened? Not important – there’s a heap of homework to nag about.

Doc warns tit may EXPLODE...sun nov 8 09

2009-11-08T16:15:00.000-08:00

It’s now Saturday night.
Vadim has just finished the 90 minute ritual of stabbing me hard before giving me the IV antibiotics, Nick is skateboarding over to a friend’s house in the hood and then they’re off to the Grove to see a movie. My daughter is off to an art gallery opening and they both think I’m tragic for staying in yet again. Their obvious sympathy makes me feel even worse. I wasn’t always this anti-social hermit. But then my phone beeps with a message and it’s one of those alerts attached to my Gmail calendar reminding me that I actually DO have an INVITE tonight…to a friend’s house for a dinner party. Shit. I think I will have to make the effort to go just to prove to my kids that they don’t have a pathetic recluse on their hands.
So off I schlep in foul mood to find several smug married couples and a few old ring-ins like moi. Polite chit-chat and whenever anyone lowers their voice and tries to engage me in conversation about ‘my cancer news’ I very politely and humbly tell them that it’s all totally under control and have never felt better. I know they’re dying to see what growth there is on head under my cute raffia pork pie hat but perversely, I don’t take it off. Fuck’em.
Now the hostess, an actress, takes about an hour explaining to the guests all the renovations she has made to the house---every last one is a shocking mistake and she has rendered the house now virtually unbuyable and unlivable—but would she listen to my clever, cunning ideas? No. Thus, a miniscule kitchen cut off from everything, two front rooms with zero flow and a big back family room devoid of atmosphere or anything resembling decent lighting. I start to yawn and there is nothing but bitter cold white wine. My cosy bed and the pile of Netflix is beginning to beckon. “Get a grip”, I scold myself. Smile and mingle. Exercise your very flabby Chat ‘n Be Witty muscle.
But it’s when she gaily announces twenty minutes later (now getting on for 9.15pm) that the pizza will be delivered ‘very soon’ and then we can all start playing CHARADES, that I start to panic and realize it is IMPERATIVE I find a way TO ESCAPE. Pronto!. Cats, she has three or four cats. That’s it. I am allergic. (I was about thirty years ago – once, I think) So now I run to the bathroom and rub my eyes vigorously and splash them with water and then struggle back out to the throng and my hostess. I sniff a lot, hold tissues to my eyes, and in a sad-eyed whisper, BEG forgiveness but it seems my cat allergies have ‘come back with a vengeance” and I must sadly take my leave.
YES!!!! I am driving back down Sunset deliriously happy—even though I am actually a rather superior Charades player, I just wasn’t in the goddamn mood and I decide that I might be a tad devilish and stop by Pinkberry for a medium passionfruit and then pop next door to the newstand for an early Sunday New York Times. Now we’re talking.
Well first off, there are 14 PEOPLE IN LINE AT PINKBERY and I cannot abide a queue so I head next door to the newsstand and as I pause to look at Star magazine I watch as the last Sunday New York Times is bought from under me. Okay, this isn’t going quite as planned but figure I should just get something achieved and drive a few blocks up Vine to get some gas as am very low. Dangerously low. So low that I run out right on out of fucking gas one and a half blocks later. I manoever to side of road and realize, to my horror, that it is another one of THOSE Saturday nights. The good news is that having run out of gas about 5 times this year I had to fork over and move on up to the Deluxe membership level with AAA so that I can just call up my buddies there any old time when, like the total fuckwit I have become, I run out of gas. I dial my cousin in Melbourne and probably blow $80 chatting while I wait for my saviors to arrive. Then hit the gas station, spend another $80 on my worthless gas guzzling Discovery and head back home, having nailed another fun-packed Saturday night. I hate weekends and I hate Saturday nights and all they represent and the fact that they still have the power to make me feel so sad and alone. But hey, there is an email from Dr Bob waiting for me.
It seems that the one I sent to him two days ago–where I pleasantly but rather pointedly remark on his NOT noticing my infection or treating it aggressively enough has certainly gotten his attention and playing it hard to get in NOT going to see him this week has also proved rather effective. He insists on coming to see ME, the next day, to see my breast for himself. It feels odd but I do sincerely like the guy and well—who can resist a home visit from a cute surgeon in his scrubs. I can’t help but wonder if he put them on just for me. To look professional.
I insist Lola be there for the visit –in case he is mean and there’s some secret doctor network that means he knows just HOW many other surgeons I’ve seen and there’s a big showdown, a shouting match…but no.. he’s sweet and very pleasant. Although, as my cancer therapist (who at $225 a session is only affordable once in a blue moon) later points out, anyone who thinks they might be sued is bound to be pleasant AND very careful NOT to apologize in any way, shape or form. He doesn’t blink when he reveals that he knows I saw the surgeon from Cedars who deflated my expander but does mutter something about the problem of accumulating fluid in the space. He sticks to his upbeat spiel of “Well there’s less redness and I think the antibiotics are working” and then even ventured a “Well I understand that you felt safer with IV antibiotics” which was a bit much given that at this point at least 6 other doctors have said that was the ONLY fucking way to go. Why I can’t say those very words to him makes me feel like a giant wimp the minute he has gone. I was even hoping my feisty daughter might chime in with something that resembles chastisement but she doesn’t. Not her job. It’s tough. He asked if I would PLEASE come to see him the following Friday to see what progress my unruly, disobedient, wayward breast was making. I say yes and he’s gone.
“Well he’s sweet and kind and he cares” says Lola and to cheer me up, drags me up to he heinous Universal City Walk where she’s heard about Zen Zone. A place that hails from Japan where you hand over yet more dough for healthy, brain-boosting cocktails made from exotic fruits and a smidge of medicinal alcohol, an oxygen tube up your nose for energy anti-ageing and if you’re in the mood, a massage. We blow $50, skip the massage and decide that the Universal City Walk is an unacceptable location.
The next week
Is spent waging a losing battle—with my inflamed breast which refuses to go back to normal. Months of antibiotics have been dumped into my system and still the nasty red patch persists where the skin itself is hard and creepy and crepey and just looks like it could be breaking down. I hit Tower Oncology every day to be stabbed and whereas I would once read the Times and try to make notes, now I have resorted to turning on my little TV and watching it like a zombie. I‘m too tired to exercise, I’m shattered from not exercising – it’s a vicious circle I can’t seem to escape. I do take all my supplements and try to think positive thoughts…no, I lie…there are few positive thoughts in my cloudy brain and I begin to fear it will be another slicing open for yours truly. I visit the surgeon from Cedars and he curtly says to make an appointment for surgery – but with no feeling or affection and I feel like an anonymous patient whose name he’s forgotten. (He had forgotten!)
Is he my guy –or do I stick with Dr Bob? Why can’t I make a decision here? This is ludicrous. MY brain hurts from thinking and I’m so bloody pooped but can never sleep and am invariably still awake when Letterman come on and then it’s a quick switch to Jimmy Fallon. I do love the Letterman show where President Obama points out, to folk saying he is being disrespected because he’s black, that he was in fact a black man before he became president and Dave responds with a wonderfully dry, stone-faced “And how long have you in fact been a black man Mr. President? I like that we can now use ‘black man’ again instead of the idiotically pc ‘African American’ moniker.
And so when Dr Bob calls on Thursday and asks if I can pop down to Santa Monica to see him the next morning, I start to say yes—but then realize I have to see both the Infectious Disease guy and the oncologist the next morning. I offer to come in the afternoon but he has a conference and so he begs me to at least email photographs. Reluctantly I ask Lola to do the honors and she takes some photos that actually make it look quite frightening. I send them off and he calls Friday evening and begs me to come in and see him on Sunday at his clinic. He adds, fairly dramatically, that he’s worried my breast might EXPLODE. I kid you not—that’s the word he uses and adds that he is afraid the skin might rupture or EXPLODE as it looks so thin and that he NEEDS to see me for himself.
Sunday Evening oct 4 Pre-emptive Surgery or The Real Deal
I drag a friend with me to meet up with Dr Bob at 6.15pm …it’s already getting dark and everything’s locked up when we get there and it all feels weird and scary and a teensy but unorthodox. I’m ready to head for the hills and just settle for Cold Surgeon from Cedars but no, here’s Dr Bob telling me to come on in –he’s inside. So sweet –he’s popped his pale blue scrubs on and it looks like just a regular consultation, almost. My girlfriend, who’s never seen the breast in question – tries to act cool when I strip off and makes a valiant attempt at asking some of the questions another friend has emailed to her iphone to ask…but they soon become redundant somehow in light of the fact that Dr Bob has actually taken the liberty of already booking me in for surgery the very NEXT day at 5 pm. Either he is genius clairvoyant/mental telepathist who is reading my mind and knows I am on the verge of dumping him as my surgeon and wants to scare me into a preemptive surgery quick smart—or he genuinely thinks I need to be under the knife quick smart! My pal Sheila dutifully asks some questions as I moan about how to logistically plan how Nick will gets to and from school but the darling daughter, despite her crammed schedule as both college student and coffee shop manager will help it happen. She is the best and am secretly thrilled she is breaking up with her boyfriend. He is very sweet but I need my darling girl.

