February 23, 2009
I’ve been looking in on Farrah every so often. Tomorrow we go to Dr. Kiehling, who will put in a port so they don’t have to keep trying to find a vein and repair the hernia in her abdomen that has occurred in the last few months, probably from all the vomiting. I just went over to see her and she was drifting off to sleep.
I called Mimmo to say I would come over for dinner tonight. He said (in Italian, of course) that his friend would be joining us.
“What friend?” I asked him.
“The one I told you about,” he replied. He was talking about the girl he’s been dating, the one he made it sound like he wasn’t all that involved with. He told me over the phone a few weeks ago that he had told her I was his “grande amore,” and that when I came here, he would be seeing me. I can’t imagine any woman taking that very well.
I said, “Mimmo, are you crazy? I don’t want to have dinner with your girlfriend. You and I haven’t even talked, and I’ve never met her.” Then he said she had wanted to come (I’ll bet) and that he couldn’t really tell her she couldn’t. I was kind of flabbergasted, so I just said, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll come another night.”
He said to come for lunch tomorrow, but I told him I was going to Bad Tölz with Farrah to see Dr. Kiehling. I hung up, kind of surprised and disappointed, but what else is new? Honest to God, it seems I always get disappointed by men. I suppose I wanted it all on my terms. After all, he was my distraction from what I’m going through with Farrah. Maybe it’s better this way. I can just write, and read, and spend time with Farrah. I keep remembering Dr. Vogl’s solemn words: “Spend all the time you can with her.” Everything happens for a reason.
February 25, 2009
Farrah looked and sounded much better, although she was in some pain from the surgery yesterday. The pain got worse as the day went on, so they gave her a lot of pain medication, and she went to sleep early tonight.
February 26, 2009
I couldn’t sleep. I’ve woken up about every three hours. I kept thinking about the Mimmo thing. There’s another woman in Mimmo’s life and, frankly, it bothers me. Why can’t I just be happy for him? It’s better for him to have a German girlfriend who is here all the time. He needs someone in his life so he’s not always alone with his dog. I guess I’m just being selfish and I need to pray about it; that I can open my heart and be happy for him.
What I seem to be getting hit over the head with is a lesson in “ego” and letting go. Everything has to change in life, but I, being a Taurus, cling to people and situations until my fingernails bleed. I hate change! It scares me. Always has. Yet everything is changing so rapidly around me these days. My best friend no longer resembles the Farrah I’ve always known and she’s fighting for her life. And my own life continues to be in flux and filled with uncertainty. I feel like there’s no foundation underneath me anymore.
February 28, 2009
A story came out in the Daily Mirror in London and was printed here yesterday saying that Farrah is dying. I had to speak to a journalist here that Dr. Jacob knows and also to someone from Entertainment Tonight who called me.
“Of course it’s not true,” I told them. “She’s here for her usual treatments and we’re finishing the documentary.” I said that this was another example of irresponsible journalism, and that if she were dying, wouldn’t Ryan and her son be here with her? The scary part is that I’m afraid, at some point, it’s going to be true. I’m walking a fine line. I don’t want to be untruthful with anyone, but Farrah is not dying at this moment. I can’t share with the journalists the fears that are deep in my heart. I have to share my optimism. We’re keeping all of this away from Farrah. She doesn’t need to be upset by any of this negative publicity.
March 3, 2009
Today Dr. Jacob came in with Farrah’s reports from the lab. Bad news and good news. The cancer cells have mutated and gotten much more aggressive. The chemo she had in L.A. clearly didn’t work, and the cancer grew and spread. It’s like this thing is an alien monster that nothing so far has been able to stop. But the good news is that the sensitivity testing showed that there are a number of substances that should work on her kind of cancer, and Dr. Jacob is starting her on them immediately. Farrah continues to be in a lot of pain and hardly gets out of bed. She’s on heavy pain medication, and we have to go back to Dr. Vogl on Thursday for another perfusion of the liver and the other tumors. Dr. Jacob feels very positive that the new treatment plan she’s going to implement will make a big difference.
