Take Me Home From the Oscars: Arthritis, Television, Fashion, and Me

by Christine Schwab

  Two days later, the orthopedic doctor found nothing wrong with me and referred me to a rheumatologist, Dr. Terry Shack, whom I would see the next day. My fears spiked. I decided to focus on cooking dinner for Shelly rather than on my pain. It was one of our rare evenings at home, and we were both looking forward to it for different reasons. Shelly longed for a home-cooked meal and a baseball game on TV. For me it was a night I didn’t have to get dressed up, make idle business chatter, and pound Tylenol to manage my pain.

  By the time Shelly walked in the door at 7:30 the apartment smelled like Il Pastaio, one of our favorite Italian restaurants. It was a night of pasta with fresh tomato sauce, garlic bread, and a butter lettuce, mandarin orange, toasted almond, and avocado salad. I didn’t have the energy to make a trip to the bakery for Shelly’s favorite chocolate-chip babka for dessert so it was nonfat coffee yogurt from our freezer. I was fast asleep on the couch in the den, the Mets baseball game already in the fifth inning.

  Leaning over to kiss me, Shelly whispered, “Hey, Sleeping Beauty, I smell delicious things from the kitchen—looks like you’ve been busy. I’m starving. I’ll open a bottle of Chianti and get washed up. Why don’t we eat in here so we can watch the playoff game?”

  Blinking myself awake, I tried to focus on where I was, but the only thing I could focus on was my pulsating feet. Gingerly I stood up, holding on to the table next to the couch for balance. My God, what was going on in my body? I felt ninety instead of forty-three. Desperate for Tylenol, I shuffled to the bathroom, where Shelly washed his face and enthusiastically told me about his busy day—meetings here, deal signings there, and selling a big show into syndication, all part of a productive day’s work for him.

  “And what about you, what did you do today?” he asked, drying his face.

  Washing down four Tylenols, I launched into my high-energy fabrications about all the things I’d accomplished when actually I didn’t have a job lined up until the following week, and my fatigue had prevented me from making the necessary calls and e-mails to book anything.

  “Worked the phones all morning, some solid gym time and then the market for tonight.” I couldn’t tell him I spent most of the day in and out of bed, trying to work up enough energy to do the grocery shopping and cooking for our small dinner. How could I counter a high-functioning day with a nonfunctioning one, especially when I had no explanation as to why I couldn’t seem to get anything done? How could I explain to Shelly that getting in and out of my car was an effort? I loved to power walk the streets of Beverly Hills, absorbing each store window as a fashion research project. That was the Christine he knew and loved. Now I was a snail married to a racehorse. Today I had seen myself in the market’s glass door as I laboriously made my way from the parking lot and the image stopped me in my tracks. Who was that hunched-over, waddling woman shuffling in her sneakers? It could not be me.

  My mom was crazed about good posture, and because I was always tall for my age I had a tendency to slump. I’m surprised that there is not a permanent hand mark on my back between my shoulder blades where my mom always smacked her hand as she told me day after day as a teenager to stand up straight. There is hardly a time when I’m on the television set waiting for the red camera light to go on that I don’t hear my mother’s words in my head and quickly push my shoulders back and lift my head up by the imaginary string attached to the crown she always talked about. It was a good thing my mom was at home in San Diego now, most likely in front of her television watching some old movie, smoking and drinking strong black coffee, waiting for her beloved cocktail hour so she could start pouring wine. Even sitting in her oversized reclining TV chair, I knew her posture was perfect.

  It was a thrill working with two television icons, Barbara Walters and Regis Philbin.

  4

  No Time for Derailment

  DECEMBER 1990

  I tried to imagine that Shelly and I were going to Westwood for dinner and a movie like we usually did. Today, instead of making a right turn into the theater parking lot, we made a left turn into the UCLA Medical Center, where my world would soon fall apart. When Shelly heard the message on our answering machine confirming my appointment at UCLA, he canceled his day. He was determined to get to the bottom of what was bothering me.

