Cancer Schmancer (21 page)

It was reassuring to hear this from someone who’d actually been through it herself, because the surgeon kept telling me in six weeks I’d be good as new, which turned out to be a gross exaggeration. She’d told me I’d be able to go on an African safari two months after my surgery. The reality was that it had been nearly four months, and I could barely sit in a luxury car without being in pain! So I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me. Why was I taking so long to recover? Every time I’d make plans to do something, I’d end up canceling, until finally I gave up making plans at all.

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As the months dragged on, John and I fell into a rut where my recovery seemed unending. We both felt stuck, afraid this was going to be the way things stayed. I, who once was so active, planning and doing all the time (we used to joke that John couldn’t keep up with me), had settled into this convalescing lump. By this point I think John was just about at the end of his rope. Trapped is probably a more succinct way of putting just how he was feeling.

It was now fifteen weeks since my surgery and we were both miserable. There was one day when I had to cancel out on yet another activity we’d planned together, and he just exploded.

“You never want to do anything!” he shouted.

“I like to do things,” I said, defending myself.

“I need to get out of this house and have some fun, live my life, be with my friends, but you never want to,” he accused. Poor guy had tried for so long to be patient and understanding, but in that moment he was like a champagne bottle blowing its cork.

I felt like an albatross. A monkey on his back. A ball and chain on his ankle. You name it, if it weighed ya down, I was it. I guess I wasn’t as much fun as before, and I sure didn’t have as much energy. The fight spiraled to a point where we wondered how we’d become so sad, so incompatible, so wrong for each other. I said meekly, “But I don’t think I was like this before I had cancer.” And then it struck us like a lightning bolt. For the first time, we could see it all clearly.

“Sweetie, you’re right, this is all because you had cancer,” said John. We loved each other, and there we were, fighting and blam-ing one another, venting our anguish and frustration, when it hit both of us that the real enemy was the cancer itself. All our current problems were because of that, not because of genuine differences. This wasn’t permanent. We weren’t stuck, and someday in the future things would return to the way they used to be.

We’d both felt misled about how long “getting back to nor-9377 Cancer Schmancer 2/28/02 4:18 PM Page 177

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mal” was going to take. John had believed the doctor’s estimates and blamed me for being a bad patient. If only someone had come to my hospital room after the surgery to give me a blow-by-blow description of what to expect and what I should do throughout my recovery. A woman who’d been through it herself, like the one by my mother’s pool. A person who truly knew what it felt like both emotionally and physically to have had cancer and a hysterectomy all at the same time. It’s a double whammy for any gal.

The hysterectomy helps take care of the cancer problem but creates a whole new set of hormonal and reproductive issues that are permanent and irreversible. Maybe I should have considered joining a support group, but first I’d need to accept what happened and not try to deny it. Regardless, somehow the voices of women who’d been through it before managed to enter my life with some sage advice anyway. Rachel’s mom, for one, turned me on to what I now consider a must-read for us all: the Harvard Women’s Health Watch newsletter.

Curiously, the name of one acupuncturist kept coming up as someone worth going to. He was a medical doctor who practiced acupuncture, herb therapy, and nutrition. I swear, there must have been five different people with no connection to each other who referred me to this man.

My friend Juliette, who suffers from Crohn’s disease, told me this acupuncturist, Doctor #11, saved her during her pregnancy. It was his partner and brother who helped her get pregnant in the first place. Kathryn’s boyfriend, Ray, came home with a note from a coworker who’d read about my illness. She wrote to me, explaining that she’d had the same surgery as mine and hadn’t begun to feel well internally until she went through her treatment with Doctor #11. Well, I don’t need to get hit over the head with a hammer to wake up, so I called his 9377 Cancer Schmancer 2/28/02 4:18 PM Page 178

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office in Santa Monica and made an appointment in the hope he’d be able to speed up my recovery. I was ready to start enjoying life again.

I drove myself over, and believe me, driving still wasn’t easy.

The seat belt hurt my incision, and the bumps rattled my insides.