Cancer IS NO FUCKING 'GIFT' IN MY BOOK

2009-11-02T18:21:00.001-08:00

Next Day.
I’m back at Cedars where I spent mucho time for scans back when first diagnosed. No more confusion with the East and West Tower and which of the 82 parking lots to use. No sirree. Am revolted by my own familiarity with so many medical establishments around LA and reminds me of how my whole life revolved around these places in Melbourne as I spent four years trying to keep the enlarged heart of my father beating.
East Tower—into one of those elevators that are beyond crowded. Every floor is lit up. Could I be any more irritable? I DO NOT LIKE BEING ONE OF THE SICK PEOPLE.
3.30 Appointment with Infectious Disease dude. Doctor Sam. Like one or two of the surgeons I interviewed he insists on his female receptionist being present – so that double mastectomy patients won’t make subsequent accusations of sexual harassment or inappropriate touching. AS IF!! What jury would believe a doc hitting on the angled breasts of yours truly.
He politely asks me to ‘disrobe’ but I note rather petulantly that there are no robes to put ON and suddenly feel very modest and hideously exposed sitting on the annoying paper-covered table naked from the waist up.
Apparently, a dark red crimson-colored breast is all an experienced ID needs to see before demanding the name of my oncologist. I tell him and before you can say “WILL I LIVE?’ he’s called my esteemed oncologist Dr O on her cell and is saying
“Lyndall’s had a staph infection for 5 weeks and has only taken oral antibiotics so far. Can she come down right now to start on IV?
And so, just 35 minutes after arriving at Cedars I am forking over a mere $9 to the parking lot guy- my cheapest stay ever. How much DO they make at those Cedars Car parks in a year???
Fifteen minutes later I’m back at Tower Oncology Center, a place I hoped never to set foot in again, despite the kindness of all the nurses and nurse practitioners who pumped me full of cytoxin and taxotere - the heinous chemo drugs from March to June. I recall Buck Henry’s alarming email back at the end of February when I first announced my chemo schedule..”Welcome ! You’re in the cancer club now whether you like it or not—with all us old codgers!” And when I told him I was off to Tower he actually uttered the words “ I’m jealous”
“You’re going to love it there, he insisted. I used to look forward to it. They’re soo nice., They bring you warmed blankets, ladies come round with snacks –(or hand-knitted beanies if you’re going bald) and you can even order meals from about a dozen restaurants.” claimed thefamous fusspot enthusiastically. All true, I discovered and they bring it straight it your numbered recliner chair.
Well my fond memories didn’t match Buck’s but there were friendly familiar faces everywhere. They greet me like a long-lost buddy but also express shock that I’m back. I swipe a few candies from the giant jar they keep as if we were kids getting a shot. I prepare to go and use the machine that I know will produce foul tasting coffee but somehow can never resist but before I can even decide on hot choc or vanilla latte I am being ushered into the massive Chemo Lounge, a massive 3000 sq foot area consisting of several nurse stations and about 40 widely spaced recliner chairs - all with their own TVs and uncomfortable side chairs for the poor old friends/spouses that sit grim-faced and uncomfortable for the 4 hours that most chemo treatments take…Though in my case, the chair was usually empty as Lola found the proximity to Barney’s a tad irresistible and would sprint down there and come back to give her tethered old mum a show and tell.
I’m weighed, vitals are taken(so dull and unnecessary) and I’m down in the chair and hooked up in record time. Do they think I’m ill or something? Just a burst of pre-closing time efficiency I tell myself till my oncologist Dr O comes rushing up, aggressively pulling the hospital-like curtains shut to envelop us in our own rather claustrophobic little cubicle. No verbal greeting. Just a big hug and an uncharacteristically pointed “I cannot believe that surgeon! Why did he let it go this long?” She motions for me to lift up my tank top which I do and her eyes widen a little but before I can ask if she thinks my breast will fall off she chides me for not having come to see her earlier. I am tempted to point out that her scheduling assistant never responded to my email but fear it would sound ungracious so instead –
“Yes I wish I had too…” but here’s the weird thing. It truly had NOT occurred to me to discuss the Flaming Red Tit problem with my oncologist. I guess I thought I was done with cancer treatment, not fully comprehending that my compromised system and thus a susceptibility to infection is all part of the chemo/cancer deal and if I had a brain in my head I would have realized that but chemo has definitely dulled my brain –plus I think that in some corner of my brain I still cling top my former identity as health nut/athlete/gym junkie…and so who needs to check in with their oncologist before surgery is even over?
DR O then proceeds to inform me that –after routine post-surgery antibiotics – an ongoing infection should be treated with oral antibiotics for just 3-4 days before getting aggressive with IV antibiotics. She notes with barely-concealed contempt that I took two weeks of Tetracycline before two weeks of Augmentin followed by a week of Clindamycin.
‘About 21/2 weeks too long” she says and then justifies her claim by painting a very grim potential scenario. “If the infection is allowed to take hold and then really won’t budge, at some point you will have to be opened up, and all foreign objects taken out -ie both the expanders and the alloderm have to be removed. The problem is that then the breast skin tends to stick to the chest wall like superglue and when you try to pry it all apart, the resulting cosmetic effects could be ---well, less than ideal. (Code for HORRENDOUS!)The ID doc had already warned me of this. Funny how Dr Bob had never mentioned it.
“So aggressive treatment as soon as possible is the only way to go. I want you to do IV for two weeks 7 days a week. The IV antibiotics bypass your stomach. I can’t imagine how you feel after five weeks of them. It’s very bad for your system you know.”
“Well yes,” I say suddenly very close to tears as I notice a good-looking man holding his wife’s hand tightly as the nurse inserted an IV.
To think I might have avoided over a couple of weeks of the bloating, diarrhea, toxic exhaustion, depression and sleeplessness due to the oral frigging antibiotics but DIDN’T, makes me very, very sad.
“What do I say to Dr Bob ?” I ask
“Tell him I’m trying to salvage the situation. Use the word salvage.” Another hug and she’s off and I sit there, unable to stop watching the couple opposite. The lovely husband has just brought his wife another pillow and keeps smiling at her and rubbing her arm.
I dread those stomach-churning moments of clarity when both denial and one’s Pollyanna-ish belief that some criminally handsome soul mate will appear one of these fine days and make up for his tardiness by being extra heavenly and sexy come into sharp focus and one realizes it is bullshit and one is very much ALONE. Now and forever. Unless some utterly freakish seventy year-old decides he can go nuts and date someone over 40 which is darn bloody unlikely.. AND I KNOW OF WHAT I SPEAK. TWO OLD BOYFRIENDS, 70 AND 72 RESPECTIVELY, ARE BOTH DATING WOMEN UNDER 35. OKAAAAY??
The nurse returns, pulls out the IV and I’m free again. It’s now 5.45. Nick’s school ends at 6pm. I’ve already texted his math tutor to say “Please tell Nick to hit the lunch tables right after tutoring and to do his homework.. That’ll be the day! Poor child. He’s very social, a bit of a chatty Kathy and loves nothing more than a good gossip at the lunch tables after a long day.
I arrive at 6.05, five minutes after the very strict closing time and there’s my gorgeous tall teenage boy perfectly happy to be the lone student - the center of attention with the afterschool staff and dreading the sight of his dragon lady, whip cracking, homework-enforcing mean mother. I fork over the late fee and we speed off.
There’s approximately 9 minutes till the next tutor arrives at our apartment but Nick is starving so we make a pitstop at the fabulous Cactus Taqueria on Vine (no fast food Taco Bell for us) and then rush home to discover that if I’d checked my texts I’d have seen that the tutor cancelled and then realize in my hurry that I’ve left my wallet at the Taqueria. A weeping, cursing dash back, convinced it would not be there and that I deserve to be flogged or worse. But it’s there. I love Mexicans. If only Nick and I had kept up the Rosetta Stone Spanish CDs I spent a fortune on…I leave them a twenty and rush home ecstatic. My biggest kicks these days come when I find things I have just lost.
Two days later. Saturday morning.
Tower Oncology is shut at weekends…so, in order to have my IV antibiotics they send a nurse to me. In my case a 6’6’’ Russian in jeans and flip flops called Vadim – much to the surprise of Nick who seems faintly irritated by the rare sight of a male on his territory. As it is, he’s like a caged lion in our small apartment, desperate to get out and start cruising the neighborhood with friends but that’s along way off I point out. You still have science flash cards to do and reading and math and I begin my weekly sessions of bribery, begging, maybe some more bribery followed, almost always, by screaming.
“Do your flash cards and then I’ll drive you to drumming in West LA and then to the opposite side of the earth to meet your skateboarding pals ”
We both know I’m wasting my breath. I’ll end up doing the history flash cards because the ludicrous curriculum at my Aussie Church of England Girls Grammar School let me study Latin French, English, Math and Science (supposedly preparing me for a proposed career as a doctor) which means I am staggeringly ignorant and I’ve actually come to enjoy doing the flash cards and learning who folk like Kubla Khan were and what caused the Civil War and stuff like that.
But I digress. MY brain is fuzzy. To the well-known syndrome of Chemo Brain has been added the “I’m permanently buggered from antibiotics” brain.