  “UCLA. Great, Christine, they’ll figure it all out and you’ll be like new,” he said. How could I be like new when I felt so old? I had been on strong anti-inflammatories for three months now from my first rheumatologist, Dr. Shack, and instead of feeling relief I was getting worse. Dr. Shack couldn’t come up with a diagnosis. My blood work was not showing anything definitive. When he did the physical test of squeezing and moving the joints in my feet there was pain, but pain from exactly what was not defined. Now I had both the pain in my body and an upset stomach from the medications. Dr. Shack, frustrated at his inability to confirm what was wrong with me and find medications that would help, recommended I see a cutting-edge doctor at UCLA. Today was my appointment day.

  Westwood Village sits at the entrance to the UCLA campus. It’s a charming college town filled with casual restaurants, trendy stores, and large movie theaters whose marquees sparkled at night. This morning we were bypassing the charming village and heading straight onto the campus for my first appointment with Dr. Ken Kalunian. The sidewalks were clogged with rushing students and doctors dressed in everything from colorful scrubs to crisp white monogrammed jackets. Community service buses pulled up to the curbs, dropping off patients with canes, walkers, and wheelchairs. Limo drivers assisted their well-dressed clients out of cars, many with grave faces, clutching large X-ray envelopes that held the stories of their new diseased lives. There were few things that could equalize the poor and the rich, the educated and noneducated as quickly as the hospital entryway. Here we all had one thing in common: We were suffering and desperate for help.

  UCLA Medical Center was where people came for the answers they couldn’t get anywhere else. My mind did a quick flashback to the parking lot at ABC Studios, where I recently carried bags of accessories for a style segment on their morning show. As I walked toward Studio 2, I passed actors dressed in doctor costumes walking into Studio 4, where they taped General Hospital. Handsome and beautiful faces made up to perfection, scrubs starched and pressed. Actors playing doctors and patients on a television show. Today, at UCLA, the stark contrast between my television fantasy world and my medical world was overwhelming.

  Here I stood at the entrance of the medical building, wishing I was at the ABC studios, where it was all make-believe. Instead I was a real patient making my way to the department of internal medicine and a third-floor waiting room filled to capacity with people who looked disheveled, stressed, and ill with very real diseases.

  “I need to copy your insurance card, Mrs. Schwab,” the nurse behind the counter called out to me.

  “You sit, I’ll do it,” Shelly said, jumping up before I could even move my aching body to the front of the chair.

  I turned the pages of my December issue of Vogue without knowing what I was reading. My anxious stomach competed with my tender feet and knees for attention—both were killing me.

  Shelly read to me, trying to add some levity, as he folded his newspaper in neat, small sections in that cramped New York subway style of reading papers in public places.

  “Actress Jennifer Aniston, who portrays Rachel on the TV show Friends, inspires a craze for a longer version of the shag haircut. Women across the country are demanding that their hairstylists give them the ‘Rachel’ or ‘Friends’ cut, a face-framing, multilayered look.”

  After what seemed like an entire morning, a harried nurse escorted us into a small examining room. Decor was not important at UCLA; the room had all the charm of a free clinic in an otherwise boarded-up row of stores. The grayish green patient room was crammed with peeling metal furniture. The examination table was covered in white paper; a fold-down desk was stacked high with blank prescription pads. A rolling tray and stool stood read
y for the doctor, both lined up perfectly with all the dents and scratches along the walls. With barely room to walk, we quickly found seats, Shelly in a stack chair while I sat on the exam table. A young intern came in to take my information. He neither looked at me nor talked to me. He talked at me with a list of routine health questions.

  “Any major illnesses?”

  “No.”

  “Surgeries?”

  “Do eye lifts count?”

  “Have you ever been hospitalized?”

  “Only twenty-three years ago when my son was born.”

  “Allergies?”

  “Codeine.”

  He scribbled my answers. I was a new chart to be filled out. No weight, height, or eye color. Little did I think the chart would soon be overflowing with symptoms.

  After another hour the doctor entered. “Hi, I’m Dr. Ken Kalunian. I see by your chart that you have some pain going on in your feet and knees.”

  “Yes, I think I pulled or strained something from overdoing it on the treadmill, but they . . .”

