Doc puts the kibosh on trip downunder !

Four Days Later
Onwards and upwards?? Wrong ! Should have been a little more like Slowly Does It or something else alarmingly simplistic but effective called Take It Easy ….but no…I did not do that. I OVERdid it and somehow, tricked into thinking I am still the smartass who had never spent a single solitary night in hospital till 6 months ago, zipped hither and thither for about four days straight, actually not feeling TOO bad. And in all fairness some of it was sensible and justifiable. A trip to the homeopathic doctor who is soothing and seems to totally understand the toxic effects of all that cancer patients go through with conventional treatment…It is such a relief to have someone who tells you what your organs are going through in a truly empathetic way and actually SUGGESTS remedies and potions and pills to take. The relief is somewhat dissipated when one hands over the credit card fro a mighty big tab---but what price health and feeling good eh?? And at least no going off to Rite Aid to fill prescriptions where I reckon they now suspect me to be some kind of junkie. Though once back home I get a blistering headache as I try to sort through the tons of supplements I have gathered in the last few months and put them into weekly pill boxes divided into morning, noon, evening and bedtime !
So that’s the body sorted---now it’s time for some spiritual sustenance and I beg Nick to do his homework solo for once as mum heads down to Venice for an evening with about 60 folk listening to an Indian mystic named SAHDGURU. He has admittedly, a truly beautiful face with luminous shining eyes and a preposterously peaceful blissed out demeanor that was very lovely and calming. He began about an hour late though and having scoffed about eight little healthy oatmeal cookies I suddenly had a shocking gut ache and my calm turned to panic as I realized the Indian gent was in no hurry with his spiel which began with his childhood and then segued into his early manhood where he realized that he could sit down cross legged to meditate and wake up EIGHT DAYS LATER to find stunned onlookers camped out waiting for him to return to consciousness. A tiny bit boastful but impressive nonetheless. I tried soo very hard to concentrate and take in some pearls of wisdom but next to me sat a heavenly old friend from New York whose son had died about six months ago. I was so stunned and horrified as I tried to imagine her grief and think how I would feel if the unthinkable happened and I ‘lost’ one of my children. It was simply terrifying and made my problems seemed ludicrously miniscule and insignificant just as it rendered the guru’s words impossible to hear for the most part. I recall he said that we must not give others the privilege of being able to hurt or upset us with their behavior or words. Not unlike the message back in the old days when I went to Kabbala . DO NOT REACT. Don’t be reactive. Uh huh. Yeah right. AS IF!
As the hours wore on and I imagined Nick stretched out on my bed watching TV, I regretted very much the fact that I had left my handbag about eight rows further up with another friend. I was trapped and that was all there was to it. Then Question Time began and someone asked about Death and dying peacefully and all that nonsense. I’m not afraid to admit it. I have NO faith and am terrified of dying. But then our man told us we had to make our death a real occasion. We must die with a smile and in great style. He repeated it several times. Yep, we had to move on out with a LOT OF STYLE ! Jeez louise—talk about pressure. Not only with grace but STYLE as well?? Give me a break! It was midnight before I made it back to Hollywood, exhausted beyond belief, so sad for my friend – but at least not filled with too much jealousy for those who could afford his costly four day seminars in LA or month long stays at his Indian ashram. I think it’s fair to say I am SO not spiritual.
Next day I stagger back to santa Monica and am back baring the top half for Dr Bob who frowns and informs me that I have tons of fluid around my huge swollen breast and must be drained immediately. And with no further delay the GIANT horse needles are produced as he totally BLAMES me for it and says it is crystal clear that I have been doing too much. I naturally protested vehemently. Alas, the darling but disloyal daughter told him that I was a shocking liar and that I had spent hours in the garage a day or two ago heaving boxes and looking for paintings and generally acting like some pumped-up circus strong man. He was deliriously happy to hear that his suspicion was right and he ordered me to lay low and START ANOTHER COURSE OF fucking ANTIBIOTICS. Then my Brutus of a daughter mentioned that we were all planning a sortie to Australia the following week and the mild-mannered Dr Bob nearly has a conniption. WHY? He demanded. Because I have family and friends there and I booked it eight months ago I said. And I didn’t get to go last year, I added plaintively. It’s true. Last December was when I felt the lump and the mammograms and biopsies began and then I got the flu and had to move out of my house to rent it and thus, at the very last minute, I drove my children to the airport and being lifelong travelers, especially to Australia, they very happily headed off by themselves feeling rather thrilled I imagine not have an overloaded silly mother tagging along. I wept bitterly and spent Christmas in LA sick as a dog, house sitting in Silver Lake and bawling every time they called. Which was not often.
