Doc, When Shall We Marry...

Well, today was round two for the second biopsy.  Depending heavily on the strangeness of kindness, I asked two dear friends to take me to Mission Hospital in Asheville for this...event.
Having checked in and sat in the waiting room with some SERIOUS mountain folk (one's surname was "Boothe"... I was curious if there was a "Wilkes" prior to that), and then striking up a conversation with a lovely Ukrainian admitting nurse about Crimea (she couldn't believe that I knew the place... well, it IS lovely) I was hauled off to radiology where they gave me the hospital issue cotton pajamas.  VERY ventilated.
They stuck me, prodded me and wheeled me off to the room where lieth The Machine That Goes Ping.
Apparently they needed five times the drugs as I was not going down quietly.  Again, I was a roadie for a band in the 80s... tolerance is high.
I remember nothing except snoring in Triage and disturbing Betty Sue Bob Ann Maybelle Two Annie across the way from me with my log sawing, but what I do NOT remember was proposing to my doctor... wholeheartedly... and not taking no for an answer.  If THAT is all I did, I consider today successful.

I'll know if things are good in a couple of days.

Bump it With a Trumpet, But Not After a Biopsy

Today was the return visit for the three month Bone Aspiration and Biopsy.
I wish I could say that it went well.  After several tries and bottles of numbing agents on the right rear pelvis, my hipbone was apparently too dense (thanks a LOT, Mom for all that stupid milk!!!).  The doc then tried several times on the left.  She hit the root of a spinal nerve and all hell broke loose.  It felt as if I had LICKED the third rail.  I don't remember it, but I apparently I screamed and twitched around for a bit.  I made them stop.  Covered in sweat-and having ripped up the bedding, I told them that we were DONE.
So, now, I have to go to Mission Hospital and have something called Twilight Sleep induced.  I'm not exactly sure what that is, other than a Tolkein-esque title for something that will probably cause me to spill State secrets.  I frankly do not CARE what it is as long as I do not feel a damned thing when they open me up like a wine bottle.  This was freaking awful.  And I've gone through herniated discs.

On the lighter side, Gypsy opened and it is really an incredible show.  It's always been my favourite as it's more or less our history as performers.  We descend from Vaudeville, Burlesque, Music Hall, etc... Just a joy to be a part of it, and if that overture doesn't get you going you have no soul.

As One Does...

Ah, Mondays... Or--as I like to call them; The Day of The Doctor...
Schlepp to Asheville today to meet with my Oncologist (still can't get my head around THAT sentence).  The numbers are all good.  Platelets up, which means I won't go all Queen Victoria's Grandchildren if nicked... look it up...
White count almost TOO low.  We are heading toward Remission folks, I would do an Uptown Funky Walk, but it's unseemly in a man of my years.

My doc visits have been curtailed from four a month to twice a month, which is bloody marvelous as I'd like at least ONE day in my life where I can sleep in and loll with Dawg.

Annoyingly enough, I still have to have another biopsy.  This is a matter of routine, but I take umbrage at feeling like a badly stored Barollo--i.e., having a doc go at my rear pelvis with a 22 gauge needle to yank out a piece of bone with marrow attached.  Yeah... YOU do it and see what kind of mood you're in for the next two weeks.  It HURTS, people.  You feel that mess all the way down your femur like the aftermath of touching a non-grounded wire when installing a ceiling fan (Yes... that's specific.  Why?  Because I've done it.)  The drive home is ... eventful.

Still, things are looking good and tomorrow we begin rehearsals for Gypsy.  I'm the Assistant Director and assisting a Director and friend I love and respect on possibly my favourite show on this earth.  It's a love letter to theatre and to relationships.  Lots of experience with the former... still looking askance at the latter.

The Kiss My Ass, Cancer Garden is growing, although rain felled a 5'4", burgundy, "Chocolate" Dahlia.  I've staked it, but it's not looking happy.  Also, I backed over my Cherokee Heirloom tomato--as I continually moved it around to find sun, and re-potted what was left along with organic fertilizer and a cage to keep it standing tall.  It looks suprised and irritated.