  My husband interjected, “Actually, the orthopedist ruled out any type of injury. Our family doctor and the rheumatologist weren’t able to come to any conclusions, so we were referred to you.” Shelly knew I was still holding on to the hope that this was a sports injury, a hope that was no longer realistic in his logical mind. I remained quiet. Normally I would have asserted myself and my opinions. This passivity wasn’t like me. Had I pounded my assertive self into the treadmill along with my damaged feet?

  Dr. Kalunian continued, “Looking over your X-rays, there’s no indication of any type of injury. I’d like to do some blood tests, but first let’s look at your feet and knees.” I slipped off my sneakers and rolled my jeans above the knees. “Ouch, that hurts,” I complained as the doctor squeezed my toes, which looked like they were filled with a watery gel, one at a time. His squeezes made those of the previous doctors seem gentle, or was it that my pain had increased, making me so much more sensitive?

  “Definitely some inflammation; let’s take your blood. We’ll get the results today, so if you don’t mind waiting a bit, once we have the information we can talk,” he said, walking out of the room, seemingly anxious to get on to another patient. The nurse came in and took six vials of blood.

  And we waited.

  There was nothing of interest to look at in the room. There was nothing to talk about that was more important than what we were doing right then, and yet I couldn’t talk about it. The fear of loss lingered in the claustrophobic air as I sat on the cold, paper-covered exam table. This was not my world. My world was healthy, beautiful, and stylish. My world, especially on television, made no allowances for any illness beyond a cold. What was I doing here, in this place, with all these sick people?

  “I think we finally found the right place, Christine,” my husband said in his most positive voice. I could hear the smile in his words and yet I couldn’t smile.

  “How do we know it’s the right place? They’ve done exactly what the other rheumatologist did, only it’s taking about three times longer.”

  I went back to turning the pages of Vogue, ending the conversation. I had nothing positive, informative, or interesting to say. I hurt. My feet throbbed. My knees screamed every time I moved them. My entire body seemed to be breaking down. I was exhausted and depressed. Instead of working on an exciting fashion segment for television, I was in an anonymous faded cotton smock at UCLA, a gigantic, bustling building full of sick people. Very sick people.

  “Okay,” Dr. Kalunian began as he opened the door and took a seat on the small swivel stool, “Based on your blood test today there is no definitive indication of disease.”

  My body heaved a sigh of relief. My joints ached.

  “However, from my examination of your joints I feel confident that you have an early and mild case of rheumatoid arthritis. Because it’s at such an early stage nothing is showing up in your blood yet.”

  ARTHRITIS.

  Pictures of crippled people in wheelchairs at the television arthritis telethons flashed before my eyes.

  ARTHRITIS.

  Wasn’t that a disease for old people? I was only forty-three.

  This could not be happening.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but all that came out were frustrated, disbelieving, muffled sobs. My mind filled with visions of my mother, watching the arthritis telethon, her cigarette dangling between her lips as she said, “Look at those crippled people. I’d rather be dead, yes, just shoot me if I ever end up like that.”

  This young, self-assured, cocky doctor seemed happy to have found a niche to put me in. A diagnosis to fill my chart. Why did he have a smile plastered on his face?

  “Well, this is certainly good news,” my husband said, sounding relieved, he picked at the lint on my cotton gown, placing it in a neat ball that he rolled tightly in his palm. Control, my husband thought he was gaining control.

  GOOD NEWS. Was he kidding? What was good about this?

  “Actually, it is. I was concerned we had a case of lupus, which is a far more serious disease,” Dr. Kalunian turned and talked directly to Shelly. I guess it was easier; he didn’t have to deal with the terrified expression on my face. The only positive thing I could think of was how glad I was that I wasn’t on television getting this diagnosis where I’d been trained to be ready for everything and hide any negative emotions, but this over whelming information was way too much to hide.

  “What exactly is rheumatoid arthritis?” my take-charge, let’s-get-this-fixed husband asked.

