Glamour, Interrupted

by Steven Cojocaru

  I was giddy. I had been thrust into the limelight because of my PKD, suddenly turned into some kind of role model, and I decided that if I was going to be Kidney Boy, then I had to tell America I was alive and kicking. I had talked so seriously about PKD in all my media interviews over the previous weeks; but now I wanted to show that people with an illness could work and keep their sense of humor. I was bouncing off the walls, making over-the-top kidney jokes. I seized control of the airwaves and held an impromptu press conference. “I want everyone to know that I’ve named my kidneys,” I announced to the nation. “Hazel and Phinneas!”

  On air, I was able to let off steam, but by the time I left the studio that day, trepidation was starting to sink in. I knew that in a best case scenario, I would be bedbound for two months or more after my transplant. And even after I recovered, my life was going to be so different. As someone with a “condition,” how was I going to bounce back and forth from coast to coast every week? I knew in my heart that wasn’t going to work and I had to concede that there were going to be massive changes in my life. It left a sick feeling in my stomach. When I left Rockefeller Center that day, I didn’t know when, or even if, I was ever going to set foot in that building again.

  CHAPTER 5

  Always Exfoliate Before Surgery

  Abby had a prime, Grade A kidney. She was clean as a whistle. I don’t think that a nun would have checked out better. She was someone who very rarely drank, never smoked, never did drugs, ate well, never stayed out late. As I told her in early January as we prepared for the transplant, “Thank you for offering your kidney, because I would have ripped that kidney out of you if you hadn’t.”

  All of the sudden things began to move at a breakneck speed. The surgery was scheduled for January 14. My parents and my oldest friend, Shari, were coming in from Montreal. Since childhood, Shari has been my go-to person when there’s a problem. Today, she’s a social worker, dealing with battered and molested children, so she’s dealt with the grim and the ugly. She is great in a crisis: She has the ability to really collect herself. She promised me she’d be with me every step of the way.

  As excited as I was that the transplant was about to happen, I was also dreading it. I was still intact, after all, and there were even days when I could pretend I was healthy. But now I was headed into the hard part. What would that be like? They were going to cut me open! Everything that had come before this now felt like foreplay; suddenly, I knew in grisly detail about Abby’s laparoscopic surgery, how many hours my transplant would take, the long, painful recovery that would happen afterward. I knew that sometimes patients received kidneys that lasted only hours before failing. Abby was saying good-bye to one of her internal organs and, now that fear was setting in, it seemed like a crapshoot. It was too much, too close.

  I started to irrationally fear staying in a hospital. The only time I’d ever stayed in a real hospital was ten years before, when I moved to LA and had no medical insurance. At the time, I was chain smoking and going out and drinking; eventually I got the flu, which turned into bronchitis, which turned into pneumonia, which landed me in the downtown county hospital. At County Hospital, there were gang members coming in with gunshot wounds and police in the waiting room and blood everywhere. Delirious, I passed out, and when I woke up I was jammed in a room with twenty other male patients. We had been relegated to the Left for Dead Ward. It was dark and airless and I couldn’t see the enemy. It sounded like there were wild boars all around me, snoring and flatulating and groaning in pain.

  I pressed the nurse’s call button frantically. No one came. In the bed next to me, a tattooed beast of a man with a head injury fixated on me with his one good eye. “Got any cigarettes?” he muttered.

  “Noooo,” I said in a tiny voice. “I have pneumonia.”

  “Bastard in that bed over there is my brother-in-law. I’m gonna kill him as soon as I can sit up.”

  “Ummmm…” I said.

  I hit the nurse’s call button five more times. Finally, she materialized at the foot of my bed. “I can’t stay here,” I whispered to her. “There are violent types in here. Could I get a private room?”

  She thought a minute, looking at my imploring Bambi eyes, and then at the room of brutes around me. I could tell she knew I was right: I wouldn’t survive the night. “There’s no private rooms here,” she said, taking pity on me. “But you could sleep in the hallway. I’ll keep an eye on you.”

  I spent the rest of that night under the bright fluorescent lights of the County Hospital hallway, parked near the nurses station. I kept one eye cocked until the sun rose, afraid that I was going to be smothered with a pillow if I nodded off to sleep.