So I get home, retire to bed, wake up and can’t find the prescription he gave me and dig around for some old leftover antibiotics. Any old ones will do surely to God. And then I do too much and then I lose the bastard antibiotics two days ago somewhere in the house or under my bed but who can tell and then I am back at Dr Bob’s today and I am hugely swollen again and he drains and then, like last time, gets a magnet to find the matching magnet in my expander so he can pump it up through the port – so as not leave any dead space for more fluid to gather and declares that I have obviously have been doing too much and going to Australia tomorrow is out of the question. I weep hysterically with self-pity and obediently head back to Cedars to have it all confirmed by the infectious disease dude—but what’s new? He is beyond conservative…and that’s where it stands…
I AM sad and it sucks…and did I keep the receipts so I can take some of the pressies back for pals downunder???

Toxic Wasteland...thanksgiving and beyond

TEN DAYS LATER
Not unlike Roman Polanski---certain post-surgery patients should be fitted with some sort of electronic security anklet-to make sure they stay PUT, preferably in bed, once back home. So that, trying frantically to make up for lost time, they don’t hit the streets a few days later with a list of errands that would exhaust a driven, wildly ambitious Personal Shopper on drugs and thirty years younger in some TV Reality Show a la Amazing Race.
One of the main problems here? I’m a moron. Why do I imagine I will have more energy than after the last surgery—especially as there clearly must be some sort of cumulative effect now after about 12 hours of general anesthesia during 4 SURGERIES in 10 months. And even worse, as I may have mentioned before, a grand total of about FOUR MONTHS OF massive doses of ANTIBIOTICS that would bring a wild rhino to it’s knees.
I am now officially a TOXIC WASTELAND. Can the antibiotics even be remotely effective after all this time. Surely fucking not!.
Three days before the surgery- two varieties of antibiotic delivered via very large pills—as a preventive measure. Then a week of IV antibiotics - 3 days in hospital and another 4 days of it at home thanks to my trusty 6’ 6” Russian nurse Vadim who obliged again by coming to rouse me from my bed to deliver the I V. And now, another 7 days of pills.
I have officially never felt WORSE. Not during the entire nightmare year have I felt sicker than I do right now. It’s as if I wake up every day with a massive hangover. Imagine being force fed three enormous Indian meals in a row, about half a dozen donuts and then drinking two bottles of champagne and five rum and cokes. Think how you would feel the next day. The blinding headache. The bloating. The gas. The total hideousness. And…the depression.
Got the picture? Well multiply it a few times more and that’s how four months of antibiotics makes you feel.
At least feeling as revolted and revolting as I do means that the day alone on Thanksgiving was sad but I felt no hunger. And there was no pressure to perform any motherly duties. Son Nick in New York with his beloved godmother –ice skating, Broadway show and slices of ‘the best pizza ever.’ And Lola spent it with her second stepmother and half brother and sister. (She veery sweetly brought me a bag of very good leftovers.) Hey, I’m an Aussie I kept telling myself as I lay in bed in a lot of pain, taking half a Vicodin every few hours and emptying the bloody drain- what do I care about Thanksgiving – but these annual family rituals- the accompanying brainwashing TV ads and movies picturing jolly celebrations with your clan have a way of seeping into the consciousness and despite any extenuating circumstances, make the lone twit in bed feel like a miserable old single failure. Yep, well aware that feelings are not facts but my brain can seem like a mighty powerful and willful bitch of a thing sometimes—leading me down very thorny, overgrown paths of sentimental and undermining beliefs.
And what if feelings ARE facts??
MUST read Power of Now again immediately. Though the last time I had the energy to read seems long ago and the voice of Eckhardt Tolle (yes, even bought the book on tape) is unacceptably tedious. I will Google it and see if there is a riveting sentence or two I can memorize. My daughter points out that I have a stack of books written by cheery folks who have had cancer and ‘seen the light’ along with books like “Change Your Diet-Change Your Life’. I know, I know, we are what we eat—Stay Alkaline and test your pee with the drawer-full of PH testers I have but how much frigging broccoli can one eat in a day? And who can cope with an acidic read-out every other day? Next morning I steal a couple of Marlboro Red from Lola, run down to the corner in my pj’s and Uggs and a coat where forty yards away sits a lovely Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. Order up one of my beloved Mocha Ice Blendeds, grab the National Enquirer someone has left and run back home. Bliss for about thirty minutes before the guilty goody-goody side of me has a field day.
So a day or two more of deep discomfort, bandage-changing and drain-emptying as the long Thanksgiving weekend drags on interminably and by Monday I have a list of things to do a mile long. Monday morning. Hopped into my car which had only one ticket due to the fact that I have yet to go to the 84 places necessary to get parking permits for my new address and realized I was not up to hitting the DMV to change the Rego address. Not today. Maybe never. But after dropping the over-exhausted teen (who loves New York and wants to move there) at school AND on time, I did, by some miracle, notice the yellow light indicating I needed gas and headed up Vine to fill ‘er up.
This is easy. I can do this. Keen on multi-tasking I make a call, hop back into my car to plug in the nearly out-of- battery-cell phone and get involved in a heated discussion of why the recent announcement that women get TOO MANY unnecessary mammograms is dead-on. These are not fly-by-night fools saying this. They are experts and have studied it all and I loathe the way the Obama administration is being raked over the coals for something that in essence will protect women from unnecessary radiation and then often, unnecessary surgery and chemo. But it’s a thorny issue and yes, there are exceptions but who knows if their lumps would not have gone away of their own accord if they were watched carefully….
