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By Root 318 0

to stress and anxiety about leaving again for a long trip. I had to cancel a trip back to Houston, where I was supposed to be the guest of honor and featured speaker at the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the high school that I graduated from, Stephen F. Austin. I felt it was quite an honor that they had asked me, considering that Mrs. LeGros, the dean when I was a rather rebellious senior there, had once said that I would never amount to anything more than a carhop (well, I was a stewardess for a while!). I had also made plans to visit my eighty-five-year-old uncle in Nacogdoches, Texas, my hometown, and I was feeling terribly guilty about disappointing him. But this trip is about trying to save my friend’s life, so it has to take priority.

September 10, 2007

We landed and came straight to the hospital to meet with Dr. Vogl about Farrah’s surgery tomorrow. She had an MRI, and afterward he showed us what size the tumors were now and which ones he would laser. Some of them were already dead or dying from the chemo treatment she’d had on the last trip. Farrah wanted to know why he couldn’t laser all of them, but he said that it was dangerous to do too many at one time. It can cause severe bleeding. That was so typical of Farrah. She didn’t want to mess around; she wanted to face them head-on and burn the suckers out. All of them!

Afterward we went to check into the hotel, a small, modern structure with colored neon lights in the lobby. We dubbed it “the disco hotel.” We ate, showered, and went to bed, exhausted from the long trip and our afternoon with Dr. Vogl.

September 11, 2007

I’m lying on the other bed in Farrah’s hospital room, watching her sleep. We’ve been here all day and I’m dying to go back to the hotel and shower and eat, but I don’t want to leave her until the private nurse gets here. God, she’s had the day from hell. We arrived at the hospital around nine and they began preparing her for the laser surgery. I was nervous because Dana, my astrologer, had said they mustn’t do the surgery between 10 A.M. and 2 P.M. She said that if they did it during those hours, it might have to be repeated. Farrah has probably never consulted an astrologer in her life, but she knows I put a lot of stock into it, so she goes along with it. Especially about something like this.

I told Dr. Vogl what the astrologer said, but I prefaced it by saying that I knew he would think I was a crazy American. Dr. Vogl is very rigid and Germanic, but now that we know him better, Farrah and I both get a kick out of giving him big hugs when we see him. I think we enjoy it because he receives our hugs with a kind of embarrassed stiffness, patting us on the backs like an uncomfortable father. Farrah thinks he likes me because I always flirt with him a little so he’ll let me film.

He promised they’d be through by ten, but I have my doubts. The first part of the laser procedure ended up being excruciatingly painful. Dr. Vogl didn’t tell Farrah about this part. She was given pain medication by IV but was not out completely, and they inserted these thin metal skewers, for want of a better word, that were about eighteen inches long, through her skin and her rib cage into her liver. The pain was almost unbearable for her. I had been filming it, but I had to stop and go to the anesthesiologist. I demanded they give her something stronger to knock her out. This guy looked like an SS officer and spoke with a German accent that was right out of a Saturday Night Live skit.

“We cannot do that. She must be awake so she can breathe when Dr. Vogl says. The instruments must be inserted very precisely.” Then, with a sadistic little smile, he said, “Dr. Vogl is the master of the puncture!”

“This is inhuman. You can’t let her be in this kind of pain. Can’t you give her stronger pain medication?” I pleaded.

“I will give her something more,” he relented. Then he explained, “When she goes into the other room for the laser surgery, she will be completely out.” Well, thank God for some mercy.

I couldn’t film the actual laser surgery because they said it