So here we are in a charming street right next to the 405 where Nick takes drum lessons in some random warehouse and I am on the cell phone in the sweltering heat probably getting brain cancer according to Dr Mercola who inundates me and many other nuts with his medical newsletter just about every day and No, I can’t find my ear device and so my ear will just have to suck up the radiation as I give breast surgeon Dr Peg an update and she says I should just dump Dr Bob and offers to call him on the spot and tell him he’s fired.
“He SHOULD have put you on an IV weeks ago!”
But I hate to hurt anyone’s feelings and what if he’s still the best surgeon in town but just skipped the “How To Treat A Staph infection” classes.
“I’ll call him now. You don’t have to ever speak to him again.” Says Dr Peg very matter-of-factly. They’re a tough breed, these surgeons.
Whoaah! It’s like getting a friend to break up with your boyfriend for you. Not quite. But I tell her to hold off. I need to digest all this. I quickly hang up because I can see that Dr Bob is calling in. Well blow me down if he doesn’t sound all hurt and offended that I have cancelled Monday’s appointment. (This is after both Dr Peg and Dr Sam have called him to tell him about the unanimous decision to put me on much stronger IV antibiotics).
I explain that I will be seeing the Infectious Disease doc again to see how the IV drugs are working.
“Well you need to come in on Tuesday or Wednesday and if the redness is still there I’ll open you up and wash you out and take out the expanders for a day or two and then put them back.”
Well that’s a winning suggestion. Ignore the fact that I am now on IV antibiotics and just hit me with two general anaesthetics and slice me open twice in three days. Wow, who could resist the thrill of being unconscious and then fighting one’s way back out of that lovely anesthesia fog twice in three days.
And by the wayI don’t even understand –nor do I care to frankly- the logistics of how he manages to drag out through a small incision around my aureola a huge whacking great thing called an expander (which can be inflated or deflated by injecting a section of it with liquid through my breast) as well as cutting out all the Alloderm, the dead people’s skin which may or may not be the cause of the infection?
That would leave me with crumpled up skin for a couple of days.
And then, three days later, cutting me open again around my nipple he somehow manages to shove a nice fresh expander back in there. As well as another fresh gob of Alloderm to strengthen my now paper-thin skin?
I know—don’t ask. Talk about a can of worms. My head is spinning and I can barely hear Doctor Bob who is at his son’s baseball game and so I just say
“Well I’ll have to think about that” not daring to even hint that I’m being told to give him the old heave-ho. I politely promise we’ll speak soon even as I feel shocked that he’s so cavalier in the way he talks about cutting me open. I click the phone off as he is still speaking . I CAN NO LONGER COPE. My son and his drumming teacher have been standing outside the car in the sweltering heat. Feeling completely frazzled I open the window and we discuss Nick’s drumming. As he lingers I realize he needs his $60 cash for the lesson-oh and another $60 for last week’s missed lesson. Great. Is it any wonder I am still toting the $20 handbag from Forever 21 that I bought for my 23 year-old daughter who refused to be seen dead anywhere near it on the grounds of it being cheap and nasty. So mumsey sports the cheap bag while daughter dearest has snatched the vintage but divine Prada bag I was keeping for best.
Here’s the rest of my day—as if I needed any further confirmation that I now officially have NO LIFE. I drive Nick from West LA halfway to downtown where they skateboard at Lafayette Park. It’s a big scene. Everyone there looks like a scary gangbanger but it’s broad daylight and he’s 14, nearly 5’ 10’ and has size 13 shoes. I watch through the wire fence for a while and then rush home to sleep. As my head hits the pillow, my phone, always close enough to keep radiating my brain, rings and it’s the teen calling in the sweet, kind, loving totally MANIPULATIVE voice that I am powerless to resist explaining that his friend’s brother can’t make it and would I come now to pick them up and drop off his friend in the Hollywood Hills and then take him to Toluca Lake to spend the night with my ex-husband. Not Nick’s father but the father of my daughter. I adopted Nick and he has no father but occasionally my ex, who likes him a lot, has him for the night and he and his third wife, take him to the Smokehouse, Bob Hope’s favorite where ribs and meat a plenty are devoured.. Wife Number three is twenty years younger than me. Of course. Nick and she have a blast together.
It’s Thursday.
What a fun day. I’ve just had my eighth intravenous antibiotic session at Tower Oncology and been to see my third reconstructive surgeon in hopes of finding someone who ‘feels right’ to replace Dr Bob. And I’ve yet to even fire Dr Bob on account of I’m a pathetic, guilt-ridden moron and also because I want to keep my options open. What if I don’t find anyone better who takes insurance who I feel is ‘right’ for me?
Anyway, they all have different plans of attack but on one thing they agree. If we can’t get the Flaming Red Infected Tit to calm down and the expander and the alloderm have to come out, ‘tis not a good thing. Because to be on the safe side, they would have to stay out for a month, at which point the crumpled skin would shrink and shrivel and almost certainly not recover. Thereupon, best bet might be to lop everything off and do skin grafts with skin taken from my back. Although Surgeon Number two, a woman, did suggest the radical and universally rejected plan of waiting a week, taking out the expanders and in one feel swoop, popping in the permanent implants, sewing me back up and ‘hoping for the best”. My oncologist – and the Infectious Disease doc were not amused by that scenario.
This third plastic surgeon, Dr Keith – let’s see –young , unsmiling, serious, kept me waiting an hour and a half in a frigid overly-chilled Cedars consult room and having already googled him and found out he was someone who excelled in sewing back arms and hands and fingers, I couldn’t help but think he will be somehow less intrigued by my old tit than a chopped off leg needing to be stitched back on….
And yet and yet…I feel so utterly and completely confused, at the end of my rope, sick to death of weighing up my options and basically at my wit’s end that within about three minutes of rather theatrically opening my paper gown to reveal the tragic rack, I have let him have his way with me---which is to say I am letting him deflate my poor, POOR bosom’s expander so that there is ’less stress and trauma” on what is clearly already a traumatized area.
I am squeezing my eyes shut as the doc injects me with a big old needle and the nurse gently pats my balled-up fist. Suddenly, I am outside my body and watching this little scene and it truly is SO surreal that this is what it has come to—virtual strangers injecting a breast within minutes of meeting you. I even feel disloyal to Dr Bob.
And although the look is not good, think deflated balloon where the surface is crinkly and sad, the deflation does produce some relief. Like other surgeons I’ve seen he’d like to see what happens after another week or two of antibiotics and then, yes, he’s all for opening me up and taking out the expander. But is he the doctor for me ?? Is he the surgeon I will dump Dr Bob for? So hard to tell in one quick consultation that began an hour and a half late and that lasted only fifteen minutes. But at least everyone’s on the same page. Things have GONE HORRIBLY WRONG AND UNLESS THERE’S SOME KIND OF MIRACLE, the surgery will basically have to be undone and the crap that’s been put in will have to be taken out. “You will have to be device free for a couple of months.” He insists.
Titless on one side for two months? Excuse me?
He did suggest that smooth expanders were the way to go rather than the ones with a rough surface. The tiny little crevices are a breeding ground for bacteria he says but when I mention it to daughter dearest Lola later she recalls that Dr Bob said the rougher expander meant the skin did not adhere to them in some demented unhealthy way. When I sneakily ask Dr Bob about the smooth ones, he says he has never heard of them. What does this mean? Every last tedious detail takes on more meaning.
I BORE MYSELF TO DEATH AND DON’T CALL BACK THE FRIENDS I have because I am dull and self-obsessed and have little good news but some of them are even more boring than me –especially when they tell me “Well you sound FANTASTIC ” Oh yeah?? or “I’m sure it’s all going to work out really well.”
Oh really??
“In six months you’ll be good as new.”
Is that a FACT?
or this one today…”You know, I haven’t called but I really do have your back cos whenever I pray, I pray for you.” OH JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP. And if I ever read about one more jerk saying that CANCER WAS A GIFT, I will personally punch them.
WHAT SORT OF FUCKING GIFT IS IT, PRAY TELL. I’ll tell you what a gift is… a gift is a new Prada bag, a $10,000 gift certificate to Barney’s, a gift certificate for a massage, a lovely orchid, very expensive perfume or something of that goddamn nature. NOT CANCER. And for what’s it worth, I am no different, certainly not gentler, nicer, kinder--I am already nice!!! And my priorities?? Well yes, they may BE A LITTLE DIFFERENT...now I think I may put more emphasis on being BITTER AND TWISTED. (Ah, feel better now).
But of course I am nothing but polite to all these deeply irritating souls who just don’t get that a simple, mundane expression of sympathy would be so appreciated …like ”You poor old thing’ or I’m going to be dropping by with some goodies/groceries….but it’s okay. Folk get nervous to be around sick dopes going through surgeries and think that instead of dropping off the Greenblatt’s Chicken and Vegie Soup, (which they’ve promised about 8 times) they can just substitute it with an email about Kathy Freston’s Reasons To Be A Vegan post…You know, I could be as happy and glowing and healthy looking as Kathy Freston if I was married to a zillionaire and had my own fucking chef to cook tasty, anti-oxidant packed grub. Kathy Freston bugs me. Entire world bugs me. And moments later I am filled with monumental self-loathing for being such a ninny. I’m not blind, deaf or paralyzed so clearly am just whining ungrateful jerk. And those penetratingly negative feelings have probably just proved enough of a catalyst for new cancer tumor to have formed. I CAN’T WIN.

