Dance While You Can

by Shirley Maclaine

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m not going to do the bone scan until after I get Finerman’s opinion of what’s happened to me. I’ll eat anything but not radioactive isotopes, unless I have to. I’ll go over to the Pantages and tell the press myself. I don’t want any National Enquirer mystery speculation about what’s ‘really’ wrong with me.”

  I pulled out my compact and applied my makeup as we sat in the lobby and made plans for what to do with the company if I had to have knee surgery.

  Perry returned. “You have an appointment with Dr. Finerman tomorrow morning at nine,” he said. “He said it sounds like you’ll need surgery.”

  I asked Dr. Perry to attend the conference in case there were any technical doctor-type questions, and he agreed.

  Mort fetched my car so I wouldn’t have to walk. He and Dr. Perry followed me to the Pantages.

  I parked the car in the space that was allotted for me, slowly climbed out, hobbled to the trunk, retrieved my crutches; and as I made my way into the backstage area, I was more than a little self-conscious that I was making an entrance more befitting Elizabeth Taylor than me. This kind of stuff just didn’t happen to me.

  My company wouldn’t come until one o’clock for a rehearsal. It was now eleven-thirty. The managers of the theater watched me swing toward them step by step on my crutches. Their faces were long and caring, their words sparse, because they really didn’t know what to say.

  “I’m so sorry, guys,” I apologized, “but I’ll make it up to you.”

  “No. No,” said Stan. “The only thing that matters is that you get well.” He took my arm and led me to the lobby where the press waited. “You know,” he said, just as I was about to round the corner, “those guys are going to think these crutches are a joke.”

  There was total silence as I walked into the room. The cameras whirred and the flashbulbs popped. I stood in front of them having prepared nothing to say. No one asked me a question, so I began to speak.

  I said that I had hoped we would discuss my excitement at returning to the L.A. stage, but for now that wasn’t in the cards, because I had sustained an injury that would probably require arthroscopic surgery. I went into more detail about the nature of the injury and concluded with saying that mine was a typical athletic injury, and I would probably be able to dance in six weeks.

  Someone asked me what I felt about what happened, and I said something about doing it to myself because apparently I needed to take the time to stop and smell the roses, reflect on life, and do what was necessary to insure that I’d still be dancing when I was ninety.

  There were really no questions. The journalists either were reflecting on what I had said or didn’t much care. They wished me well, and our little get-together was mercifully over.

  I went to my dressing room and checked over my costumes while Mort and Stan went away together. An hour later they returned. Stan happened to have five more weeks available at the Pantages, from the end of August till the end of September. They made a deal on the spot. I wouldn’t cancel—I’d postpone. The ad would go in the paper the next morning, and no one would lose any work because of me. In fact, because of the later date, we’d probably be able to make a date in Japan.

  “Maybe you’re guided to do all this,” said Mort. “How come it always works out with you, even when there’s trouble? Do you know how rare it is for Stan to have a five-week cancellation that perfectly fits your schedule?”

  I wasn’t surprised. But I did need to look more closely at the harmony that was unfolding.

  The musicians and dancers came to my dressing room. Mike Flowers announced the dates for the summer tour after I recovered from surgery. He then added L.A. in September and Japan after that. I was concerned whether everyone would stick with me, so I wanted to assure them that they’d have work.

  It was Jack French’s birthday, and we celebrated with a cake and champagne in plastic glasses. The opening night party food had already been ordered, so everyone was invited to come to the party anyway. People began revising their schedules so that they could best use their time off. I could see several of them comparing what work they were guaranteed with me and what they might have to turn down in order to wait.

  I asked them to wait if they possibly could, because we were all really a family now. I said I would understand if they couldn’t—sort of.

  We had a good time saying good-byes, teasing Blane about causing my injury during the lift, and joking that each one of us had created this reality in our lives in order to have the time off. What we each needed to do now was figure out why.

