Take Me Home From the Oscars: Arthritis, Television, Fashion, and Me

by Christine Schwab

  Our condo looked beautiful. Shelly made the bed, and every dish was washed and put away. The windows opened to my little balcony garden. All my white flowers were in bloom. Without my reminding him, Shelly had taken care of everything. I walked through the rooms, loving each one. Loving being home. But the checkout process had been long and exhausting, so I longed for bed. My own soft pillows and crisp white sheets felt welcoming. No hanging IV bottles. No Lysol. I crawled between the covers, leaving my suitcase packed, my messages saved on the phone, my husband closing the shutters and turning on the sound machine that would dull the city noises so I could rest. I was home.

  It took steroids to make this Hawaiian trip possible.

  9

  Running at Steroid Speed

  SPRING 1992

  I had my life back. Or at least my life on pain pills and steroids.

  March and April were filled with work. Catching up and moving forward. Live with Regis, Entertainment Tonight, The Today Show. My schedule was just the way I liked it, busy and challenging. It felt so good to feel so good.

  My lungs were slightly damaged, but considering the condition they were in, they were good. My secret was intact. Everyone believed my story about a lung infection from so much plane travel. I had to guard myself from saying too much. I had the story down so pat that I tended to go overboard with details when in reality no one really cared or listened. They were just glad I was at work.

  I was running at above-normal speed. I had endless energy. I barely needed sleep. I felt like superwoman. I was back on steroids, but at a higher dosage. Twenty milligrams a day to be exact. Those magical little pills that masked my arthritis. I never stopped to ask the doctor about more long-term side effects.

  “We have to use steroids to take down the methotrexate lung disease, it’s the only drug we have to get you back to normal,” my pulmonary doctor said as he checked me out of the hospital.

  I put the moon face out of my mind. I was only concerned with being alive. I didn’t think about every step I took or wince every time I bent my knees or tried to open a car door handle. I could exercise. I had a life back, my life in the high-speed steroid lane.

  “What are you doing up at three o’clock in the morning?” my sleepy husband asked me, walking into my office where I had fashion charts and style magazines spread out all over the floor. The room was so brightly lit it looked like daytime. The fireplace blazed against the early morning chill. My cup of coffee was now cold and untouched.

  “I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I might as well get up and accomplish something. It’s so quiet at this hour that I can really get tons done,” I said sitting on the floor in the middle of all the clutter.

  “But when will you sleep?”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll catch a nap this afternoon,” I lied. There was little sleeping at night on steroids; forget about the daytime. “You’re edgy,” my sister Susan, now working as a full-time nurse in the neonatal department at Harbor General Hospital while going to law school at night, said to me as we enjoyed one of our monthly dinner outings. Even with our crazy, busy schedules, we always made time to be together. Being with my sisters was like medicine for my soul.

  “It’s the steroids. They’re going to start to taper me, but my adrenal gland has to kick in and that takes time.” Adrenal glands are the natural producer of steroids that the body requires to function. When they aren’t working the body is not getting its needed dosage of natural steroids, making me edgy. Sometimes I felt like I was crawling out of my skin. It was the weirdest feeling. I had to keep moving. I felt jumpy all over. Everything about me seemed hyped—my sensitivity, my reactions, even my skin felt magnified to the slightest touch. But compared to where I had been in the hospital, I only concentrated on the positive.

  Usually oblivious to minor things, his head overloaded with work, Shelly had also noticed my quick, irritated reactions. “Jeez, don’t jump all over me, we don’t have to have the Passover dinner here, we can take the family out this year,” Shelly said, trying as usual to find solutions. But I wanted to scream, “Why can’t someone else do Passover this year, why always me?” And yet I couldn’t scream, I could only apologize for being grumpy. It wouldn’t do any good to explain that it wasn’t me talking, it was the steroids, my version of the infamous ’roid rages athletes had, minus attacking a trainer with a baseball bat. I looked at my loving husband as he walked away rejected. I hated that I was incapable of being all things to my husband and family. And I worried. Would they be able to accept me as less than perfect? My mom’s drive for perfection in appearance was always at the back of my mind. Rheumatoid arthritis took away the ability to be perfect, and not being perfect for me, even as an adult, threatened every fiber of my being.

