Eating Crow

I forgot to mention the absolutely stupid assholic day that I went to the..."nutritionist"! I got the name of this ridiculous woman through the Wellness Community which is a sort of sweet place populated by bald women wearing cute hats. So I was looking forward to having an "expert" point me in a direction I may not have noticed so I could get some needed nutrition advise since today I have only had two sips of soup and a piece of honeydew and a piece of eggplant. And that's on a good day. But I do not think that is enough to sustain life on planet earth but maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, this very busy nutritionist gave me an appointment and apologized ahead of time for her office which was being remodeled. The office was in Beverly Hills. How can a nutritionist afford an office in Bev Hills, you ask? Aha. Mistake number one on my part. Should have known she would charge an arm and a waiting room couch.

So I get there and yes, the office is a complete mess. One old chair in the "waiting room" and open fixtures on the ceiling. That's fine. But then she ushers me very quickly into her office where she has a little messy desk in a corner and she weighs me and I'm looking at all of the diamonds she has on her wrist and her fingers and I'm looking at her and she appears to be in her thirties and just oh so busy and she asks me about my problems and she sort of gasps at my situation, which was mistake number two on my part. Should have left after the gasps. Then she starts scribbling things down on the back of what looks to be a letter from the gas company. Things like...Don't eat sugar...Which is something I had just told her I couldn't do. I would say..."I love avocados." And she would write down...Eat avocados...And I would say..."I love cheese."...And she would write...Eat cheese. And this went on for about half an hour. The appointment was scheduled for fifty minutes. But, voila, we were done.

"That's it?"
"Yes."
"Should I call you? Are you going to check up on me?"
"Ah, yeah. Sure. Sounds goood."

Her fancy cell phone rang. More than once. She was picking out wallpaper for the office and someone had mistakenly delivered way too rich a beige. She wanted more of an eggshell color and she was going to stop at nothing until she got it.

I shall not mention her name (rachel beller) but DO NOT go to a nutritionist. Unless you have no idea that broccoli is good for you and fast food is not. Waste of time. Waste of money. I want that half an hour back. I want to take her diamonds and stuff them in her ears and I want to pour flax seed oil down her gullet and into her purse. And then I want to rub my own body with flax seed oil for being such a stupid sucker.

When you are sick, all of your friends want to help you, which is wonderful. But I find myself in an uncomfortable position some of the time because not all friends can help you at all times and you might ask someone to drive you somewhere and then another friend gets jealous because he wanted to drive you somewhere and then you start getting very anxious as to which friend you should pick to drive you somewhere and the anxiety makes you throw up and you end up driving yourself because you don't want to upset anyone. I believe that is one thing you don't have to deal with when you have a partner. Your partner drives you everywhere. End of story. But when you live alone you have to choose someone to help and it becomes this OTHER drama about who is a closer friend.

And then there is the feeling that everyone is talking about you behind your back. "She's got cancer again. She doesn't look so good. Oh my gosh, what 's going to happen to her?"

Hmmmmm. Do you think I might be just a little paranoid? Maybe you're not talking about me at all. Maybe nobody wants to drive me anywhere. Maybe I'm just delusional and self important.

Maybe I'm hungry.

But here's what I was thinking about yesterday...If I die, in a matter of years I will be forgotten. However, Hitler will be remembered forever.

Yes, I am hungry. Now what would that nutritionist recommend? Eggshell perhaps?...............