  As each person said good-bye and left my dressing room, I thanked him or her for understanding. Cubby O’Brien, our drummer, was most concerned about which hospital I would be in so he could send me flowers.

  “Skip the flowers, Cubby,” I said. “Just make sure you’re waiting to go back to work with me when I get out.” He chuckled, but I noticed he didn’t say absolutely.

  After everyone left, I sat in my dressing room for a while, contemplating surgery and six weeks of rehabilitation instead of the smell of the greasepaint and the roar of the crowd. I quickly called Sachi and we decided to go to a movie.

  The next day I had my diagnostic appointment with Dr. Finerman at UCLA.

  UCLA Medical Center is an exercise in bureaucracy. If you don’t have your “blue card,” you can’t get through any door, regardless of who may be waiting for you on the other side. Rome could have burned while they fiddled with my blue card. It took nearly half an hour. It didn’t matter. Finerman was an hour late himself.

  He was a nice, balding, white-haired man—detached, stooped over (from surgical procedures I presumed), and experienced. He looked at the MRI pictures and manipulated my knee. He was gentle and yet no-nonsense. I liked him and I sensed his reputation was accurate.

  “I’m not worried about the bone damage,” he began. “These MRI pictures are too clever by half. You, and many others I have seen, do just fine with your bones in such a condition. But I am worried about your anterior cruciate. That ligament is partially torn and floating, and we may have to cut away half of it. That means you won’t have the stability and control you’re used to when you land on your leg. But you can live with that, I think. This arthroscopic procedure isn’t much. What you should have is a cruciate reconstruction, because you have a laxity [separation] between the femur and the tibia. That means you have an unstable knee and can use all the ligament you can get. But that would mean open-knee surgery, which would keep you off your feet for a year.”

  “A year!” I gasped.

  “Yes. That’s a serious reconstruction. But afterward, you wouldn’t have any problems, except for the laxity. This way you’re fifty percent guaranteed.”

  “Will it get me through the summer?” I asked.

  “I think it’s possible,” he answered.

  “Possible?”

  “Yes. You’ll have to train hard to build the quadriceps above the knee and the calf and inner thighs. Deflect the pressure on the knee by building up the muscularity around it. Let muscles do what ligaments used to, and you’ll probably be fine.”

  “Can I dance in six weeks full out?” I asked.

  He hesitated. “If you pay attention to rehabilitation, you probably can.”

  I could see he was covering himself all over the place. Dr. Perry was nodding in the background that I could do it.

  Dr. Perry demonstrated for Dr. Finerman the Perry-Band exercise device he developed for joint rehabilitation. He was familiar with it and liked it. I felt like an athlete getting ready for the main event.

  “When can you operate then?” I asked. “The sooner the better.”

  “Have you eaten this morning?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Then sometime tomorrow morning. We’ll work it out. Do all your lab work today, and my office will let you know what time tomorrow.”

  “What kind of anesthetic do you use?” I asked.

  “We’ll
give you a local, and you can watch it if you’d like.”

  “But what if I move?”

  He looked at me like I had two heads.

  “Well then you move,” he said. “I can move too.” Is that what I had heard before?

  Finerman straightened up, as though to dismiss Perry and me.

  “I’d like to be in the operating room if I could, please,” said Dr. Perry. “If I am going to be responsible for her rehabilitation, I want to make sure we don’t miss anything, and I understand exactly what her situation is.”

  Finerman hesitated. Then he said, “Okay. We’ll work it out. You’ll find it interesting.”

  That was it then. I’d get my lab work done now and come in the following morning. What I didn’t realize was that if you didn’t have an injury before working your way through the bureaucratic maze in the hospital, you’d be guaranteed one afterward.

  I held on to my precious blue card. I was like a soldier who was told, “When crossing a stream, you may drown; but save your rifle.”

  I went first to the outpatient surgery department, where they would instruct me further. A nurse took my blue card to register me, while soon after another nurse said I should go immediately to the blood count department.

