She was able to come for dinner last night. I can’t help wondering how many more Thanksgivings and Christmases she has left. I hate that I even have that thought, but I guess it’s only natural for it to cross my mind. She talks about it herself. She doesn’t know how much time she has…a year, two, maybe five? I know there can be a miracle, but the chances seem to be getting more remote with every new scan.
December 4, 2008
This healer from the Philippines, Father Fernando Suarez, came to see Farrah today. He was a small, dark-skinned man with a powerful presence. A friend of ours had called to tell me about him, and I set up an appointment for him to come see her. Apparently people have had amazing healing experiences from just seeing him one time. He prayed for her with his hands on her body and gave her two bracelets to wear and a prayer to say every day. Afterward he came over to me. The minute he touched my body I started to cry. He pointed to my chest and said I had a lingering virus that was causing me to be susceptible to other viruses that come along. Exactly what I’ve been experiencing. He prayed and gave me the same bracelets to wear and blessed some water for both of us to drink.
Afterward we both felt drugged. I did a few errands and then went home feeling just wiped out. I got into my flannel pajamas and crawled into bed and stayed there the rest of the evening. Farrah and I talked later and she felt the same. Maybe it’s our bodies healing. God, I hope so.
December 25, 2008
It’s Christmas night and everyone has eaten and gone on their way. I should feel happy at having spent a lovely night with my children and my friends, but I’m feeling unbearably sad. Farrah looked so frail tonight. Every day she has horrible side effects from this last round of chemo, and we don’t even know for sure if it’s working.
Last night she came over to make pies. I know she could barely make it, but she loves doing it and pushes herself beyond her limits to get here. I don’t know if I’m starting to sense that the cancer is getting the best of her or if it’s just fear, but I think I know deep down in my heart that it’s a matter of time now. When she hugged me tonight and said she loved me, I could almost feel every bone in her body through her skin. Please, God, let her be around a lot longer. I need her. She knows I’m useless with the damn crusts and can’t do them without her.
I just spoke to Marianne and she said a prayer for Farrah. I feel better. Sad still, but better. I called Ash and Sean to tell them I love them. I wish Kim had been here. She’s called a couple of times sounding sad and lonely. She told her dad she’d never spent Christmas without her mom and he said she lived in London now. It always astounds me that he can sometimes be so lacking in compassion.
December 26, 2008
Farrah called earlier and was on her way to the emergency room. Her right leg has swollen to twice the size of the other one, and Dr. Piro is concerned that it could be a blood clot. She was in tears and didn’t want to have to go into the hospital again. I told her I would meet her there, but she said she’d call as soon as they did the ultrasound.
She just called and it’s not a blood clot but they’re not sure what it is. The doctor thinks maybe the lymph system isn’t draining on her right side because the tumor is blocking it. Good God, doesn’t she ever get a break? Dr. Piro was so sure the chemo was working; we thought the tumors must be shrinking. How can this be? I don’t like the sound of this at all. They didn’t make her stay in the hospital, though, and she said she’ll call me as soon as she gets home.
December 28, 2008
Farrah and I both spoke to Dr. Jacob today. She thinks Farrah should have a scan right away to see if the chemo has been working and the tumors are smaller. She’s concerned about the swelling and that the tumors could have grown and therefore be causing the blockage in lymphatic drainage. She thinks we should come to Germany within the next two weeks. Farrah feels more comfortable being there in the clinic, and frankly, so do I.
The idea of leaving again makes me anxious, but if it’s what needs to be done, I’ll do it. After seeing that movie Marley & Me the other night, about the dog dying, I can’t bear the thought of leaving my dog Lolita. She’ll be nine in April, and although she still seems like a young dog, I know she can have only a few good years left. I’ve never felt this way about a dog—I’ve never been much of a dog person—but there’s some special connection between us. We love each other so much. I can just lie down next to her and look at her sometimes. Then she gets annoyed and moves away. I can’t believe I could be so obsessed with a dog. I remember when it used to be men!