Oh I could go on…but my friend is already bored and so I merrily drive off to the next task till I hear an almighty CRACK and realize I have omitted to remove hose from car. SHIT! I stop and see that it has at least come out of the gas entry-point of my car and done no visible damage. But the long snake of a thing has come out of the bowser—is that the right word – and is lying right next to MY car there as people stare disapprovingly. So I run inside and try to explain what happened to a foreign gentleman. Not sure he understands me. I repeat that the gas hose has come off it’s moorings. “Moorings?” Yes, I can’t put it back, I say, looking as sad and tragic as I can. But he waves his arms and says something I don’t understand but I feel I’ve done my duty and hit the road without looking back. A friend later says they’ll have filmed my car with secret cameras and to expect a bill for about $1000. That seems harsh and I beg my brain to file it under “LATER”.
And you probably won’t have a whit of sympathy if I tell you that three minutes later, stopped at a light on Melrose I look over as I chat on the phone and see a black man pointing at something in my car – or at me. I politely ignore him and keep chatting. My eyes flicker to the right again and there he is again, staring crossly and pointing as he shakes his head at me. Oh for heavens sake, I recall thinking—what’s his problem. Lucky I didn’t give him the finger. (My son practically faints with tension every time we drive together. He gives a running commentary as to what lane I should be in, slow down, put on your indicator MUM, NOW...MUM THERE’S A RED LIGHT COMING UP…stuff like that.) The lights change and off I speed only to hear sirens and a loud speaker moments later telling me to “PULL OVER. NOW !” I look back.
Oh, it’s the POLICE. That’s the problem with my foul, gas-guzzling Land Rover Discovery. It’s so high that when the cop car was right next to me I couldn’t even see it WAS A COP CAR. I make up a brilliant story about my young son at the airport calling to say the plane got in early and I’m running late because I’ve just been to my cancer doctor and the very sweet, kind policeman lets me off. I’m sorry but you can’t NOT use the cancer thing for as long as you can. Just lucky he didn’t rip my now out of date Disabled Tag off the rearview mirror and handcuff me on the spot. New Year’s Resolution. Throw out the Disabled Tag and never speak without a hands-free. (And don’t tell Nick—he will be livid. Out of guilt for some driving transgression of the day I sometimes let him drive the last fifty yards down the street. But only when it’s dark and there’s no one around. He’s a superb driver. And yes, I am a wicked, lying scofflaw. I’m going to change.)
And I vow to buy a new hands-free but I also need to get into the New Age and buy a new phone that can access email and so until that decision is made, how can I get a hands-free? I want an IPHONE but Lola says I won’t be able to handle it. I’ll show her!
I head to the nearest Starbucks for my venti latte with half a pump of mocha (it used to be one whole pump) and as I rush past some sort of Christmas display in my hurry to get the last Times, it catches my drain which I have pinned to my t-shirt in …It means the long skinny tube comes out of the plastic bulb and blood spatters on my jeans and a few drops on my shoe and the floor. This may well be one of the low-points of the month and I dash to get napkins, wipe the tiny spots off the floor and then run out the door mortified,NOT looking back to see if anyone noticed as I hold the tube upwards to prevent more spillage. Minus my coffee, I reattach the tube in the car—and realize it’s a bad day for tubing and I am still in desperate need of a caffeine hit.
So off to another frigging Starbucks-miles out of my way—and then come to my senses and realize I need to go home immediately and retire to bed for a couple of hours before heading back out for groceries and the teen. I sleep as if I’ve just done a marathon and wake up three hours later at 4 with that awful sick panicky feeling when you’ve overslept in the day and scarcely know where you are…I must dress and rush to Nick’s school.
My darling son tells me the evening’s homework ahead and we both visibly wilt at the prospect of math, science, english AND history – not to mention reading and coming up with a proposal for the bane of my life—the Science fair Project. I LOATHE Science Fair Projects with a deadly loathing and feel that this is where a guy could TRULY be worth his weight in gold. A man, a father, a boyfriend…even just a man friend. But they’re in short supply so what can you do? I have so far talked the teen out of something to do with engines and fuel efficiency since I argued it would be too hard to show that on one of those wretched display boards. And what is the hypothesis and how do we go about it and do graphs?? I want to shoot myself on the spot when I realize it’s due in a week. Just the proposal – but I know from experience that it will take us forever. Lola suggested growing crystals and at first he seemed excited but I think he now regards it as too girlie. Last year’s was about landslides and the year before it was How Long does Different Food last without Refrigeration before getting moldy and that, not surprisingly, was a humdinger. Rotting, stinking chicken, cheese and vegies in the garage that had to be checked and photographed every few days.
