After The Brief Hiatus, We Resume

Sunday was just too traumatic. I couldn't write. Hell, I couldn't even think. I was worried past distraction.

And yesterday I had my court appearance for 'Disorderly Conduct,' resulting from an incident last month at the local Ball-park, where I was arrested for saying "fuck" too enthusiastically (well, also for calling the cop a moron, as in "You moron, I was NOT doing anything wrong!"). Upshot: $50 fine, 90 days unsupervised probation (and a sotto voce admonition from the legal aide atty sitting near by that cops don't like to be reminded they're morons. You call 'em 'pigs,' they just smile their little, piggy smiles; call 'em morons, and it's like you're in on the secret. But I digress.)

On Saturday, Lila was in bad shape, desperately weak and weary. They've even got a neologism: chemo-weary. The way I hear it, chemo can do that, and does so, pretty regularly (to say nothing of pretty much constant distress to the bone marrow/blood cells, the cells of hair follicles, the cells lining the digestive tract and the cells lining the reproductive tract. Stuff mess you UP!). She felt pretty good on Friday, but by Saturday, about 72 hours after Lila's latest chemo, she was so tired and debilitated with other symptomatic discomfort that she couldn't brush her teeth.

She IM'd me in the morning, said the weariness and weakness was terrible, the meds weren't helping, and she was gonna spend the day on the couch. That was the last I heard, that day. What I knew was that she was hurting, badly, and incommunicado, for all practical purposes.

I was not expecting to hear from Lila on Sunday. Back BC (Before Cancer), we had established a protocol about communicating: she reserved Sunday for her family. This was in the day when we'd talk for HOURS and HOURS, sexy and funny, and smart talk all intermingled. We talked 6 hours on the phone one Saturday night, from about 10 pm her time, til almost 4 am. A single conversation of ours could consume a whole day. So she thought it fair to her kids to give them Sundays. And that made sense. Then.

But under this new, cancerous regime, I am having some doubts.

The problem was/is what happened Sunday. Since the last thing I knew on Saturday was that my babe was terribly weak--for which she required hospitalization and observation after the last chemo--and it was now Sunday, and I probably wouldn't hear from her, either, I tried to open the communication channel, just to find out how she was doing. I kept up a steady stream of IMs. Sometimes she leaves the IM window open, and might shoot me a nod. But not Sunday.

So, I called her message machine at work. After the last incident, we'd agreed that if she suffered any reversals, or had to be hospitalized, she'd leave me a private message, in German, on her old phone at work. So I called the machine, and heard just the usual, curt announcement. I left a message anyway, in case she checked in. And then I waited. And waited. And worried. Because she had seemed in such bad shape on Saturday, I was more than usually worried.

So after a decent interval, I tried to call her on her cell. Lila often--usually--doesn't answer her cell, rather I think preferring to let it take messages. I have been in the habit of calling her to leave encouraging, supportive, passionate, loving messages that she would retrieve at her leisure. But the message didn't open before the phone was answered.

Not by my Lila, but instead by her husband. So I went into my Mark Schreier personality, a former colleague and friend who'd heard she was ill and was trying to call only to discover the extent of her illness. Gave the fella my phone #, as anyone would who was perfectly innocent. (Mark Schreier was a name we agreed upon years ago. It's a pun on the German Markt Schreier, or pitch-man. She thought it funny, our little inside joke, as I do have a bit of the "barker" in me (woof). We have a lot of pet names.)

But inwardly I was going crazy. Why was he answering her phone? In my mind, there was only one reason: she had had a reversal, a crisis of some kind, and it was serious. Mebbe she'd died? Why ELSE would he answer her phone? She's stage 4. She could slip away anytime, really, treatment or no. That's what it means to have no illusions, isn't it?.

But I couldn't betray my anxiety. I had to be a worried friend, not a frantic lover. I think I succeeded at that, though I don't know. I had NOT called the family 'home fone,' precisely to avoid what had just happened on the cell. When I hung up, I went directly to the obit page of her local paper and was knee-bucklingly grateful not to have found her name there. I still think we're gonna meet again, in this world (cuz I'm no believer in any subsequent ones).

So at least, I guessed, she was still among the living, because were she not, I think they would have said so right then... But in what condition? Okay, she's not "gone," but she still could be desperately, grievously, mortally ill (well, yes, I know she is, but there's a difference...). I started calling hospitals, though to no avail. And then I started calling friends, to vent my anxiety, tears and vexation. I have some good friends like that, many at a distance: Suzz, Tena, Sue, Mena (funny, they're all women, innit?) Good friends.

And I got drunk (mebbe a pint-and-a-half of scotch?), enough to go to sleep, finally.

Then Monday, I had to be downtown in a courtroom at 8:30 am, and so missed her call when it came around 8 am. She left a message, in which she didn't sound much stronger. But it was Monday, and my darling called me. I got the message when I got back from court, and called her back. But she couldn't talk. She'd only called to reassure me she was still alive. We exchanged mebbe 30 words...Then she called this morning, sounding a little better, but still weak, and she said she has a pretty staggering array of serious discomfort. I was and am always so grateful to hear her voice, I just about wept into the fone.

There is another thing I am now beginning to fear, and that is that my obsession on Lila's disease/condition has become all-consuming to me, and just about the only thing about which I think; and I fear my friends (such as they are, and they aren't that numerous) soon will grow exhausted from hearing me carry on about her and the situation and it's hellishness, and will simply stop coming around. Luckily, I guess, I supply some valued substances to some of 'em, so they'll prob'ly steel themselves, suck it up for the sake of the bidness.

So that was where it was. I had just about wept myself dry on Sunday, worrying. (I know, mainly we weep for ourselves. I'm guilty--takes a whole lotta medicine for me to pretend I'm somebody else.) Any potential recrudescence of 'optimism' was vanquished like Custer's 7th. Yesterday was for recovery. And today we resume the Chinchilla Chronicles...