Utterly thrilled with SCOTUS (I'm sorry, that still sounds rather odd)'s decision on marriage equality.  Enough dithering with bigotry... get it done.  Marry whom you love and leave archaic nonsense out of it.  I don't wanna hear biblical quotes on it any longer as that book also regulated what a man does with his MANY wives... and slaves.  Forgive me if I do not take marriage counseling from a tome that demands I be stoned to death for wearing contrasting material or planting different crops next to one another.  I tend to think that THAT particular deity had a bit of a Personality Disorder.

At any rate...

Much love to all and to all a goodnight.

Step Ball Change

Monday numbers are all good.  Fighting fatigue and dizziness like a champ.  It could be so much worse; bone pain, nausea, headaches, etc... I seem to be, thank Goddess, one of the lucky ones.
I began rehearsals for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and we are now in Technical Rehearsals... or, as a favourite director of mine once said, When We See Who People REALLY Are.  Does separate the wheat from the chaff. 

My role is small, which suits me just fine as I come back to life after a very strange six months of insolvency, being a maid, being a caterer, being a waiter and essentially being terrified of where the next dollar is coming from.  Two paycheques have rolled in and rolled right back out again as the bills are paid.  Three car payments in one months.  Oh myyyy.

I have to dance in the eleven o'clock number and reigniting that twenty year dormant part of my brain is ... new.  All I hope for is to remember the steps, not to fall, not to fart, not to break anything of mine--or the man next to me and to SING OUT LOUISE.

It's amazing what goes through my mind as I'm step-ball changing away.  The poker face is plastered on, but it's been a LOOONG time since I broke that kind of a sweat onstage that wasn't nerve or costume induced.  Good old-fashioned activity.  It's fun, but I DO see occasional, "Oh my God, that old guy is gonna keel over", looks on colleagues faces.

The cast is excellent and brilliantly talented and the set/costumes are gorgeous.  Jewel Tone-apalooza.  Aquas... oranges (makes me miss Howard Johnsons in Times Square), greens, golds, etc... 
Reunions of actors who have been here in previous years and brand new ones.

Doctor-wise, things seem fine.  Numbers all in the manageable area.  Here's hoping this continues.

I'm hungry.

Boring, but Good

I had a doc appointment Monday.  Apparently, all is going swimmingly well.  Great news indeed.  Still existential to think this is going on, when I feel better than I have in years.  An occasional dizzy spell or a fatigued moment and then right back on form.

The interesting thing is how some folks relate to me.  I get pulled aside from time to time, with the obligatory hand on my shoulder and intent gaze.... "How are you... REALLY????".  I mean, I appreciate the concern, but it gets a bit tiresome repeating the same initial shocking, then good, news 84.000 time a day.

I do seem to care a lot less about the daily nonsense.  In reality, I just go to work, learn my lines, figure it out, come home... Dawg.

Sort of a simpler life, doing exactly what I want to do.  Heh... Could be worse, I suppose.

Zzzzzzzz....

Whoa.  WHOA.  WHOOOOOAAAAA!!!!!

Okay, apparently the drug is working so bloody well, that they are taking me off of it for four days while they figure out the next best thing.

Hopefully, since I'm responding well, it will be a much lower dosage as I am beginning to feel like an extra in Night of The Living Dead.  I wander around in a "Did I Leave the Oven On?" fog... forgetting what I'm saying in the middle of a sentence and basically wanting to lie down while driving.  Frowned upon, on most roadways.

The show that I am directing seems to be going well, which is a colossal relief, as I haven't done this before and I'm enjoying it.  Being "IN CHARGE" is an odd mind set for me, as I have always been an Indian rather than a Chief, but I think I might like it.  God... I can certainly pontificate when I need to make a point.

I'm going back to the theatre to begin and finish the season until late December, so paychecks and the applause that I whore for will return to my rafters.

