Rocking the Pink (26 page)

While the machine measured, I lay perfectly still for forty-five minutes, with my arms above my head. After about twenty minutes, my arms went numb. And then I felt an itch on my face I desperately
wanted to scratch. And then . . . I started to . . . smell something. What was that smell?
Oh, it's me.

Apparently, my body was aggressively sweating out the remainder of the chemotherapy drugs. (And, unfortunately, wearing deodorant in radiation was prohibited because it somehow interfered with the machines.) It wasn't pretty.

The radiation technician came into the room and sat beside me.

“Please continue to lie very still,” he instructed. And then he marked three dots on my body with a Sharpie pen—one dot on my sternum, another one under my breast, and another one under my armpit—the three coordinates of my radiation field.

As the doctor sat next to my armpit, leaning in to do whatever was necessary with that Sharpie pen, I felt self-conscious about my body odor. I figured it was better to acknowledge the elephant in the room than pretend it didn't exist.

“I'm sorry for my stink,” I blurted.

The technician smiled at me. “You're fine.” And when I didn't say anything, he added, “Remember, we treat other areas of the body here, too.” He winked.

The next step was to permanently tattoo the radiation-field dots to ensure that over the course of the next six weeks, the exact same field on my body would be radiated every time.

Jane had received her radiation tattoos the prior day, and she had emailed to warn me. “Brace yourself, Laura. It hurts terribly.”

As the technician raised the tattoo needle in his hand, I steeled myself for the pain. But as the needle pierced my flesh, I didn't even flinch.

“Wow,” the technician said. “Most people say that really hurts.”

I guess most people aren't She-Ra, Princess of Power.
“Oh, that's nothing,” I scoffed. “Pfft.” During the second and third tattoos, I could have fallen asleep.

Just like that, I was now the tattooed lady. Granted, the tattoos were eensy-weensy, barely visible, but I knew they were there. (And, by the way, the moment I got home from the hospital, I emailed Jane to tell her that she was a “complete and total wuss.”) And the coolest thing? My radiation tattoos had “broken the seal,” so to speak. I would never go back to my tattooless self.

Well,
I thought,
I might as well get a real one now. Let the permanent badassery begin!

 

 

Over the next six weeks, I went in for radiation treatments five times per week. Every day I lay down on the big metal table and R2-D2 buzzed around me, radiating the three areas designated by my radiation tattoos.
Zap. Zap. Zap.
Getting undressed and into my hospital gown took longer than the actual radiation session.

Radiation reminded me of something Sharon said right after her triplets were born. Her husband had taken their older daughter out for an entire afternoon of entertainment, leaving Sharon at home alone with their three infants, and Sharon gushed to me, in sincere relief, “Gosh, it's so much easier to care for three kids than four.”

For me, radiation was like caring for twins (pun intended) after having served a long tour of duty with quintuplets. A virtual vacation.

True, there were side effects as the long weeks of daily treatments took their toll on my body. The biggest was what the doctors called “fatigue.” And it was certainly true that I fell asleep the moment my head hit the pillow every night. Occasionally I napped, too. But you know what?
Fatigue shmatigue.

True, my radiated skin became blistered and pained. And toward the end, it tightened like leather. But, at least for me, this problem did not compare to months of chemotherapy. The superficial pain from radiation was isolated within my breast, chest, and armpit; it did not touch my heart, mind, and soul. My spirit remained untethered from my circumstances.

 

 

It wasn't long before downy-soft hairs started sprouting on my scalp. I was reborn. Brad couldn't keep his hands off my newborn head. He constantly rubbed it and called my little hairlings “beautiful.”

Unfortunately, the hair follicles in my scalp were not the only ones becoming active again. In addition to the beautiful hair on my head, I was developing noticeable peach fuzz all over my entire face.

“You've got muttonchops,” Brad teased, and I promptly beelined to the bathroom to shave my cheeks with his electric razor. (Thankfully, the peach fuzz subsided after a few weeks.)

I started going to weekly Pilates classes, where my classmates took great interest in tracking the progress of my hair growth from week to week. I took daily walks with Buster. I started, very slowly, to see my friends again.

And then, toward the end of my radiation treatments, I sang with Cool Band Luke at a fundraising gala for lung cancer. My hair was at the G.I. Jane stage, so I wore a red flapper wig throughout the performance. I shook my booty all night long, and no one ever suspected I was in the midst of cancer treatments. I was just the girl in the band. It felt like coming home.

At the end of the night, after the lights had come on and the band was packing up our gear, I took off the wig, which had become hot and itchy. A lingering partygoer gasped when I removed it and exclaimed, “You look better without the wig! Ditch the wig!”

Thanks to that kind (or drunk) stranger, I donated the wig and all my head scarves to a cancer charity the very next day and never covered up again.

A few weeks later, my head was sprouting a curly mop. And though I was grateful to have hair at all, this Q-tip look wasn't particularly attractive. “I look like Vinny Barbarino from
Welcome Back, Kotter,”
I whined to Brad.

“Oh, no, you don't, honey,” Brad reassured me. And just as I was about to hug him, he added, “You look like Horshack.”

But nothing could get me down. I had hair again. My port had been removed. I had no nausea or bone pain. We had (gratefully) said goodbye to our (wonderful) baby sitter. It was time for our family to take care of itself again.

And then, like a faucet that has suddenly been turned on, new songs started pouring into my head. They flooded me at all times of the day and night, boring holes through my gray matter.

I was back, baby! There was no doubt about it.

