Don't Let Me Die In A Motel 6 or One Woman's Struggle Through The Great Recession (28 page)

Amazing!
A cancer treatment
that
didn’
t a
ttack
every cell
!

That
first appointment
took
a full t
wo hours.
It was very interesting:
a Styrofoam cast was made of
my
body while I lay there, pliable as a puppet
.
The final position
was comical:
my left hand was over my head, my hips had to swing to the right – it
was like doing the
supine
Hokey Pokey, but you had to lie that way,
very
still, for at least
15
minutes
a
session.

West Hills
became a
second home
.
Nigel
drove
me the four
blocks, and I would shuffle in
–
shuffle,
since
radiation puts
amazing
stress on
the body.
I was so fatigued I could barely slip on my smock.
I met a lot of people
in
radiology
.
There were
so
many breast cancer patients:
one in eight women contract
s
the disease, and this
is expected to
rise
to one in five.
Everyone knows someone who’s had it, who’s died from it, who’s re
covered, who is battling
.
It
had
first
touched my life
in ‘05
:
brave
Patti
from
WaMu
had died
,
and a group of us formed a team
to walk
T
he Komen in her name.
It never occurre
d to me then that in two years,
I would be walking for myself.

I saw
varying
reactions to
cancer
.
One woman, fear almost leaping from her eyes, asked
me
about radiation.
I told her it was no biggie compared to chemo.
That didn’t seem to
assuage
her
.
She
was almost shaking in her smock.

For what it’s worth, these are my rules
about illness, and every other tragedy we all face in life:
1.
Stay calm.
Getting hysterical – railing against God and screaming
“Why me?!”
–
doesn’t
change
a thing
.
It just drives you – and everyone around you – crazy
.
Hesse said, “
"Within you there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time
.. . .”
The art
of stillness – so prized
in
the East but
despised
by Americans
–
possesses
more power than
the
perpetual
motion
this culture
demands
lest you be run over.

2.
Do what they tell you.
I have
a certificate
from Overlake
proclai
ming me A Good Patient
.
I cooperate.
I confront whatever faces me --
cancer,
needles, catheters, surgery --
look it s
traight in the eye and say, “OK, d
o what you have to.”
Weeping and wailing will not forestall the event
; will not
diminish the disease
.

3.
Keep your sense of humor!
Wh
en
I was in
Sina
loa, Nigel mentioned
an ex-
colleague, a librarian named Wen Wen.
Without
missing a beat
, I asked, “What is she?
A panda?”
S
uch moments stave off the dark and
unfocus you from your plight,
if only f
or a minute.

Where, you ask, did I, a neurotic Jew from Encino, develop
this
ability to cope with crisis?
In truth, I don’t know.
I’m
an absolute physical coward:
before having a lower GI in my twenties, I was so upset that I locked myself out of the house
.
But something happened with
Cancer
‘07
.
I surprised myself, and I think that those
around me were even more surprised
.
Until you’re thrown over the trenches, you don’t know how you’ll react when
t
hey hurl
the
grenades at
you
.
I felt
that as far as
my
behavior as a patient
,
I had nothing to be ashamed of.
To me,
t
his
was as good as a Medal
Of Honor
--
or a Survivor’s
medal
from
Komen.

I met many brave
patients
at
Dr.
Wolinsky’s
:
the woman with
mouth
cancer who still went to work every day;
the
octogenarian
with colon cancer who could barely sit from the pain.
There were two older ladies – lifelong friends – who
were both
named Barb.
Barb One sat with Barb Two
every day, week after week.
Two small gray-haired ladies you’d never notice on the street, but in here, they were giants.

My r
adiation continued
Monday through Friday
:
what at first had seem
ed
science fictional
now beca
me quotidian.
I was led
to
a large
cool
room, dominated by
a huge
machine.
My Styrofoam body cast had already been put in place.
I lay down, and the sweet tec
hnician
Anna
manipulated my arms, legs, and
hips, so that I assumed The Position.
She
retreated behind the
barrier of
a closed
computer room
.
The Machine and I were alone.
T
his
was the most amazing
technology
ever: a
n immense
elliptical orb
whirled into place over my h
ead; a metallic
block
settled a
t an angle by my left side
to deliver
its X-rays
.

Dr. Wolins
ky was a superb nature photograp
her, and he
provided us with a treat:
on the ceiling hung a screen, upon which he projected a slide show, from
spraying white water
to
a quiet creek
; from red desert
canyons
to
a
close-up of a
single
flower.
Calm.
Calm.
It was hard maintaining that
position, b
ut I
was able
to stay still,
even as my arm fell asleep
.
I watched as
the
metallic
block swung over me
, lead pieces behind glas
s
like so many drill heads.
They formed
an irregular pattern
when they delivered their
charge
,
then
closed
up
into a solid
.

Thirty-
five
sessions.
It starts to wear on you.
Comes a time when walking
into
that waiting room, putting on that
smock,
need
assuming The Position makes you want to scream, “Enough already!”
–
but I never did.
We got the day off for Thanksgiving – hurrah! – but had to show up the
prior
Saturday
, like students
making up
a test
.
Nigel went back to Seattle
on November 21
st
to meet his parents there.
He had driven me to
27
sessions,
and for that
I
will always be
grateful.
Who else was going to take me?
Not Rachel,
enmeshed
in her own life; not my parents, far away in Lake Arrowhead.
If it hadn’t
been for Nigel
, I would have been driven by strangers,
volunteers who would
no doubt
be kind, but
would make me feel that much more invisible.

I spent
my
time
apart from radiation
lying on the
Murphy
bed.
My f
atigue was getting worse, and I was
so weak
I
couldn’t get up
for a
glass of water.
It was an effort
to read
the news
;
to keep up
my
Clintonian
expertise.
Thank God I wasn’t working.
I couldn't concentrate
even
to watch
TV.
In a couple of
months
,
I had gone from Chemowoman to a listless pile of flesh.
I had forsaken the world, but
the world,
in its wisdom
,
insisted on coming to me.

There are side effects to radiation beyond
enervating
fatigue.
My left breast
had been burned, and
was the color of
a ripe
pomegranate.
Naturally, the urge to itch was intense
.
They gave me a
number
of creams – one with a cow on it – cute! – and that helped a little
. I also had
a constant thirst, the kind
so
parching
that you couldn't
let water touch your mouth – you had to pour it directly
into
the back of
your throat
.

“Beware
of
water intoxication,” Dr. Wolinsky
said
.
But I couldn't help it.
I went through
a
six
pack of
16-
ounce
bottles
a day
, and I had
to stash them
everywhere:
on my nightstand (actually a TV tray), in the bathroom,
in
the car
.
I
was
like the
alcoholic
who
hid
vodka in her windshield wiper
fluid.

What was worse, much worse,
was The Matter Of T
he Missing Esophagus.
One morning
I woke up,
and
the right half of my throat
was gone
.
I could not speak until I’d had a bottle
of water.
I could not eat on that side.

“Hmmm.”
Dr. Wolinksy
pursed the lip
s
of his
hang-dog face.
“We try to target the radiation
,
but it’s possible we may have hit your esophagus.”

Oops!

“Will it go away?”
I was sitting
in the comfy white chair of his office.