by Kari Lizer
I sat in the car for a minute, trying to think of who I should call. I couldn’t tell my parents. My sister trumped me with her brain tumor, which had recently started to grow again, setting in motion the ticking clock counting down to her demise. And I certainly couldn’t tell the network or studio who were producing my pilot—as the sole breadwinner in my family, I couldn’t risk shaking their confidence in me. And besides, according to Dr. Ghim, I had the great kind of cancer. I could handle this on my own. So I scheduled the surgery quickly and quietly.
It was uneventful and seemingly successful, and now I needed to move on to the radioactive iodine portion of my treatment. Ten days away from my babies.
Several of my husband’s brothers and their wives volunteered to come to Los Angeles from the East Coast and help him out with the kids. They were very worried about him having to manage everything all by himself. Another brother and his wife, who lived in Los Angeles, thought, “Hey, since everyone’s going to be out here, maybe we should have our anniversary party then so everyone can come!”
I reminded them, “Well, I’ll be in isolation, so I won’t be able to… Oh. I see. You weren’t talking about me.” And their party planning began.
I checked into the isolation ward at Cedars in preparation for the radioactive iodine. I was put into a room with glass walls. No one was allowed in or out. I communicated by telephone to the nurses, who could also see me on a monitor at the nurses’ station. They passed my meals through a sealed opening in the door, like prison. I would be in there for the first twenty-four hours after I received the radioactive iodine, when I would be unsafe for human contact. When it was time for the treatment, two men appeared at the door to my room. They wore contamination suits: all white, with gloves and booties on their feet, masks covering their mouths and noses, and goggles. One of them held a stainless-steel tray with a small Dixie cup perched on it. The one behind him carried a similar tray with a clear plastic cup of what looked like water. They punched in a code on the keypad of the door leading to my room. It could only be opened from the outside. Which I understood. I could already feel a strange temptation to run out into the hospital postradiation and randomly touch people to see if I could make them glow.
They entered the room like space men, walking awkwardly in their suits. The first man said to me, “I have the radioactive iodine in this cup. It’s in two capsules that you are to swallow.”
The second man said, regarding his cup, “This is water.”
I stared at them. I was wearing a flimsy hospital gown. I could feel the air where my backside was exposed. They couldn’t even risk breathing in the same room as these capsules, and I was supposed to ingest them? Put them inside my body? Was this really a good idea?
The first man held forward his tray, and I took the Dixie cup and looked inside. The capsules looked regular—they weren’t pulsating or anything—so I tipped the cup to my lips and dropped them down my throat. The second man was ready with the water on his tray. I took the clear cup and washed down the radiation. The men put down their trays, then motioned to a third person who had appeared on the other side of the door that they were ready to be let out. And they were gone.
I try really hard not to feel sorry for myself, but this period in my life took me down. Not because of cancer. Or fear of dying. Or even being separated from my babies. This took me down because it was the first time I thought, Oh, I’m completely alone. And I knew why. Because I did this. No one was here for me because every time someone asked if they could help me, I said, “I got it.” I went to work with a fever instead of taking to my bed and letting someone else take over. Not letting anyone bring me soup or even run an errand or, God forbid, do the rewrite without me. And now nobody thinks about me. Because I’m always fine. So here I am, all alone and radioactive. When you take too much pride in your own self-reliance, people stop thinking you have needs. It’s the same thing with always paying the check. After a while, people stop reaching for it.
The Chinese say the thyroid is the resentment gland. Well, no shit. I don’t think I’m allowed to resent people for not doing what I wouldn’t let them do. But I do. But I don’t think I’m allowed. But I do.
After the twenty-four hours at Cedars, I was released to go to my beach hotel, which would be my prison for the next nine days—the Casa del Mar in Santa Monica. They gave me pages of instructions about what to do if my urine spilled where it shouldn’t. There was a hazmat number to call if I threw up someplace in public. I was in one of the hotel’s bungalows with instructions to the staff that I was not to be disturbed and no one was to enter my room. No housekeeping, no room service. I took my isolation seriously. I know a guy who had the same procedure who left his family and went to gamble in Vegas for a week. I said, “What about the people you came in contact with who have kids?”