Health Food hell

2009-10-25T22:19:00.001-07:00

So---the next two weeks. A lot of draining goes on of fluid now collecting in something called a seroma...a pocket that collects when you remove breast tissue leaving space, not unlike empty closets or drawers for things to collect... and more antibiotics than CAN BE POSSIBLY BE GOOD FOR those crucial flora in my gut....So a lot of time is spent at Erewhon (now that I've felt obliged to boycott Wholefoods since Mr. Wholefoods is opposed to a public option for Health Care) asking for THE most effective and thus expensive probiotics for my stomach. The pale, wan salesperson somehow lures me over to the weirdo counter where bizarre, strange drinks called things like Motor Oil Maco and Seaweed Soup are recommended on an individual basis. The pony-tailed anorexic behind the counter asks for a quick health history and his eyes start to bulge in a very unpleasant fashion as I tick off cancer, surgery, chemo, more surgery, staph infection and antibiotics. He looks up a book before telling me to settle down while he whips up something "really healing and beneficial".
Five minutes later he pours almost black goop into a large paper cup and whacks on a price sticker that reads--I kid you not- $24.95.
I think of doing a runner but just smile weakly and push my trolley to the checkout. I take a large sip and have to report that it tastes fouler than anything I've ever had the misfortune of tasting.
"This is vile" I say to the pretty checkout girl..."I think I may vomit."
"Did you get it over there?' she asks nodding her head towards the bar. I nod back.
Lowering her voice, she whispers conspiratorially "Do you not want to pay for it?"
"I'd be THRILLED not to pay for it" I respond, sensing some long-standing feud between her and the pony-tailed dude.
"Good, I'll tell him it's bad" and she tosses it in the bin instantly.
Perversely I start to wonder if it just might have been the magic cure-all for infection. Too late.

Week drags on—friends stop calling for most part and I just spend a bloody fortune on twice weekly Vitamin C infusions, three more trips to the oxygen joint where I have discovered the answer to claustrophobic nightmare side it...Delve into my bedside drawer which now contains about 27 different things to make you blotto---from Ativan to Xanax, Lunesta, Ambien, Vicodin.. Well, you get the picture and in fact half a Xanax really does the trick in the Oxygen Hyperbaric Chamber. It’s niiiice.

The days truly blend into each other. I try--but I can't fight the overwhelming, utterly horrifying exhaustion that comes over me at least two or three times a day. I find myself leaning on the kitchen counter, unable to even stand without leaning as I wait for the kettle to boil or as I butter toast.
It reminds me of my mother. The last two years of her life she just had no energy. None. I remember my shock the first time I noticed it on one of my annual trips back to Australia. She just leant on the counter every time she tried to cook something or make a cup of tea. It made me cry then when I realized just how tired she was. It makes me cry now. She was dead a year later.

And then the two weeks of the antibiotic, Augmentin, is up and it's back to Dr Bob.
I am convinced he will now send me to an Infectious Disease doctor as my breasts look almost exactly the SAME. Instead he hums and ha's and talks vaguely of perhaps opening me up to take out the expanders and wash me out.
So I nervously suggest that perhaps I should go to see an ID doctor and he actually listens.
That is to say he doesn't actually send me to see him. But he does say "I know an ID and I'm going to call him right now."
And he does so--there and then- somewhere else so I don’t hear what he says but he does come back and informs me the ID has suggested I go onto another antibiotic for a week called Clindamycin.
Now I must just state that I am not the shy and retiring type --many pals would claim that the exact opposite but here's the thing --I just DID NOT have the energy to ask why he was not sending me to see an expert in the field of flaming infected breasts.
This particular antibiotic makes me feel like everything else I've been through is kindergarten -these pills make me almost comatose. I sleep almost every day, all day. Take my son to school and come back home to bed. Swear every day that I will go down to the gym in my building but cannot do it. Impossible.
Anything but takeaway is almost impossible. Trying to help the teen with the endless amounts of homework makes my head hurt. Badly. Gives me a blinding headache and I am irritable and foul and barely human.