  I remember the doctor shifting into his professional training mode, sitting up taller, buttoning the top button of his lab coat, moving to eye contact with Shelly, pen poised in his right hand as he explained, “Most people think anything with the word arthritis in it is all one disease, but it’s not. The most common disease is osteoarthritis, a wearing out of the joints that people acquire as they age. Rheumatoid arthritis, what Christine has, is an immune system disease, a type of arthritis that causes pain and swelling in many joints. The cause isn’t known, but what is known is that both genetics and triggers from the environment seem to play big roles. You need to have a certain genetic pattern to be susceptible to the disease, but not all people with those patterns get the disease. It seems that you need a trigger from the environment to cause the genes to turn on and make antibodies that cause a patient to get symptoms. Basically the body attacks itself. Once you get symptoms, it’s rare for it to go away on its own, and drugs are needed to decrease the symptoms.”

  Shelly absorbed it all, fascinated, relieved, and ready to tackle the problem as he did everything, straight on in his bulldog manner.

  “Quite simply, the body attacks itself, eating at and destroying the joints,” the doctor said as if he were telling us that I had the flu and with lots of liquids, it would go away in a week or ten days.

  I observed the two of them engaged in their medical talk. It felt as if I was floating above the room and watching strangers talk about someone else. This couldn’t be my life they were referring to. My life was finally on track. I had given birth to a son, survived a divorce, helped my son get started at USC, moved my career forward, and met and married my soul mate. I couldn’t derail, not now, not when I finally had all the pieces in perfect place. Not when I was living the dreams that kept me hopeful through a painful childhood. My two sisters liked to call me Sparkle Plenty—because they said I always tried to put a positive spin on life, and I did, but not this day. This day I couldn’t even begin to sparkle. Watching as Shelly listened intently to the doctor, I grabbed both sides of my head to stop the pounding. For the first time in a while, something hurt more than my feet.

  “We’re going to stop the anti-inflammatory Voltaren Christine’s been taking and replace it with Naprosyn, which should be easier on the stomach. I’m also adding a low dosage of Sulfasalazine, which will also help reduce the inflammation and slow the disease’s progress. I’ll increase the drug as needed
and prescribe some physical therapy at Cedars-Sinai. There are no apparent foot erosions, so our goal is to prevent any damage in the future. We’ll keep a close eye on Christine,” he continued, writing out a prescription and handing it to Shelly. “I want to see her back here in two weeks for more blood work. In the meantime if there’s any questions or concerns please give me a call,” and he handed the prescription and a couple of brochures with old, crippled people on the covers to Shelly, shook his hand, nodded at me and walked out of the room.

  “Christine, Christine, why are you so sad? This is a good diagnosis. This isn’t fatal. Now that we know what it is you can start to get better.” Moving over to the examining table to hold my quivering body, Shelly tried to calm me down, but there was no calming. As he rubbed my back with one hand I saw the brochures in his other hand. They were hardly the Vanity Fair Hollywood covers. Instead of beautiful celebrities, they were filled with older people with crippled hands and feet. How could I be put in the same group with these victims of rheumatoid arthritis? How would I ever hold on to my life, my career, and my new vibrant and sexy husband? Right then, in that grayish-green cubicle of a room, in my husband’s arms, I felt this wonderful life slip away, and I didn’t know how to even begin to stop it. I was once again that small, scared, young child who watched her mother load the suitcases into the car for the third move to another “boarded-out” home.

  “You’ll love this new home, Chrissie. Margie and Bill have two kids around your age, plus other young boarders. It’ll be a real family, you’ll see, don’t cry, you’ll like it,” my mother said, turning up the volume of the car radio to muffle the sound of my sobs.

  But I didn’t like it at Margie and Bill’s. I didn’t like their kids, and they didn’t like me and yet I lived there for more than three years, until even my mom knew she would have to do something different. “Boarding-out” was simply not working. I had never had control of my childhood, and I now understand that most kids don’t have control, but most kids live with their parents, or even one parent. But my mom always felt in control. I was in a safe, clean home, my dad was no longer around, and she was able to do her work and have her life. What I didn’t recognize on her face that day she told me about my new boarded-out home was her awareness that she was also losing control. I was becoming so unhappy that in the future something would have to be changed. Maybe the turning up of the radio was not just to block out my sobs, but to cover up the pounding of her heart? Did she have any solutions? At the time I didn’t have any idea the anxiety this was causing her, and she was trying to deny the anxiety it was causing me. Denial was becoming less and less of a solution.