Cancer World!!!! The Theme Park No One Wants to Go To

Yesterday, I spent the morning being siphoned and then the afternoon driving two hours to a "CANCER CENTER" two hours away to be siphoned AGAIN, then herded through endless examination rooms, hallways within hallways, into another windowless room, to be dealt with by caaaaaring nurses.  And finally an Oncologist who gives me more news--luckily good, that I am responding to treatment like a love letter to this new drug.  I was VERY relieved, but this is still only five weeks in, so I reserve the right to allow joy to come to the dance

Needless to say, I am happy and grateful.
I know others are going through so much more, but there is such a feeling of US and THEM in a doctor's office when dealing with disease. As if I'm being examined behind bars.  I can't help but make the gap lessen by saying something completely irreverent to make the Nurse/Phlebotomist gasp, or at least laugh.  Throwing someone off guard while they are holding needles is probably less than wise, but certainly a way to be thought of as a sentient entity, rather than a test tube.

I just have this trigger about being a number.  I insist on being a person in the damned room.  I realize that this is probably how they are seeing me, but the inner rebel-without-a-clue can't help it and out comes the rubber chicken.  Wacka wacka... (Michele Ragusa, this is all your fault :)  )

On the way home, I stopped in a one horse town at a Golden Corral and gorged--as I hadn't eaten in hours and despite the constant weight loss connected to this disease, I can't help a trough when the moment arrives.
TRULY a lesson in what I don't want to be, yet a strange feeling that I am with my people.
Southerners fresh from church in their polyester skirts complimented by their equally rayon doctrines... Acutely obese children begging their mothers for more yellow "vegetables".  I look at them with a strange aversion and recognition.  These are my people... that I DO NOT want to be like.  I will inwardly judge them, but become enraged if anyone outside my ken casts a disparaging eye their way.
Difficult to explain and I'm not exactly proud of it, but maybe Margaret Mead would understand!

Home to begin direction of a show at Connemara with our new Apprentices--that fill me with such pride and desire to do right by them.  Art mirrored by life complicated by mortality.

Time for some more wine, I think.

Brief.... almost Haiku-esque

I literally am becoming a Platinum Magnolia (equally durable, but FAAAR more expensive).
A local deli has asked me to bake and supply them with pastries, and I really love this place, so it's no problem.

In one week I'm directing a show.

In two weeks I'm rehearsing for one... all the while gardening, stirring and SURVIVING.
Take that, warped chromasomes!

Normalcy, Tartes and The Weekly Leeching

Good news today from Leech Land.
When last bled, my white count, hemaglobin and platelets--not to mention my EKG were all in the land of Normal.
This is, as you may have guessed, reasons to break out the Martini shaker... metaphorically speaking, of course.
As I still feel fine... actually better than fine as I am neither anemic--nor have a white count that is higher than the Troposphere, this is all still a bit surreal.  I know I have it, but it certainly does not have me.

In food land, I sold a Tarte Tatin I made in my own kitchen to my favourite little deli in town.
Tarts... Now if only I could make Vicars...

Brief

Had lunch with a good friend from Abingdon today.
Still fighting fatigue... but fighting it with a Martini.  If I'm going to be tired, there will bloody well be something langourously Noel Coward about the whole thing.  Camille I am not.

Watching a BBC 4 series from 2001 called Manor House.  21 or so people recreate life in an Edwardian manor house in 1906.  It's certainly clear why this era didn't last.. although I really love the style.

Fatiiiiiiigue

Cooked a dinner for friends last night who are dealing with similar travails. 
Salad with mixed local greens/veggies and a champagne/honey vinaigrette.  Brined roast chicken, riced garlic potatoes, deep fried okra (in the new deep fryer) and locally grown berries and cream for dessert.

Felt decent yesterday... more than likely due to a drop in the white cells and a shrinking spleen.  Amazing to know that I was gradually getting more ill over the years and just powered through it.
Ah well.

Now... today... Fatigue hit around 6 pm like a rogue wave.  Decided to actually pay attention to it and stay out of the garden.