One week later. (2pm appt with Dr Bob)
It is five weeks today since Surgery. I swallow the last vile Clindamycin with a chocolate shake I have made for Nick and myself in lieu of a nutritious breakfast. We’re incredibly late. Somewhat justifiably as Lola has broken up with her boyfriend and she stayed over and slept in my bed last night and woke me at 6 am as she rummaged in my closet for some cosy piece of cashmere to pop on for her early job, reappearing ten minutes later to report a dead battery and beg her ambien junkie/zombie of a mother if I would drive her to the coffee shop where she has to open up at 6 and ‘prepare stuff ‘ before opening the doors at seven.
It’s still dark outside and now that I’m here, crippling fatigue aside, I’m suddenly fearful about my daughter entering through this squalid back alley entrance on her own. I accompany her inside to make sure there are no burglars waiting to pounce. Cannot believe how brave she is and suddenly guilty and bitter that I never had a rather menial but impressive job like this opening up a hipster Melrose coffee shop frequented by freshly CAA-signed young screenwriters and many other wanna-be’s. I marvel as she whirls into action – turning on the coffee machine, putting out the pastries and generally showing a speed and high energy efficiency that hitherto has not been demonstrated in my kitchen or home. Eggs are cracked, benches are wiped, glasses are polished and deeply impressed I wonder who has entered my daughter’s body. I beg for a latte but she’s too busy and so I rush home and crash back to bed, not even hearing the 7.15 alarm.
Drop the teenager off at school and ominously the head master who greets the kids every single day, approaches my car.
“Say good morning to Mr Darryl and look him in the eye “ I hiss to Nick as he lumbers out of the car and naturally Nick looks away and grunts something unintelligible at Mr Darryl who can never quite hide his displeasure at Nick’s ridiculously long hair and skintight hot pink girl’s jeans. (He prefers a nice girl jean – so much tighter, cheaper and more colorful than boy jeans usually and I am secretly proud that although his sexuality is not in question he is quite boldly foppish in his dressing. I wave at Mr Darryl and speed off to Santa Monica for the zillionth time this year.
Fed up with paying $14 every time I see Dr Bob. I park half a block away in the Funeral Parlor Carpark and run in for what seems like my 900th checkup. As I undress and put on the seersucker gown I take a good look in the horrifying but appropriately-lit exam room. My left breast is still a very angry red after 5 weeks of swallowing enough antibiotics to stop an angry rhino in it’s tracks.
Dr Bob enters and like some robotic hooker, I open my robe as I greet him. He pokes. It hurts.
“Still red” I say.
“Yes but a little better” he counters
“Well” I begin but trail off …. Why is it so difficult to argue with a surgeon?
“Perhaps a little but it is still red. What about seeing an ID guy?
Silence. He takes notes.
“Maybe IV antibiotics are the answer at this point ..”
“No I think another 5 days of Clindamycin is the way to go..”
Really? REALLY??? Just slide into my sixth week of antibiotics even though they’ve made ME feel sick, toxic, beyond the valley of depressed and exhausted but have NOT even begun to tame the blazing hot, flaming red breast?
I feel beaten but using every last drop of energy I have left I manage to ask
“And you don’t think it makes sense to check with the Infectious Disease doctor you spoke to last week to see what he says?”
“No, try these again, “ he says, handing me the prescription.
“Okay” I say meekly and start to get dressed.
I reach the Funeral Parlor’s empty half acre parking lot to find that these godly Christian bastards have called the towing company and yes indeedy, they’re hooking up my car!
I whip out a twenty and make a tearful plea to please, please NOT tow ..
“I’ve just been with my cancer surgeon and he kept me waiting forever..”
“Fifty dollar call-out fee” interrupts the slimy mean guy.
I whip out another thirty bucks and he unhooks my ride. Fifteen seconds later as I speed back towards Hollywood I boldly dial my breast surgeon Dr Peg and leave a message. Apologizing profusely in advance for calling when I know how busy she is, I ask if she thinks a sixth week of antibiotics is the best way to go at this point.
Eureka! She calls me back before I have hit the 405 and asks if she’d heard correctly. I STILL had an infection?? I was to call an infectious disease doctor immediately and she gave me the name and number of the same ID doc that the surgeon at the Hyperbaric Oxygen Center had given me three weeks ago. I called and was told they couldn’t fit me in for 2 weeks but moments later Dr Peg texted to say she had made an appointment for the very next day.

Discover Infection....so amusing

2009-10-20T10:39:00.000-07:00

Wake up feeling feverish and my chest feels like it's on fire. Try to be good mother and make school lunch but can I be really frank? Making school lunches bores me rigid and he never likes them and so I hurl a few snacks together, give him the six bucks for school lunch, hand him his morning drugs (Adderall for the ADD and Accutane for skin plus some multi-vites!) plus his bowl of Cheerios and milk that is eaten in the car with towel on lap and off we head to school, late as usual. Johnny Depp's children's bodyguards - two gigantic black gentlemen who hang out at school next to their equally humongous black Escalade all day, snap their heads round to look as I loudly roar to a halt. I smile insincerely and wave as Nick cringes, swearing under his breath. They stare back stonefaced and off I zoom to Starbuck's for my morning Venti. Too tired to even wait for my order in a standing position. I have to sit- the sweat pouring off me.

I call Doctor Bob. In surgery all day. I call his cell. No response.
So called my breast surgeon Dr Peg who happily was available in one hour. (Officially she is not the doctor in charge at all--it is the Reconstructive Surgeon but what's a mid-reconstruction sheila to do ?? Be your own advocate and call the next surgeon on one's list- the one who made the first cut and scooped out all the breast tissue. She's also the one who first gave me the staggering news that I had invasive breast cancer. She did my lumpectomy. I like her. She's a woman. I wish she did reconstruction as well.

Back home to hit the hay for half an hour before dragging self off again for...?? .Gosh, how unusual. Another doctor visit. WHAT a scintillating life.
My very beautiful breast surgeon takes one look at practically luminous red breasts and declares
"Jesus, you've got an infection.!"
At this moment Dr Bob calls me back and when I see it's him calling I ask Dr Peg, somewhat panicked, what I should say.
I AM ACTUALLY FEELING GUILTY THAT I have gone behind his back as it were to get a second opinion on my now dark red heat-radiating boobs.
She just takes the phone and tells him very matter-of-factly that I have an infection and need antibiotics. Okay, great. But is he going to be upset with me I keep wondering, like a nervous schoolgirl. Yes, it's insane but not totally...
After all, Dr Bob is the one who swears he will deliver beautiful breasts again and I am feeling somewhat captive and inclined to keep things jolly and pleasant.
And so, when he calls me an hour later before I have even collected the meds from Rite Aid, insisting I come to see him tomorrow, I am somewhat miffed and desperate to ask why the HELL he did not even diagnose this infection ! But instead I simply ask meekly if we can make it monday as I actually have plans tomorrow. No, not a lunch or a high-profile meeting, not even a quick guilt-ridden trip to Fred Segal or Barney's - but a couple MORE doctor appointments.

No, am not ludicrous hypochondriac.
Well actually--maybe I am. Cancer, a lumpectomy, chemo, a double mastectomy and a nice staph infection WILL turn a gal into a bit of a scaredy cat.
And concern (outright terror comes later) now spurs my sluggish brain into recalling that I should be checking in with the fabulous Dr Cynthia in Santa Monica who has been giving me 90 minute Vitamin C infusions during chemo as well as various supplements. Unlike the vast majority of doctors on Planet Earth she is not a total dinosaur and seems to have grasped the readily available knowledge that nutrition, supplements etc can actually prevent illness and promote wellness. Yes, that's it, she's a wellness practitioner. She believes in homeopathy and even blood tests to see what heavy metals might have seeped into one's system.
So I call to tell her about the infection and she says to come in the next morning for another Vitamin C infusion and suggests that I then call a joint in Beverly Hills to book a session in a Hyperbaric Oxygen chamber. Really. And that it can help with post-surgery healing as well as infections.

FRIDAY
So, was greeted like long lost buddy at Dr Cynthia's and before long, stabbed with a needle for the 980th time in 9 months am resting in yet another recliner chair with whopping great bag of Vitamin C plus some other goodies--Vitamin B and some homeopathic tinctures as well.
It's lovely and restful for about 90 seconds and then two things invariably happen--the Vitamin C gives you a raging thirst AND makes you want to pee in a bad way, but one becomes a master at putting down one's Starbuck's, the Times, popping down the footrest and keeping one's arm totally straight as one manoevers the IV stand past lots of sets of feet belonging to annoyed people who never seem to need to take a pee as they sit lined up in this ridiculously narrow room. The stand and I have to get water from the water cooler, then go to the bathroom and do what one does, one-handed....and back again. Exhausting. And this is the repeated at least three or four times in the 90 minute procedure as I guzzle water and yawn trying to ignore the blazing row that now rages inside my noggin...The wholistic side of me is convinced good healing stuff is flowing through my veins but the skeptic in me screams out "Waste of bloody time and money!"
Speaking of time and money the internal furore now reaches new peaks as I drag my tired body back down Wilshire Boulevard to the aforementioned Hyperbaric Oxygen place and have to strip once more and show my tits to the admitting doctor who happens to be a very nice breast surgeon from a few floors above who is filling in for the doctor/owner of the place who's on vacation. He takes the proverbial 'one look at my tits' and tells me that the minute I have finished with my oxygen treatment I must call his friend, an Infectious Disease doctor at Cedars and have MY INFECTED BREASTS looked at.