He said, “They’re not my kids.” See, that’s the kind of guy who should get cancer.
I have never been so bored in my entire life as I was that week. But at least everything at home was fine. When I called, my in-laws regaled me with stories about what a blast my kids were having without me. Annabel had learned a song on the piano. Elias could throw a curve ball. And Dayton was sleeping through the night. Apparently, I was the one holding them back.
Finally, one of my oldest friends braved a visit to me. We sat out on the patio and didn’t touch. She talked nonstop about how her kids were driving her crazy—I was so lucky I got to chill at the beach. She ate all of my potato chips and smoked all my cigarettes—yes, picking up smoking again was my morbid reaction to cancer. I guess my friend forgot I couldn’t go to the grocery store to replenish my supplies.
Then she apologized for monopolizing the conversation—but she’d been really stressed. This whole thing with me really made her think about her own mortality. Suddenly, she got weepy thinking about how sad it would be if she died and just had to go home and hug her kids. I wanted to unleash a stream of radioactive urine onto her self-obsessed foot. But at least she was there, and from this moment forward, we jokingly referred to her as Florence Nightingale.
I made it through my quarantine without losing my mind, but it gave me a lot of time to think about what I was doing wrong in my life. I arranged the thousands of baby photos I’d taken over the past six years into albums, and as I reminisced, I made a list of things I could do better: better friends, better family. I was so angry with everyone and everything, I was going to give myself cancer again. And maybe now, if my IBC diagnosis was correct, I actually had.
This time, however, I have the chance to do things differently. This time, I wasn’t going to be brave. Or stoic. Or resilient. I was going to be a giant, helpless baby. I was going to ask for what I needed. I would whine and demand. Be weak and weepy. Make people drive me places and cook me meals. I might even wear a diaper. I would accept charity and giant favors that I would never repay. I would rely on everybody but myself. I would learn to lean.
But sadly, my doctor disagreed with my diagnosis. My bruise, he said, was probably the result of my recent tumble with a garden shed I moved in the backyard. I was not patient enough to wait for someone to help me, and because it was too heavy for me to move by myself, it tipped over and fell on top of me. Luckily, I was able to get out from under it, or that’s how they would have found me.
Which would have been some kind of poetic justice, I guess. “Here lies Kari; all she had to do was ask.” It’s okay. Someday I would get cancer or some other life-threatening condition. Everybody does. And I would be ready.
Under the Influence
I have recently discovered that personalities don’t really exist. Our moods and temperaments are only a reflection of whatever chemicals, hormones, and temperatures are running through our bodies at any given time. My discovery came when I flew to Boston to be with my son Elias after he tore his ACL during a soccer match. It ended his hopes for his soccer season his junior year of college, and he was depressed and scheduled for surgery—expected to be c
ompletely incapacitated for at least ten days afterward. Determined to make the best of a bad situation, I sprang into action, renting an apartment close to campus so he wouldn’t miss too much school, renting a car and a parking space so I could transport him from surgery to home and physical therapy without relying on taxis or public transportation. I arrived two days before the operation to fill the apartment with all of his favorite foods and treats. I ordered a PlayStation 4 with the latest FIFA game to pass the boring hours and put a smile on his face. I set up an air mattress for myself on the floor of the living room, giving him the bedroom, and splurged for the extra-special Game Ready machine that iced and compressed his leg, providing relief and fast healing next to his bed—the same one the Red Sox use. There was nothing I wouldn’t do to speed his recovery and ease his pain.
The day of the operation went smoothly. I sat worried and waiting for over three hours while the orthopedic surgeon bisected his patella tendon and grafted a strong piece of it to his femur and kneecap.
