From Paris with Love
Depression doesn’t send you a press release. It doesn’t send you a reminder E-mail. You often have no idea when you’re in it. I had no idea that the hardest part of my disease, the most devastating emotional fallout, would come when I was finally healthy. It took months after my return to normal life to understand why, when I should be happy, I felt so awful.
I went back to work full time on January 3, 2006, just two days after my New Year’s biopsy slumber party at Cedars-Sinai. Awards season was weeks away, and I wasn’t about to miss another red carpet, even if I had to wear a catheter and all of the regalia attached to it and stuff it into a YSL tuxedo. I was still bloated and drugged and crazy on steroids, but I was like a spotlight-craving diva who believes that the show must go on even if you have an ice pick in your neck. After being in and out of the hospital for a year, I wanted to be seen.
Plotting my return meant a major beauty tune-up. Rodeo Drive and the surrounding streets were shut down as every top skin technician, facialist, and scalp analyst in town converged to polish me to a high shine. In between twice-weekly blood tests to monitor my creatinine levels, the epogen shots to manage my ongoing anemia, the regular visits with Dr. Jordan and the trips to the drugstore to pick up bags stuffed with bottles of pills, I club-soda’d my way through every premiere in town and reacclimated myself to the art of party calisthenics: Jumping across the room to “accidentally” bump into über agent Kevin Huvane while simultaneously IMing Judd Apatow at the bar.
My agenda was simple: I had finally gotten the sickness “out of the way” and now it was time for yet another glorious comeback. I had convinced myself that the disease was all done, there would be no more side effects. I was going to forget that I’d ever been ill and prove to myself—and the world at large—that I was fine.
But it doesn’t work like that. Disease doesn’t just go away, even when it’s gone.
The Golden Globes, broadcast on January 16, was the first event of the season, and I saw it as a litmus test. I was now back full time, after the long laundry list of things I’d been through the previous year, and I was finally stable. Unlike my “comeback” number one, the previous summer at the MTV VMAs, this return was no longer an innocent fantasy out of Sunset Boulevard. I felt more fragile: After being sliced and diced and pureed, would I even be able to stand up? Or was I just a shell of myself?
I also struggled with echoes of high-school paranoia about being accepted. After the first transplant, people had been generous; but after the second, would I be relegated to the graveyard? Did I really bring something to the red carpet or had my moment passed? I was feeling insecure, and I needed validation big time.
I walked onto the red carpet looking like a hot pocket in a tux. I climbed up on the Entertainment Tonight platform, and looked down at the air-kissing celebrities below me. I felt someone tapping on my foot: I glanced down to see George Clooney, smiling up at me with his million-watt grin. “How are you feeling, Cojo?” he asked, with warm genuine eyes. “Are you OK?”
“Actually, my doctor says that I’m going to kick the bucket unless I shack up with you at your villa on the restorative waters of Lake Como.”
“Sure,” he said. “Anytime. Just as long as I’m not there.”
The next weeks were a blur of sun-damaged cleavage, starched hair, and sweat-stained chiffon. Awards season in Hollywood runs about the course of a staph infection: A two-month marathon where the featured dish at every fete is ego l’orange and baked bullshit Alaska for dessert. Like a starved starlet fallen off the carb-free wagon, I feasted on both dishes at the SAG awards, the Grammy awards, the Oscars, and every pre-, post-, and in-between party in town.
There was certainly no room in my day planner for introspection. And yet, as awards season wore on, I found myself feeling empty and questioning the meaning of everything I saw around me. At first, sheer adrenaline kept me going, but now I was starting to crack. Physically, I was exhausted: My body hadn’t yet healed, and I was tired, in pain, constantly short of breath. What once had been so easy now felt like too much work. I wasn’t the same person anymore; not physically, not emotionally. The world and the job that I once wore so comfortably, like a fine cashmere coat, felt off.