  I began the trek to the blood count floor and got lost. A nice intern took pity on me and directed me correctly. When I arrived at blood count, the room was teeming with people.

  I sat down. Several people began to ask for autographs. I knew if I did any that would be it, but everyone stared at me. One guy shrugged; a blond mother smiled. I decided to go to the nurse behind the glass-walled office.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “I’m here for my blood work to be done,” I said. The roomful of people were now intrigued about what blood problem I might have.

  The nurse didn’t look up. She reached out her hand. “Your blue card?” she demanded.

  “Oh,” I said. “The nurse on the sixth floor has it.”

  “Well, we need it,” she assured me.

  “Oh. Okay,” I said. “I guess I’ll have to go get it.”

  I crutch-hobbled my way back across the floor between screeching kids and open staring faces.

  “Someone is supposed to be accompanying you,” she said. “Why aren’t they?”

  I didn’t know what to say. Was it somehow my fault that I was alone? Dr. Perry rescued me. “I don’t have my blue card,” I said. “I’m on my way to get it back from that nurse on the sixth floor.”

  “I’ll get it,” he said. “Wait here.”

  The nurse left. I went back to the teeming room. A buxom, kind-faced nurse came to get me. “We had the same problem with Richard Chamberlain,” she said. “Come with me. The last thing you need is autograph hounds. It would be hard for you to write while you’re trying to hold yourself up, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said gratefully. Just then a male nurse, whom I recognized from the sixth floor check-in, walked up. “You forgot your blue card,” he said. He handed it to me.

  “Dr. Perry went back to get it for me,” I said. “Could you tell him I have it now, not to worry?”

  “If I see him I will,” said the male nurse.

  The buxom nurse led me to a blood-taking booth. There were people and needles, and blood and records, and kids and mothers, and syringes and helpers all over the place. It reminded me of Soylent Green, a movie made years ago about overpopulation.

  A black male nurse came up to me. “Hi there,” he said. “Can I have your registration papers, please?”

  “What registration papers?” I asked.

  “The ones they were supposed to give you on the sixth floor,” he answered. I pulled my newly returned blue card from my pocket. “Will this do?” I asked.

  “Not enough,” he answered.

  “Oh. So should I go back and get the registration papers?” I asked.

  He thought a moment and said, “What kind of surgery are you having?”

  “Arthroscopic on my knee,” I answered.

  “Which knee?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay,” he said, “here.” He handed me a small plastic bottle. “Let’s do the urine now, while I call up to the sixth floor.” I thought about Perry, who was now probably frantically looking for my blue card.

  “Just around the corner to your left, then right, then left, you’ll find the bathrooms,” he said.

  I set out with my crutches. But I got lost. I hobbled until I returned to my point of origin, where the black nurse took a look at my empty plastic bottle and said, “You couldn’t go, huh?”

  “No,” I said. “If I had had to go, I’d have been in big trouble. I couldn’t find the left, right, left doors. I got lost. Where are they?”

  “A lot of people have that problem,” he said. “One day we’ll get it marked out here.”

  “When?” I asked.

  “Well, they’re building a bigger wing. Should be finished next year.”

  “Bigger?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is that really the answer?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “What’re we gonna do with all the people?”

  I shrugged. I had just purchased Paul Ehrlich’s latest, The Population Explosion—it was clear what we were all in for.

  “Here, let me show you where those bathroom doors are,” said the male nurse. He took me part of the way. I, like some old lady in a nursing home, finally found the unmarked doors. I opened one and went in.

  With my crutches, it was very hard to turn around. I dropped one. In trying to retrieve it, I dropped the plastic bottle in the toilet, which didn’t have a lid. Standing on one leg, I picked the bottle out of the toilet water and wiped it with some toilet paper, which was so thin it kept tearing.

  Finally in position, with my crutches placed snugly up against the wall, I unzipped my slacks and did what I had to do into the plastic bottle. When I was done, I wished I had a daisy or rose or something to add the finishing touch.