I thank him for his concern and take the name and number he has frantically written out for me-offering to make the call himself- and again, the cynic in me says that perhaps he is just a germ freak--or his pal needs new patients and I head out to the room where the oxygen chamber lies there like --well like something astronauts would practice in at NASA or--- just like it did in that famous photo from the 80's where Michael Jackson lies in one in an attempt 'to enhance and extend life'. No, it didn't work out so well for him but then again, he was nutty and did not have infected boobs.
So, wearing a little cloth robe I hop on the gurney type thing, am given lots of information about pressure and having to swallow so my ears don’t pop and if I start to feel real pain then I must tap on the thick plastic ceiling above my head etc etc But I tune out as I suddenly start to panic about the claustrophobia side of things.
But I'm too chicken to get out of it all now and have already handed over my credit card.
So a button is pressed, whirring sounds begin and I wish my son was here. He would enjoy it.
And then the end of the giant tube is shut and a deafening silence descends.
Shit, I think I want to pee again and I truly loathe myself right about now for getting into this insane pickle. Is it time to start banging on the ceiling.
No, hang on, the jolly fat attendant looms into view above me holding a phone . He starts to speak to me from outside the space ship. I can hear him and somehow he can hear me.
Very sophisticated technology for the 80's.
He asks me what channel I want and I spot a TV far far above me, faintly visible through the thick plastic. I go for CNN and then lie there for an hour hideously uncomfortable. For one thing, CNN, I now realize, repeat their headlines every few seconds.
Desperate to pee, my back starts to hurt and I have to swallow every ten seconds because of the pressurized space ship I am in and there are stabbing pains in my poor old innocent ears...Finally, about 50 minutes in, I can bear it no longer. I will pee in the space ship and my back is burning and I am sort of freaking out.
I tap frantically. Nothing. I can hear music coming from behind me.
More tapping.
Nada.
Has everyone left? Maybe there was an earthquake and I won't be found for 48 hours.
God I hate my life.

Eventually the jolly fat one appears, still bopping to the music he has clearly been grooving to in the back-- and starts to speak but he has forgotten the phone and I cannot lipread. Try to stay calm.
He realizes and disappears as he grabs the phone.
'I want to get out NOW PLEASE!" I plead...and he then informs me that because I am the equivalent of 3000 feet under water or 30,000 or something (I thought it was space ship, not a friggin SUBMARINE) it will take him at least ten minutes 'to bring me up'.
"But I am up. I am up here in the bloody bastard room like YOU" I want to scream but just grin like a fool and beg him "Please come back in ten minutes. Don't forget"
Five minutes which seems like five hours later, wet with perspiration, I tap again.
"Am I up yet?"
Apparently I am still a few thousand feet underwater.

And then I reach dry land and the gurney starts to slide out and I jump off the gurney before it is even fully out. I've never been happier to reach dry ground EVER.

The skeptic in me laughs maniacally at the goody-goody self-healing side of me.
"Well the stress of that little adventure will have cancelled out any good it might have done you".
Hard to argue with myself on that front.

I am practically hyper-ventilating at the exhaustion/cost factor of it all and it suddenly hits me HARDER than usual that of course none of this alternative wholistic type shit is covered by Blue Cross. They only cover the hard-core drugs of course.1 Bastard Insurance shysters. Big BLOODY PHARMA. Big Pharma Fucks. And if I see one more TV ad for some foul drug with nine hundred hideous side effects I will scream. How can anyone take the FDA seriously when they let all these ludicrous ads on the airwaves which have categorically made people ask for more and more prescription pills.
I head to a 7/11 for a nice coke before I can swallow one of these new whacking great big hard-to-swallow antibiotics and now on my way to school to collect the teenage son and head straight to his orthodontist to check on his full mouth of braces before swinging over to his dermatologist for his monthly check-up and blood test to make sure his poor little liver is coping with the Accutane. This is insanity.

2009-10-15T18:54:00.000-07:00

Next Check Up..

Shit ! Doctor Bob says that until the drains are less than half full for two days in a row I have to keep them in--so, that of course is fantastic news..NOT !
Two stupid bags hanging from my body for several more days. I should have lied about the amount of fluid. But this is what happens to people who don't read the Home Care instructions very carefully and inadvertently tell the truth.
Beyond depressing but I try to be a cheerful, upbeat patient as one does with a doctor, especially a surgeon who -and it's really just hitting me now - I will be seeing every week or two for the next three to four months as he puts dirty big needles into my breasts to expand the expanders before finally opening me up again to replace the expanders with permanent implants. At this rate it'll be 2010 before sex could even be a remote possibility. Literally.
I have so many questions - but try to keep them to a minimum especially when my opening salvo "Do you think my breasts will ever look less horrifying?" is met with a chuckle and "You're such a character!"
My next attempt, said even more pleasantly (I swear!) is "But has anyone ever looked this bad at this point?" meets with silence and the doc asks the lovely young nurse for more tape to bolster my misshapen breasts. Did he hear? Not sure but best not repeat it I feel in case it sounds accusatory.
It is just so odd the way one feels one feels one HAS to treat doctors with kid gloves and the utmost respect---After all, it's my ONLY body and my only life. Oh and let me be very clear about this....former questions to doc were not out of line. My breasts are NOT a good look. One breast is twice as big as the other and has a strange egg-shaped lump veering out crazily towards the armpit whilst old leftie (which was innocent and had just one old benign tumor ) is like a flattened pancake and has a downward-facing nipple....
BUT, lest you think I give my breasts no credit ---I have to admit that my main fun in life now is when - somewhat akin to a nervous tic, I compulsively push the expanders in and out so that they 'pop', simultaneously if I get the timing right -with a satisfying little "POOLOOP" sound.... good times.

Next couple of visits....
Okay, I am going to spare you the truly and deeply tedious details but suffice it to say that a couple of days after my drains have been taken out---my breast swells like a balloon and the doc has to get out the horse needle and drain my breast since fluid is collecting right around the underside where the cadaver skin--politely called Alloderm- has been placed. Now this is a day or two after another horse needle has injected MORE fluid into the expander...so- and this is where my drug-addled brain loses the plot-I have been expanded and then drained- but in different spots though they feel like the same spot but since I am far too squeamish to look--what do I know...but none of it is really explained properly and I am tired of asking questions and think that perhaps ignorance is bliss.
I just know I am like human pin cushion and keep asking why my breast gets redder and angrier looking by the day. But he says it "all looks fine -- just fine " and who am I to argue.
Just know I am feeling BAD--- really bad, like "Can I actually stay awake and alert enough to keep driving the car down Olympic Boulevard?
Whoops, just ran a red light camera and GOT yet another bastard bunch of BAD points- as I speed home from the doc to my beckoning bed.
I suspect that maybe actually I'm really sick when I don't even have the energy to nag at my gorgeous but very distracted son about his homework every ten minutes. Then I know something's wrong when I lie in bed - completely lacking the energy to get up and make the breadcrumbed chicken breasts I had PROMISED TO COOK after three nights of takeaway. Was deeply grateful when child offered to microwave some mac n cheese. Organic, natch.

At about 8 pm he goes down to the underground car park to search for his special 'composition' book in the car and I wonder whether a quick nicotine hit will give me the energy to help him with the mission statement for a fictitious charity he has just told me he has to write for English and I swiftly turn on the stove’s gas burner to simultaneously light a stick of incense and my cig....and then in a flash of brilliance decide to get a protein hit with a quick spoonful of peanut butter.
Uh oh---I hear Nick outside the front door putting his key in the lock and grabbing a paper towel to wipe some tell-tale ash from the counter, I then make a lightning dash to my bathroom where I shut the door, take a last drag and spray the non-aerosol air freshener. (Even a very tolerant 14 year-old son draws the line at his cancer victim mother smoking)

I slip out a few moments later feeling positively lightheaded and dash to Nick's room to see if there is any way humanly possible to help him with the essay- other than by actually WRITING THE WHOLE THING MYSELF. I lie on his bed waiting for him to find his agenda and the essay directions.....that'll be twenty minutes..
But right about then I smell something burning and then there's a DEAFENING ALARM going off....is it our smoke alarm--or the building alarm - or both?
Well okay, I don't actually recall turning off the gas burner and I MAY have flung the paper towels in the general proximity of the stove and well, in any event, the roll of paper towels is now very much ALIGHT on top of stove!
I shriek like a banshee as my brave darling son comes to the rescue, grabs the frying pan scoops it up and manages to hurl the flaming missile into the sink before turning off the burner on the stove and turning to give me an accusing look.
"What did you do??" he shouts.
"NOTHING! " I shout back as I grab a towel and start waving it under the alarm. But it doesn't stop and as Nick opens the front door to get some air we both note that lights are flashing, the alarm is loud enough to reach the Valley and we see residents fleeing to the Stairs carrying small dogs and cats and crying babies in their arms. A huge German Shepherd practically runs me over as I rush out to look.
“Oh I bet it's a false alarm,” I mutter guiltily--though it does seem like a weird coincidence.