Anyway, he struggles with all this homework due to ‘learning differences’ (after much and thorough testing) and needs more time than most but his mean mother must now drag him to buy groceries before going home as I could not even achieve that in my hideously unproductive day. The guilt, the guilt...about anything and everything and when he sweetly asks “How was your day mum?” I don’t even know what to say. I must lie of course and not reveal that it was useless, I was nearly ticketed by cops and it mainly consisted of sleep. I don’t want him to worry. A fatherless adopted child should not have to worry any more than strictly necessary.
Well I can only imagine he’s been worried this past year. It’s hard to tell how much fear has swirled around the brain of a gorgeous 14 year-old who is growing like a weed, has size 13 shoes and who shaves, speaks with a manly deep voice but still gives very big hugs. He’s moved twice this year, nine times in his life, been to five different schools (two in another country), has tutors three times a week to help with failing grades and a mother who swears like a trouper. But… no boy has ever had a more doting mum or a more fantastic, loving sister. Lola was nine when ‘we’ adopted Nick and she definitely adored my genius idea that we were adopting him ‘together’.
Gosh - I get chills every time I remember the excitement as the birth mother’s due date arrived. We were on HIGH Alert. Forget the anticipation of Santa, Disneyland, the Tooth Fairy –or even her fifth Little Mermaid birthday party. Waiting for her baby brother (we knew it was a boy) to be born beat everything. She was deliriously impatient–and a joy to watch. Every time the phone rang we both screamed. Even Molly the Husky ran around in circles like a maniac. She didn’t want to go to school in case she missed something but I swore on everything holy that I would swing by Campbell Hall on the way to Valley Presbyterian. It was before Mapquest but I had my route worked out. Fortunately he came into the world at about 8pm on a Friday. We were standing by but still imagined it was a few days away. I had just cooked Lola and her friend from school who happened to be with us, gorgeous lamb chops and since I loathe cooking (have I mentioned that?) I’m not keen on any effort going to waste but once we got the CALL at about 7.30 saying “We just wanted to inform you that they’re about to do an Emergency Caesarian – you should come now”. That was it. Dinner was left on the table. We shrieked, screamed, panicked, laughed, ran around in circles and tore out the door to the Valley. Driving like a bat out of hell down Sunset and over Coldwater Canyon, we arrived in record time, taking a good fifteen minutes off my timed practice run. We arrived at the Maternity ward and were naturally sent to lots of wrong places before we ran down a corridor and bumped into a nurse carrying a swaddled baby.
“Is that ours?” shrieked Lola. The nurse looked up wide-eyed as if we might be crazed baby-snatchers.
“Is that the Hobbs baby?” I smiled politely. She confirmed that this was the baby for adoption and we all cheered. But she was a humorless human, was having none of our glee and promptly marched off to the Newborn Nursery, not even slowing down as Lola and Ally ran behind, DESPERATE for a peek. Unfortunately children were NOT permitted in the nursery and I sent the girls around the corner where they frantically jumped up and down to try and see through the glass window. I was still carrying the great huge camcorder bag which I had not had time to open….I followed the nurse as she put the drops in his eyes and rather roughly checked him and measured and with shaking hands tried to get out the camera. He started to howl and I was desperate to pick him up but I wasn’t about to grab him for fear of being sent out with the kids…I guiltily waved at them as they madly gestured for me to bring the baby over to them. I did finally get to hold him for a few precious moments and weepily took him over to the window so they could get a glimpse. Beaming faces. All very touching, All so very sweet. One of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
The adventure began and not an ounce of jealousy ensued. She relished the thought of him as ‘her baby’ from the moment she held him two days later in the hospital as I signed papers and we prepared to drive him home with us. From then on she would rush in from school, sneak into his room and pick him up even if he was asleep, against strict orders, to ‘watch over him’.
“He’s asleep Lola. Go and play in your room honey.”
“He was awake mum—he was crying” she would lie, bald-faced, thirty seconds later, having wickedly woken him from a major snooze.
As he got a little older she and her friends would spend hours fussing over him, giving him bottles, bathing him and dressing him up (often in dresses, like a doll, sometimes with lipstick- he didn’t mind) but always with extraordinary maternal finesse and expertise. (I could care less about babies at that age). Our place was a favorite hang-out and understandably. They got to PLAY with a REAL LIVE BABY who left the long-begged-for American Girl doll and her myriad outfits for dead. All her pals adored him. Especially our fabulous next-door neighbor who was exactly Lola’s age. Lauren, also adopted, was mad for Nick as well and would often appear, pretending she had permission, to help Lola give Nick a bath and then stay for dinner—often her second. There were endless calls from her mother insisting I send her home immediately – but we all loved her lively, giggling presence and I often fibbed that we’d begged her to stay so she wouldn’t get into more trouble than necessary.
Yes, with a mother and a sister who give and demand more annoying kisses than most, he knows he’s loved and gives tons of affection back–but it doesn’t stop the guilt. That’s who I am.
And now there ‘s the bloody guilt all over again that I decided to have a double mastectomy and DO this to my poor body. I’ve had a good look and the new breast is in fact fairly lumpy and odd-looking. A bigger scar than last time—but that’s to be expected. And I don’t care about scars.