Yes... The New Normal, indeed.

Clear, Please...

I had my first meeting with my Oncologist (there's a sentence I never thought I'd say) today--after a full week on chemo and after I had my blood checked.  The great news is that my white cells--which rang the carnival strong man test bell at 280,000, has decreased to 11,000.  Hemoglobin and platelets all good and other news is that I feel better.  Having been a ballet dancer for almost half my life, my pain tolerance is rather high, so my "I feel like crap-ometer" tends to be a bit different than most mortals...
Ironic, when I have to take chemotherapy every bloody day.

I alsospoke with her about the possibility of bone marrow transfusion as a pre-emptive strike to cure the damned thing and will see a doctor at Levine Cancer Center in Charlotte (a nice Jewish hospital.  Thank G-D!  The least best thing is that there will be magazines that are of this decade and I won't get a nice dose of White Jesus in the waiting room.  No offense, but the white-washing of the Christian Messiah has always made me laugh a bit.  I'm not religious, but I am kind of historically aware...
Aaaaaanyway...

I digress...
Taking inspiration from a dear friend who navigated Stage 3C breast cancer, a mastectomy, lymphectomy, radical IV chemo and radiation--every time I feel fatigued, I get off my ass (which now weighs the same as it did when I played the lead in the musical; Crazy For You (although gravity and geometry have moved things about a bit)), and go outside and garden.

Clearly, my front yard is a wee bit altered...

I call it the "Get Off My Dress, Cancer" Garden.

So... here's hoping that this trend continues...
Having friends over this evening for a VERY Southern dinner.
Organic Greens with a Champagne/Honey vinaigrette
Roast chicken (of course I brined it first...)
Fried Okra in WHITE cornmeal (that is the key)
Riced mashed potatoes
Locally grown berries and cream

The Get Off My Dress, Cancer... DINNER....

The saga continues, dolls...

Get On With It...

Massive fatigue today.

As in the kind where you are very aware of the placement your bones in your body because they are tired, tired, TIRED.  Rather inconvenient when you're catering a party in a private home--carrying china and Depression Glass.

See, sprawling in a heap would just be ...unseemly.  And going fetal in the butler's pantry would more than likely affect business, so just get over it (I tell myself) and put the berries on top of the cream, smile, pour the wine, the water, the Mimosas and get through it.  My friend who owns the company and works with me is a fellow New Yorker as well as a cancer survivor and the shared knowing looks turn us in to war buddies.

Come home and sit down and stare at the wall until consciousness alters, then get off your ass and go outside with Dawg.

I began to notice one of the legion of flower tubers/bulbs I planted sprouting out of the garden ground today and two Bluebirds were taking turns on the new Bluebird feeder in the back garden--hitting the oven-dried meal worms that these stunning creatures devour like honey roasted cashews on an eight hour flight.

Little things do tend to mean a lot more.
Things that in New York, I wouldn't notice or would stare at fleetingly as I rushed to an audition or a job and not think about again.
I've begun to notice that my mind is taking photographs and filing them away.
I stared up at the sky today; May 1, Beltane... and was just happy to be here.  It was a profound and elementally good feeling.  Not bittersweet or sad, but a real locked in feeling of The Present.
I liked it.
I hope they recur.

I think about people who are in far more advanced stages of this than I.  A little girl comes to mind who is dealing with Acute Myeloid Leukemia and has to deal with a second bout of intravenous chemo as well as the pain and the jagged hope of a bone marrow transplant.  This is all she knows.  This battle for normal.
It stuns me into respectful silence and extreme empathy.  From my former perch outside and away, I am suddenly zoom-lensed in to not a only a ringside seat, but a place in the arena.  Surprised... gob-smacked, but ready to fight--clumsily at first, with the weapons I have.  If anything good comes out of this bullshit, it is this; Empathy... Compassion....  Shutting the hell up and paying attention to other people... 

