Crane (30 page)

A friend of Kari’s recommended a clinic that served as a one-stop surgical and treatment superstore aptly named the Breast Center. The facility occupied several floors of a hospital ten minutes from our home. Twenty-four hours after Kari’s James Garner dream, we sat in the crowded waiting room watching women of all ages take their turns receiving diagnoses that would, one way or another, permanently alter their lives, with either relief or dread. Whatever the outcome, I was convinced every woman in that center was currently going through her own personal hell. The title of art critic Robert Hughes’s book
The Shock of the New
applied to Kari and me as our brains processed all the new information, hope, and fear in a kind of hyperdrive. As Kari filled out multiple pages of new-patient information, I watched many women who were waiting alone. I wanted to ask them, “Are you here alone by design or because a mate couldn’t get off work, or worse, couldn’t handle the situation and just jumped ship?” Before long, Kari Hildebrand (never Kari Crane) was called. “Good luck,” I whispered to Kari as well as myself as she was led away to an examination room.

I stayed behind because those were still days before I felt welcomed in that private eddy occupied by Kari and the doctors. I do have a sneaking suspicion, however, that most men, if they show up at all, prefer reading magazines or watching television in the waiting room rather than participating in the frank, life-changing dialogue being exchanged behind those exam rooms’ closed doors. The minutes limped by as the Breast Center’s well-trained staff took care of a never-ending flow of incoming patients. I was amazed at this supermarket of all things breast: women checked in at the front desk for mammograms, checkups, follow-ups, surgery, and chemo. The doctors and staff clearly were making a conscientious effort to present themselves as more than just medical workers. Instead, they
appeared to be caring souls watching over and guiding sisters in distress. There was a projected warmth in this facility, which was at the time unique. Kari emerged after an exam, mammogram, and biopsy and gave me two thumbs up for everything about the center: its staff, technology, goals, and purposes. All that was left for us to do was go home to wait for the results of the biopsy.

Two days dragged by. Neither Kari nor I mentioned what was hanging in the house like radioactive fog. Kari kept busy working out details of her latest landscaping plan, and I wrote questions for an upcoming “20Q” interview with the pouty
Family Ties
star Justine Bateman.

Every story has a before and after. I wished that the one we were in the middle of might have a never, but eventually the phone call came. The doctor announced that the lump in Kari’s breast was malignant, but he was upbeat. He said they had caught it early. He said that with surgical removal of the fingernail-sized tumor and follow-up treatment, the prognosis was good. After relaying the conversation, Kari stoically looked at me for a moment, then fell into my arms, sobbing. This was the first time since her tween years that Kari was feeling dependent and unable to control her own life. She was justifiably anxious and scared. I could only hold her.

In the mid-1980s, MTV was a big deal, a television groundbreaker. A publicist I knew had been pitching me her clients for magazine interviews, and as a small incentive she sent me two tickets to the annual video awards show being held at the Universal Amphitheater. Kari and I were going to be rock ’n’ rollers for a night, have a bit of mindless, big-haired (for Kari) fun. This was something we never did in our straight and narrow life together. The night of the award show turned out to be the same day we got Kari’s breast cancer diagnosis. “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans,” as John Lennon said, so a lump in Kari’s breast cancelled our walk down the red carpet.

In the deserted waiting room on the morning of Kari’s lumpectomy, I put my arms around her and kissed her face, but I could feel her absence. Kari was already retreating, facing her call to arms on her own. Cancer was frightening and humiliating, an unplanned detour from her work, family, and friends. Now she had an additional job on her docket: ridding herself of an invasive plant. “I love you,” I whispered, though there was no one nearby. “Don’t worry about anything. These people are good. They’ll take care of you. This operation will be a success, and we’ll get this terrible thing over with.” I kissed her again, holding her close.

She pulled away and strode purposefully toward a prep room. There was no pause, no sentimental look back over her shoulder. No doe-eyed look like Diane on the way to her abortion. I again whispered, “Good luck.” I don’t know if Kari heard me.