I drag myself down to see Dr Bob the next day and he’s happy as a clam. He really just takes a quick peek under the bandages to make sure there’s no sign of a flaming infection again. Satisfied, he tells the nurse to change the bandages. As I realize he’s walking out the door, I don’t have the energy to speak up and ask about lumpiness or any other bloody thing. I’m over it.
And I’m over antibiotics. I’ll be finished in a few days but I’ve been awfully good. I take the pills on time like a regular goody two shoes. Okay—I gagged a couple of times this week and spat out several pills in fury as I dry-heaved and wept. But the prospect of another staph infection and MORE antibiotics has kept even a rebel like me on the straight and narrow.
Onwards and upwards.

Fourth Surgery this year ! dec 4

Friday Morning – Three days later.
I have talked the darling daughter who has no college on Fridays and works every week at her coffee spot ALL day (as distinct from her dawn shifts) – into cancelling her daylong shift and coming with her mother to a far distant land in the San Fernando Valley where I have to confess I have had crap in storage for—gosh, let’s think, since I sold my Hancock Park house eight years ago. Even after selling many big pieces to an auction house AND a massive garage sale where I was utterly ruthless thanks to mean friends who made me sell things I regret to this day (like a vintage child’s coat stand I still miss that was SO adorable) there was still tons of stuff from a 6000 square foot house with a guesthouse and a pool house and two huge basements that had all been filled by yours truly, a serious hoarder - and so furniture and baby clothes and boxes of photos that I refused to part with all went to a 10 by 20 unit in the Valley eight long years ago. And then, when I returned from Australia two years ago after the four year stint to look after my dad – I had all the stuff shipped back that I had optimistically shipped there, thinking I would find HOME back in the wonderful Land of Oz but alas…it just didn’t feel right once my dad had died. Four years of hanging out at hospitals, rehab centers and retirement homes had proved less than scintillating and besides Lola my daughter dearest was back in America and so, along with Nick and I, BACK IT ALL CAME, at vast, vast expense, to join the stuff that had stayed behind in the Valley. They loved me at All Aboard Storage. Another 10 x 20 unit was filled. They were side by side. Very convenient.
And so, there we were, in blistering heat in Sun Valley, unlocking the units for the two foul-tempered moving men who stared at the boxes covered in about an inch of dust. It was pretty much impossible to be ‘in the moment’ and even remember what on earth The Power Of Now had tried to teach me as I already DREADED—with a mighty powerful dread, the unpacking and deciding of where all these reminders of bygone days would go AT THE OTHER END IN A FEW HOURS. Things I had totally forgotten I owned. Growing up poor, things I thought I desperately needed and MUST cling onto – hang the expense. As they piled it all onto the truck I tried to imagine where the big pieces of furniture would go—the lovely old armchair covered in green velvet my dad had sat in for sixty years, the loveseat covered in brown velvet that my mother had inherited from her mother and had prized her whole life….the black velvet bed from Central Park West, the gorgeous mid century sofa I had found in Sydney and had had re-covered in hot red wool, my granny’s favorite old china and the hand-carved bench her grandmother had made….where the fuck exactly would it fit? My brain hurt.

At the new apartment there are three bedrooms instead of two, because I need a bedroom for the angel pie daughter after she broke up with her boyfriend and besides, this is twice as big, much better value, and best of all, HAS A DOUBLE GARAGE out back where I can put all the stuff from storage, thus SAVING a truly embarrassing and shocking $560 a month I have been paying for two years. And half that much for the 6 years before that. Yep, lotta money. I am fool. We know this. I have clung onto tables and chests of drawers—NOT priceless gems, just weird funky chests of drawers from second hand stores and vases from Goodwill and pillow slips and blankets and towels from Target and plates and spatulas from Ikea that have now become THE most expensive pieces of crap of all time after traveling, I kid you not, from NY to LA to Sydney to Melbourne, back to deep in the Valley and now to Hollywood. Yep, that’s the kind of tight ship I run!! I realized the full extent of my sickness when the guys informed me that a second back-up truck was needed. It would not all fit in the first dirty big truck. A tiring nightmare of a day. A costly one. Lola cursed. I swore like a sailor and I nearly forgot to pick up the darling Nick Hobbs from school.
Two weeks later
Okay—so it’s been grueling period. I’ll try to keep it brief as even recalling it makes me want to slit my wrists. A week after the hellish move out of the storage joint to my new digs near Beverly, I then hired the same surly moving guys and we moved everything out of the apartment on Rossmore to join the stuff at the new place. The double garage I had loved so much was already UTTERLY FULL and when I tell you that discovering I had cleverly managed to HANG onto two large filing cabinets filled with fascinating things like AT&T bills from 1997 along with treatments and faxes I had sent to about two thousand producers, was one of those major self-loathing moments. I think you know what I mean.
