My Journey with Farrah - Alana Stewart [18]
She was really nervous and crying a little when they put her on the operating table, but by the time the IV started to take effect, she was chatting and joking with Dr. Vogl as he performed the intricate procedure. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. This man is a true scientific genius. He let me stay in the operating room filming it, as I’d done before. I know I’ve said it before, but they would never allow this in the States.
Afterward, when the drugs started wearing off, Farrah started complaining of pain in her liver. They gave her some pain drops and nausea drops orally in water, which I knew was a mistake. I even questioned the doctor before he gave them to her, warning him, “She tends to get very nauseated after any procedure and can start vomiting violently.”
Did he pay any attention to me? Of course not; he’s German.
So, about thirty minutes later, when I was in the anteroom talking to Dr. Jacob on the phone, I heard this splashing noise, then another, and another. I rushed into the room to see Farrah projectile vomiting. “Oh God,” I said to Dr. Jacob. “She’s throwing up!” The last time it happened after this procedure was the time Ryan was with her, and she threw up for over eight hours nonstop. I told the doctor who had given her the drops that she must have the medication immediately to stop the vomiting, but it had to be given by IV, not orally. The oral meds would take too long to work.
Nothing they gave her had any effect at all. It would look like she was nodding off, and then suddenly she’d start throwing up all over again. She was almost totally knocked out from all the drugs they’d given her, but still nothing stopped the vomiting. Dr. Vogl kept coming in, checking on her, and scratching his head. It was the first time I’d ever seen him at a loss for what to do.
“You think you can still make the plane?” he asked. She kept mumbling, “Yes, I want to go,” in between bouts of heaving.
He shrugged and then turned to me: “Well, she seems to want to go.”
Okay, now I was pissed. Who was the doctor here?
“She just threw up again five seconds ago,” I said. “Do you really think she’s capable of making that decision?”
“Well, you’re her friend. You know her. Do you think she can go?”
I hate when people answer a question with a question. I said, “Look, I’m not a doctor, how can I know if she’s able to go?” This was getting ridiculous. There was no way she could travel—back me up on this, will you, Doc?
Finally, after it was apparent that nothing was going to stop her violent vomiting, even she realized there was no way we were getting on that plane. I called the pilots and explained what had happened and how sorry I was. They called Bren Simon, and she told them to spend the night and bring us back the next day. God bless her. A five-hour ride in a bouncing van would have been a nightmare. Unfortunately for us, the nightmare was just beginning.
This was a day clinic, where people don’t spend the night, but we had no choice—we weren’t going anywhere. So Dr. Vogl arranged for a small room with two beds and his private nurse to stay with us. When we got to the room, it was around 9 P.M., and Farrah continued to throw up. They kept giving her more and more medication, and I was getting more concerned by the moment. I kept calling the doctor, asking what was causing such a violent reaction, and he said it was the chemo.
“I had to give her a very aggressive dose in order to kill this terrorist,” he explained. He always referred to the cancer as a terrorist. “Some people do have this kind of reaction.” Thanks for telling us now. Just when the medication seemed to be taking effect and Farrah would doze off, the next moment she’d be reaching for the barf box (for lack of the technical term). She threw up about seventy-five times altogether (she told me the next day that she’d kept an accurate tally).
After a bit, I sneaked out into the hallway to eat the pizza and spaghetti Bolognese I’d had delivered before all this started. Who would have thought that I of the