By the time the Grammy’s rolled around at the end of February, I was on the verge of collapse. The day of the event, I woke up without the slightest excitement about going—and for me to lose interest in dishing with Fergie on the red carpet is a very big deal indeed. That night, I did my interviews on the red carpet with only perfunctory enthusiasm, barely able to muster interest in the stampede of Gwen Stefani’s giddy Harajuku girls, and fled back home as soon as the red carpet was being dismantled.
As soon as I walked in the door of my house, I collapsed. My BlackBerry was vibrating. My cell phone said that there were twenty-seven messages. I ignored them all: I took my antirejection pills, grabbed my dog, kicked my boots off, and collapsed on the living room couch. I hugged Stinky close to my chest, feeling engulfed by some undefinable malaise. What was wrong with me? I should be celebrating, not feeling so down.
Any other time, I would be busy conducting my post–award show ritual. First, I would neurotically put away my wardrobe by steaming the wrinkles out of my suit and hermetically seal it in a garment bag. I would then fold every other item (including socks) and put them away, too. I would then go through a rigorous drill of makeup removal using four cleansers, sandpaper, and Lysol disinfectant wipes. Not that night. I couldn’t muster the energy. I just collapsed on the couch in full stage makeup, still dressed in my Grammy regalia. I woke up hours later, with crusty mascara smeared all over my white couch and my white dog, my satin suit crinkled into origami.
I sunk even further when I woke up the following day. Not even a shot of pomegranate juice with bee pollen could lift me from my funk. I skipped my business meetings, missed my blood test appointment at the clinic, and just slept. I did all my work by E-mail, incapable of even speaking on the phone. Prone in my bed, I couldn’t understand what was wrong with me.
But the feeling pervaded as the days passed. Mostly, I felt tremendously lost. For the first time in over a year, I didn’t have people holding my hand and coddling me: My parents and Shari had long ago returned to Canada, I wasn’t being monitored hourly by a troop of nurses and doctors, and my friends no longer were obliged to call and check in on me every day. Because I was healthy now, it also meant that I had to fend for myself.
New emotional anxieties assaulted me every day, a laundry list of things to be paranoid about: I panicked about forgetting to take those pills, worried about the kidney rejecting, obsessed over the feeling that I was permanently handicapped. I wasn’t like other people, anymore: I was separated by my experience.
Awards season marched on. I had to be upbeat and energetic, despite feeling like I was sinking in quicksand. All through February and March I kept up the illusion, until the very last celebrity had departed the Oscars Governor’s Ball and bundled their rumpled couture into their limousines.
But back at home, I would fall apart. Nothing could comfort me. All my crutches were gone, nary a vice. Even though I had a clean bill of health, there was no drinking, no carousing, no inhaling. I was even forced to throw away the bong made of Moroccan glass that Snoop Dogg had given me as a Chanukah present. Instead, the only panacea was sleep.
I was consumed by napping: I considered every other activity an interruption. Life became like marking things off a to-do list so I could climb back into bed. I would go on sleep benders, sleeping days at a time, with the curtains drawn and the room blacked out. It was hot out: I pumped the air-conditioning on its most frigid setting, just so I could curl up under three comforters. I liked my depression on ice: The room echoed how I felt, undeserving of fresh air and sunlight.
Making a meal was a task as monumental as building a skyscraper. My kitchen was abandoned: The desire to sleep was stronger than the hunger pangs. I took hour-long showers, hoping that the hot water wou
ld wash off this gray film of bleakness. I turned on my beloved Stinky: I resented having to take care of another creature. Sometimes his morning walk wouldn’t happen until noon. I would wake up at 7:00 a.m. and start sending signals to my brain that Stinky needed to be taken out. But then I would turn over, go back to sleep. For the next six hours I would drift in and out of consciousness, as the signals warned me Take him out! Take him out! Stinky would lie next to me, whimpering; and yet I still couldn’t summon the will to do it. I got to a place where I didn’t care if he made in the bed—or even if I did.
I visited a therapist. “What are you here to talk about?” he asked.
