The Time of My Life (27 page)

With our relationship back on track, we were ready and eager to face the world again. I’ll always be grateful that we were, because the next twist that came was the cruelest of all.

With so few good movie roles available, I’d been looking off and on for a TV series over the past couple of years— but though I’d read tons of scripts, nothing was ever quite right. I had really enjoyed working on
The Renegades
and
North and South
, and knew if I could find a good character on a solid series it would be worth gunning for. Then, in 2007, my long-time agent, Nicole David, and manager for TV Jenny Delaney sent me scripts for two new series that both looked very good.

One of the two shows,
The Beast,
was about an enigmatic FBI agent named Charles Barker. Barker was a fascinating, layered character who constantly surprised me as I read through the script. I loved his world-weary persona, and the fact that he wasn’t your stereotypical good guy, but a complex and mature character.

I really liked the writing and the ideas on
The Beast,
but the production team was young and inexperienced, especially compared to the team for the other series. Going with the young, hungry show would be a risk, but ultimately I just liked the material better. There was something about Barker that
really spoke to me, so in the end I turned the other project down.

We shot the pilot, and I knew even before seeing the finished product that
The Beast
was going to be really good. If it got picked up, we’d be shooting the full first season in Chicago, and both Lisa and I had high hopes that would be the case. So we went into the holiday period more optimistic than we had been in a long while—happy to be in love and excited about the future.

Then came that fateful night in Aspen. As we toasted the new year and I felt the champagne burn my stomach, I never could have guessed what lay ahead. I didn’t think my digestive issues and that strange burning sensation meant anything serious, even though I noticed that I had begun losing some weight, too. But I just gritted my teeth and made it through the holidays, assuming I’d start feeling better soon.

Back in LA a couple of weeks later, I noticed something else strange. When I went to the bathroom, which had become something of an ordeal over the past few weeks with all my digestive issues, things didn’t look quite right. It’s embarrassing to say, but my urine was very dark, and my stool was very pale. I walked out to the kitchen and found Lisa making a cup of tea. “Something really weird is going on,” I said, and told her what I’d noticed. She knew I hadn’t been feeling all that great, and she asked if anything else wasn’t quite right.

I walked to a mirror and peered at my face. “Do my eyes look yellow?” I asked Lisa. She came to look, and I pulled my lower lids down and rolled my eyes around.

“Yes,” she said. “They do. They look jaundiced.” Lisa’s not the worrying kind, but I could tell by the look on her face that
she was concerned. “Let’s make an appointment for you to see Dr. Davidson tomorrow,” she said.

“I don’t think that’s really necessary,” I said. “I’m sure it’ll clear up.”

But Lisa was adamant. “This isn’t normal,” she said. So we made an appointment, then got online to see what we could find out about these strange symptoms I was having. We looked up jaundice and found a long list of things that could cause it, none of which sounded very good—from hepatitis to liver infection to cancer. All the same, we didn’t imagine for a second that I could possibly be that sick.

The next day, January 14, Lisa and I went to Cedars-Sinai to see Dr. Davidson. We described my symptoms, and after looking at my eyes he immediately ordered a batch of tests. CAT scans, blood tests, urine test—they put me through the works. He knew something was up, and a procedure called a bilirubin test soon confirmed it. My bilirubin levels were very high, which meant something strange was going on with my bile ducts.

We asked what might be the cause of high bilirubin levels, and he gave us a short list of possibilities, one of which was pancreatic cancer. But another was acute pancreatitis, which is still a serious illness, but treatable. “It’s probably pancreatitis,” I told Lisa, trying to reassure not only her but myself, too.

But later that day, a CAT scan revealed a mass on my pancreas. This was very bad news, though it still didn’t mean I definitely had cancer. To find out for sure, the doctors would need to do an exploratory endoscopic procedure, to get a piece of tissue for testing. Unfortunately, they couldn’t schedule
the endoscopy until four days later—an eternity when you’re dealing with a fast-moving disease. We spent the next four days at home in a fog, trying to keep our emotions in check while inside we were starting to panic.