  So this was my frame of reference: The county hospital and old movies, like One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. No wonder Mr. Melodrama was terrified. On the other hand, I had also fallen madly in love with the kidney team at Cedars. I felt so much genuine concern from them: I would walk into the clinic and their faces would light up. I would see encouragement in their eyes. If the people were so lovely, could a stay in the hospital be that bad?

  And then there was Dr. Jordan, who was quickly becoming the hero of my little movie. I don’t know why Dr. Jordan hadn’t already put me in the psychiatric ward across the street: I don’t think he’d ever experienced anything like me. When I’d initially gone to visit him, I had serious questions, the big ones like, “What is the formula for the gene code that passed this disease on to me?” and “Can I have a molecular breakdown of the cysts?” But increasingly, my questions were starting to be less of a scientific nature. It was, “Can I get a lomi lomi rub while I’m in the ICU? Transplants can be so drying on the skin,” and “How soon after surgery can I have my placenta facial?”

  BZZZZT! The alarm went off at three o’clock in the morning the day of my surgery, January 14. Get a Free Kidney Day had arrived. I’d woken up early to pack: Only the necessities of course. Several Juicy cashmere sweat outfits in opal and dark cocoa and winter fog gray. A Dolce & Gabbana leopard print bathrobe. Black Gucci slippers. Fake sheepskin-lined Uggs in case my toes got cold. Annick Goutal scented candles. Enough makeup to spackle the faces of an entire troupe of America’s Next Top Model aspirants. The way a seaman would pack life vests, I packed La Prairie sheer foundation.

  With my surgery only a few hours away, the inside of my house was a total madhouse: My family was there, Shari was there, Abby was there. And to top it all off, Oprah’s film crew waltzed in the door at 4:00 a.m. It was already clear that a lot of people were interested in hearing my story after I had my transplant. In December, I’d had an informal discussion with my Today show producer about doing an interview after my operation. The doctors had decided that bringing a film crew into the hospital wouldn’t be safe or appropriate, and the Today show had sensitively agreed to wait about three weeks after my return from the hospital, in early February, to do my first live interview. I was also talking to Entertainment Tonight about doing a taped interview for the night before the Today show piece aired. And in the days just before my surgery, I had also agreed to go on Oprah’s show in April, once I’d recovered, to talk about my illness. Oprah’s crew had arrived to pre-tape me getting ready.

  As I was packing my bathrobes, Oprah’s crew was filming my every move. I’m not the type to shy away from a camera, but for once, the experience was surreal: In the rawest, most visceral moment of my life, I had a boom mike hanging a foot over my head. I was torn in two: I wanted my privacy for this intense moment, but it also was a fleeting life experience that I wanted to capture. As long as they stay out of the operating room, I thought: I wanted my doctors focusing on my kidneys, not worrying about whether the cameras were capturing their good side.

  Still, I was holding it together. As the camera crews zoomed in on us, I turned to Shari and looked at her critically, noting the Ronald McDonald–orange lipstick she’d put on for the occasion. “That lipstick is embarrassing,” I insisted. “You should have a nude lip, not an orange
lip. You’re blinding me, and you’re going to blind Oprah.”

  Considering that Abby was about to undergo surgery too, she was remarkably calm and collected. She had put her life on hold for me, including her job. Her recovery from her surgery would require a four-week stay with me, and her family would be flying in to visit and take care of her. But tonight, she was the picture of Zen, as she continually looked after me and my parents, holding our hands, making sure that we felt safe.

  My parents were doing what they always do: They had whipped out my mother’s famous chocolate-chip cake, the pride of Romania, blue ribbon winner of the Bucharest bake-off, and were feeding Oprah’s crew. My mother had brought the cake down from Montreal, wrapped in tin foil, inside a plastic bag, hidden inside a sweater in her carry on. My mother’s purse is like a minibar with handles, and there is nothing—no illness, no strife, no world disaster—that can’t be fixed with food. She’d come equipped with cake, bagels, and an entire brisket.