Boxes of thirty seven different drafts of a script I had spent just six or seven years of my life on—a script that was as close as two weeks from shooting in Vancouver with Howard Stern having actually taken two weeks off his show to come and play a sleazy record producer and me and Lola and the entire crew all there in hotels totally overexcited as script, sets, locations were all locked!!!…..Before the dickhead producer had a meltdown and pulled the plug for NO good reason. And then lovely folk like Melanie Griffith refused to lower their fees to help get it back on its feet again and the adorable Howard Stern sued us for his lost two weeks wages and well…despite another six months of blood sweat and tears, it went down the gurgler and my second directorial effort never materialized.…
Love seeing those shooting scripts and music cassettes of all the fabulous gospel music that we had selected for my wonderful romantic comedy again….good times….years and years of my life down a very disappointing drain.
And then there were the boxes of Nick’s heavenly baby clothes plus an entire box of all his Batman costumes (he was a truly obsessed Batman and called me Robin for at least twelve months) and photos of my dad in his Spitfire and stupendously sad and brave letters from his days as a POW on the Burma railway that seemed to come hurtling at me like missiles out of the dust. And old passports of my mother and postcards she had sent me from Crete on her way to join me for the European holiday of a lifetime back in the days when I had it all and was a young whizz kid TV reporter fresh from Australia living in London with a glamorous and successful theatre producer. And BETA tapes of me on my TV show Hobbs’s Choice in London and huge one inch cassettes of short films starring Rowan Atkinson and written by Richard Curtis that I had directed—but NO machines in existence to even play them any more, They had to go. It all has to go…
But not the twenty five boxes of fantastic albums from my former life. They could become a book, perhaps. Photos of Jack and Anjelica and Roman and me and Mick Jagger and all of us at the Red Ball in Paris or lying on the beach in St Tropez or going to see Bob Dylan with Diana Vreeland or at the bull ring in Ibiza on acid watching Bob Marley and the Wailers or having Prince Charles to dinner in our swanky Knightsbridge home or interviewing Andy Warhol for my TV show…..
I yi yi .These memories rushing at you as we stuff yet more boxes into the garage and try to put them in some kind of order, TAKE THEIR TOLL. They can sap the life out of you. I have moved about 18 times in twenty two years. It’s too much.
The unpacking….I feel ill and hot and sweaty and still toxic and poisoned after a year of mammograms and missed diagnoses and botched biopsies and waiting and being told I am fine and then being told I am not fine and then more biopsies and guilty, lying gynacologists and a lumpectomy and chemo and steroids and four general anaesthetics and three surgeries and ten weeks of antibiotics and the electric sessions and the oxygen treatments and the Vitamin C infusions and the expanders being expanded and the needles and IV’s—so many needles….I just don’t feel too good. I don’t have a lot of zip in my step right now.
As far as the surgery decision is concerned, I have no more energy to give it and so very simply I decide to continue with Dr Bob and he schedules the surgery to try and restore my breast for ONE week later.
But I am just so deeply, madly tired that I do something I seldom do. A few days later I put the surgery off for two weeks so that it will be eight weeks from the last surgery and I can be uncommonly SENSIBLE and rest and do yoga and eat well and go to bed early and meditate.
NONE of which I do, naturally. I feel compelled to unpack every last idiotic possession and get the place totally together for the sake of my sanity and that of my kids. How can I come back home from yet another surgery with drains and pills and have to fight my way past boxes and suitcases full of clothes I forgot I had?
And here’s the one bonus for me with moving. I get to go to one of my favorite haunts – IKEA—where I can navigate the place like a pro and dart hither and thither quicker than anyone I know. Here’s the secret – go online, cruise the catalogue for about sixteen hours, make a shopping list, print it out and then enter through checkout, go straight to the gigantic shelves and JUST GO CRAZY. I decide to punish Nick for nothing in particular and drag him to Ikea with me on the way back from picking him up from a party. But because he is so cranky (it was a girl’s party I made him go to because I said yes on the Evite without asking him and he is livid but I feel bad and don’t want to let the gal down) and because he has been going to Ikeas on different continents since he was a small boy in his Batman outfits (try London, Melbourne, Sydney and Burbank) he has a hissy fit outside the store and insists he needs to skateboard for a while and he will join me in there. So I give up and rush on in and he finally remembers to join me hours later when I have heaved great boxes down from shelves and am now in the checkout line. He’s become an annoying clone of his cheapskate, miser sister and thinks he can bitch about my spending and guiltily I realize he is right about certain things and I angrily take them out of the trolley as he says deeply irritating things like “It may be only ten bucks but it all adds up mom !!” And by the time we are in the car I scream “It’s funny how you didn’t mind me spending SEVENTY dollars on your brand new purple suede skate shoes yesterday Nick ! Funny about that but I’m not allowed to buy a ten dollar plastic grocery bag holder from Ikea to help me save the environment !!” and then we scream at each other for awhile and like a very bad parent I even mention the money I spend on tutors which is unforgivable but I put it in the context of “You need to take some responsibility and do your share of the homework on your own” and then he screams that he doesn’t care about school and tutoring and he’ll “just live in a sewer” and then I decide to cool it and we don’t speak the rest of the way home. But I adore him and he helps carry everything inside and then apologizes later for not coming in to help me in Ikea right away and I am touched as I nearly always have to ask him to apologize but soon I realize it’s just because he’s sucking up and his beloved big sis has offered to take him and hear a band she knows because he loves music and he’s a drummer. And I don’t have the energy to say no and they go with a few of her friends and they have a ball and even drop into a black light party on the way home and apparently Nick dances like a mad thing and is very cool.