I read months-old, torn magazines about parenting and real estate and world events. I got a cup of coffee from a machine. I watched people awaiting developments for themselves, family members, or friends. For some there would be relief, for some heartbreak, but for all of us who paced that room it was a period of hours and minutes spent in a community of sympathy and utter anxiety.

Finally Kari’s surgeon came to tell me the lumpectomy had been successful and Kari was doing well. The surgeon said his team also took a few lymph nodes as samples for analysis, but the good news was there appeared to be clear margins adjacent to the breast lump. These “clear margins,” I learned later, were vital for a more optimistic prognosis. After another couple of hours, Kari was wheelchaired out of recovery and loaded into our car. We headed home. End of story, we thought.

A few days later we returned to the Breast Center for postsurgery follow-up. In the physician’s examination room, where I was now an active participant, Kari opened her gown to reveal the tape and gauze wrapped around her chest. The doctor carefully unspooled the mummy-like covering, looked at and delicately palpated the sutured breast, and smiled. “How’re you feeling?” he asked.

“Sore, but otherwise okay,” Kari answered, putting on her business voice and, in effect, declaring victory for the home team.

There was an insidious asterisk to the exam, however. Because of Kari’s age—thirty-five—and the aggressive nature of the cancer cells they’d biopsied, the doctor felt that both chemotherapy and radiation were called for. Kari was just too young, had too much life ahead of her, not to be militant about her treatment. Chemo would be administered at the Breast Center, radiation at a facility nearby.

As we maneuvered through the crowded waiting room, I looked at Kari with love and relief and said, “Let’s get the hell out of here!”

We walked to the car. I opened the passenger door and helped Kari gingerly lower her body into the seat. I closed her door, and by the time I walked around the car and opened the driver’s door, she was weeping with such force that intermittently she couldn’t catch her breath. In the car I couldn’t position myself to hold her, but I put my right arm across
her shoulder. Goddammit, I thought, cancer’s black flag is not going to be a shroud for Kari or for our life together.

Kari had a horrible time with chemo. The sessions were set up for every third Friday because, in theory, that would give her the weekend to recover. What it really did was allow her two days to literally camp out in the bathroom and vomit. The vomiting was followed by more vomiting. I stood outside the bathroom door, feeling helpless, my own guts knotted. I was useless. There was nothing I could do to help Kari through her misery except keep pushing fluids for hydration and help her crisscross the hallway back to the bedroom for some rest before her next wave of nausea.

The first week after her chemo sessions was always an unsteady one as Kari tried to regain her strength and appetite. Week 2 almost resembled real life, with work, food, laughter, and movies our main focus. Then the dreaded third week approached. I could see the storm building off in the distance, thunderheads of anxiety that never varied their direction. And then it was Friday at the Breast Center, with Kari attached to an IV dripping poison from a plastic bag into her arm while I scoured more dated, torn magazines. I don’t know why I never brought material from home to read. After another wobbly walk to the car, we went home, where our tortoiseshell cat, Nutmeg, watched as Kari slowly teetered to the bedroom. Kari tried to get comfortable but the nausea came on rapidly, and another weekend was spent mostly sitting on the cold black-and-white tile floor of the bathroom.

The absolute worst times occurred on those Fridays when Kari’s blood was drawn and her white cell count was so low the clinic couldn’t administer her treatment. Then the dread of anticipation would be held over for another week.

After twenty-six weeks, half a year, Kari had had seven treatments. She was bald as an egg but wore bright-colored scarves or a wig, which didn’t begin to approximate her own luxuriant hair. To complete her course of thirteen treatments she would have to endure at least another half a year of periods of unbearable sickness bracketed by weeks of anxiety that were nearly as intolerable. Kari couldn’t continue. She elected to quit her chemo, over the protestations of the Breast Center physicians. She and I had hours of discussions about the pros and cons and the unknown. Kari talked to her doctors at length. Of course, they wanted her to do the full regimen. She was young, an otherwise healthy woman of childbearing age. Kari preferred to just wipe her hands of the anticipation, the dread, the weakness,
and the days in the bathroom. Most important for Kari, I think the decision was based on her desire to regain control of her life. Cancer was not going to tell her what to do and how to do it. She researched homeopathic remedies. Her chum Linda, the good witch of the West Valley, started chanting ceremonies with candles and incense. Kari’s diet grew stricter. No more Wendy’s burgers and fries as the occasional treat for us. The sandbags were filled, the Kevlar vests strapped on, ammo stocked, troops at the ready. We were going to fight this enemy Kari’s way.

