Cancer Schmancer (12 page)

This was the first time a connection had been made between my fame and the lack of a diagnosis. I hadn’t thought of it before, but there it was right under my nose. Right in her office with those nurses. Can anyone be thorough in their job when they’re completely distracted by celebrity? I wondered.

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The next thing ya know, we’re on to colonoscopies. I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of having a camera shoved up my butt, but I knew I wanted one and had mentioned it to her when we first spoke on the phone. My stool had changed in recent months, but the closest thing I could get to a diagnosis was my internist’s telling me I was eating too much spinach.

My dad’s older sister, Rosalind, a dear aunt of mine, had died from ovarian cancer that eventually spread to her colon. As years go by it’s difficult to differentiate between diagnostic fact and family folklore, but that’s what I believed to be true. My fear was that my cancer had been diagnosed too late and might have spread like hers.

The surgeon had no problem with scheduling a colonoscopy, and repeated again and again that she was willing to do anything I wanted for me to finally feel like I was in the right hands. A gas-trointestinal specialist, Doctor #10, would perform the procedure the day before my surgery. That way I wouldn’t have to take the barium, which clears out your intestines, more than once.

With great fanfare Wanda drew the curtain to separate me from John, Elaine, and Rachel as the exam was about to begin.

She held my hand as Lucy and the surgeon did another D&C on me, this time sans Novocain. Though Doctor #9 still felt the second biopsy wasn’t necessary, she wanted to gain my trust by accommodating my sister’s request. She even took my sister’s work number at the hospital to fill her in on everything. Doctor

#9 really went to great lengths to rectify the damage that had been done by her colleagues. Meanwhile, she seemed to be going to town down there, snipping away tiny chunks of tissue that Lucy gingerly dropped into a vial for biopsy. Man, did that hurt.

Thank God it only lasted a minute.

While Lucy helped me clean up and get dressed, Doctor #9

moved to the other side of the curtain to talk to Rachel, John, and Elaine. “This will be a piece of cake,” she said. “The gynecologist’s 9377 Cancer Schmancer 2/28/02 4:18 PM Page 96

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biopsy indicated the tumor was a baby cancer, just beginning to turn malignant. It’s one hundred percent curable.”

We all left feeling encouraged and good about my surgeon. It was a relief that it was over. John left for work while Elaine, Rachel, and I went out to lunch. As we ate and drank and tried to remain optimistic, I couldn’t stop thinking about those patients in the waiting room. The sadness in their faces, the thinness of their bodies, the baldness of their heads. Would that be me? Is that where I was headed? I didn’t want to go there at all, so I rejoined the conversation in progress: babies, vacations, the menu. When the waiter walked by, I ordered another glass of wine.

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“Now I’m Concerned”

J u n e 1 9 , 2 0 0 0

over the weekend I worked with John writing our MTV pilot. I remember awakening during the night in one of my scared moments of tears and whispers, begging him to finish the script with me. “Who knows what’s going to happen? This may be our last chance to complete it.” I wanted to see his idea become a teleplay. I hated the idea that I might be leaving this earth with an unfinished piece of work. So with the weight of an uncertain future resting squarely on my shoulders, we pulled out the laptop and attempted to write a comedy. And I’m grateful we did, because it was fun to return to our make-believe world. I thought it romantic, the notion we were creating a place no one else knew about but us. It was an escape from reality I welcomed.

I also prepared the guest house for my parents’ arrival, and continued to hike as well. When Monday rolled around, John left for work and I geared my day around the barium I was to drink that afternoon in preparation for the colonoscopy on Tuesday. My dad had had one recently and said it was nothing. I thought it strange that everything I was getting, my mom or dad had also recently gotten. They were able to share their experiences with me, 9377 Cancer Schmancer 2/28/02 4:18 PM Page 98

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guiding me with firsthand knowledge. It was like I was a child again, a big 140-pound baby—something I hadn’t allowed myself to be in a long time.