January 1, 2009
It’s 2:30 A.M., the beginning of the new year! I went over to Farrah’s to spend it with her and Ryan, and I’m so glad I did. She was feeling and looking so much better. It was really a sweet, lovely evening. We had some smoked salmon, made Bellinis, and watched Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino. We tuned in to see the ball drop at midnight and raised our glasses in a toast to good health—especially Farrah’s. Then we made two piecrusts for tomorrow, and by that time it was almost two.
She has a scan on Monday and we’ll know where everything stands then. I feel like it’s going to be much better, but I’ve felt that way the last few times, and I’ve been wrong. I hope I’m not wrong again.
January 5, 2009
I’m sitting in the waiting room at Dr. Piro’s office, where Farrah will be having her scan in a few minutes. She’s in an isolated room now, with the radioisotope substance in her veins, and they’ll do the scan after forty-five minutes. She can’t move or talk or read, and no one can be in the room with her because of the radioactive material in her veins.
She’s feeling very hopeful, but I’m almost afraid to get too positive. Every time we have, we’ve gotten bad news, it seems. So I’m not going to jinx us. We’ll know within the next two hours.
Later
I think Farrah and I were both holding our breath when Dr. Piro walked into the room after the scan. I know I was. He said, “Well, it’s a good-news day!” He told us that the tumors are all shrinking; that this chemo is working. She was ecstatic. We all were. Dr. Piro was beaming as Farrah hugged him. It’s the first time in so long that we’ve gotten good news, especially from the scans here.
We went to tea at the Peninsula to celebrate. Farrah called her dad, Ryan, and Redmond. We called Tina and Carole. We were all so happy. I told her I didn’t think it was all the chemo, by any means. I think the spiritual work she’s been doing with Marianne, Father Sanchez, and Diane, the Christian Science practitioner, is playing a big part. It’s as if the energy has shifted.
January 14, 2009
Today the news is not so good: I got a call from the hospital that Farrah was being admitted. Just when things were looking up, she started vomiting nonstop at one o’clock this morning. It was obviously from the chemo she had yesterday. Marianne Williamson and I were supposed to have dinner, but we went down to see Farrah first. She was just lying there under all the covers, so still, so quiet, with IVs dripping into her arms. She looked pale, fragile, and helpless. She could barely speak. We just sat on the bed in the dark and Marianne prayed for her. The nurse came in and gave her some medication to put her out for the night. When she gets into one of these throwing-up jags, the only way to stop it is to put her to sleep. We crept quietly out when her eyes started to close.
We had dinner at Toscano, an Italian restaurant in Brentwood, where I used to live. The pasta wasn’t quite as good as I remembered it. The kids and I lived in the Brentwood house for twelve years. I can’t believe the time passed so quickly. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and live it all over again. And be more present, and appreciate what I had more, appreciate my children more. Cherish every minute instead of always being so busy, busy, busy. Just another of the many, many regrets I have in my life. Things I wish I’d done differently.
It was bittersweet being back in Brentwood. I felt slightly sad and disconnected. Life is passing too quickly. Like a meteor flashing through the sky. I feel like I can’t hold
on to anything, especially Farrah. It gives me that old familiar feeling of being adrift in a sea with no anchor. Just lost at sea.
January 31, 2009
Carole had an early birthday dinner for Farrah Saturday night. Jaclyn Smith and her husband, Brad, Kate Jackson, Jose, Carole, Bob, Tina, me, Dr. Piro and his wife, Judy, and Farrah and Ryan, of course. Farrah wanted a chocolate cake with white icing, so I volunteered to make it. It took me all day. The first one flopped. Gas was leaking out of my stove, so I had to call the gas company. Then I baked another one, even though the repair guy said not to use the stove. Geri Lugo, my manager and also a phenomenal baker, came over and decorated it, since I’m as useless at decorating cakes as I am at making piecrusts. They always taste incredibly good but are not so pretty. She made beautiful chocolate roses with a pastry tube. It fell over in my car on the way there, but I managed to salvage it.