Any thoughts of sticking it out soon leave my pounding brain---This alarm is PREPOSTEROUSLY LOUD and so I reluctantly don Uggs, grab keys and follow my son who is thrilled to be leaving homework to join the rushing throng of residents hurrying down the stairs. I decide on the elevator but find that a huge iron door has appeared out of nowhere and shut off access to the foyer where the elevators are...so yes, even I have to backtrack and use the bloody stairs.
And there they were - the entire population of this enormous apartment building gathered at the back of the building. But look, it was a lovely hot evening, a brilliant red sun was setting (which would otherwise have been missed.)..there were little kids in the pj's running round and shrieking like wild things, overexcited teens texting their pals and people laughing and cracking jokes as they petted each other's pooches. EVERYONE WAS HAVING A BLAST. Okay so a few cats in their carry boxes hissed a little and one new mother with screaming infant seemed a tad stressed but generally there was a sense of bonhomie- especially when about ten burly firemen arrived and everyone cheered. And there was no proof it was my fault.

Whatever--people were back in their apartments 25 minutes later, I had not been charged with arson and I still had to write the bloody mission statement as Nick was way too frenzied now to focus. I practically hallucinated as I wrote the last sentence at 11.35, Nick now snoozing happily in bed.
I empty the fucking drains and it's me for the hay.

Plastic Surgery....but not the good kind!!!

2009-10-14T22:32:00.001-07:00

HAVE JUST HAD A DOUBLE MASTECTOMY….So some kind folk email me and ask "How's it going ?"
Well just fine and dandy I say...though part of me wants to shriek-- It's a miracle and God knows why or how I am here writing and utterly alive!!!.I mean, WAS the combo of a jet-lagged jet-setting plastic surgeon and a sleep-deprived 'new mother of triplets' breast surgeon the IDEAL combo for me and my bilateral skin-sparing, nipple-saving mastectomy with right lymph node removal and then reconstruction ?

For instance, the morning before the operation...there's the glam good-looking young reconstructive surgeon Dr Bob yawning insanely, eyes barely open and boasting of two weeks of wild nights in Ibiza till 5am every night on his vacation, which had ended just ONE day earlier ---as he asked me "Are we, (yawn, yawn), saving the nipples or not??(yawn, yawn)..I don't remember"--- and as he madly scans notes clearly trying to remember who the hell I was and what he was meant to be doing for about 6 hours the next day, I helpfully offered to call Dr Peg, the ridiculously gorgeous breast surgeon on her cell to ask if she was indeed saving the nipples since it was really her decision in her initial three hour stint before the Big Guy took over.....Alas, I couldn't hear her answer when I reached her 'cos the 6 week old twins were screaming in the background like banshees and she sounded croaky and SHATTERED and crabby...."Here, speak to Dr Bob" I said enthusiastically, since I had chosen, with questionable wisdom, two surgeons who HAD NEVER WORKED TOGETHER before...(most mastectomies are done by a team that have worked together but after meeting a heap of doctors, I had decided I liked these two, both stars in their fields, and had hoped, in vain as it happened, that they might have at least met OR spoken before this) .....but as I looked up I realized that Dr Bob had slipped out of the room....probably to get a hit of coke....so I hopped out in my gown to try and find him--but he was nowhere to be found and I figured well....they'd meet tomorrow in the operating room, and Peg had already hung up anyway..!
Hmmm. sSould I run for the hills now I asked myself, but faltered as Dr Bob reappeared, smiling.
....Suffice it to say that later in the day, jetlagged myself at about 2pm, the scheduled time for my surgery the next day--I had a mini panic attack and called Dr Bob's office and said I was NOT HAPPY about the fact that the two surgeons had never met OR spoken to discuss my case--NOT HAPPY I repeated a FEW times... and I'm afraid I was probably even fouler than that and eventually Dr B called back to try and calm me down...but he sounded like he'd just swallowed 6 valium or shot up, so was not remotely soothed by the call!
In fact, decided to pop out and buy a LOT of goodies (Chinese food, vodka, chocolate) to stuff into my face before the midnight deadline....and probably should, in the spirit of total candor, confess that realizing, as I stood in a tragic Trader Joes line that I would never have sex again, I made a quick detour on the way home to the Hustler store (they WERE having a half-off sale!) and purchased a couple of vibrators--well three actually--they were SO cheap. But coming out and finding some foul west Hollywood parking inspector giving me a dirty big ticket was VERY upsetting in my fragile state, and when I found that whipping off my trendy trilby to reveal bald head--"Hellooo, CANCER!!!' and then pointing out the Disabled Card dangling from my mirror did not inspire him to tear up ticket, (was in front of a driveway okay??) I wept, slammed doors, drove off like bat out of hell and was forced to run into 7/11 for some lovely American Spirit, poison-free fags.

An hour or two later my darling daughter came over to calm down mama....and SCREAM about the cigs and as I wondered aloud if I shouldn't have perhaps gone with one of the BREASTS ONLY dudes in Bev Hills (surgeons who only deal with breasts and nuttin else), Lola googled up Doc Bob's slick website and showed me all the stunning face lifts he also does and said "Mum, for god's sake, get a grip, faces are harder than tits...he'll be fine!" Why the hell I hadn't bargained for an eyelift as well while I was under I could not comprehend --I mean why not at least wake up with SOME part of your anatomy looking better than before--that would be a bonus, right ?? !! Note to self--am a MORON!

At 2am -after one last mouthful of cheese on toast and one last secret cig in the bathroom (I had found where Lola hid them)--staggered into bed, guilt-ridden about nicotine.....But now, just wish I had taken a photo of my rather stunning pre-op bosoms.

Anyway---I did survive the massive 8 hour saga--(they cruelly intubated me to make sure I would)...despite the South African anesthesiologist being mean and only giving me about one and a half seconds of fun before I was OUT--I had begged for a few minutes of euphoria and the 'good Michael Jackson stuff' but he was not amused--a real pill who had even tried to trick me with a casual "So how was breakfast this morning?" as he casually wrote some notes...

Both surgeons were LATE by the way. Over one hour !! It couldn't start till both were there and so I had to lie in dull room till 3pm (peak jet lag time for those recently returned from Spain !!) while annoying nurses changed shifts and asked the same deeply aggravating questions like "What is your understanding of the procedure you are having today? Please tell me in your own words.. "
Foul curses under my breath with Lola giving me filthy looks and the one to whom I said "My understanding of it all?? Two people attacking me who have never met !" then got all uppity...and discovered that I hadn't taken my undies off as instructed for the friggin bloody buggery catheter ! She was really vile and said nothing could proceed till I took them off. Bitch !! So, a cold bloody bum as well as everything thing else, including white tight spanx like tights to stop swelling. Like HOW?? (NOTE--LOLA is cranky now cos she says I stole these bits from her recollection of it all and that I am drug-addled fooI ---and don't remember all this but I really do)

Three days in hospital---all a blur and guess what? Doc Bob took off on holiday again the next morning and the breast surgeon had a three day weekend to hang with her twins, thus alarming several nurses who were shocked to discover there were NO instructions...but darling Lola had grilled them both when they each finished surgery the night before and was very in charge and together.....I barely remember a thing except for the big giant white Labrador some old couple brought in for 'healing purposes' who was trained to get up on the chair next to my bed --but NOT trained to show a whit of interest in me as I patted him. He wouldn't even look me in the eye--bastard!

