My Journey with Farrah - Alana Stewart [59]
We spent New Year’s Eve 2007 at Tina Sinatra’s. We had dinner, watched a movie in our pj’s, tuned in to the ball dropping in Times Square at midnight, and celebrated with some champagne.
Farrah with Kimberly and me during Christmas 2007.
Farrah with her son Redmond and my daughter Kimberly at the Leonardis Clinic in June 2007.
In March 2008, Farrah and I escaped to Mexico shortly after her fourth trip to Germany when they declared her tumor free. It was the last time I remember Farrah really feeling good for a prolonged period of time.
As difficult as it was sometimes to be in Germany, the clinic was in such a beautiful part of Bavaria that it made things a little easier.
Keeping the faith in May 2008. Farrah was back in the hospital just before surgery with Dr. Kiehling. She’s holding her rosaries, as she always did before any surgery or procedure. It was her ritual to say a quick prayer and kiss them.
Me, Dr. Jacob, Farrah, and Ryan enjoying dinner on our first trip to Germany.
Here we are at a makeshift slumber party in February 2008. This very sweet girl, Francoise Shirley, who had a company called Sleepyheads, asked if we could send her a picture of us in the pj’s. We loved these flannel pj’s, so we put Farrah’s pink boa around our necks and climbed into her bed at the clinic to pose.
We talked for a long time, and when we hung up she was in better spirits. I told her it’s only normal to feel hopeless and depressed with all she’s going through. I don’t know how she’s doing it. I tell her again and again that she doesn’t realize how courageous she is, that she’s the bravest person I’ve ever known.
Her scan is this week, and we’ll know if the tumors are smaller, larger, or the same. She’s scared. I keep telling her it’s going to be okay, but truthfully, I’m scared, too. God, we just need a miracle. Please let there be good news. I don’t know how much more of this she can take. Thank you, God. Amen.
October 9, 2008
This is the big day. I’m sitting here in the waiting room at Dr. Piro’s clinic while Farrah waits for the radioactive material they’ve just injected her with to take effect. Then they will do the CT and PET scans. We were just laughing and talking…like we would on any normal day, about clothes, where we would eat afterward, going by to look at Jaguars if we had time. And yet after these scans are done, we’ll know the results, and her life could be radically changed—yet again. If the tumors haven’t responded to the trial at City of Hope and have grown larger or multiplied, I can’t even imagine what the next step will be. But I’m not going there now. I feel in my heart it’s going to be good news. But I’ve been wrong before, time and time again. So I’m frightened.
Later
It wasn’t exactly good news. Dr. Piro called us into the scan room and showed us on the screens where the active tumors were. We were both pretty shocked to hear that not only have the ones in the liver grown larger and multiplied but the primary one has returned and there appears to be activity in a lymph gland as well. Farrah didn’t cry. She asked questions and listened thoughtfully to the answers, but she was so disappointed. This was so not what we had expected. Dr. Piro went on to say that the growth might have occurred during the five or six weeks while she was waiting for Dr. Forman to get the approval to start the trial. He called Dr. Forman, who said that he would like to do three more treatments and then recheck the tumors in six weeks. He feels he needs more time for the drugs to work (if they’re going to was the part left unsaid).
I think we both grasped onto the hope that the drug will kick in and the next scan will show an improvement. We were both quiet when we got into the car. Finally, I just said, “I’m so sorry.” She got teary, but stayed amazingly strong and brave. She seems so fragile right now, my heart just breaks for her. I searched for something to say that would cheer her up, some thread of optimism. I reminded her that the man who