I can't say that these were formerly my strong suits, but hey... if it's an unexpected by-product, Mazel.

The New Normal

So, today I did what it looks like I will be doing off and on forever.  Back to the hospital so they can pull more blood and see how this new drug is affecting my little Invader.

They do this in the room where chemotherapy  is administered via IV.  Old men and women looking tired, blank... and sometimes forlorn.  Young, French-manicured girls texting on their smart phones... Varying faces of the same insidious crap.
Believe me, I am very aware that I have it easy in comparison, but it is odd to sit in this room, in these chairs on the same level and see who is affected and how.
Clearly, cancer is extremely ecumenical in its choices...

It is an unpleasantly decorated room.  Robin's Egg blue walls, baby-shit brown easy chairs... no magazines and pictures of THE LORD are everywhere.  It's a 7th Day Adventist hospital... whatever that means.   I've always gotten 7th Day Adventist and Latter Day Saints mixed up... so maybe the nurses wear magic underwear and are good at math while being vegetarians.  All very confusing.

I stare out the window at the vivid blue sky and green mountains that surround the building--contrasting with the very deep and apparently damaged red coming out of my vein, through a small tube into a vial to be dissected by triage nurses and interpreted by my Oncologist.

This is the new normal.  That and fighting dizziness and humourous onset of fatigue that has me bumping into things, reeling and forgetting what I'm saying in the middle of a sentence.

What is also strangely new is a deeper and surprising appreciation of ... well...everything.  Conversations, food, friends...  Focusing on things and finding that it is indeed oddly easier to be more present for the present.  (Taking the moment present as a present for the moment.  Ah, Stephen...)

Had dinner last night at Sierra Nevada and the table ordered things like Pig Cheeks...
Someone ordered bone marrow and my inner inappropriate thirteen year old almost asked the waitress to check and see if it was a match.  I may need it.   Ah, black humour...

In the middle of all this, Spring has descended where I live; the rarefied splash zone where The Smokies meet The Blue Ridge and Appalachia.
So, what to do...
Well, garden my ever-narrowing arse off.  How about that?

Today, I put up a Bluebird house made of cedar and a "squirrel-proof" Bluebird feeder filled with mealworms.  Oregano, Parsley, Mexican Tarragon, German Thyme, Lavender, Chives, Dill, Marjoram, and--just because I want to watch them (hopefully) grow and bloom, Dahlia, Lilly of The Valley, Morning Glory and a very aptly named Sarah Bernhardt Peony... Seemed appropriate... The Drama Queen of Flowers.  And a magenta hanging petunia.

I have this weird feeling, I may start growing vegetables and generating my own electricity out of what Dawg leaves in the ivy.  Beard to my belt and spouting Foxfire quotes while looking like a ZZ Top refugee... I'd fit right in.

They say every seven years, time waves a hand over your face and your soul... Aging you and adding vintage.  I have to say, looking back, that is absolutely true.
So... bring me your tired, your poor... your hungry wine snobs yearning to breathe free.
Here I stay.

Chemo Fun

Yesterday, the Chemo (Sprycell... still can't get over the name... ah, Marketing) arrived and I took the first pill.  Sat and stared at the box for a while before opening it, as I was grateful to my Doc and her team for getting it to me for a 25 dollar co payment.... (12 grand a month... GAWD...), but wasn't exactly looking forward to see what side effects would commence.

All I felt was some big-time grogginess and a bizarre urge to hit the bathroom when I was at a friend's house.  I think my dog must have felt some empathy, because when I came out of the bathroom, he squatted down and dropped a deuce on my friend's floor in solidarity---looking up at me with a goofy grin on his face.  And he's housebroken!!!!!! Humiliating...  Cleaned it up, apologised like a shamed serf and got the beast outside.

I reeled around her house for another half hour, bumping into things and cursing and then decided that this was completely ridiculous, so I drove off  and raided the plant nursery at Ace Hardware.  Dahlias, Peonies, Lily of The Valley, herbs and lots of dirt.  If I'm gonna go down Chemo Lane, it's going to be LOADED with flowers.