  Before I got in the car to leave, I put on my lucky leather trench coat. And then we drove our little caravan down a pitch-black, deserted Sunset Boulevard toward Cedars-Sinai Hospital. I drove myself: I knew this would be the last act that I would be in full control of for a while. After this, it would be out of my soft, well-moisturized hands.

  Is it any surprise that Hollywood’s most glamorous hospital has a hush-hush secret entrance? I had been deemed worthy of the clandestine code, and so when I arrived, I entered the hospital via an underground passageway, used to hide the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Julia Roberts from the prying eyes of the paparazzi. There weren’t any paparazzi for me, and there wasn’t a red carpet (just a concrete hallway), but it felt very Hollywood nonetheless, like having VIP tickets held at will call, or being given the password for a secret club. At the entrance, we met a representative from patient relations, a woman named Robin with black curly hair and funky eyeglasses and a warm loving energy.

  I was so nervous with amped-up energy that I started blathering stupidly at the poor woman. As we took the elevator to the sixth floor, I began to babble instructions. “I’m going to need a room that’s at least two thousand square feet,” I told her, as we rose. “I must have indirect lighting at all times, and a double sink vanity in my bathroom, with adaptors for my hairdryer and flattening iron. Can I get a room with a baby grand and chandeliers by Baccarat?”

  Robin just laughed in my face. “Nice try,” she said, not unkindly “You’re delusional.”

  I had imagined that Abby and I would have a long ritual ceremony in the lobby of Cedars: Sending her off to have her kidney removed was a big deal and I had envisioned a tearful farewell. But once we got upstairs, Abby was whisked off so fast that I didn’t even get a chance to say good-bye properly. She had to be prepped and then undergo her surgery before they would start on me, so that the kidney was fresh and piping hot when I was ready for it. I didn’t have a room ready yet. Instead, Shari, my parents, and I waited in Robin’s office while she took Abby up to the operating room.

  Robin’s office was very cramped. There was really nothing in it: A small windowless cube of a room, blank walls, a desk, a computer, and a few chairs. The four of us sat there, staring at each other, growing increasingly nervous. When I looked at my parents, all I saw was four eyeballs boring into me.

  My parents and I had struck a bargain in advance: “I want chipper! Happy! Sunny! Think Prozac!” I’d instructed them. “I don’t want you to be real: I want you to be uplifting! Behind my back you can have broken hearts, but I can’t handle it in person.” They’d understood the pact—and to their credit, have mostly upheld it to this day—but in that moment, they looked like wounded birds, and just looking at them was giving me a lump in my throat. Their ashen faces were drained of all color, their watery eyes were holding back tears, and I could feel their pain along with them. I was scared, and looking at them made it worse.

  In order to calm them down, I kept repeating comforting platitudes. “It’s going to be OK,” I told them. “It’s going to be fine. The doctor said I’m young and strong, and this doctor is not lying. It’s not a big deal.” But inside I was saying to myself, This is a very big deal. What if something goes wrong with Abby, or with me?

  Thankfully I had Shari. She knew exactly what I needed at that moment. Shari and I have this unbelievable ability—despite all of our responsibilities, our families, our careers—to revert to being tittering fifteen-year-olds in the blink of an eye. We could have dealt with the moment with gravitas and dignity; instead, we turned into juveniles. We surfed the Web in Robin’s office, visiting the online homes of Louis Vuitton and Chanel and Bottega Veneta. We went to the virtual makeup counter at Barneys New York and I redid Shari’s face completely. We decided in the hour before my transplant that she was more of a spring than a winter. We were giddy with adrenaline and anxiety; our nervousness was taking us to the verge of hysteria.

  At one point, Shari turned and looked at me critically. “Do you realize you are still wearing a full face of makeup?” Oprah’s camera crew was gone, but I still looked like a painted diva from La Traviata. “You need to go to the washroom and scrub that all off before you go in to surgery!” she commanded. I objected. Why not look my best for the doctors, too? But she was right. I didn’t want to risk any kind of infection.

  By the time Robin returned to retrieve me, Shari and I were laughing uncontrollably: Being infantile had taken the edge off and calmed me down, although my parents, still terrified, weren’t at all amused. But the moment had arrived. “We have to get you prepped,” Robin said, soberly. Before she had even finished speaking, the four of us were on our feet, ready to go: After three hours of waiting, we just wanted to get on with it.