Rachel and her husband, Greg, made plans to come out to the beach and have lunch with me before I had to take the barium drink. After that, I’d only be able to have liquids or Jell-O until I came through the surgery on Wednesday. It was a beautiful day, the sun was glistening on the ocean, and I made a reservation at Geof-frey’s, a restaurant on a cliff overlooking the Pacific. I always feel like I’m in Hawaii when I go there, and I thought Rachel and Greg would enjoy dining alfresco by the sea.

We talked about poor Nancy Marchand dying of lung cancer.

Not too morbid while having a little lunch. How wonderful for her she got to play such a great part on such a landmark television series as The Sopranos all the way up to the end. I saw her perform off-Broadway in The Cocktail Hour, and always loved her after that.

I was glad I’d done The Nanny. It made me feel successful in my career goals. What would be my next part? Would there be a next part? I ordered the fish, grilled crispy over spinach and whipped potatoes. Usually I like pasta, but this sounded good.

Greg and I had wine; Rachel never drinks. We raised our glasses and toasted to it all going well, and all being over on Wednesday.

As we all got back in my car and headed home, I called for my messages on the cell phone. The nurse had left a message saying that the surgeon had more information from the most recent biopsy (the one my sister had insisted on) and would like me to stop by her office before going in for my colonoscopy tomorrow.

That’s as much as I heard before the phone went dead and I was stuck in a cellular void of no reception for the rest of the way home. Now, it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes, tops, but I felt my entire piece of salmon get stuck in my chest as I frantically kept trying to get a signal so I could connect with the nurse.

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When Greg, Rachel, and I arrived at the house, Angelica and Ramon were still there. “Fran, how many minutes can you record on your video camera?” Ramon asked as I entered the kitchen.

“I don’t know, forty?” I guessed as I dialed the nurse on my hard line. Ramon and his timing, always with the obtuse questions. It’s part of his charm, I guess.

Rachel tried to ground the situation with simple logic: “Whatever it is, we’ll just deal with it, that’s all.”

I remembered I had to take the barium drink. Greg, otherwise known as “the bartender from hell,” prepared it. When I got through to the nurse, she simply repeated the message she’d already left, but I dug in my heels and said, “I’m sorry, but there’s no way I will be able to wait until tomorrow to find out what this new information is!” She explained that Doctor #9 was in surgery all day.

“I don’t care!” I answered, with panic in my voice. “Can’t she call me on her way from one operation to the other?” It seemed unfathomable to wait. I mean, how torturous. She said the doctor would be coming out in a few minutes and she’d try to get her to call then.

Rachel said, “We’ll wait with you.”

“Are you sure? I mean, I know you probably should be getting back to the kids,” I said, feeling like a burdensome pain.

“Don’t be ridiculous, the kids are fine. We’re not leaving,” she insisted. Once again, I was learning something valuable: When those around you offer to help carry the load, take it for the lifesaver it is and simply say thank you. So we all went into my bedroom and played with Chester. That dog was so intelligent and plugged in to me, he sensed right away something was wrong and anxiously awaited the surgeon’s call along with the rest of us.

Well, just as I was massaging Chester’s little old bones (he was now eighteen years old) and listening to Rachel tell a story, the 9377 Cancer Schmancer 2/28/02 4:18 PM Page 100

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phone rang. We all froze. Rachel stopped talking, Angelica stopped folding laundry, and I grabbed the receiver. It was Doctor #9.

I picked up my notepaper and pen from the side of the bed as Rachel and Greg held their breath. There was no small talk, no pussyfooting around, no soft-pedaling. She came right out and said, “I’m glad we listened to your sister because the second biopsy shows a more advanced cancer than the first.”

“What do you mean, ‘more advanced’?” I said. I looked up at Rachel, who was hanging on every word.

She explained that a more extensive scraping of the uterine tissue indicated not only cells that were grades of one and two, but also threes and fours.

My head was whirling. Thank God for Nadine. The request she made for a second biopsy might have seemed like overkill at the time, but proved to be one of the single greatest pieces of advice I’d received from a medical professional throughout this whole unfortunate mess. How could this be happening? “What does that mean exactly?” I asked, always trying to understand and write down everything she said.