The endoscopy was scheduled for January 19. An anesthesiologist put me to sleep, and a gastrointestinal surgeon snaked a tube down my throat. He planned to insert a stent into my bile duct, to open it up and have a better look. But he couldn’t get the scope that far down, because my stomach was very enlarged. They would have to try again another time, using a different technique—but at this point, they were almost certain what was wrong with me. There were very few things other than pancreatic cancer that would cause my stomach to swell like that along with the other symptoms.

As I lay sleeping off the anesthesia in the recovery room, two of the doctors gave Lisa the news. “We need to do a pathology on the tissue to be absolutely certain,” they told her, “but we’re 99 percent sure that he’s got pancreatic cancer.”

Lisa later told me she went completely numb hearing those words. She didn’t trust herself to absorb any more information these doctors were giving her, but she knew it was critically important, so she managed to ask them to call her sister-in-law Maria Scoures. Maria is a respected oncologist in Houston, and Lisa needed her help to take in this news and help decide what to do next. The doctors got Maria on the phone, and she’s been a godsend for us both from that moment on.

Lying in the recovery room, I still had no idea what awaited me. When I woke up, I was suffering from severe enough cramps that the doctors ordered me to spend the night in the hospital. During the endoscopy, the doctors had pumped me full of air while trying to get the stent in, and having all that air
trapped in my digestive system was unbelievably painful. They wheeled me into a hospital room and I tried to make myself comfortable, still groggy from the anesthesia.

Lisa came in to see me, but first she made a decision: She wouldn’t tell me about the cancer right away. She wanted me to have one last night of “normal” life—one last night of innocence before our hardest fight began. She told me she loved me, and spent the night by my side.

The next morning, the surgeon came in and woke us both up to give me the diagnosis. I don’t remember much about that conversation, but when he told me I had pancreatic cancer, my first thought was, “I’m a dead man.” The only thing I’d ever heard about pancreatic cancer was that it’s incurable and it kills you very quickly. I just stared at him in shock. I had gone in for a simple gastrointestinal procedure, then all of a sudden—surprise! You could be dead before springtime!

Fear sliced through me. What the fuck had just happened? I had been so excited about the upswing my life was on. Now it all seemed like a cruel joke. I couldn’t be dying—I had too much to live for! I just couldn’t face the idea that life as I’d always known it was over, that there was a disease inside me that would grow and mutate and eventually kill me. I didn’t know where I would find the strength to deal with it.

And neither did Lisa. She has always been so strong, so determined and capable. We had been together through so much. But after the surgeon left, she just broke down and cried. She crawled into the hospital bed with me, buried her head in my neck, and said, “I can’t do this, Buddy. I can’t do it. You can ask me for anything else, but please don’t ask me to do this.” I held her tightly and we wept together. She knew I
couldn’t change anything about what was happening, but she was devastated.

She pulled herself together and has helped me through every aspect of this disease with good humor and boundless love. But at that moment, as she lay sobbing in my arms, I felt as alone as I’d ever felt. I knew I’d have to find a way to fight this thing, but the very thought of it exhausted me.

There was one last sliver of hope. If the cancer hadn’t spread at all, the doctors told us it might be possible to operate. But that hope came crashing down the next day, when another CAT scan showed that it had already spread to my liver. I had what they call Stage 4 cancer, the worst possible.

Lisa and I decided to tell only a few people about my diagnosis, at least until we knew for sure what my treatment would be and what my prognosis really was. We told our lawyer Fred Gaines, agent Nicole David, and my brother Donny. We especially didn’t want to tell my mother, as she was having eye surgery the next day and was supposed to try to keep her eyes dry—no crying—for a few weeks after the surgery.

Unfortunately, those morally bankrupt souls at the
National Enquirer
had other ideas. Someone in the medical field tipped them off, and a
National Enquirer
reporter showed up at my mom’s house about a week after my diagnosis. She opened the door to have a complete stranger ask, “How do you feel about Patrick having pancreatic cancer?” And that’s how she found out. For the life of me, I cannot understand how anyone can be so cruel, so unfeeling, to do such a thing. But human decency is apparently an afterthought when there’s money to be made selling tabloids.