  “Great, Christine, your adrenal gland is finally kicking in, we can start tapering the steroids,” Dr. Kalunian announced the following week at my UCLA visit. Between the sun shining through the wooden blinds and his smile, I knew this was a major breakthrough. “We’ll take the steroids down slowly and increase your anti-inflammatory drugs.” All I heard was tapering steroids. I was relieved. Because of taking prednisone, a steroid, the adrenal gland turns off because it doesn’t have to do what it’s meant to do. When I stopped taking the prednisone, the adrenal gland didn’t turn on right away, so I didn’t have the benefit of its production of the steroids that my body needed, and therefore I had to taper slowly, regardless of my frustrating steroid symptoms. It had been more than six months of high-dosage steroids and not only was it wearing on me, but also my family, friends, and associates. Most of my family and friends didn’t know I was on medications, they just thought I was becoming bitchy. I had snapped at everyone, including Shelly. I used every bit of discipline to keep him from knowing how really agitated and angry I felt, but sometimes steroids were more powerful than determination.

  “What did the doctor say?” my sister Susan questioned, as wechattedonthephone,followingmyUCLAappointment.Icould hear her sip her coffee while I munched on a bag of tortilla chips for a breakfast snack, trying not to make them crunch into the phone.

  “Not much. They tested my adrenal gland again, and it finally kicked in, so we can start tapering the steroids,” I answered, grabbing another handful of chips.

  I couldn’t wait to taper the steroids, because while taking such high dosages I couldn’t stop eating. I couldn’t stop anything. I was on a moving sidewalk that ran beneath my feet. Feet that now felt good, masked with steroids. What little pain I had was easily controlled with a pain pill. I almost convinced myself that my disease was gone, but it wasn’t. RA hid under all the steroids, ready to strike with a vengeance as the steroids were withdrawn. I was trying to be positive, but would the increased anti-inflammatory drugs work?

  “We’re going to Hawaii for a week,” my husband announced the following night as he walked in the door at his usual hour of seven o’clock. The candles were lit, Dave Koz played his smooth, sweet jazz in the background, and a Gelson’s chicken potpie baked in the oven. I was determined to make up for my steroid behavior and be the good wife. “Both of us have been working too hard. I decided we need some fun, so I booked a week in Maui,” Shelly beamed, proud of the good news.

  I rushed into his arms. Hawaii. Lounging in a cabana for two while the tropical breezes cooled our bodies would be delicious. Romantic evenings with the shutters opened to the sound of the crashing waves. It sounded fantastic. As I held on tight to this magnificent man who had anticipated my needs, I realized I didn’t have a bathing suit that fit! I had to stop eating. I must exercise more. I had two weeks to achieve some sort of improved shape and clear my calendar for a much-needed week of R & R.

  Over the next two weeks my steroid-induced manic mode came in handy. I stayed on the treadmill endlessly. I drank Slim Fast in all its artificial flavors that somehow left the same chemical aftertaste in my mouth. I even ate AYDS, the popular diet-suppressant candies that tasted like chocolate or caramel, always with coffee so they w
ould expand in my stomach. I tried to stay away from the breadbasket at dinner. It was one thing for Shelly to see me in soft candlelight, but in a bathing suit in bright sunlight?

  A getaway was exactly what we needed. Recently my colleagues and friends had become suspicious. I obviously was not as good at deception as I thought I was. My lies compounded. When it came to my edgy and irritated behavior I couldn’t remember what excuse I used. Several friends begin to question me.

  “Is everything okay with work, Christine?”

  “How are you and Shelly doing?”

  “Fine, great, everything’s perfect,” I lied.

  “You seem different, are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Just this crazy, busy, wonderful life. Really I’m fine,” I said, and quickly changed the subject.