His surgeon, Dr. Anwar, came out and told me he expected Elias to make a good recovery. Once E had woken up from the anesthesia, they came and got me, and I rushed to his bedside. He was groggy and seemed no worse for wear. They armed me with oxycodone to get him through the worst of his pain. The nurse and I gently lifted him into the car, and we made our way back to the apartment at Downtown Crossing, where my nursing duties would begin. The first hint of how bad the pain was going to be was on the ride home when he screamed every time the car hit the smallest bump—and this was with the nerve block that would wear off in twelve hours.
The next five days were hell. Setting my alarm to deliver the pain medicine every three hours, changing the ice in the Game Ready machine every two hours, adjusting the brace, moving him to the bathroom, fighting with him to eat—we descended into a bad dream. The air mattress I was sleeping on had a leak, starting out mildly uncomfortable fully inflated, then flattening into a plastic pancake by morning, leaving me waking up on the hard wood floor after my two-hour sleep cycle. My patient was a tyrant, an ogre, an asshole. There was very little I could do right, from applying the compression stocking—which is like putting pantyhose on another person’s foot, a task I can barely manage on my own leg and have long since abandoned—to the way I screwed the top on his water bottle to the food I delivered to him in bed. When I tried to help him adjust his brace, he howled in pain and accused me of dropping his leg. If I woke him up to take his medicine, he snarled at me, “Why did you wake me up?” And if I didn’t, he scolded me: “You didn’t wake me up? Now I’m not going to be able to stay ahead of the pain like the nurse said!”
When his girlfriend came to sit with him in the afternoons, he asked me to close the bedroom door in a tone that suggested I was some nosy neighbor who had a freaky interest in his private business. But since it was still my job to keep him on schedule, visitors or not, when my alarm sounded to change the ice or deliver medication, I would knock gently on the door, move in quickly, service my patient, then duck back out, nodding and apologizing like a mistreated geisha.
Once out of earshot, I would take one of the chair cushions from a barstool in the kitchen, carry it into the bathroom, and cry into it so I couldn’t be heard until it was time for either a meal, a pill, or a bathroom run for my ungrateful patient. This was our life. There was no day, no night, no night nurse. The low point: me stealing his prescribed stool softeners because my own lack of sleep, exercise, and love had succeeded in binding my middle section up like a bale of hay. I hated myself for taking his ill temper personally and tried to give myself pep talks when I could escape the apartment to stock up on ice at the CVS across the street. I muttered to myself, “He’s in pain. You have to try and remember that,” resembling the many homeless people who lived outside our temporary apartment, which, it turns out, wasn’t in the best neighborhood. When a man got stabbed and collapsed in the doorway to our building, bystanders watched in shock as I leaned over him to unlock the entryway door, then step over his body to get inside, saying, “Sorry, but I have to get in there. I’m a nurse,” which must have added to their horror when I didn’t pause to check on the victim. My only concern was that my patient would wake up from his nap and find me gone, in which case there’d be hell to pay.
My son’s pain didn’t seem to affect his treatment of anyone else. When his dad called to check in, I could hear him falling all over himself with gratitude. “Wow. Thanks so much for calling. I really appreciate it. What? You’re sending a card? You don’t have to do that. But thanks, Dad. Love you too.” I moved in after the phone call ended to hook him up to the continuous passive motion machine—a medieval torture device that bent his leg back and forth to prevent scar tissue and restore his range of motion. He was supposed to be in it twelve hours a day, and I worried he was slacking off. It was not my idea or prescription, but I was met with unmasked hostility when I inquired about how many hours he’d logged. “If you’re so worried about it, you time it,” he snapped. Not ending with “Love you too,” which sent me back to the bathroom to shed my martyr’s tears into my crying cushion.
My friend Kathleen has a saying: “Mom is the worst part in the play.” And I know this.