  My private pre-op suite wasn’t exactly private or a suite: it was more like a minimum security prison, with four other patients sharing the room with me, each of us waiting for our moment under the knife. I was given a bed, a bag for my possessions, and a hospital gown. When I’d thought of the hospital gown, I’d imagined something classy—maybe something in a tasteful shade of ecru, a discreet Cedars-Sinai monogram over the heart. What I got was a cheap paper tablecloth from the Beef Barn. “One size fits all” was hardly a bespoke suit: I was showing more skin than Tara Reid dancing on top of a bar at a Girls Gone Wild reunion in Rosarita Beach.

  I lay down on the gurney they’d prepped for me, and that’s when it hit me that I was about to have a kidney transplant. The words kidney transplant are so big that it’s hard to process them. I began saying it in my head, and then saying it out loud. Kidney transplant! “Kidney transplant!”

  I’d brought a small book of prayers with me. At this moment, being spiritual felt very necessary, and I’d requested that one of the hospital’s rabbis come up to talk to me. But he turned out to be a Jungian rabbi. All I wanted was the basic menu: the prayer, the comfort, and done. Instead, when I asked him to pray for me he turned around and lashed into me: “You need to let go of the self and pray for good health for the world,” he said. “There should be no ‘me’ involved.”

  “Excuse me, Deepak Chopra-with-a-yarmulke,” I said, incredulously. “I’m surprised you’re not selling me enlightenment CDs and meditation candles.”

  He walked away in a huff, probably on his way to bar mitzvah Madonna’s son Rocco.

  I was traumatized instead of comforted by him, but I got the solace from my parents. They had come in the pre-op room, where the three of us prayed together. It was practically a revival. We sat there, in the chilly room, hidden by the curtain that separated the hospital beds, and held hands. Anyone listening in would have heard a cacophony of singing, humming, and chants in a mix of Romanian, Hebrew, English, a nice helping of Yiddish, and I think I might have thrown in a French designer’s name or two.

  Praying seemed to calm my parents. In the final moments before the surgery, there were no hystrionics, no weeping at my feet. As scared as I was, I was starting to feel safe. It was beautiful to be with my family.
There was so much love that it gave me peace.

  By this time, the drugs they’d given me were starting to kick in. I felt dreamy and giggly. This isn’t so bad, I thought, as the nurses arrived to wheel me in to the operating room.

  When I’d imagined the operating room, I’d hoped for something from Grey’s Anatomy: moody, atmospheric, like a good table on the patio of the Ivy on a late June evening. Incredibly gorgeous trainee doctors with perfect hair and luminous skin, huddled around, examining my charts. But this was heavy duty. It was so white and so clinical. There were at least a dozen people in the room, mostly strangers, clanking around, busy little bees with their gleaming scalpels and enormous machines. I looked at the equipment, drinking it all in. Thanks to the drugs, everything was hyperrealized and hypermagnified: the lights seemed ten times brighter, it was as cold as the polar ice caps. And the room was as noisy as the floor of a cruise ship casino, with everything beeping and clanging and ringing. But, surprisingly, the mood in the room was calm: light, rather than intense or heavy. The doctors and nurses were just there to do their job, and I found, in this last moment, that I completely trusted them.

  As I lay there, growing foggier by the minute, I said my prayers and good-byes in my head. It wasn’t in my hands any longer. I didn’t know what shape I’d wake up in—maybe the surgery wouldn’t work, and they would cryogenically freeze me instead, and I’d wake up in five thousand years—but as I lay there, I finally felt serene. There had been a knot in my stomach for so long as I tried to stay calm and cool and crack jokes for everyone, even while I was a mess inside. I had fought the fight, helped my family, dealt with my professional issues, been prodded, poked, and had my weight in blood taken, and now I didn’t have to do any more work. The type A, tightly wound, anal retentive, micromanaging alpha male with control issues had nothing left to do but let go.

  I have no memory of the surgery at all, though I was told it took five hours and was deemed a complete success.