Shampoo - Rinse - Apply Conditioner

When I am sitting in a waiting room, which I seem to do quite frequently these days, I always thumb through the magazines that I would never buy. Oprah, Health and Fitness, Family Circle...And what the hell does Family Circle mean anyway? What family sits in a circle? I think of American Indians sitting outside of their tee pees in front of a fire but that can't be what they mean, can it? But the point I am trying to make is that the two advertisements that catch my eye these days and that are all over magazines and TV and radio are ads for losing weight and ads for shampoo. Since I am thin now and about to be bald I find these ads very offensive. How dare they show me some gorgeous girl with glorious red hair flowing down her back? How insensitive is that? Does it ever occur to them that there are bald women out there who are quite hurt by these ads? And losing weight. What about us thin people?! Us people who are having a hard time eating? Money money money it's just all about money and there are more fat people out there than there are thin people or at least people who think they are fat, of which I was once one of those people. Looked in the mirror and saw little love handles and thought yuck, what the hell are these and how did they get there? But, of course, I would do anything to have those handles because there is not much to hold onto now. And my pinhead!! What am I going to do about that when the hair falls out? I'm just going to have to go out and get a fathead hat or a fathead wig. I'm calling the wig guy tomorrow. My only decision is should I go red? Brown? Curly? Cornrows!! Oh yeah, the kind with a million beads going up and down the rows. That would be an interesting look. I could run like Bo Derek along the beach and let my beads swoosh back and forth and with my luck these days probably knock me in the eye and rip my cornea out.

Hey, but I'm not taking any of this bad luck personally. Like God has it out for me, Trish.

"Yes, I am God and I'm looking down at the earth and the one thing that comes into focus for me is that obnoxious Trish Soodik. What a mistake bringing her onto the earth. Think I'll smite her a bit. And then, what the hell, I'll smite her a bit more. She could use some smiting. Who does she think she is anyway being sort of nice like that. Eating all that broccoli and exercising. I'll show her................."

No, I don't think like that.

WHY ME DAMMIT?! WHYWHYWHY!

So the date is set to get my feeding tube reattached to my intestine. Oh yummy. All those yummy chemicals to put directly into my body. But the good news is water. I will be able to absorb lots of water. Should be good for my skin. My head. My shiny head. And yes, I am a bit obsessed by this hair loss thing. Freaks me out really. I think I'm going to get a Chicago Bears hat to wear. One of those knit caps.

Oh, what am I saying? It such a gigantic bummer. I'm trying to laugh about it hahaha but it is so not funny. A tube coming out of my middle and a bald head. WHAT KIND OF A LIFE IS THAT? Maybe I could be a Doonesberry strip. But a person. A woman? Maybe I could get a job on Star Trek, the weird generation. Maybe I could just sit in my living room and watch movies and election news until my hair grows back.

Maybe I'll get a poodle wig. Or a hat with rabbit ears. Wow, that gives me a whole new way to look at this. Hmmmmm, rabbit ears. No one would bother me if I had rabbit ears. I could probably walk down a dark alley naked with my tube hanging out and my rabbit ears pointing skyward and I'll bet you every guy walking down that dark alley would leave me alone. Yeah, that's the ticket. Rabbit ears to maintain my dignity. Maybe this won't be so bad after all..........................

Oh The Humanity

Yes, I do feel at times like I'm on the Hindenburg or the Titanic or some spectacular vessel that is about to go down. But I will try not to panic just yet and I still have a bit of hope that I'll be able to spot the iceberg before it slams me in the guts...

BUT

The cancer is back. No, I can't fucking believe it either. Back just where it was before. And here is the news that no girl with any dignity likes to hear...I'm going to be BALD! Going to lose my hair this time. And how's this for irony...I had a hair appointment for tomorrow for some highlights. Guess I'll be cancelling that one. Unless we can think of a creative way to highlight my scalp.

I think the thing to do it to think positively and to try and make some sense out of all of this. Look on the bright side. Because there is always a bright side somewhere, don't you think?

NO FUCKING WAY! THIS JUST PLAIN SUCKS. How come Diablo Cody gets to have a great life? How come assholes all over the world are laughing and having a wonderful time and swimming and buying new shoes and eating delicious meals and having martinis and making love and spooning and watching plays and

HOWCOMEHOWCOMEHOWCOME?