As I entered Doctor #11’s waiting area, there was beautiful Asian-sounding music playing on the sound system. Several people of varying ages sat and waited for their appointments. One wall was covered with books on nutrition, Taoism, and Buddhism, as well as gift boxes of Doctor #11’s special tea blends and herbs.

The nurse brought me into Doctor #11’s office, where I sat and waited. I enjoyed looking at the photos and knickknacks displayed on the shelf unit and desk. Small traces of the doctor’s private world painted a picture of him. There were framed photos of a beautiful-looking family I assumed to be his. Diplomas and serene Asian art hung on the wall. The furnishings were sparse and simple in their design.

When he entered his office, he was younger than I thought he’d be, and extremely soft-spoken. Everything about him was calming. He shook my hand as he introduced himself and seemed extremely compassionate as I talked about my cancer and the surgery. He nodded his head as he listened. I studied his kind face, the shirt he wore, his white coat, and his wedding ring. Is he this tranquil at home?

He told me to stop eating nightshade vegetables. I’d never heard of nightshade vegetables, but they sounded awful, and I was sure I’d never eaten anything like that. Well, it turns out they’re tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, and eggplants, all of which I managed to eat plenty of. I love Italian food, need I say more? “These vegetables do most of their growing at night, hence the name night-9377 Cancer Schmancer 2/28/02 4:18 PM Page 179

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shade vegetables,” he explained. “And they’re considered inflam-matories. If you have arthritis or any kind of inflammation, be it post-operative or a simple sprain, you should avoid these foods.”

Who knew?

He also took me off starches like pasta and white rice and suggested I eat brown rice instead. “No pasta?” I exclaimed. “But I love pasta. I eat it almost every day!”

“Too hard to digest. No dairy, no sugar, nothing raw like salads, and very little animal protein,” he rattled off. This guy is nuts.

“How ’bout fruits?” I asked, hopefully.

“No fruit. Except for apples,” was his reply. Oy. How is this man going to make me feel any better when I’m starving to death? “And here’s a special tea that you have to brew and drink after every meal,” he said, handing me a bag of twigs and bark that looked like it came from his driveway. Am I supposed to drink this stuff or use it as fertilizer?

“Oh well, I guess I have nothing to lose,” I said, acquiescing.

I’d spent four months feeling lousy, and I was desperate. He promised he’d make me feel much better in six to eight weeks if I were to come for treatment every week and follow his nutri-tional guides.

He looked at my tongue and felt my pulse. That was the exam: the tongue, the wrist, and done. Normally, I would have considered this exam a joke, but instead I found myself totally mesmerized.

The next thing I knew I was in a private room on a padded table that had clean white paper pulled across it. The tranquil sounds of wind chimes and delicate instruments filled my ears.

A black-and-white photo of a bowl of noodles in a rustic Asian café hung on the wall.

He began to stick the acupuncture needles into me quickly, pre-9377 Cancer Schmancer 2/28/02 4:18 PM Page 180

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cisely, and, most important, painlessly. Now, I’d never been into acupuncture. The one time I’d tried it in the past, it hurt. Duh, the dude is sticking needles into me—what did I expect? That said, this doctor was part of a Chinese family who’d been practicing for generations and he made the experience most pleasant. He inserted a few needles in each calf, in my abdomen, my chest, my head, and my hands. “Don’t move,” he instructed, as he turned on a heat lamp and let its warmth penetrate my stomach. Oh, did I ever enjoy that. Then he placed a long string through my fingers and said if I had any problems to pull the string and someone would come right in to help. The light in the room was subdued and the music serene. Now, I don’t know if I needed any of that stuff to make the needles work, but it sure helped to make me relax.

After that, I continued going week in and week out. Doctor

#11 was always interested in what was going on in my life: Was I happy? Was my relationship good? Was my sex life satisfying?

I’d really never had a doctor take such a personal interest in me before. Even though a part of me wondered if he was taking notes for the tabloids, I preferred to think this was the way good doctors should be and leave it at that.