  This was the first time friends had been vocal about the changes in my personality. No one brought up the changes in my body. The realization that people were suspicious jarred me into a desperate need to control. The two weeks before Maui became a race to get my whirling diseased life in some type of order. First, to take my weight down with more exercise and less food. Second, to conceal my weight with camouflaging clothes. Sneakers, the only shoes I could wear, had become my trademark. I had every color and style.

  “I didn’t realize sneakers were so in right now,” one of my stylist associates mentioned, looking down at my khaki-colored, army-boot-style shoes. “You have to be very confident to wear THOSE,” she glared.

  “They’re totally chic—where have you been?—and sooo comfy,” I replied in my most elitist tone.

  On the flight from LA to Maui, Shelly and I planned our week, the biggest decision being where we would eat, what books we would read, and which cabana we would reserve. My suitcase was packed with loose-fitting tent dresses, cover-up bathing suits, and a gigantic pareu that wrapped stylishly around my body to get me discreetly from the water to a lounge chair. I had managed to lose a few pounds, but only a few. The AYDS and Slim Fast tamed my appetite a bit, but the steroids offset everything, and my body demanded food. Steroids were always hungry.

  Our week in Maui was perfect except for the steroids. Luckily they were working on my joints, keeping the inflammation down. While they worked on my pain, they took their inevitable toll on my mind and body. The march of the steroid army continued, even as my doctor tried to slowly decrease my dosage. I was still so jumpy and irritable. Only a steroid-driven me would find fault with the Hawaiian breezes messing up my hair. And the nights were endless, steroids making it almost impossible for me to sleep. I was sure that Shelly could sense it, but he slept like a baby—innocent and unaware. I knew it was partially my fault for keeping so much from him. How I envied and resented his peace.

  Over breakfast on the hotel patio, with the ocean breezes caressing us, Shelly and I had one of our intense talks about life. It was like life as we knew it before I became sick. Not one mention of disease, work, or family issues. For an hour we slipped back into our pre-RA time, filled with vacation plans for the future, holiday celebrations, and painting a room in our home. Things we had put on the back burner for the past two years. Life when it was uncomplicated. Life as I always dreamed it would be when I lived in my childhood pretend world.

  Books, television, and the few movies my mom took me to or we watched on TV together were my salvation. They offered a life I wanted to relate to while showing me that there was more to the life than what I was experiencing. They gave me the tools to create my own pretend world when I was at my boarded-out homes. In my head I was in a happy environment, living with my mom. I had a real family with a dad and brothers and sisters. It was only in my heart that the reality still lingered.

  Later that day, cuddled up in our beach cabana, book in hand, I appeared to be reading but I wasn’t. My mind raced, trying to figure it all out. On one hand my pain was manageable. On the other, my body was much worse. I had no control over the effects of the steroids. If I had done research I would have understood this was normal for high dosages of steroids over a long term. But I didn’t. In hindsight I knew it was only because I wanted relief and didn’t care about consequences. At first I had to have the drugs to get me through crisis situations. When I had to be on TV and woke up unable to walk, a few pills, and I was back on track. Then for my methotrexate lung poisoning, high dosages dripped through IVs into my arm to heal my damaged lungs. Now I needed them to compensate for my adrenal gland suppression. My dependency kept growing. The negative steroid effects kept taking over. And waiting, hiding behind the false steroid-induced sense of improvement, the RA army was gathering its own momentum. Ready to march over my body once the steroids got out of their way. The war between steroids and rheumatoid arthritis to overpower my body was in full force.

  Shelly and I with the chairman of Universal Studios and the most powerful man in Hollywood, Lew Wasserman.

  10

  An ET Christmas

  DECEMBER, 1992

  Christmas was one of the busiest and most exciting seasons for my work. All the shows wanted holiday segments. Fashions to wear, gifts to give, New Year’s Eve makeup that glowed, resolutions for looking good for the new year. My work calendar would fill up mid-November and go right up to Christmas Eve. I always seemed to be flying home on packed planes just in time to make Christmas with my own family. And I loved it. I was past the dismal childhood Christmas holidays and into the glamour of the television holidays, where anything and everything was perfect, fantasy-like, and fun. Just my cup of tea.