Farrah is so depleted. This chemo is really wrecking her. She’s been so sick all week. She was in the hospital for one night and has had nurses at home much of the rest of the time. I don’t know how much more her body can take, although Dr. Piro says she’s in much better shape than she was two months ago, when she was in the hospital so ill from the bleeding. He says that the chemo is shrinking the tumors, and that these symptoms are all from the chemo. She has no quality of life, but I guess that’s the way it is when people are having such heavy doses of chemo.
The terrible part, besides the pain, is the indignities she has to go through. Losing her hair, constant vomiting, being so horribly weak and exhausted all the time. She made it through dinner and opening the presents, but had to leave about an hour into the movie. She wasn’t feeling well at all. Where is this miracle that we need? It’s time, God. She’s suffered enough.
I wonder if we’ll go back to Germany. I don’t even know if she could travel at this point.
February 1, 2009
Mimmo called today; he still does periodically. He said he had a dream about me last night, a very sexy dream. He said he misses me. I’m not sure how I feel anymore, but I do miss him—or at least I miss what we had in the beginning. And that’s probably not going to come back. I asked him if he’s been seeing anyone and he said (in Italian), “Yes, I’ve been dating a German girl some.”
“Is it serious?” I asked half teasingly.
“No, no,” he replied quickly. “I really don’t know yet.”
After we hung up, I thought to myself with a little pang, Hmm…he found someone awfully quickly.
February 9, 2009
Boy, a lot has happened in a short space of time. Farrah had another scan and it wasn’t good. The tumors have grown again and there is more cell activity. Dr. Jacob came into town and we met with her and Dr. Piro on Saturday. They both agree that Farrah has to go back to Germany for local treatment with Dr. Vogl. She can’t have any more systemic chemo because her platelets are too low, so there really is no other option. Something has to be done right away to stop the tumors from continuing to grow. I hope she can make this trip. She is so weak she can barely walk into her kitchen, much less get on a plane and fly for twelve hours.
But she has no choice but to go, and I have no choice but to go with her.
February 15, 2009
We didn’t leave today. Farrah got a bad infection in her arm from an IV site and has to be on intravenous antibiotics for a few days. The plan now is to leave on Wednesday, if all goes well.
A beautiful mind.
This photo was taken on one of our last trips to Germany, while we were shooting footage for the documentary. I like that Farrah—despite all she was going through—looks so beautiful, so vibrant in this picture. She seems happy and even refreshed. You’d never know what horrors she has been through. There is not a hint of them written on her sweet, smiling face. I marvel at her resilience.
A number of years ago, I took Farrah to meet spiritual guru Deepak Chopra. I convinced her to go with me for a week to his healing center in Del Mar. Farrah, being Catholic, had always been fairly religious but was not very familiar with the spiritual path that I had been pursuing. Previously, I had tried to teach her how to meditate by choosing a calming word or mantra and going into a peaceful place inside yourself.
When she met Deepak, he asked her, “Farrah, do you know how to meditate?” She replied, “Oh, yes! I do it quite often. Mostly in the car when I’m driving.” I think Deepak was probably speechless for the first time in his life.
Classic Farrah. Not even Deepak Chopra could change her. We laughed about her unique method of meditating for years.
BACK TO GERMANY
February 20, 2009
Farrah and I finally made it. We got on Lufthansa yesterday (just barely, as usual) and arrived in Frankfurt at ten thirty this morning. We went by the hotel, dropped the bags, and went straight to Dr. Vogl at the hospital. He did the MRI first and the chemo embolization right afterward. When I got him alone to question him about how it went and what he thought, he wasn’t very positive at all.
“It’s a disaster,” he said. “The primary tumor has grown very large and there is a tumor in her lymph that is blocking the drainage, which is why her left leg is swollen twice the size. I put ninety percent of the chemo into the primary area and the other ten percent into the liver.” I asked why only 10 percent in the liver, and he said, “The primary had to be the priority today.”
“How is the liver?” I asked.
