My Journey with Farrah - Alana Stewart [65]
Later
I think Farrah and I were both holding our breath when Dr. Piro walked into the room after the scan. I know I was. He said, “Well, it’s a good-news day!” He told us that the tumors are all shrinking; that this chemo is working. She was ecstatic. We all were. Dr. Piro was beaming as Farrah hugged him. It’s the first time in so long that we’ve gotten good news, especially from the scans here.
We went to tea at the Peninsula to celebrate. Farrah called her dad, Ryan, and Redmond. We called Tina and Carole. We were all so happy. I told her I didn’t think it was all the chemo, by any means. I think the spiritual work she’s been doing with Marianne, Father Sanchez, and Diane, the Christian Science practitioner, is playing a big part. It’s as if the energy has shifted.
January 14, 2009
Today the news is not so good: I got a call from the hospital that Farrah was being admitted. Just when things were looking up, she started vomiting nonstop at one o’clock this morning. It was obviously from the chemo she had yesterday. Marianne Williamson and I were supposed to have dinner, but we went down to see Farrah first. She was just lying there under all the covers, so still, so quiet, with IVs dripping into her arms. She looked pale, fragile, and helpless. She could barely speak. We just sat on the bed in the dark and Marianne prayed for her. The nurse came in and gave her some medication to put her out for the night. When she gets into one of these throwing-up jags, the only way to stop it is to put her to sleep. We crept quietly out when her eyes started to close.
We had dinner at Toscano, an Italian restaurant in Brentwood, where I used to live. The pasta wasn’t quite as good as I remembered it. The kids and I lived in the Brentwood house for twelve years. I can’t believe the time passed so quickly. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and live it all over again. And be more present, and appreciate what I had more, appreciate my children more. Cherish every minute instead of always being so busy, busy, busy. Just another of the many, many regrets I have in my life. Things I wish I’d done differently.
It was bittersweet being back in Brentwood. I felt slightly sad and disconnected. Life is passing too quickly. Like a meteor flashing through the sky. I feel like I can’t hold on to anything, especially Farrah. It gives me that old familiar feeling of being adrift in a sea with no anchor. Just lost at sea.
January 31, 2009
Carole had an early birthday dinner for Farrah Saturday night. Jaclyn Smith and her husband, Brad, Kate Jackson, Jose, Carole, Bob, Tina, me, Dr. Piro and his wife, Judy, and Farrah and Ryan, of course. Farrah wanted a chocolate cake with white icing, so I volunteered to make it. It took me all day. The first one flopped. Gas was leaking out of my stove, so I had to call the gas company. Then I baked another one, even though the repair guy said not to use the stove. Geri Lugo, my manager and also a phenomenal baker, came over and decorated it, since I’m as useless at decorating cakes as I am at making piecrusts. They always taste incredibly good but are not so pretty. She made beautiful chocolate roses with a pastry tube. It fell over in my car on the way there, but I managed to salvage it.
Farrah is so depleted. This chemo is really wrecking her. She’s been so sick all week. She was in the hospital for one night and has had nurses at home much of the rest of the time. I don’t know how much more her body can take, although Dr. Piro says she’s in much better shape than she was two months ago, when she was in the hospital so ill from the bleeding. He says that the chemo is shrinking the tumors, and that these symptoms are all from the chemo. She has no quality of life, but I guess that’s the way it is when people are having such heavy doses of chemo.
The terrible part, besides the pain, is the indignities she has to go through. Losing her hair, constant vomiting, being so horribly weak and exhausted all the time. She made it through dinner and opening the presents, but had to leave about