March 5, 2009
We’re in the van driving a million miles an hour on the way to Frankfurt for Farrah’s procedure with Dr. Vogl. It’s like being in the Indy 500, the way these people drive. I pray we’ll make it there in one piece.
Later
We’re on the way back, literally flying along the autobahn at breakneck speed in blinding rain. Mr. Carstens, our ancient German driver, ignores me every time I tentatively ask, “Aren’t we going a little fast?” I’m too nervous to lie down and try to sleep even though it’s after eleven o’clock and I’m exhausted. Farrah is sound asleep in the backseat. I’m glad the day is over for her and it went smoothly. I guess that’s easy for me to say, considering I’m not the one who had to have her main artery sliced open and a long tube of wire threaded into her liver, where the chemo and antibody drugs were injected. She had to rest for four hours afterward in a recovery room to make sure the bleeding had stopped, and then we were allowed to leave.
I feel numbed by all of this. My friend no longer looks like herself. She now looks like a cancer victim: weak, gaunt, and without her glorious mane of hair. She looks like a little fragile bird. It’s heartbreaking.
March 6, 2009
We returned to the clinic yesterday. Today Dr. Jacob came into my room to talk about how things went.
“Dr. Vogl was unusually quiet,” I told her. “He didn’t say much. I don’t think he was happy with what he found.”
“No,” she said. “He was very unhappy with the condition of the liver. There are so many tumors in the liver now, he says it’s very serious and doesn’t know if she will make it. But I have hopes that these other therapies will start to work and that the perfusion he did yesterday will shrink the tumors in the liver and the pelvic region.”
“And if it doesn’t work?”
“She will not have very much time,” she answered solemnly.
Dr. Jacob said that Farrah knows the liver is serious but doesn’t know how bad it is, and Dr. Jacob doesn’t want her to know. I agree. Farrah has to have hope to keep fighting.
Maybe I’m starting to understand why this has happened with Mimmo. I need to be with my friend all the time and not be distracted by anything else. Dr. Vogl’s words are still ringing in my ears: “Spend all the time you can with her.” I can’t believe this is happening. But despite it all I still have hopes for a miracle.
March 10, 2009
Farrah’s hernia site, where Dr. Kiehling operated, hasn’t healed properly, and there’s a large hematoma there. She went into the hospital yesterday for Dr. Kiehling to perform a second surgery. Now Dr. Jacob doesn’t know how long it will be before she can have the next liver perfusion. It’s starting to feel like we’ll be here forever. We’re booked to go back on the twenty-third, but I don’t see that happening.
March 11, 2009
Things are looking up. Last night Farrah was better. Our friend Dominick Dunne is here at the clinic, and he gave us some of his videos. We watched The Two Mrs. Woodwards, and ended up giggling about men in my past before going to sleep.
“This is fun,” Farrah said. “Kind of like having a slumber party.”
I felt like I had my girlfriend back for the moment. These times seem to be fewer and further apart.
March 13, 2009
I don’t know what got into Farrah today. She threw a bottle at the housekeeper and knocked everything off her table in a fit of rage. Everyone is afraid to go into her room. I thi
nk it’s a combination of the pain medication she’s been on for so long now and everything just building up in her over the past couple of years. She’s had to endure so many surgeries and procedures, so much pain, so many indignities. I can’t blame her for getting angry and having to release it all. I came when I heard the ruckus and tried to calm her down. “What’s going on?” I asked. She was in pain and she had been calling the nurses for an hour and couldn’t get their attention. She just lost it, understandably so. “Just don’t throw anything at me, Blanche,” I teased. I’ve been calling her that since one of our earlier trips here when she was hooked up to an IV and couldn’t move off her bed. After asking me to get her about ten different things, I finally turned to her and said, “You’re skating on thin ice, Blanche. Don’t be surprised if you find a rat on your dinner tray tonight.” It became a running joke for us: I called her Blanche and I was Baby Jane.