It’s not like I’ve been showered with gratitude and overwhelming appreciation before. They’re kids. They take things for granted. So why was I devastated? Why did this utter lack of appreciation suddenly feel so intolerable? When Dr. Anwar called to check on his progress, I gently mentioned Elias’s sour demeanor. The doctor said, “Oh, sure. That happens when the anesthesia is leaving a person’s system sometimes. Also, he’s on some pretty strong pain medication. It causes personality changes in some people.” As soon as he said it, it made perfect sense. It’s chemical. This wasn’t my sweet boy. He’s not awful and entitled and unkind. But even knowing this didn’t help (because I’m the worst nurse ever). I reached out to a friend, feeling guilty and worthless, but she suggested perhaps the explanation for my sudden intolerance of bad treatment and being taken for granted was chemical on my part too.
They say when you are approaching menopause, the flux of hormones and the loss of estrogen can make you a little crazy, which is perhaps why I felt as sensitive as an exposed nerve. My friend suggested this was the time to hold my tongue and give myself a time-out when I felt my emotions getting the best of me. She said, “Just don’t react. Remember: your feelings aren’t facts.” Maybe. But the more I thought about it, the more I came to my own defense. I don’t think I am crazy now. Is it crazy to want to be treated like a human being? I think the crazy was what came before. And now I have come to my senses. The hormone that was necessary to keep me on task, conceiving, then birthing, then raising three children is leaving my system and I’m waking up. It was the stuff that told me even if I worked a twelve-hour day, I must come home, cook a healthy meal, check the homework, make snacks for the team, and tend to everyone’s emotional needs, making sure that selfish interruptions like sleep or personal hygiene didn’t get in the way. And thank-yous didn’t always come. But I didn’t need to be appreciated. My satisfaction was in the doing, the nurturing, the sacrifice. That was the hormone talking.
And now, emerging from the fog of my reproductive years, that wasn’t going to work for me anymore. In fact, a lot of things were going to have to change. Like, I’m not driving sixty miles to meet my parents for dinner, I declared to no one, trudging down the wet Boston sidewalk in search of a wine store. If I’m always the one who pays? I’m never going to be the one who drives. You come to me or starve. Guess what else. Next Christmas? You can forget about me painstakingly choosing only the most thoughtful (yes, expensive) and perfect gifts for everyone, while I’m lucky if I get dollar-store shower gel that makes my chest break out. From now on, we’re drawing names. Twenty-five-dollar limit. Christmas is not on me anymore—I’m resigning as Santa Fucking Claus.
Also, my kids do have to celebrate my birthday. And I want presents, or I’ll go out of town on theirs instead o
f my usual habit of showering them with the equivalent of a Price Is Right showcase.
I don’t want to be the bigger person anymore. Or the understanding friend or the good daughter or even the supermom, I think as I’m trudging back from the wine store, head down, three bottles of chardonnay clinking against each other in their plastic bag.
And another thing—I’m suddenly noticing that every man, almost without exception, states his opinion as fact. When I was under the influence, that didn’t really bother me—probably because it served some evolutionary purpose, as in “a man with confidence most likely has viable sperm.” But now that my mission is no longer about propagating the species, these men just seem like self-important assholes. I’m done with them too.
I feel bad for men, dealing with the new me. They liked it the other way. The martyr, the nurturer, the mommy. But I can’t help them. And I think that’s why men my age start flocking to younger women around this point. It’s not the taut skin or high breasts, although those things are nice; it’s the fact that those women are still on the juice.
They can still tolerate him blabbing all through dinner about how hard his job is—even if she has the same job at 60 percent of the pay. I could no longer sit still while he talked about his glory days on the baseball diamond or football field. Or his band, for fuck’s sake. But she, in her twenties or thirties, could still feign interest, high as a kite on estrogen and eggs as she was. She could cluck over his sore throat and pretend he was good in bed. She liked making him feel better. Making him happy made her happy. It’s bad design on someone’s part because the men I know are so much more determined to be part of a we as they age, just as the women I know want to be left the fuck alone.
These men are as interested in a committed relationship as we women were in our twenties, when they were running for their lives. Cruel.