Drug-addled days lurking in bed and stumbling round the apartment. I have rediscovered Jon Stewart and am in love with him....
--till the brilliant, sweet divine Lola Nightingale (who has looked after her mom so DIVINELY and well) took me to see Doc Bob ( finally back from his mini-break) yesterday and he announced that the witty ol’ drains have to stay in another week- cos there's so much bloody BLOOD still flowing from the wounds down lovely tubes into two huge plastic bags that are pinned to the witty mastectomy bra contraption I am wearing.....drains that unless you are some kind of friggin technician and close so they are airtight and very, very carefully shut them, tend to leak out onto your very best 800 thread count sheets you have been saving for fab hot date--or, in my case, the day you return from tit surgery. Also, note to sheilas who may have to endure this gorgeous surgery one day soon...when you wake up so out of it and practically comatose from so many drugs and sleeping pills that you decide you HAVE to defy doc's orders and drive yourself just a couple of blocks to Starbucks for delicious Venti Latte, then make sure bloody pouches are neatly tucked into sweat pants so that other folk walking in don't look at you, look down and then practically gag before politely looking away...

As I was saying....the Doc took the sticky bandages off the revoltingly lumpy excuses for tits and inspected the tragic fading blackened nipple that may or may not survive---his eyes GLUED THE ENTIRE TIME TO LOLA'S lovely FACE. He then started to ignore me as if I really was a disfigured old mother and grill the stunning Lola. Before long they were discussing Lola's life in detail, her college, her interests, living conditions. boyfriend etc.....
and as Lola says "He was giving me the eye and it was definitely the sex eye..." He finally got a grip and turned his attention back to sad old mum sitting there half fucking naked...and to really cheer me up he told me grisly details of what he found in my chest cavity...NO muscle for a start--it had been cut out by previous butcher/plastic tit guy and he ‘fessed up to fact that I have dead people's skin in my chest now to support forthcoming tits...Lola claims she told me after the surgery but I told her I wish she wasn't a liar..

I then asked him if he thought Dr Peg used airbrush makeup cos her skin is so flawless and whether he thought she has used Botox but Lola, deciding we WERE ALL on drugs, very promptly tried to refocus the discussion to healing, bandage changing and when the next procedure will be.

Okaaaay---enough rambling for now--time for more sweet, kind pills....Decide I love both my surgeons and it's off to sleep and dreams of running in fields bare breasted...or something.....about to have sex maybe ???
One Week Later

The initial buzz of popping Vicodin, Xanax, Ambien CR and Ativan--guilt-free ('take what you like--it was a 7 hour surgery' they told me) whilst lolling in bed 24 hours a day has worn off! Besides--failed to find the combo that would prevent the searing pain of even turning over in bed or opening a tamper-proof pill bottle and I now feel vile beyond belief.
A toxic antibiotic-filled wreck. (And let's not even discuss how the codeine in pills like Vicodin slow the digestive system down -grinding it to a hideous halt. Memo to Self-stock up on Fibre Pills!)
I do believe that some people enjoy having a perfectly genius excuse to stay in bed, read, sleep and do nothing ! I am NOT that person. I'm restless, agitated, loathe my own company and by about 1pm as dust motes drift lazily in the light that only comes in the AFTERnoon (reminding me of the same dusty particles I encountered in the Southern hemisphere as I tended my darling old dad for four years in Melbourne as he struggled to stay alive ), you realize with perfect DISGUST that only pathetic, sad, TRULY ILL folk are STILL in bed at this hour.

And besides, I ask you...how fantastically relaxing is it to lie there feeling as if two heavy, scalding HOT rocks have been freshly scooped from an active volcano and roughly sewn into your bosom cavities by A VERY HEAVY-HANDED GOBLIN who doesn't like you very much??
So up I stagger, swapping the Vicodin for three healthy Advil and a frantic search ensues amongst the dozens of pills and supplements for my son's ADDERALL (doctor-prescribed, as is the way in the USA) and I quickly swallow one of the little blue beauties for some sorely-needed pep.
Unfortunately the resulting burst of energy means I have the courage to finally turn on the overhead light in the bathroom and inspect the post-chemo growth of hair on head. (When I first went bald, I popped a ridiculously low-wattage lamp into my bathroom deciding that without eyebrows, lashes or hair, mental health could be best maintained in complete gloom.)

Like a mole up for air, I blinked repeatedly in the foul ugly light but as my eyes finally adjust and I get a good gander, I nearly faint on the spot. It wasn't just the mousy brown fuzz- patchy, thin and dull - (let's be frank girls twenty years of dyeing one's hair blond can make one's TRUE hair color seem alien and QUITE hostile) --no, it was the healthier thick patches of grayish white hair glistening gaily and practically shrieking at me, in some heinous sing-song..
"You're old, you're old, a cancer victim and OLD !"
I was not mistaken. My temples and sideburn areas were sprouting healthy tufts of GRAY HAIR.
Just like my dear old dad.
On him ? "Heavenly--sooo distinguished!"
On me ? "Foul--ageing lesbian!" (And I love lesbians)
Okay, I admit it. Am SHALLOW, VAIN BITCH - what can I tell you?
But when even the doctor tells you not to look at your own tits -"It's best " he explained cryptically, surely to goodness your hair, in sympathy, could at least refrain from overnight graying!
I collapse in tears on the bathroom floor and then, realizing that Advil don't cut it, hit the hard stuff and crawl back into bed, leaving the TV on MSNBC...When I wake up many hours later, programming has dwindled into some marathon of shows about prisoners and their lives. I weep again--why do I always feel sorry for prisoners- and wish most of them were not in prison. Possibly because America has the highest per-capita number of prisoners in the world and many just come out crankier than before. Okay---moving right along. I successfully ignore the healthy kale and broccolini salad in the fridge my daughter has brought me and devour almost an entire block of Green and Black dark chocolate. Full of anti-oxidants. And fall into Ambien-induced coma at 3 and dream I am in prison....

Next Day...
Wake up and along with my daily regime of pills, take another Adderall--but soon, I fear the Adderall effects are being dulled by the antibiotic/painkiller cocktail and so, feeling like my head might explode if I don't get out of suffocating apartment where walls are closing in on me, I struggle into sweats and baggy old shirt (arms cannot move above shoulder level) to make my second big escape...
I purchase a LARGE Mocha Ice Blended--only about 900 calories. WHATEVER!! Yes indeedy---that tastes good.

Well, one reckless act leads to another and just moments later I'm skulking down the Men's Grooming aisle at Rite Aid- quickly grabbing what seems like a cunning product before slipping out with my purchase.
I smile graciously at the parking inspector as I calmly approach my car at a long-expired meter- no fear of a ticket whatsoever and yet dreading the day when the small cancer-sanctioned mercy of a 9 month DISABLED Parking Tag ends! (Disabled means never having to feed a meter.)

My calm is shattered though as a small child points at me and then shrieks at it's mother - "Is that a man or a woman?"
I realize, to my horror, that it's been a hatless sortie!
' You're lucky I'm not topless,' I want to shriek back 'then you'd have something to holler about.'

Get home and marvel at how my chemo-addled brain thought it was appropriate to go to the MEN'S section for hair coloring products. After all, am a woman. So, doesn't really make sense. Did breast tissue removal make me subconsciously think I am man now? Interesting...
And am especially livid to find that JUST FOR MEN'S Touch of Gray actually promises to NOT ( I repeat NOT) get rid of all the gray so that whilst enhancing your vitality, "your experience will still shine through."

Hello!! We're in Hollywood ! Since when did experience count for anything? Youth RULES baby---don't even get me started..
Collapse back into rumpled old bed. A day before a friend has very sweetly offered to come by at 6.30 with a "gorgeous healthy, surprise dinner " for me. I have sent three emails thanking her for such generosity and thoughtfulness.

At 9.10 I check my texts, email and calls. Nada. And it's clear I've been stood up. ("Surprise! I forgot!")
and actually feeling faint with hunger, I decide on a mad dash to the IN 'N OUT on Sunset.
By about 10pm, after a 25 minute wait in the car line, I'm eating my cheese burger in my car in the good ol' Disabled Spot. I have a great view of the jolly families and couples inside chowing down with gusto. I search but can't find a single fellow loner in the place.
Suddenly I realize there's a huge wet patch on my thigh. Checking my drain I realize to my horror that for the third time this week, I have not replaced cap properly and it has emptied it's witty, bloody contents onto my nice clean sweat pants.
The fun just never stops...
Silent tears spontaneously fall onto the waiting fries in my lap. I try to quickly find the humor in the ‘Tragically Alone on Saturday Night at In 'N Out ‘ episode- but come up empty.

As Bette Davis might have said---"Having cancer, without a partner, ain't for sissies".

Hmmmm...a new way to go

2009-10-01T18:11:00.000-07:00

Can it really be this easy to set up a blog??