Just because, that's why. Nothing makes sense. It's all random. Oh, I could read that Buddhist Nun's books where you breath and you accept and you commune with nature and find something deep inside of yourself that centers you and makes you feel a part of the whole but

I AM PISSED OFF BEYOND BELIEF and I don't think this is fair and I hate certain people and I'm not sure about god right now and what the hell that means. But here's the thing...I am not afraid to die. I just hate the pain one has to go through to deal with all of this stuff. And if I didn't have a fabulous son I might run down to the beach right now and take off all of my clothes and jump into the water and swim out until I was eaten by a shark. (Eeewwww, what a horrible way to go.) But anyway, there is a reason to be here so I'm going to do the damn chemo again and lose my hair and look like a pinhead and oh, by the way, I'm going to get that feeding tube put back in again. Bald with a feeding tube. Oh, I can just imagine the guy I'm going to meet with that look. Maybe a blind guy.

So that's my cheery news of the day. And how are you?

The Absence of My Ass

I am not sure if I've ever written a blog on a Sunday night around eight o'clock. But I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to write at all this week and I thought I would check in and let you know where things stand at this moment in time.

THEY STAND ON NOTHING.

I don't know the results of my cat scan/mri yet and I can't eat and I feel just awful and I slept for a few hours today and I have no idea what's happening.

But I do know this...I have lost about 28 pounds. I've said 30 pounds before but to be specific it's about 28. And some people really can't tell where I've lost that weight. They say I look pretty much the same. I believe that's because of two reasons. One is that luckily my face does not get that thin and wan look. In other words, I think I have a fat face. That's good thing. The second reason is because I believe most of the weight I have lost is my ass weight. I think my ass actually must have weighed around 25 pounds! I am not kidding you. I look in the mirror now and see one of those horse back riding asses. You know...Ladies who ride horses have very flat asses. Well I used to have some booty back there. I liked it. It was fine. Now....There is nothing. It's gone. My ass is gone. I honestly think I lost all of my weight in my behind. Which I guess is a good thing because who can tell except my desk chair? However, if I don't start to eat soon I'm afraid my fat face will thin out and be all wrinkly and ancient looking and I'll have to buy all sorts of expensive creams and lotions so I am hoping that my trip to the nutritionist on Tuesday will reveal some eating tricks to me that I don't already know.

And here's what is confusing...Wouldn't you think that your appetite voices would come from your mind? "Eat Trish. Come on, you know you're hungry." So why don't I have an appetite? They didn't operate on my mind. They operated on my stomach. But I have no appetite and certain food just makes me gag. Like eggs, for instance. I used to love eggs. Can't even look at them now. You know what I ate today?...Sour Cream...I completely craved sour cream. Is that disgusting or what?

Remember when I said that 2008 was going to be a good year. Big changes and all that. Well, what the hell happened? This year seems to be just an extension of last year...

EXCEPT

I actually got the storage people to come and take away half of the man formerly known as my husband's stuff!! I couldn't believe that I actually did that. I could barely get off the couch but I had called the boxingupthestuff mover guys and they came on Saturday and they took about forty boxes of stuff out of this house. It was heavenly. I stared at the empty shelf in the living room for a couple of hours before I started putting MY STUFF on the shelf. My buddha with the candle, my Eloise doll, another candle that I liked. And some books. I could not believe how good that made me feel. I toasted myself with a slow drink of water and then I threw up. It was perfect.

I am reading The Road. Compared to my life I actually find it quite cheery. Next maybe I'll reread A Death in the Family. Makes me smile just thinking about it.

The Audacity of Bob Hope

I still feel crappy. I can't seem to eat but maybe tomorrow's mri will tell me something I don't know.

However, life goes on in it's increasingly strange ways. Which is probably due to the fact that I am weaker now than I have ever been in my entire life and occasionally things are a bit blurry. Like, yesterday, for instance. I was getting my drip and a completely insane man was sitting two chairs away from me. And he would not stop talking. And here's what he talked about...

SHOW BIZ.

This guy dropped every name that was printed on every star on Hollywood Boulevard. He started by saying that he was Bob Hope's son but he wasn't sure if Bob Hope's wife, Delores, his supposed mother, was dead or alive.

Nuts enough for you?

