My Journey with Farrah - Alana Stewart [43]
Back at the clinic, we sat up talking until one thirty in the morning. It felt just like the old days, when we used to sit on the phone for hours, talking away about anything and everything. Farrah read me an entry from her journal that she’d just finished. She’d never shared her writing with me before. It was very touching, so honest and from her heart. She said, almost apologetically, “My writing’s not nearly as good as yours.”
“Are you crazy?” I said. “You don’t have any idea how beautiful this is. It’s so descriptive and so poetic. This has to be the narrative running through the documentary. It’s so powerful.” She was talking about life and how fragile and fleeting it can be. She’d been hit by so many blows, one after the other. One phrase particularly stayed with me: “They can keep cutting out parts of me, but they can’t cut out my spirit. Sometimes I feel like a blond nothingness.”
Later, as I lay in my bed, I couldn’t sleep, thinking about the past few days…the past year. How did we get here, my friend? You are in this life-threatening battle with cancer, and I’m going through it with you. Then I had this cancer scare myself. I feel like my entire concept of what it means to be there for someone is changing. Supporting Farrah through this has been an exercise in constant motion, never having enough time or space to find my feet before the ground disappears beneath them again. It’s been a nonstop game of catch-up with my emotions. I constantly have the sensation that we’re hurtling through space, faster than the speed of light, and I don’t have time to digest or process anything. This has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. I feel like I just have to hold on and try not to go under while the raging current sweeps us along.
June 11, 2008
Okay, God, enough is enough! I am so sick that I’m barely able to swallow. Dr. Jacob did a swab of my throat and she thinks I have strep but has to wait for the results to know what antibiotics work on this particular strain. Fortunately, she was able to move Farrah’s surgery to Thursday. There was no way I could have made it today to help take care of her, besides the fact that she doesn’t need to be around my germs.
What if I can’t go with Farrah tomorrow for her surgery? She’ll have to be in the hospital three days this time. It’s a serious operation. I don’t have time to be sick.
Later
Finally, some good news! Dr. Jacob came into my room with the lab reports: there’s no cancer in my blood, and the tumor markers are normal. She said that means the cancer was localized and the doctor got it all. Thank you, God! I still have to do the PET scan to make 100 percent sure it’s not in my lymph or anywhere else, but she doesn’t think it will be. She started me right away on an IV of antibiotics to knock out my throat infection. I feel better already, just knowing that everything looks much more positive.
I asked her about Farrah’s operation tomorrow. Would it be terribly painful? She said that it would not, and that she will only be in the hospital two days. Please, God, let this turn around.
June 12, 2008
Farrah’s surgery day. We got to the hospital early, around 9 A.M., and of course waited and waited. Apparently the doctor was running late with other surgeries. Finally, they came to prepare her. She looked frail and nervous, clutching her rosary, as they wheeled her into the operating room. I went with her as far as they would let me, before saying good-bye. She looked like a small, frightened child.
I’m sitting in the Schlössel (which means castle), a Bavarian restaurant down the road from the hospital, having some lunch and waiting for Farrah to come out of surgery. Please, God, let Dr. Kiehling come into the room with good news—that it went well, that they got the rest of the tumor, that it was easier than expected.
This restaurant is really depressing. It’s the road show version of what one would imagine a German castle to be. Besides me, there’s