Lisa and I jumped right into action, learning everything we
possibly could about the disease and how to treat it. Maria was a tremendous help, too—she was doing pancreatic cancer research of her own, and advised us on how best to fight it. From the beginning, we’ve done all our own home care—injections, intravenous nutrition, and everything else—because we didn’t want to have an at-home nurse. We wanted life to go on as normally as it possibly could, because I had no intention of staying alive just for the sake of it—I wanted to live and enjoy life rather than feeling like a full-time patient.

Before the news of my illness broke publicly, the A&E network decided to pick up
The Beast
for a full season. This was incredibly great news—but of course, they’d ordered those thirteen episodes without knowing their lead actor had just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. At first, I wasn’t sure I could go through with filming a full season of an action-packed dramatic series—I didn’t know whether I’d be healthy enough to do it. But very soon, I realized there was nothing I wanted to do more. And I made up my mind that I’d find a way, no matter what.

We got in touch with A&E to let them know about my diagnosis, and I sent along this message: “Don’t count me out. I can do this.” All I could think was, if I’m really going out, I’d rather go out on a high note, doing quality work I believe in. I loved
The Beast,
and felt that I’d done some of the best work of my career in the pilot. I really wanted to have the chance to explore the character of Charles Barker even further.

Once they learned about the cancer, the executives at A&E were under no obligation to keep their offer on the table. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for them to kill
the series. But to their immense credit, they did not. We decided to see how my chemotherapy treatment went, and they’d make a decision after that. If I responded well and it looked as if I’d be healthy enough to shoot the series, they’d go ahead with it.

Television executives aren’t necessarily renowned for their generosity of spirit, but that decision by A&E president Bob DiBitetto restored my faith in humanity. It was such a decent, openhearted thing to do—and he kept his word. After a few months of chemotherapy treatment, when I was feeling pretty good, I invited the writers and producers to Rancho Bizarro. I told them I was excited to do the series and ready to go, and they called A&E right then to ask for the green light. We got it.

Chemotherapy was hell on wheels, and it got worse the longer it went on—but I knew if it was a matter of just pushing through all the pain and discomfort, I could do it. The cancer also caused all kinds of trouble with my digestive system, including bloody, painful bowel movements and debilitating cramps. I spent many nights curled up in the fetal position on the bathroom floor, desperate for the pain to pass. But although I felt nauseated, bloated, and cramped most of the time, there was at least one side effect of chemo I’d dreaded but didn’t suffer: I managed to keep my hair.

As Lisa and I headed up to Chicago to begin shooting in the late summer of 2008, I vowed to myself that no one on the set would ever know if I was feeling bad or in pain. I was going to shoot this whole series, doing my own stunts, right into the Chicago winter—and I wasn’t going to make a peep about anything having to do with cancer or treatment. If I had a 6:30 a.m. call, I’d wake up a couple of hours earlier to try to get my digestive system in order and make sure I was ready to go.

I stayed on that first chemo regimen for ten months, which is an incredibly long time—most people undergo a round of chemo for just a few months, as the side effects get cumulatively worse. And mine did get worse toward the end of shooting the season, but I undertook an attitude adjustment every single day, reminding myself how fortunate I was to be working on a project I loved, and willing myself to put one foot in front of the other to finish it, no matter how bad I felt.

Being on the set was incredibly energizing. I was happy to be working again, focusing on something other than the continuing fight against cancer. I worked twelve-to eighteen-hour days, jumping and fighting my way through action sequences and thoroughly enjoying bringing Charles Barker to life. There were definitely tough moments when I had to overcome pain, nausea, and fatigue. But some days were good. Once, after a crew member said to me, “I can’t believe you’re able to do all this,” I turned to Lisa and said, “I’ve worked with hangovers worse than this.”