So Kari went AWOL from further chemo, but she did take up the banner for radiation treatment five days a week for six weeks at a facility minutes from the Breast Center. It took us longer to drive there than it did for the daily scattershot of rays. No angst, no dread, no storm clouds approaching, no sickly weekends, just a precise daily drill for a month and a half. Kari was into precise. Her landscape designs and blueprints reflected her precision. This she could do. This was a walk in the garden.

At the conclusion of radiation, the physicians at the Breast Center were still pushing for Kari to finish the chemotherapy. Their mission was to eradicate her cancer with extreme prejudice, but after yet more hours of discussion with family and friends, Kari decided the ordeal was over. After all, there was no history of cancer in her family. Kari had never been a smoker (except for the rare marijuana hit), and her idea of drinking was, at most, two glasses of wine with dinner. We researched the chemicals in blueprints. We researched the compounds in Round-up, an herbicide used voraciously by landscape installers to exterminate weeds. If Kari’s cancer had resulted from an environmental quirk, it was a one-off. She was young, strong, and determined. As far as Kari was concerned, it was “Adios, cancer!” The protocol now became simply a checkup every three months at the Breast Center—blood work, X-rays, scans, meetings with doctors.

Kari’s brush with mortality accelerated her desire to accomplish things. Our life had been shaken at the foundation, but we were still standing. I tried to bring some levity to our daily life, but dark, crazy thoughts played with my head. I had watched my wife absorb XXX poison into her system. I had picked up her thick, raven hair from the furniture and the pillowcases and the shower drain. Each day was still a roller coaster ride because we didn’t know what was coming around the next bend.

“Why Kari?” I thought. “What did this model citizen of our sick world ever do to deserve this?” Then I’d get pissed off for feeling sorry for myself, for thinking cancer might make me a widower, put me on my own again
when I was just getting the hang of being a couple. What had
I
done to deserve this, other than be a semimodel citizen of our sick world? Hadn’t I already sacrificed one family member? Were the gods not appeased? I was in my midthirties, finally behaving like a mature adult, and cancer was trying to face me down, daring me to keep my wits and integrity intact. I accepted the challenge. That was part of my responsibility. That was part of being grown-up. Hell, I had looked and smelled and memorized my dad’s murder scene. That blood-splattered wall had my DNA on it. I had been in the Scottsdale morgue with my dad laid bare on the slab. Did those evil gods think a little cancer was gonna scare me now? Fuck them.

Kari and I had tried to have children before her cancer. She would have given structure to a youngster’s life as she had given it to me. But now a pregnancy would push her estrogen to an unsafe level and possibly lead to cancer’s return, so we decided against it. We thought about adopting and found an attorney specializing in it. For several months we were keen on the idea, but it gradually lost steam. Our priority was Kari. We concentrated on her care. We weren’t in the clear. I don’t think cancer survivors ever consider themselves in the clear. There’s always an anticipation of another summons being slapped against the chest.

The cost of Kari’s surgery, hospital stays, outpatient visits, consultations, checkups, blood work, chemo, and radiation eventually exceeded $200,000. Although we had good medical insurance through Blue Cross, we were freelancers without employee-subsidized insurance, and we still owed an enormous amount of out-of-pocket expenses to the Breast Center. It would take us a few years to pay off the bill, but I always felt that if we showed we were trying, that we weren’t running from the invoices, then no doctor’s office or surgeon or hospital would come after us. We sent in a monthly check in the amount we could afford. I continued to write for magazines as well as receive a few bumps from John Candy and Dave Thomas for publicity services rendered pertaining to promotion of their films and personal appearances. Those generous checks helped pay off our medical bills.