As this is also about food, I made this amazing little ramekin dish called Oeufs en Cocotte.  You butter a smal porcelain ramekin, put a tablespoon of cream in it and drop it in a quarter inch of simmering water on the stove ("water bath").  When this is hot, you break an egg into the ramekin and let that get hot for a while...then you take this out, drop another tbs of cream on top and add a dollop of butter (unsalted).  Toss it in the oven and bake at 375 for 7 minutes.
Take it out and let it set for about five.
Eat.
GLORIOUS.

I love French food.  My Grandfather had a disturbing antipathy toward France and all things French, which I found inexplicably odd as that is primarily the DNA on that side of the family, but lucky for me, I do not share this affliction.

Vive la Freakin France, y'all!

Life's little detours.

One of the horrors of doctor visits are the routine check ups that produce... unexpected results.
For instance,  I go for a normal blood lab/check up and am told that my white cell count is at 280,000.  It's supposed to be no higher than 20,000.  I am then immediately sent to a Hemotologist/Oncologist.  This is also told to me at 7:45 in the morning.  Hearing both, "I don't know" and "...Oncologist" at Dawn Thirty dwindles the day's normal pursuits to nil.

After a bone marrow biopsy--in which they corkscrew a 20-gauge needle into my rear right pelvic bone and yank out a 1/8" thick piece of bone with marrow attached, it is then sent off to Yale Hospital and biopsied. 
Yep... My ass went to Yale.

Sure enough, I have Chronic Myeloid Leukemia.
When the doctor said these words, I'm sure my outward appearance didn't change, but the panoply inside my brain was more or less:  "You have Cronic Myeloid Leukemia and....".  My hearing  ceased at "Leukemia" and that word repeated itself on continuous loop--sounding more and more like Charlie Brown's teacher, Miss Othmar.  The Doctor's lips were still moving, but I wasn't actually hearing anything.  Memory waxes poetic, I'm sure, but this is my recollection of hearing The News.

In 24 hours, I became a layman's expert on this disease. 
Prior to 1991, it was more or less a death sentence, but due to the invention of a medication called "Gleevek"... and now it's second generation, "Sprycell" (interesting name.... as if my cells are about to skip off to a Jazzercise class), it is now possible to send this into a very long remission.  How long?  No one knows, but everyone in the chronic stage in 1991 who began this drug is still asymptomatic and doing well.

Sprycell is an oral chemotherapy that I will apparently be on for the rest of my life, long or short, until I have a bone marrow transplant.  This all sounds rather Grand Guignol, but I apparently a good candidate.   I am seemingly "Young and in good health".  When I was told this, I wanted to look behind me to see if the Doc was addressing some stallion with perfect teeth, giant biceps and a tan, standing just up right.  Apparently the criteria is low.

Today, the meds arrived FedEx.
I have good insurance, thank you Cigna/Actors' Equity... as this crap is TWELVE THOUSAND DOLLARS A MONTH.  Due to the work of the Social Worker assigned to this (my) case, I only pay a co-payment of 25 a month.  Less than a gym membership. 
To a bad gym. 
...On the wrong side of town.

So...
Today begins the "Journey", as friends are calling it.  Frankly, that sounds a bit too Hallmark-y.  How about...
Today I started chemo.
Let's call this what it is.
I have cancer.
Cancer.
It is treatable, manageable and ostensibly the Monaco of cancers, but I hate sugar coating things.   Tell me the truth, be direct and then let me know what I can do to kick this sorry, invasive bitch into the dirt where it belongs.

The good thing is, I have this little reminder in my brain to be aware that life is short.
To that I say--Life is short, but it is wide. (Borrowing a quote from Rebecca Wells).  I have no symptoms, I feel fine and I plan on continuing that paradigm!

In the meantime folks-- eat well, buy good wine, don't sweat the petite ca ca, make up with your family members and fr-amily members, take your vitamins, call your mother and come by my place for dinner.