“Not good.” He shook his head. “There are maybe forty tumors now.”
I thought maybe I’d heard wrong. “Forty?!” I asked, hoping he’d said fourteen and it was just the accent.
“Spend all the time you can with her,” he said solemnly.
“What are you saying? How long do you think she has?” By now I was completely numb with shock.
“I don’t know,” he said. And then, “She could die any day.”
I called Dr. Jacob afterward and asked if she’d spoken to Dr. Vogl. I told her what he’d told me and she said she knew. I asked her if I should call Ryan and get him to come over.
“Not yet,” she said. “It would only complicate the situation right now. Let me do these tests and see how everything looks in a few days. If, or when, you need to, you can call him.”
I can’t say anything yet, not even to Ryan? It doesn’t seem right. I feel like he should know, but I don’t want to panic him prematurely.
I can’t believe I could be losing my best friend. What am I saying? I am losing her. It’s a matter of time. Though tonight, she sure didn’t seem near death. She was disappointed that the news wasn’t better, and she didn’t even know the full extent of it. I look at her now and she doesn’t look like Farrah. What is happening to my friend before my eyes? I want to make it all stop and go away and I can’t.
February 22, 2009
It’s 2:30 A.M. I went to sleep around ten last night. I couldn’t keep my eyes open, but sure enough, four hours later I’m wide awake. I just took one and a half Ativan, hoping that’ll do the trick. The last thing I want is to be awake in the middle of the night with nothing to do but think. Earlier this evening, Farrah asked Eileen, the nurse who was with us in Frankfurt, what had happened to Jonathan, the nice Englishman we’d gotten to know here on our last trip. We had filmed him talking to Farrah for the documentary. He had a similar cancer that had also spread to his liver and he was undergoing a similar treatment. Farrah is a very private person, but the cancer had given her a feeling of having something in common with so many people.
“He died day before yesterday,” Eileen said quietly. I caught my breath. Then I turned and saw the effect this news had on Farrah. She got very quiet and didn’t say a word. He’d had the same kind of cancer she has, and she was so positive that he was beating it. He had been a beacon of hope for her.
Dr. Vogl came into the hotel room to check on Farrah around ten this morning. He was quite upset with the doctors back home. He said her liver was in good condition when she left here last June, and he
couldn’t understand how it had gotten into this kind of shape between then and now. He actually seemed angry about it. He’s a man of few words, but you definitely knew how he was feeling. He was happy with the CT scan they did after the chemo embolization, however. It showed that the tumor that was causing the leg to swell had already shrunk by 30 percent, which is highly unusual. Her leg is already better this morning.
After that we got dressed, had breakfast, and made the hellish five-hour drive to the clinic. We made a bed in the back of the van for Farrah, who wasn’t feeling very well, but she couldn’t sleep. Little wonder. Mr. Carstens, the crotchety old driver from the clinic, had rented a VW van, which was so light and flimsy that you could feel every bump in the road. I actually felt so carsick that I had to take some of Farrah’s nausea medicine.
We finally arrived around six o’clock and Dr. Jacob was waiting for us. She wanted to talk to Farrah about what Dr. Vogl had found and about the treatment plan she wants to start right away. She said Dr. Vogl had called her three times yesterday and three times this morning, he was so concerned about how things had progressed. She reiterated that the tumor on the lymph node in the lower abdomen was the size of a tennis ball, and that’s why Farrah’s leg was so swollen and she was having such pain. Dr. Vogl had put most of the chemo into the primary tumor and the one in the lymph node because they had to be treated aggressively. She has to go back in ten days for the full liver perfusion.
“It’s not good, but I still have hope,” Dr. Jacob said. “When I no longer have hope, I will tell you to get your affairs in order.” At least that seemed more hopeful than what Dr. Vogl had said to me in private. Dr. Jacob says that Farrah has to stay as long as necessary to reduce the tumors and then come back four or five weeks afterward. Farrah said I can go home early, but I won’t leave her. I can be just as stubborn, my friend.
My Journey with Farrah Page 15