  Having just returned from my annual Thanksgiving “Thanks For Giving” week of makeovers with Regis and Kathie Lee, where we made over a deserving person each day, everyone from a daughter who gave a kidney to her father, to a woman who had fostered hundreds of children in her home—only unlike my childhood experiences, she adored these children and kept in touch with them. There was never a dry eye in the audience. Heartfelt holiday emotion.

  My next assignment was with Entertainment Tonight. I loved doing this show because it was a nighttime show and always shot on location, totally different from my live, in-studio daytime programs. My producer was Bonnie Tiegel, one of the nicest people in the business. We met working on the local KTLA Morning News. Bonnie went on to produce at ET, I went on to national shows like Live and The Today Show, but we always kept in touch. Bonnie is the kind of person who, with all her success (she is now a senior producer for ET and The Insider), never lets go of her friends. You e-mail her, she responds immediately. No phone call is ever not returned. She praises good work and follows up every segment with a DVD of the segment and a handwritten thank-you note. This may sound like normal behavior to you, but in the television world this is unusual, very unusual. The only other notes I ever received from executives during my more than twenty-five years on TV were from Oprah. Both Bonnie’s and Oprah’s notes are preserved in plastic sleeves in my “favorites box.” To me it says everything about the two of them as human beings.

  My freelance work at ET consisted of special assignments. I would come up with a theme, and Bonnie would tweak it to the show’s audience and give it the green light. This holiday assignment was about where celebrities do their holiday shopping. My prep work included scouting out locations and talking with store owners about what celebrities frequented their stores. Since it was early December, most celebrities hadn’t shopped yet, but once I located their favorite stores, I could show the things the owners felt they might buy, some things they had already bought, or things that I thought fit in with their personalities or the person they were dating or married to. The result was a fun, interesting, celebrity-filled segment. Perfect for Entertainment Tonight, or as it’s referred to in the business, ET.

  It takes at least one day of shooting, sometimes more, to put together a three- to five-minute piece for the show. I was assigned a director, a cameraman, and a soundman.

  We were given a call date and time and met at the first location, often meeting each other for the first time. T
he level of crew and talent at ET was always the best, so no one had to prove themselves. It was a given—if you were on ET, you knew what you were doing. At each location they set up lighting, always caring about the way talent looked. After doing many news segments where a camera is pointed in your face with one glaring bright light attached to the top, having someone adjust lights and do camera checks to see how I looked was a treat. News is not concerned with how you look—they want the story. ET wants glamour, and they spend the time and money to create it.

  My first location was Lisa Kline’s boutique on Robertson Boulevard, one of the most popular and unique shopping streets in Los Angeles. Lisa had a big reputation for celebrity clients, both men and women. Her women’s boutique was on one side of the street, the men’s directly across the street. We started in the women’s store, where whimsical flannel pajamas were all the rage with celebrities; think the antithesis of Victoria’s Secret. Covered in cartoon characters, clouds, or white fluffy sheep, boutiques couldn’t keep the pajamas on the shelves. Standing behind a table covered in these fun PJ’s, I talked into the camera—as if it were my best friend—telling them how Reese Witherspoon was planning on giving these as holiday gifts to many of her girlfriends. The camera zoomed in on the colorful designs and then moved in tight to my face for a close-up. Luckily I was not in one of my moon-shaped-face periods and looking more like my normal self, so I was able to smile and play into the camera. Take No.1 complete.

  We crossed the store for Take No.2, designer T-shirts for men. The common T-shirt had recently taken on a new look, made of expensive fabrics with a prestigious designer label inside. Instead of white T-shirts in a three-pack for ten dollars, purchases could now run up in the hundreds of dollars, and celebrities were buying them up. “What better gift if Tom Cruise or Richard Gere were on your shopping list?” I asked the camera, holding up the new, slim-cut, high V-neck T-shirts. What man wouldn’t look like a star in a two-hundred dollar Armani T-shirt?