Don't Let Me Die In A Motel 6 or One Woman's Struggle Through The Great Recession (23 page)

August 13
,
2010
.
Friday The Thirteenth.
Nigel drove me back to
T.O. – to the Thousand Oaks
Los Robles
Hos
pital – so I could have a Port-A-Cath
installed.
Though
it sounds like
a ride at the fair
(“Let’s go on the Whirl-A-Gig, then the Port-A-Cath!”)
, it really isn’t fun.
It’s a
surgically implanted
device
used for
giving infusions
.

When I thought I’d be treated
at Overlake
,
my
old
surgeon
there
had
studied my results.
“This time you’ll have to have chemo.”

“OK.”
What
else could I say
?
I was woefully ignorant then – I thought
chemo was a type of
radiation.
What I did know was
that it
made people
sick,
throw up
, and sometimes
even
killed them.

We took another elevator; entered another
doctor’s office
smelling faintly of
Lysol
.
They
were all essentially the same:
bimbos at the front desk,
becoming
less bimbo
nic
the more specialized the field of medicine.
By the time you got to oncology, these women were
PhDs
.

“Insurance card?”
I meekly handed
mine
over.
You
had to offer the Sacred D
ocument before your ass could hit
a
waiting room
chair
.
I filled out
multiple
forms.
As I ha
d at the Overlake Breast Center,
The Aspen
Surgery Center
, Dr. Candle’s, and TOSH.
In this Age Of the Computer Cloud, where information is
everywhere
, why couldn't
they centralize medical records
?
Why must one take pen to paper and detail – for the fifth time – that
you’d had
childhood asthma?
Of course the concern was privacy, and in
strictly
medical terms,
Fuck With
Privacy
=
Lawsuit.
Let me clarify:
nobody cares
if
teenage
hacker
s
in Bul
garia
view
X-r
ays of your breast
–
so l
ong as
you don’t sue
.

Holy of Holies, Rachel had appeared
at Los Robles
!
She
was
b
etween trips to the Pacific Rim
.
I had not
been asked
to
her
home
since I’d returned to L.A.
in June
.
Not a great feeling
when
you’ve been diagnosed with cancer
.
But she’d been active behind the scenes.

She’d found me a pla
ce (a real one!) at the Oakwood
s
in Woodland Hills.
Since I had no money or credit, she’d
supplied
the deposit and
signature
for a studio
.
The Oakwoods
was a
complex
that catered to
short-term residents
, but
I didn’t care.
At last, I’d have a real kitchen!
A Balcony Of My Own!
All I needed was
£
500
a year, and Virginia Woolf would
smile down at me!

So a
t the end of July
, I moved my camp again.
Rachel and Miles showed up at the
Marriott
(at eight A.M., God help me!)
and my friends Kim and Larry appeared at the other end.
Again, we schlepped
my meager possessions, along with my
Sheltie Wee.
The cat, alas, was no more, despite the noble ministrations of my writer friend Cindy.
My other dog, Angel, was secreted away at my hairdresser
’
s, along with Cotton Bunny.
Rachel had insisted
that
both
be given away.
I was not about to do that.

Fast-forward to
T.O.
,
where
I was
taken
to pre-op.
This time,
I was given
a light pink gown
.
My doctor was a
chemo port
specialist, but I kept forgetting his name, and
so
called him
(
not to his face
)
Dr. Port.
Dr. Port wa
s a Jewish doctor, gray-haired and
bearded:
he could have
wielded his
knife at
a
bris
.
He was very nice to me, but
I sensed there was trouble in p
aradise.
When I returned, some months later, a reception huffed, “At least he’s nice to
somebody
!”
Until you
go inside, you don’t realize:
hospital politics
can
rival
the Fortune 1
00’s.

They used a local for my procedure,
but blissfully, I
went under
.
When I came to, I had a literal rude awakening: Rachel was going to accompany us back to the
Oakwoods
studio
.
Uh oh!

When she saw the
trio
of pets
, she went completely
batshit
.
“What
does this mean
?!
You told me you had given Angel away!!”