So anyway, about eight trips to Home Depot, Target, CB2, West Elm and Kmart later (a lot of it just research-not ALL compulsive spending) and I have bought yet more extension cords and picture hanging hooks, hammered and assembled and glued and stood on ladders and hung mirrors and fought with my kids and made their rooms look pretty darn great. I’ll be honest- I do sometimes wish there was a good man who found me gorgeous even with my ludicrously short hair and who would have the keen, cosmopolitan intelligence to appreciate my manic ability to make a wildly stylish yet COZY home. I mean it’s not everyone who has the foresight to bring their Aussie electric pizza maker and seven fabulous old lamps to America and then find the cunning store on Third that sells Oz to USA converter plugs. Am I right? Frugal AND a connoisseur of good lighting!
So at Sunday night at nine pm after running to get a Gift Card from Forever 21 for the girl who had the birthday party and then running to Office Depot for a math graph notebook and then hitting the Cactus Taqueria on Vine for our dinner and after barely stopping for two weeks straight, the gorgeous new Spanish-style apartment is looking pretty together and I relax for the first time in a fortnight as I watch Curb Your Enthusiasm with my kids in the living room with a fire blazing and stuff myself with toast and peanut butter (I HATE tacos) and hit the hay by midnight. Take the heavenly teenager to school and INSIST ON A KISS IN THE CAR – not usually granted - because he is staying the night with friends as his silly old mother has her FOURTH surgery for the year coming up in a few hours. I thoughtfully do extra nagging about homework and teeth brushing so he doesn’t think anything is different.

MONDAY NOV 23rd– 3pm A very kind friend Diantha brings me back to St Johns where I lie through my teeth about the last time I ate. It was 10 am not 9—what the hell—I’m an old hand and I was determined to finish my Starbucks. So here I am again and my dear friend Richard is here because he insists that there be someone with me during this time leading up to being put under the knife which is just so touching since it has occurred to no one else in my life..
And here we are at Admitting…again ….the taking of the vitals, the off with the undies AGAIN, signing many, many forms I NEVER read, remembering with guilt that I have yet to make a will, hoping that the letter I wrote to get out of that parking ticket will do the trick and that they’re not clever enough to check and work out that my Disabled Sticker has expired and I really should pay it….
And Dr Bob is late again and I run to the toilet to drink from the tap just cos I’m thirsty AND a rebel…but I’m really an idiot and have taken two Ativan—I thought it was one but I forget everything these days and I think I took another and I feel so groggy and out of it that I may vomit any minute and I just want to get on down to that operating room guys…Here’s the shocking truth. I look forward to the drugs and being put out. I NEED THE FUCKING REST. A quick cell phone call to my Nick and Lola and that’s all I remember folks.
WAKE UP AT 12.30 am and there’s my divine smiling daughter who’s been waiting for hours for her mother to wake up and be brought back to the hospital room. A daughter is a very wonderful thing and I am deeply grateful for having such a complete gem. Realizing where I am and what’s just gone down, my hand goes to my chest and yes, there’s seems to be something resembling a breast there. I sure as hell am not about to look under the bandages and the bra contraption they put on you but just feeling that fake titty mound makes me quite happy. If not drugged out of my mind and completely devoid of anything resembling a singing voice I could even be tempted to burst into song. Something corny. ‘I ENJOY BEING A GIRL” comes to mind. Lola tells me that she spoke to Dr Bob on the phone and he said it went well.
I feel great relief. It’s moments before Thanksgiving - a year since I recall feeling that small but quite hard lump in my breast. A really chilled glass of good French champagne would go down well right now, I chirp brightly, delirious for about 18 seconds before I realize I’m in some serious pain here. But bubbly is not on the menu and after about half an hour of chatting with my darling that I now cannot remember- I suddenly see that my poor angel who started her day at 6 am at the coffee joint and then had a full day at college till 10pm, is ready to schlep all the way home to Hollywood. She looks shattered and I wish to goodness I’d come round a little sooner for her sake. I kiss her goodbye and she’s gone. Lie there feeling guilty that I left home in Melbourne at 20 and never went back. Never hung out with my mother again. Except for stressed, tense, unreal periods during holidays. The guilt is monumental and seems to be fade-resistant.. And then I remember – or did I dream it—that whilst coming out of the anasthetic, I agreed to use a bedpan to pee – but couldn’t once they put it there and they took it away. THE HORROR…THE HUMILIATION. I despise bedpans and do not believe in them. I think it was the reason I had a baby at home—someone told me they had to use a bedpan after giving birth..I really hope it was a dream.
