My Journey with Farrah - Alana Stewart [50]
Now it’s raining cats and dogs, accompanied by thunder and lightning that seem frighteningly close. God, please, just let us get back to sunny California. I feel very alone right now. Alone and scared.
Later 2:20 P.M.
I just finished the PET scan and I’m sitting in the office, waiting for Dr. Horr to give me his report. I wasn’t allowed to eat all day and I’m hungry, weak, and nervous. I’m wolfing down a banana and wishing there were something more to eat here. He’s calling me in now. Boy, is my heart pounding!
“Sit down.” He gestures to a chair in front of several computer screens lit up with slides of my body and brain.
“So, do I have any tumors?” I blurt out. I can’t wait any longer to know.
“No, no, you are fine,” he says matter-of-factly, not realizing that he’s just told me I still have a life to live. Thank you, God, thank you, thank you, thank you! I’ll never complain again, I swear it!
Later 6:30 P.M.
I just left Dr. Rotorooter’s office in Munich. I wanted to get it all over with in one day. Gynecologists are really different here. First of all, there’s no nurse in the room when they examine you. He had me take off my clothes from the waist down and lean back in this large chair with my legs in stirrups, up in the air and wide apart. No sheet, nada. When he finished examining me, he sat back, took off his gloves, and proceeded to talk to me while I remained in the same spread-eagle position. All the while he was talking, I was wishing I had the camera and could shoot him from my point of view, framed by my wide-apart legs.
The good news was that everything had healed well. I then asked nervously if the cancer could come back. He said, as best as I could understand with his limited English, he had lasered the whole area and the surrounding tissue was cancer free. He added that I should still get Pap smears every few months. I guess I’ll never get a Pap smear again without holding my breath for the results.
So, now that this major worry is over, I can get on with my life. But it’s not the same life. How could it be? If this experience wasn’t a wake-up call, then I don’t know what is. I can now honestly say that I feel there’s a Higher Power out there who wants me to live. Maybe it’s so that I can be here for Farrah? I feel a deep sense of commitment to continuing this path with her, no matter where it might lead.
I started this journey with her, particularly the German part. I wanted her to come here because I thought they could help her. I felt she’d die if she stayed in the States, and now even some of the doctors there are admitting that she probably wouldn’t be alive today if she hadn’t come here. The first time she came, a year ago, I told her that I’d stay as long as she had to stay. After that, I felt like I had to come back with her because I knew the routine. I’m not being self-important; it was just a fact. I felt I had to stick by her.
I’m sure that a big part of it has to do with what happened with my grandmother and my mother. When my grandmother’s colon cancer came back, years ago, I didn’t try hard enough to make her go into Houston where there were better doctors. She didn’t want to leave Nacogdoches and the local doctor there, so I didn’t push it. At the time, a part of me may have even been relieved by her choice, because I didn’t know any doctors in Houston and it seemed overwhelming. Then she died, minutes before I arrived at the hospital, and I never got to say good-bye to her. I was devastated, and even now it brings tears to my eyes that I didn’t make more of an effort to spend time with her when she was alive. I’ve felt tremendous amounts of guilt about that ever since.
That guilt only got worse when, shortly after my grandmother’s death, my mother died of an overdose of prescription drugs. Once again I did not get a chance to say good-bye, leaving me riddled with guilt that I hadn’t done enough to save her.
So maybe, in some way, by