I listened to Doctor #11’s words as if they were gospel. By the end I was sold hook, line, and sinker. An absolute skeptic in the beginning, I wound up falling in love. I was buying the CDs that always wafted over the sound system, the herbs, and, per the doctor’s instructions, I tried to take brisk walks every day. Soon enough, I began to feel better. Good ol’ Doctor #11 always asked how John was, and held me in his arms when I wept about the cancer. He was the closest thing to Marcus Welby I’d ever experienced, and I do believe he helped me. Plus, he was a medical doctor, so my insurance picked up the tab. Acupuncture had turned out to be a good thing now that I’d found the right physician, and in combination with 9377 Cancer Schmancer 2/28/02 4:18 PM Page 181

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walking, diet, and herbs it became the formula that put my recovery on the right path.

You never know when a pearl will drop in your lap, so stay open and you, too, may get a note through a friend from someone you don’t even know—one that will make all the difference. . . .

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Melinda

N o v e m b e r 2 0 0 0

idon’t exactly know when it hit me, but it was definitely a few months into my recovery that I realized I’d be living the rest of my life as a woman who’ll never be pregnant. It was difficult to accept, even for me, who hadn’t had a lifelong burning desire to be pregnant. I can only imagine how those women who’ve always wanted to have a baby, but now can’t, must feel.

It wasn’t fair. I hated that this was foisted on me. Especially since through therapy I was finally understanding my indifference to having a baby and actually becoming more receptive to the idea. Needless to say, the timing of it all was highly ironic. All the years I could have had a baby I was frightened of the idea and didn’t. If I’d ever tried, I would have become aware of my luteal phase defect, because I would have miscarried due to low progesterone levels. I’d have figured it out then, and I never would have gotten the cancer.

But psychologically, I wasn’t near ready, and probably never would have been if I hadn’t gotten such good therapy when my marriage was coming apart. So I’d figured out why I didn’t want to have a baby, and now that I did, I couldn’t. C’est la vie! I decided to be fatalistic about it all. I don’t need to get pregnant or become 9377 Cancer Schmancer 2/28/02 4:18 PM Page 184

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a mother to have a rich, full life. For that matter, if I want to have a baby, I don’t have to carry it to be its mother. John said we didn’t need to have a biological baby to have a family. He’s an extremely generous man and I love him for having said that. But for a while there, I gotta admit, it was difficult to grasp the permanence of it all, and I found myself slipping into a depression.

I never expected to find what I needed where and when I did.

It was at a baby shower, which I really didn’t want to go to in the worst way. I mean, I didn’t like going to baby showers when I had a uterus. But that was where I met Melinda. The shower was for Juliette, one of the gals who’d recommended my acupuncturist, and it was on November 4. For most people that’s a date of little significance, but November 4 happened to be the anniversary of my wedding to Peter. So this shower was a real zetz for me—on my way to Juliette’s, divorce and a hysterectomy were all I could think about. If it weren’t for Camelia’s having been invited, too, I’m sure I wouldn’t have gone.

But I felt it was time to resurface, and Juliette, whom I’ve known since her producing days years ago at MTV, knows everyone in Hollywood. So I agreed to go. I wanted to look good, strong, and healthy for all to see. After careful deliberation, I finally settled on some really cool lizard-print pants and cowboy boots with a cashmere sweater.

Juliette, a warm and vivacious Englishwoman, was beaming with joy as she welcomed us at the door with a huge belly, smiling from ear to ear. She looked beautiful. I was trying my best to forget the divorce and hysterectomy, mingling and getting acquainted, when Juliette called over a woman and said, “Fran, I want you to meet Melinda. She had the same surgeon as you and the same surgery, too.” Could the party get any worse?

Melinda and I looked at each other and exchanged uncomfortable hellos. Add salt to the wound, why don’t you? There we were, 9377 Cancer Schmancer 2/28/02 4:18 PM Page 185

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Melinda and I, the hysterectomy girls, who hadda visit our oncologist every three months to check for cancer recurrence, standing among a sea of pregos, women with children, and healthy career gals. We shook hands and drifted off in different directions.