“I had a medical tragedy last year, and now I’m having a really hard time coping with life.” I explained to him. “It feels like it’s all too much.”
He took notes and nodded. I waited for him to give me answers that would solve my problems, but he just stared at me, letting me babble incessantly. I left the office feeling gypped: He didn’t give me anything useful; he didn’t give me a plan. I wanted to quickly fix the pain and lift this depression, and I wanted to do it now. I was too new to therapy to realize there was true work involved. I simply didn’t show up to our next appointment.
Like speed-dating, I went through a slew of buttoned-up PhDs before I finally found a therapist who I connected with. I had finally found someone with whom communication was easy, and it felt like we were working together. I didn’t feel alone anymore: Someone finally understood and felt empathetic. My post-recovery depression, my therapist told me, was a common complaint of disease survivors: The real pain comes afterward, when you go back to your life. Since the summer of 2004, I had been dealt blow after blow, but I was too busy surviving—living from blood test to blood test, creatinine number to creatinine number—and I simply hadn’t had the room in my overloaded psyche to process the real trauma of my disease. Instead, I’d buried my emotions, and now they were coming back to bite me.
In March of 2007, my kidney took its first transatlantic flight. I’d landed in Paris. I had my dream itinerary in my hands, the one I’d been imagining since I lay half-dead, defeated, in the dialysis center. It was the grand finale of my personal kidney movie, and I wasn’t solo: It was a trip for two, me and my spiffy new kidney.
It was an enchanted week. We visited the tearoom above the Ladurée patisserie and indulged in the same chocolat amer macarons that Marie Antoinette had satisfied her sweet tooth with. I salivated over vintage Chanel jewelry at a secret boutique hidden on a side street on the Left Bank, fondling original brooches that Coco herself had once worn. We finished our evening with a special date at the illuminated Opéra, where we stood outside in a light rain and absorbed the facade as if it were a painting: When the Opéra is glowing in the rain, it almost seems divine.
Our weeklong tour came to an end at my favorite spot in Paris: The Tuileries garden at twilight, where I sat by my favorite fountain. This was supposed to be the moment where the soundtrack swells up: After all the strife I’d been through, my magical city and my magical spot was going to finally give me the big epiphany I needed for closure…the happy ending. But where was it?
Nearly a year had passed since my last overnight stay at Cedars-Sinai. I hadn’t suddenly lifted out of my depression: There was no magic formula. I couldn’t define the single event that had made me feel better. Instead, I had clocked in a lot of time in therapy, slowly dealing with emotion head on. All my life, I had kept my feelings bottled up inside—the lifelong scars and past rejections, the pent-up anger and low self-esteem—but this seminal event in my life had crashed my emotional system and now I had to rethink everything. I had to learn to deal not just with the aftermath of my disease, but take emotional stock of a life’s worth of baggage.
There were days when I felt so cold and emotionless that it was as if my heart had turned into granite. Other days, I was filled with fury. And sometimes, the wind would blow in another bout of depression. But now I knew what that monster was. It was a matter of using all my strength to pull myself out of bed and use the skills I’d learned in therapy to march forward instead of hiding under the covers.
But I still didn’t have a life. That was the surprise discovery of my year-long recovery. I had woken up one morning with this horrifying, palpitating realization: I had a career, I had a wardrobe alphabetized by designer label, I had a freshly detailed sports car. But a life? No. All these years, I had been such a driven animal, so blinded by my career, that I wasn’t aware that my whole life was about my job. I had spent half my life on an airplane. I was like a vampire, only slithering out at night. All I did was work work work. Once I had passed through the worst of my illness, I didn’t know what to do with myself. After all I’d worked for, I didn’t know how to do anything besides take celebrities to task for their fashion faux pas and showcase my own snappy ensembles. The joke was on me.