“Well, before, it appeared to be what I think of as a baby cancer, where the cells are just beginning to turn, but to now find cells that are grades three and four—I gotta be honest with you, Fran, now I’m concerned.”

I’ll never forget those three words: now I’m concerned. A malignant tumor can have cells in it varying in grades from one through four (four being the worst). Which grade of cells dominates determines what grade the tumor is. If it’s a grade-four tumor, suffice it to say, you’re in pretty bad shape.

“I’m going to want to do a radical hysterectomy. That means you’ll have to lose your ovaries and I won’t be able to perform the surgery laparoscopically or vaginally; we’ll have to cut into the abdomen.”

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Rachel held my hand. She knew from the look on my face I was devastated. I don’t know what made me think of this right then—maybe it had been in the back of my head all along—but I said, “I want to freeze my ovaries just in case they’re disease-free.

Maybe I could harvest the eggs someday.” And then I added, “I’m going to want a plastic surgeon to sew me up, too.”

She still thought surgery would essentially cure me, since uterine cancer is pretty noninvasive and slow growing. In that respect I was lucky. Even though as a young, thin woman I was atypical for uterine cancer (it mostly affects postmenopausal or obese women), out of all the gynecological cancers I could have gotten, this was the best—“best” meaning least likely to spread if caught early. There I was, finally too young and thin for something, and I get it anyway.

“But,” she explained, “with all cancers, we never know what stage it’s at until the surrounding tissue and lymph nodes are removed and biopsied. How deep and how far-reaching the cancer has gone will determine what stage of the disease you have.”

Meanwhile, I’d read somewhere that uterine cancer was the only gynecological cancer with a mortality rate that was on the rise, in part due to late diagnosis. So there you are.

I hung up the phone and wept in Rachel’s arms. “I think it’s better they take everything anyway,” Rachel said. That’s what we call being Talmudic about life. “What do you need it for? Get it all out and be done with it, be clean of it.”

I called my mom again, who was busy getting ready for their flight to L.A. on Tuesday, and told her this unexpected plot twist.

She was in full agreement with Rachel. “Get it the hell outta ya,”

were her exact words. She’d never felt comfortable with the surgeon’s doing a partial hysterectomy anyway. The radical seemed more thorough, more efficient. Let’s hope so, anyway, because that’s what I was getting. Thanks to my sister, we were all better 9377 Cancer Schmancer 2/28/02 4:18 PM Page 102

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prepared. Not only was the surgeon better able to judge the type of surgery I needed, but I’d now go under the knife knowing exactly what to expect.

I reached Elaine on her cell phone at a charity event. “Oh Elaine,” I wept. “They got the results back from the biopsy and it’s much more advanced than the surgeon thought. I think it’s time we tell Peter.” Up until this point I really hadn’t wanted to worry him. He was so far away, and had gone through so much already, not only with the divorce but with having lost both his parents to cancer years before. I’d been thinking I’d write him a letter after it was all done, but things had changed. The situation seemed graver, and I worried that the news might leak to the press. I didn’t want him to find out that way, so I asked Elaine, as one of our oldest friends and faithful manager, to please tell him.

From her charity event, in the hotel parking lot in an evening gown, she called Peter on her cell phone. He began to cry immediately, she later told me. All the anger melted away and what was left, all that was left, was the love. He told her to tell me that he knew about John and understood, but if I needed him, he’d jump on the next flight out and be by my side through it all. When Elaine called me back and relayed his message, I cried like a baby.

It was the sweetest expression of love we’d shared in years, one of many silver linings to come.

When the phone rang again, it was John returning my 911

page for the second time in less than a week. With fear in his voice he said, “Are you okay? What’s the matter?” I told him the cancer was worse and the surgery would be more radical. He said he’d leave work immediately. He was never to return to the job again.

As for me, I felt sick to my stomach, and ran to the bathroom.

The barium had kicked in. . . .