March 22, 2009
I feel like I’m in Groundhog Day. Each day just melds into the next. Over a week has passed and nothing has changed that much. Farrah has had ups and downs, and seems a little better today, but she’s still not well enough to fly home. She’s so weak and frail, and barely eats anything. They’re giving her liquid nutrition through the IV now.
I’m feeling unbelievably depressed, like there’s no end in sight. I don’t want to focus on myself when she’s so ill, but I’m desperate to get home. I miss my kids and my dogs so much, but most of all, at this moment, I miss Farrah. This has been the worst trip of all. At least during the others we were able to hang out, laugh, and have some fun times in the midst of all the seriousness.
Every week now is a roller coaster; one day she’s better, the next she’s worse. I never know what the day will hold when I wake in the morning. All I can do is pray.
March 27, 2009
We’re leaving tomorrow, finally! A real blizzard came in on Tuesday and it snowed like crazy for two full days. I was in heaven. Everything looked just like a Christmas card. The Germans are fed up with snow, but Farrah and I just sat and watched it coming down.
Growing up in Texas, we never had snow except for once on Christmas Eve in Nacogdoches when I was five. I remember standing at the window, waiting for my mother to arrive, and watching these beautiful snowflakes with awe. Farrah and I didn’t say much as we sat there watching the snow; we were sort of hypnotized. I’ve never seen such large snowflakes, big lacy doilies floating down for hours on end.
At one point, she said, “You’ve given up so much of your life to do this for me. I don’t know how I can ever thank you.” I replied, “If I had a sister, I’d do it for her, and you’re like my sister.” I made my way through the lines hanging from the IV pole to hug her. It was one of the most intimate, tender moments we’ve ever had.
Later
I went over to Mimmo’s for lunch and he was very sweet. He had his lunch with me after everyone left, and I told him I was leaving tomorrow and that I probably would not be coming back. I also told him Dr. Jacob is moving the clinic to the Black Forest near Stuttgart. I said it might be the last time we saw each other and he said, “No, it won’t be the last time. You will either come back or I will come to L.A. in November.”
I asked him what about his girlfriend and he said something I didn’t quite understand, like he would simply tell her he was “going on vacation.” He also said he’d never get married. He said he was fed up with working so hard and he was going to sell the restaurant and live somewhere else, where it was warm. I get the sense that he’s still in love with me, and he works very hard at being strong because we’re so far apart. But the bottom line is that it’s over. And although I’ve been affected by it much more than I thought I’d be, I need to let it go. Sad…
Farrah had an ultrasound late this afternoon and Dr. Jacob said there was fluid in her liver and it had to be removed. She told Farrah she would deaden the area and she wouldn’t feel anything. Then she stuck what looked like a five-inch needle in her stomach and Farrah literally screamed in pain. And that was just to deaden the area so she could stick a tube inside the liver and drain the excess fluid out. It looked God-awful. Afterward, back in her room, Farrah was in a lot of pain. They gave her some pain medication and we talked on the bed for a long time. It was as if she didn’t want me to leave her.
March 28, 2009
I can’t believe we’re on the plane to Los Angeles. I wasn’t sure Farrah could make it, she was in such pain and so weak, but somehow we managed to get her together, packed, and into the car.
Paparazzi were parked outside on the street in a black Porsche SUV and followed us to the Munich airport. We’d alerted the Lufthansa VIP people who were meeting us, and they had the police there. I got out first and immediately spotted a paparazzo down the street taking pictures of the car and the waiting wheelchair. Farrah stayed inside the car while the police chased him away. Then the guy in the black Porsche pulled up behind us, and I had to tell the police he was the one who had followed us from the clinic. They chased him away as well. They’d never be able to do that in L.A. They’d scream about their First Amendment rights and the next day they’d hire Gloria Allred to represent them.