I also wish that for the love of God Dr Bob had been kind enough to give me that doohickey you just press and pain medication floods your veins. But noooo—I’m now in searing pain and here we go again with the pressing of the red nurse button which means you WILL be ignored for a good ten to twenty minutes before a grim night shift nurse appears and invariably expresses shock and confusion when you ask for your pain medication. I am not disappointed but eventually, two percocet are given and things calm down. I go to sleep –wishing to goodness I was capable of following orders and sleeping on my back but I simply cannot do it—my back starts to ache after about ten minutes and gets worse as time goes on which is why I can’t even enjoy massages. Sleep on my back is simply not an option—though I regret it even more when I read in Us magazine that Tom Cruise sleeps on his back to avoid wrinkles around eyes and neck.
Tuesday
Wake up in stunning pain and beg for the Percocet immediately. It’s only 6 am, have eaten nothing for about 24 hours and would love to have some food in my stomach. But no breakfast in sight.
What a decision. Risk feeling ill with the Percocet on an empty stomach or put up with a couple more hours of scorching pain? I go with the pills and when breakfast finally arrives I find it hard to hide my disappointment upon discovering that my two pieces of French toast are cold, grey and preposterously rubber-like. Now we all know that in 2009 hospitals have yet to equate nutrition and health in any way shape or form ---but this is taking ignorance TOO FAR. Are they SERIOUS?? This is my third stay this year at St Johns and I should know the score but I’m tired and grumpy and hungry and sore and I press my buzzer and ask if any other food can be found for me—food I could EAT. Well, about forty five minutes later a really mean, mean woman comes and yells at me that I hadn’t filled out a menu and I point out that I was in surgery and not offered a menu to fill out and she says well that’s not her fault and I LOSE IT AND YELL THAT IT’S NOT MY FAULT EITHER AND IS THERE ANY THING AT ALL I COULD EAT ? PLEASE ??
An hour later she brings eggs that have been poisoned I think—they taste like fucking dog food and they too are grey and I cannot possibly eat them and they’re cold and suddenly I am very sad.
But what makes me even sadder is that I have a raging thirst and have been drinking lots and lots of water and so about every ten minutes it seems I have to pee and that means I have to unhook both the pulsating, inflated leg cuffs I am wearing that prevent leg clots and then I have to unplug the IV stand and hook up the cord so it doesn’t get caught on the bed, like last time, and unplug my computer so I don’t trip over that cord, like last time, and put on my Ugg Boots since I have a thing about bare feet on hospital floors and and then drag the IV stand into the tiny airless bathroom and them empty the heavy dangling drain filled with blood and then pee and brush my teeth and put on some moisturizer cos I have a theory that having a general anaesthetic is ageing and then I have to shuffle back into my messy room to plug everything in including my legs and get into bed and drink some more water…and do it all again. EXHAUSTING. Well at least I am getting some exercise and it beats a catheter. I think.
Dull day. But blessed pills make me sleep for a lot of it. When I am not sending psychotic emails to folks.
7 pm The angel posing as my daughter brings delicious salad from Wholefoods with tuna and mint and beans and all sorts of goodies and I feel better immediately- (note to hospitals all over the globe—good healthy food makes you feel BETTER)—and even she nearly gags when she takes a bite of my turkey dinner and agrees that I’m not being paranoid and that someone’s trying to poison me. I soon send the baby girl home to hang with Nick who’s been shockingly sweet on the phone and has told me made himself Trader Jo’s Piroggi for dinner and is doing his math homework. Wow. Amazing how easily they just straight out lie. (I know this because math teacher has since emailed to say it was NOT done ).I give him about ninety two instructions for packing as he is being collected tomorrow at 10 and taken to LAX for flight on HIS OWN to NY to spend Thanksgiving with his godmother but he doesn’t listen as closely as I hope. If at all. I tell him to study my typed packing notes and the itinerary –and he knows enough to agree- but I would bet anyone now that he ignores them completely.
9.30 pm A VERY exhausted looking Dr Bob shows up after a day of surgery – he seems to be very popular right now—and he helps me off with the bra contraption and I suddenly realize it’s the MOMENT OF TRUTH as he takes off the bandage. Not completely but enough to see that IT COULD WELL BE A MINOR MIRACLE. HE DIDN’T LIE..MY BREAST SKIN SEEMS TO BE UNCRUMPLED AND IT LOOKS LIKE A NORMAL BREAST AND I AM VERY, VERY HAPPY.
“You are a genius “ I tell him and he smiles….”I told you…” he says..
I asks if he put Alloderm back and he says “Yes, just a little. I want to put more in later..”
Whatever…this is a GOOD OUTCOME…..I LOVE DR BOB…
He looks very tired and I tell him to go and get some sleep while I tidy my room again and try to straighten my bed. GOD FORBID they could ever make it. That’s what nurses are meant to do. There is little more pathetic than making your own bed in pain at 10 pm at night. But smooth tits are good too. BE THANKFUL I tell myself – and I am.