Jane and I were engaged in an enthusiastic email exchange about how to cast the movie about our lives. I definitely wanted Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock to play me, or, if the movie included a younger me, maybe Anne Hathaway. Any of them would do, really; I loved them all. (Not very original, I know, but you've got to aim for the top.)

“At any rate,” I reasoned, ever the pragmatist, “I'd need an A-list actress to play me to get the project green-lit.” I was proud of myself for using such in-the-know industry-speak.

Jane agreed that my entertainment-industry acumen was admirable. “For me,” she joined in, “it's got to be Cate Blanchett or Renée Zellweger. Either of them would do me justice.”

“I understand Cate,” I responded, having established myself as the resident Holly wood expert, “but Renée Zellweger to play
you?
An
American?
Perish the thought!”

“Oh, yes,” Jane shot back. “Renée did a bang-up British accent in the Bridget Jones movies.”

Actually, I'd read an article in which Hugh Grant had said Renée's accent had been impeccable. Perhaps Jane was onto something there. “Good point, Jane.” Really, we'd missed our mutual callings. We both should have been Hollywood casting agents. “So hard to choose.” (And, of course, it was imperative we make a decision soon, since Holly wood was sure to be knocking down our doors any day now.)

“What about Brad?” Jane asked.

“That's easy,” I wrote. “Brad Pitt will play my Brad. Brad Pitt's a dead ringer for his irreverence and charm.” And, I recalled, the two Brads had been members of the same fraternity at their respective colleges. That being the case, my Brad and Angelina's Brad (or dare I call him “Angie's Brad”?) could greet each other on the movie set with secret handshakes and sappy fraternity songs—about which Angie and I would roll our eyes and exchange warm looks of commiseration about our beloved men.
They're so silly,
our mutual expressions would communicate,
but oh, how we love them.

And now that I thought about it, if Angelina Jolie wanted to star in my movie with her Brad, then I most certainly would not stand in her way. It had been an egregious oversight to overlook her as a candidate to play me in the first place, I realized. I wasn't totally convinced she could pull off my particular brand of spazziness—she seemed like a pretty cool customer to me—but I would be open to letting her try.

“Well then,” Jane wrote, and I could detect her bossy tone clearly through cyberspace, across two continents, “how about a cute
boyfriend for me? I'd like Hugh Jackman, please,” she commanded, as if she were ordering fish and chips. “That man can sing! You could do a duet with him in the movie, maybe in a dream sequence or something.”

It made no sense! Jane was unattached at the moment! And this movie was meant to be cinema verité—as realistic and gritty as possible.

Ha!
Who was I kidding? If my Brad and I were Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, then by God, My Dearest Jane would enjoy a torrid, if fantastical, affair with Hugh Jackman. It was our movie, wasn't it?

“Okay, Jane. We'll create a part for Hugh Jackman.” I laughed as I pressed the “send” button. It was the least I could do for my dear friend.

Come to think of it, that gave me an idea: As long as we were creating parts that made absolutely no sense in this movie, couldn't we find a part for George Clooney (twice honored as
People
magazine's Sexiest Man Alive, if you haven't heard)? Given George's years of experience portraying a TV doctor on
ER
, perhaps he could be Dr. Hampshire in our film.

“George is my absolute favorite!” I wrote.

“Oh, yes, he's a dream,” Jane replied.

“He's such a man's man, isn't he?” I sighed. “I bet he smells like Old Spice! I just want to get right up close and . . . smell him.”

During those interminable months of chemo, my sense of smell had become particularly acute as the unmistakable and omnipresent odors of chemicals and sickness had bombarded my nostrils. I just hadn't been able to escape that awful chemo scent, though I'd changed my sheets and pajamas obsessively—it was on my skin, my clothes, my sheets.

Yes, I decided, George Clooney's manly-man smell would be an idyllic escape from cancer and its wafting stranglehold on my life. Yes, George Clooney's Old Spice smell would be just the ticket to take me away from it all.

“Oh, Laura,” Jane wrote in her reply email, “is he your celebrity crush? The one you'd ‘do' if given the chance?”

“I don't want to have
sex
with him, Jane,” I wrote piously, though, of course, I was lying. “I just want to smell him!”

For the hundredth time, I thought about my bucket list, something I'd composed in my mind, and supplemented many times, as I'd lain in bed on my darkest days. Some of the items on the list were meaningful and poignant, exactly as you'd expect. Like watching my daughters graduate from college. Or holding my future grandchildren in my arms. Or taking golf lessons so I could join Brad on the course in our twilight years.

But life is also about moments of giddy excitement, flashes of unexpected, pulse-racing thrill. Isn't it?

Yes, the more I thought about my bucket list, the more I realized smelling George Clooney was pretty high on the list. And, dammit, I wasn't ashamed to admit it.

When I emerged from my very last radiation treatment and into the hospital waiting room, my fellow radiation patients, whom I had befriended over the past several weeks of daily treatments, threw me a “radiation graduation party.” My song “Mama Needs a Girls' Night Out” was blaring on the CD player, and we all started dancing around in our hospital gowns, booties hanging out and all. After cake and presents and warm hugs all around, I walked out of the radiation area as the group hummed “Pomp and Circumstance.”

Brad and I marched out the front doors of the hospital together, arm in arm, and at the first flash of bright sunshine on my face, I raised my arms in triumph. We'd reached the finish line.

Before heading to the car, though, we made one last stop, in the building next door.

“Sayonara,” I said to Dr. Hampshire, real sassy-like, as I stood in his office.

“You're not nearly done with me,” he reminded me. (Indeed, regular checkups with my oncologist would be part of my life for years to come.)