We got Farrah out and into the wheelchair while the Lufthansa ladies held up blankets around her in case the paparazzi were somewhere around with long-range lenses. We got inside without incident, through the VIP terminal, and onto the plane. Farrah was in a lot of pain, so I gave her a pain shot and she’s sleeping now. The problem is that the paparazzi from Munich will have alerted people in Los Angeles and I’m afraid there will be a slew of them waiting for us. It’s not so easy to avoid them at LAX because they can come right into the terminal and there’s no other way out that I know of. We’ll have to see if the Lufthansa reps meeting us can come up with something.
March 29, 2009
It was quite something at the airport last night. It all went smoothly until we got through customs, and suddenly we were ambushed by paparazzi, who got the picture they’ve been waiting for: Farrah in a wheelchair. We tried our best to surround her and get her into the car, but I’m sure they got what they wanted.
“Are you guys proud of yourselves?” I yelled at the one with the video camera. “How do you sleep at night, you slimy vermin?!” Honest to God, I really wanted to grab his camera and smash it on the ground, but I somehow resisted. I figured this was not the time to get arrested.
April 5, 2009
Dr. Piro put Farrah in the hospital four days ago. She’s in a lot of pain from the hematoma, and her blood tests weren’t good, so he needs to give her a transfusion. When I saw her today, I was shocked at how she looked, so gaunt and pale and drawn. I’ve thought that a couple of times before, but she never looked like this. It really frightens me.
April 6, 2009
My phone started ringing at 8 A.M. this morning and didn’t stop all day. I literally didn’t have time to get out of my nightgown until tonight, when I changed to pajamas. I think I must have had over fifty phone calls about Farrah and all these crazy stories in the press reporting that she’s in a coma and hovering near death. Finally, Dr. Piro made a statement to the media, but instead of quieting it down and making it go away, it just kept growing. The Associated Press reported that the cancer had gone to her liver, like it had just happened, when the Enquirer reported it over a year ago. It was like writing that Abe Lincoln had just been shot. What is wrong with all these people? It’s become a feeding frenzy.
April 7, 2009
I took my dog Lolita for her surgery this morning and then went up to the hospital to see Farrah. She looked much better today and was more lucid. Dr. Piro is cutting down on the pain medication and she’s not completely out of it all the time. She’s still not even close to being herself, but at least I am beginning to see a glimmer of hope. I went to Poquito Mas and got us nachos in hopes she might eat something. She promised she would if I went to get them, but she only had a bite. She promised to eat more later.
The vet’s ass
istant called and said Lolita was doing fine and in recovery. Then he told me that they had sent the tumor for another biopsy because it was deeper than they had thought and had blood vessels going from it. Fatty tissue tumors, which the doctor had thought that it was, don’t generally have blood vessels attached. That’s all I needed to hear to throw me into a full-scale panic attack. What if it’s malignant? I tried to get some encouraging words out of him, but I wasn’t at all satisfied. He said they had to send it in to the lab to rule out malignancy, but he didn’t leave me feeling very reassured. He also told me that her left hip joint has some dysplasia, and that’s why she seems to be having trouble with her left leg. Please, God, don’t let anything happen to my dog. I can’t bear it. Not now. Not any time soon. I just can’t bear any more loss right now.
I picked her up this evening and she was very quiet and subdued. She’s sleeping on the living room rug now. I curled up beside her and just lay there.
April 9, 2009
I went to the hospital to meet Ryan and bring Farrah home. We disguised her and got her into the wheelchair and out the back door of the hospital to avoid any paparazzi. She went straight to bed and to sleep when we got back to the apartment, and Ryan and I watched the documentary footage. We really wanted it to be great, but it wasn’t what we had hoped it would be. Initially Ryan was a lot more critical than I was, because I needed to think about it for a while, but then what I realized was that it was very confusing.
It always worried me that Farrah was so positive she could control it all. Whenever I voiced my concerns she’d say, “Don’t worry, I have final approval. We’ll go into the edit room and work on it. It’ll be fun.” But I knew she was getting sicker and that she wasn’t going to be able to physically do what she would have to do to ensure that it would turn out how she envisioned. I don’t know what will happen.
My Journey with Farrah Page 16