He said he was Henry Winkler's roommate at Harvard. For some useless reason I happen to know that Henry Winkler went to Yale. This guy was best friends with Donald Trump ("A great human being.") and very close with Shirley Maclaine ("In what life?" I didn't ask.) and he accompaigned Magic Johnson to Mexico for AIDS treatments.

Aha.

And he was a Jewish Buddhist Catholic and he didn't believe in Western Medicine and that's when we got into a big argument. I usually just sit there and let people ramble on if they are the rambling type. But this guy, Mr. Hopeupyourass, asks me why I'm there and I tell him about my cancer and my sugery and he says, "You should never have done that. Had that surgery. Doctors here in the States will kill you." And everyone in the room told him to shut up but he just kept talking and...

I have to change the subject for just a moment. One of the people in the room was this very nice man that had been smiling at me for a couple of weeks. And I've been smiling back. Not really my type but there was something about him. Anyway, yesterday he sits next to me and we're talking about books and luckily I was reading Cormac McCarthy so I appeared as if I was sort of educated and we were having a grand old time and I was thinking, gee, he would be a nice person to have dinner with sometime.........WHEN I WON'T THROW UP ON HIS PLATE!........And then somewhere in mid-conversation he tells me that he's a MONK! He lives at the Self Realization Church and rings the gong in the mornings. Oh, just what I'm looking for. A gong ringer. But I'm thinking that so far the two men I've met who are the most interesting are a monk and a guy who sells hot dogs. I should never have left Chicago...................

So Mr. Hopethebiggestjerkintheworld won't stop saying that I will probably die because of my surgery and I looked right at him, after being silent for a while and said, "Henry Winkler went to Yale."

Well, that stopped him dead for about one second. His reply..."Believe what you want to believe."

One woman was so disgusted by this guy that she left her drip early. "Life is too short." she said. And so was this guy. When he stood up I could see why he was so angry. He was under five feet tall. And he wore stupid sweatpants and very large glasses. The woman with ELB (extremely large breasts) peeked into the room for a moment. The little guy's glasses fell to the floor. I imagined that his eyes popped out and knocked them off of his head.

Is this my life?!!!!! I used to work on Mad About You. With sane people.

Well, that's a lie. But we were making a living in "show biz". We weren't sitting there with IVs in our arms praying for health, sipping soup, going to doctors once or twice a week. What the hell happened? Is this it? Do I go from this to OLD in five minutes. And I was having so much fun.

Tomorrow I will know an answer. Or I won't. But it will be another day on earth in this very strange world that I find myself living in..................

The Killer Nectarine

I feel like shit and it all started yesterday when I ate half of a nectarine for breakfast. I almost immediately went into some sort of nectarine coma and I couldn't see straight and I felt light headed and sick and oh my gosh that fruit tasted SO GOOD and I was hoping it would go down well but it almost killed me. I am trying to figure out what the hell is happening to me. So I went to the oncologist yesterday. Dr. Shaum. I haven't seen her since October, which is normal. Here's the good news, my fainting and vomiting is not because of cancer. Here's the bad news.................No one seems to know what the hell it's from. Except post surgery changes in my most basic system. Dr. Shaum was not happy with my weight loss. Here's the totally neurotic crazy thing...I have lost almost thirty pounds and I still feel that I have to take off my shoes when I get weighed. Are we all like insanely anorexic? So I told her that I can't eat, I have no appetite and I throw up once or twice a day. "Hmmmmm." She said. "I don't like that."

Neither do I.

So she scheduled an MRI for me for next week. The kind where you drink a bottle of stuff that glows as you go through the machine. This way she'll be able to tell if there is a blockage that is keeping me from eating properly. Now first of all, I don't know how I'm going to drink that "bottle" of stuff because I can barely swallow a spoonful of soup. And secondly, my MRI is on Valentines Day. Not that I think that day is anything but a great boon for Hallmark cards but...You know. I'll be going through that machine trying not to throw up and thinking about when I used to be able to go out for dinner on Valentines Day. Eat a great turkey burger at Hals. And a martini or a Cosmo. I can't even imagine that now. Yesterday I ate a teaspoonful of peanut butter and an apple slice for dinner. Alcohol? Forget it. Maybe I'm supposed to be a nun. Mother Teresa was very thin and I'll bet she didn't have any Cosmos. No Manalo Blahniks. Actually, I hate those shoes. Those pointy things. Are they supposed to be sexy? Yes, to sadistic and sleazy men. Maybe if Hillary is elected she will put an end to overly pointy shoes. Yes, that's what's missing from her platform. (Hey, no more platform shoes!) I'm an Obama supporter but if she comes out for no pointy shoes I just may have to rethink my vote.