  There was no back on the toilet, so I had no place to put the full bottle while I zipped up my slacks and retrieved my crutches. On my good leg I did a grande plié to the floor, while keeping the bottle steady. My slacks slowly receded down my bad leg. I couldn’t pull them up, because I had no free arms.

  I finally made it by sitting on the toilet again, placing the bottle on the floor, standing up, zipping up the slacks, sitting back down, retrieving the crutches in one hand, clutching the bottle in the other, standing again, maneuvering one crutch to the other arm, opening the door with a now-free hand, and hobbling out to the hallway.

  It was then that I realized I couldn’t maneuver the crutches and hold the bottle of urine at the same time. There I was stranded in the hallway of the UCLA Medical Research Center, about to be prepared for surgery so that I could go on with my bombastic, free-spirited, athletically proficient career in stage dancing, and I couldn’t even carry pee and walk at the same time.

  My male nurse spotted me, rescued me and my bottle, and led me back to the blood-taking cubicle. My registration papers had arrived, but Perry was apparently still searching for my blue card.

  The orderly took my blood, quickly and painlessly. I just hoped he put the right name on the vials. He then directed me to the elevator that would take me to the x-ray department. He said he’d redirect Dr. Perry to me when he returned.

  I stood in front of the x-ray check-in desk. “I’m here for x-rays,” I said.

  “Let me have your packet,” said the nurse.

  “What packet?” I asked.

  “They gave you a packet on the sixth floor which is necessary for you to present before an x-ray.”

  The sixth floor was now my idea of hell. Nobody had given me anything, and I would not return to it for anything. I told that to the x-ray man. He was chewing gum and listening to someone else’s phone conversation. I spied the x-ray rooms.

  “I’m going on in there,” I announced, “because there’d be no reason t
o x-ray me if I go up to the sixth floor again looking for a packet. There’s already enough troops running around looking for stuff.”

  I maneuvered my way into the x-ray department. An attendant met me. “Please remove all your clothes and jewelry,” he said, handing me an open-backed hospital robe.

  I hobbled into the changing room and, balancing carefully on the crutches, reached up and tried to undo my necklace. Why I needed a chest x-ray when it was my knee in trouble I couldn’t figure out. But rather than argue, I struggled to remove the interfering necklace, an opal I associated with my father. There was a security catch on the chain, and it was too small and too high for me to see. I struggled and struggled.

  “Are you ready?” asked the attendant.

  “Well almost,” I answered, and, abandoning the problem of the necklace, disrobed to emerge dressed in the hospital gown.

  The outside door opened. It was Dr. Perry. He looked at me and shrugged. “I’ve been on a safari to the sixth floor. I take it you got your blue card.”

  “I did,” I said. “But now I need this packet thing, whatever that is, to have an x-ray.”

  “What packet thing?” he asked.

  “I guess they’ll tell you on the sixth floor.”

  “Okay, I’ll get it,” he said and kindly turned to make the trek again. I stopped him first. “Lee, could you undo this necklace? I can’t.”

  He sweetly reached up and undid it for me. Without him, I probably would have checked out of the whole process.

  In the x-ray room, I tried not to move when the pictures were being taken. It was difficult, because by now I was hyperventilating.

  From the x-ray, I was directed to the EKG on another floor. They were nice but sharp with me. As I was strapped with electrodes to a table, the nurse said, “This is an EKG. You’re supposed to be relaxed. Why are you so tense?”

  I just laughed and said, “What I really feel like is having a coronary arrest, just to see if I have the proper papers to be taken care of.”

  She seemed to understand and didn’t say a word as she went on with her work.

  After the ordeal of the surgery preparation, I went home and tried to relax. As nighttime approached, I could think only of the audience who would have been filing in for my opening night. Instead, my company was at the theater eating the preordered goodies and having a party, as they looked forward to a six-week vacation.