“I did.
I tried to give her to Shelley, but she pooped all over
the
f
loor
.
”

“And what’s with that bunny?
I thought he was gone too!”

“Shelley’s
dogs tried to eat him.”

“This is unacceptable!
It’s
my
name on the lease, and I am responsible.
If the Oakwoods finds out, it’s
my
credit that’s affected.
How
did this happen?
Amy?”
She turned to me like a
conference leader.

I mumbled a response.
I was high on the after-effects of the local, plus a dose of
pain-killers
.
For all I know, I
recited
from
the
Morte d’Arthur
.
Rachel stomped out, leaving a trail o
f venom and some very startled pets.

Later that day, I sent her this email:

You know, I was very happy to see you at the hospital this morning because I thought it showed that you cared.

But coming into the home of a cancer patient right after surgery and yelling for ten minutes is, in my view, utterly beyond the pale.
I don't care what the issue is
–
I don't care if there's a giraffe in the middle of the room.
WAIT until someone isn't in pain before unleashing.
I called Dr.
[Port]
and told him
–
his only reaction was "WHY?"

My neck and chest are killing me and I am on Vicodin. The last thing I need is more stress and
yelling. When
it comes to cancer, everyone needs t
o check
 
their ego at the door.
 
This
is the 800 lb
.
gorilla in the room, not a bunny in a cage.

Not bad, huh?
She
sent
a reply apologizing, emphasizing that she was the one on the hook with the
Oakwoods, and telling me th
at in my eyes, she could never live up to
my
expectations.
I answered:

As far as caring:
I'm not talking about anything monetary.
I'm talking about actually taking the time to have a face-to-face with a sister who has cancer.
That's worth more to me than t
he Oakwoods, a million
dollars, and a Ferrari.

I meant it
.
What I wanted from her was the ultimate gift that one human being
can
bestow on
another:
the gift of time.
But
always
she
kept
this
for herself
.
For the
hundredth
time in our lives,
we reached a cool strangers’
truce.

Cancer is a test
of character,
as litmus-like as
war and
floods. Not only for the patient, but especially those around her.
You could tell a lot about a person based on
th
eir reaction. Hospital visits?
A Saint.
Compassion?
That was good.  Avoidance? Fear of death.  No
response
? A bastard.  It was better than
Myers-Briggs.

The next morning,
I went into the Oakwoods office.
Our leasing agent, Candy, was a sweet girl fresh from Colorado.

“Candy – you know my situation.
I’m a breast cancer patient.”

“
Right
.”
She smiled
at me from her desk, her eyes tinged with pity.

“Let me be straight with you – I have two dogs.
Is there any way to make that work?”

“Well…” she thought, then wrote on a Post It
®
, passing it up to me.
It said, “service dog.”
Excellent
!

“I also have a bunny in a cage.”

“That’s not a problem.
The Manager has let that go in the past.”

“Thanks.”
I walked out.
Done.
Maybe I had played the cancer card, but
maybe I had earned
that right
.
My cards so far had stunk
.
All that
tsuris
that Rachel had put me through, all that
stress
about her
Good Credit
, was moot.
Sometimes, if you just talked to people, you could
work
it out
.

This was a lesson that I, the
98
th
tier of the
99%
, had just taught The One.

A chemo port is not the
world’s
most comfortable device.
It sat, beneath the flesh above my right breast, a p
lastic pipe
wending through
my
neck
that tapped
the jugular vein
.
When I turned my head, I could feel it.
It
was
like being strangled from
the
inside.

Before my first s
ession
,
I was
really
sweating
.
I’d trawled the Web, going on various cancer sites, reading horror stories from fellow sufferers.
Having met with my oncologist
before, I knew what to expect.
And I wasn’t exactly
thrilled.

That first
consultation, my parents had gone with
Nigel
and me
, looking as scared as I felt.
We
tramped
into the doctor’s
tasteful
mahogany office.
Dr. Pilgrim was a thin, cheery man from Australia who had
been a Professor Of
Medicine
.
He looked, for
all purposes, like Dick Van Dyke in
Marry Poppins.
All he needed
was
a
troupe
of penguins.