But now I was actually learning how to have a life again. How to make time for friends. How to invite people to hang out at home in sweatpants. How to go through an entire meal without once mentioning show business or fashion. I wanted to stop and smell the patchouli candles. I was in training. Already, I was starting to consider new hobbies. Songwriting, baking devil’s food cupcakes, skeet shooting, elementary monster truck driving. Expressionist painting. Bead making. Growing hemp. Harp classes. I was even getting in touch with my paternal instincts: Dressing Stinky up in Baby Dior outfits and teaching him French.
Sitting there in the Tuileries gardens, I thought of my mother, and how much she had wanted this trip for me. That, I realized, was the other surprise to come out of my illness: Looking back now, I knew that as terrible as the last few years had been, they had also brought my family closer together. Suffering together had turned us into a strong unit. After going through all our travails, we could look at each other now and ask ourselves, what’s worth fighting about? We were proud of ourselves: This is who we are. This is our family.
It started to get cold in this peaceful garden. I shivered. There would be no Hollywood-ending sunset tonight, no snapshot moment to end my Paris vacation, but it didn’t matter to me anymore. Life is not a movie, I realized. Life was not the postcards I’d always painted in my head. Unlike the movie star that I’d always been in my own mind, the real me was flawed. Sometimes even a mess. But maybe that was OK. Maybe having my life turned upside down turned out to be the healing that I needed: I didn’t have to live up to my own picture-perfect expectations anymore. It didn’t matter what I didn’t have. Whatever I had was enough, because I was alive.
Learn More About Kidney Disease
More than 20 million people in America live with chronic kidney disease. At any given moment, roughly 63,000 patients are on a waiting list for a kidney transplant: The demand for organs drastically exceeds the number that are available for transplant. As a result, some patients will die before they ever locate a new kidney.
By becoming a living donor, you can make a real difference in a kidney disease patient’s life. Transplants that come from living donors are more likely to work right away, and less likely to be rejected.
If you have a friend or family member who is looking for a kidney transplant—or even wish to donate an organ to a stranger in need—consider becoming a living donor. Talk to your doctor, or call the National Kidney Foundation at 1-800-622-9010.
For more information about organ donation, visit the following Web sites:
National Kidney Foundation’s Living Donors Online
www.livingdonors.org
Transplant Living
www.transplantliving.org
United Network for Organ Sharing
www.unos.org/data/about/viewDataReports.asp
Acknowledgments
Dr. Stanley Jordan, a truly awe-inspiring man of greatness. I am so blessed to have someone as compassionate, caring, and dedicated as you in my life.
Dr. Louis J. Cohen, surgeon extraordinaire and kind therapist to my parents. Here’s to your lifetime supply o
f Cristal.
Robin Hudson, the best hand-holder in the world. Thank you for always wearing a nice cheerful lip stain before my surgeries.
The kidney clinic team at Cedars-Sinai who enveloped me in warmth and love. You are the angels who carried me through.
All the incredibly kind nurses at Cedars-Sinai who let me pass the time by giving you makeovers.
All my love and gratitude to Shari Isenberg for your absolute devotion and for wearing lipstick so bright I could find my morphine drip button in the dark.
Linda and Steve Levine, thank you for always being my safety net.
Linda Bell Blue, Terry Wood, and Janet Annino, thank you for pushing me to excel and be better, and for being there with open arms when I fell.
Special thanks to Sandi Mendelson, Paul Olsewski, Judy Hilsinger, and Scott “Margaritaville” Zolke.
My literary agent Jay Mandel; this is our second book together—I think we now have the formula—just make them entirely about me.
And to my editor Kathy Huck, thank you for believing and standing by this book. It’s as much yours as it is mine.
About the Author
STEVEN COJOCARU is a red carpet fixture as the fashion and celebrity correspondent for Entertainment Tonight and The Insider. He is also the author of the best-selling Red Carpet Diaries: Confessions of a Glamour Boy. He lives in Los Angeles.
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Credits
Jacket design by Mucca Design
Copyright
GLAMOUR, INTERRUPTED. Copyright © 2007 by Steven Cojocaru. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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