My Journey with Farrah - Alana Stewart [36]
He pursed his lips and shook his head. Shook his head no. Again, he cautioned, “You must not tell her. She has a strong will. That’s very important.”
So what do I do now? Suddenly I have this knowledge and I don’t dare share it with anyone. Is that the right thing to do? I sure wouldn’t want Farrah to know and give up hope. But do I have the right to keep this to myself? I feel like I’m harboring a horrible secret. I wish Dr. Vogl hadn’t told me.
May 30, 2008
Farrah’s liver perfusion went well today. Now she’s in the recovery room and in quite a lot of pain. We wanted to spend the night at the hotel, but Dr. Jacob insisted she come back to the clinic so she can treat her. It’s now 7 P.M. and I’ve come back to the hotel to get our luggage. Farrah is still in the makeshift recovery room in the hospital, which is really a supply room. The real recovery rooms are filled with other people. Maybe this is just the way they do it in Germany, but the people here are treated like cattle. They wheel them on the stretchers into a large hallway and just leave them lined up to wait for surgery. It’s ridiculous to leave someone like Farrah lying on a stretcher in plain view of anyone who might have a camera. They’re certainly not set up for VIP treatment.
I had a chance to speak to Dr. Vogl again. He said it went very well and he feels much more positive than he did yesterday. I brightened. “So tell me again, how long do you feel she may have?” I asked.
“Oh, she’s in good shape,” he said. “She can live quite a while.”
“You mean like three to five years?” I asked, hoping for more. He looked pensive.
“That’s long,” he said. I didn’t try to question him further. I guess I didn’t want to know anymore.
Farrah got quite sick from the chemo, so Dr. Vogl decided to travel in the car with us. He had to go visit his ailing mother near Munich, and it was on our way (or so he said). In any case, he’d be in the car with us in case she got worse. The driver made a bed for her in the backseat of the van where she was able to sleep most of the way. I wasn’t so fortunate. The two middle seats, where Dr. Vogl and I sat, were incredibly uncomfortable. I was so tired and so jet-lagged, I would have killed to lie down, but there was no place to put my head. Even so, I kept falling asleep and waking up with my head falling over in some weird, cramped position.
The trip seemed endless. We stopped at some awful roadside café to eat something, and Farrah woke up and gamely came with us. She wanted to order a Whataburger, but Dr. Vogl insisted on soup. It looked like the dishwater. I know she would have eaten a huge greasy hamburger if he hadn’t been there.
Then we got back in the van only to find out that, after having already driven several hours, we were still three hours away from the place Dr. Vogl was going, which really wasn’t directly on our way after all. When we had dropped him off, we were still two hours away from the clinic. Truly the trip from hell! We finally arrived there at 2 A.M. We checked into our rooms but were wide awake, so we talked until 5 A.M. I finally took an Ativan and went to sleep. I woke up and looked at my watch, which I thought read 8:30. I’d only slept three and a half hours, so I took another Ativan. Then I looked closer at my watch and saw that it was actually 2:30 in the afternoon. I couldn’t believe I’d been so stupid, but then the Ativan started to kick in and I couldn’t stay awake even though I wanted to. I fell back into a drugged sleep until 6:30 P.M.
P.S. I’ve been calling UCLA every day to see if my test has come back. Finally, I called one more time. I got the nurse on the phone and she looked it up on the computer and the Pap smear was still abnormal. I almost fell through the floor. Now I was freaked. I paged the doctor and finally got through to her. She reassured me that it wasn’t that big of a deal and that there was no immediate rush. We could wait until I get back for the next step, which is the colposcopy, but it might make more sense just to have it done here.