But I digress. I feel really badly these days and it's all because of not being able to eat or hold anything down. It is a royal, major bummer. If ever there was a time to use the word bummer, it is now. I used to say, "Man, we missed the movie. What a bummer." No... Missing a movie is not a bummer. Not being able to stand up for more than five minutes...THAT is a bummer.

I'm going to see a nutritionist. What I'd really like to do is to ask the nutritionist to move in with me for a month and cook me little tiny meals all day and rub my back and walk with me but I think she's only going to suggest a menu. I used to know how to eat. I was...hahaha...very healthy. And then they cut out my insides and now I am all screwed up and I'm telling you there is not a day that goes by that I don't wonder if I made the right decision to have that surgery. I don't think I can live the rest of my life feeling like I do now. Sometimes I think I'm going to have to have that feeding tube reinserted so I can get nutrition through that during the night. How's that for an insane thought? Put back the thing they took out that caused that infection and now they have to open me up again and..............None of it is directly related to cancer! Could I have not lived with that tumor until I just plotzed dead right there on Santa Monica Boulevard? I felt fine then. I could swim and do yoga and lie on my stomach. This is a bummer of a challenge and you know what?...........I DON'T LIKE IT!!

I got into my car the other day with a friend and she asked me where the rattle was coming from. So I asked her..."What rattle?" And she pointed out this little noise that was coming from my CD player. I had never noticed it before. But it drove her crazy. She spent most of the ride trying to fix it. SHE actually drove me much crazier than the rattle. Those things, little car things, don't bother me. So it rattles. It's a car. If I made a rattling sound, now THAT would be annoying.

Actually, I do make a rattling sound. I need someone to look under my hood and fix my carburator. Oh, if only it was that easy.

Obama and Yo Mama

Doncha just love to vote? I do. There is always something so exciting about going into that little booth and punching that card and worrying that you've punched the wrong hole and going back and checking on it and feeling like, wow, my teeny tiny vote actually can mean something. And today I got tears in my eyes while I voted (which could really just have meant that I was hungry) because there was a woman and an African American on the ballot and they were truly viable candidates. Now I shouldn't say this but I'm going to say it because Cedric does not read my blog. He voted for Obama. We had a nice talk at the hot dog stand today as he was late because he had to vote and he wanted to read up on all the candidates this morning so he would know exactly what he was voting for. And this guy was a medic (Is that how you spell it? It stands for something, right?) in the Navy during the Gulf War and even HE knew we should not have gone into Iraq.

The hot dog was superb.

I was telling someone that my parents died three years ago about six months apart. And they had the usual response which is..."Awww, that is so sweet. They must have really loved each other."

Ahhhhh. No.

Actually, my parents hated each other. And the reason that they lived so long was because they were waiting for the other one to die so they could stand at their grave and shout..."Ha! I outlived you, you asshole!" That didn't happen, of course, but my mother went first and that was a very good thing for my father. He got a few months of peace before he left town. But when someone says..."They must have really loved each other.", I just let them think that because I have told people that my parents hated each other and all they do is laugh and think it's a joke. Oh haha. Not a joke when you grow up with screaming yelling insane people. My mother was once so angry at my dad that she told me he was gay! Of course, I had no idea what she was talking about because I was around six at the time and my only gay awareness was knowing these really nice guys named Andy and Brad who were interior decorators and they had a kid at my school and I could tell they were not an ordinary couple but it never bothered me nor did I think twice about it but years later when I thought about what my mother had said I decided she was just yammering and she could have said that he was a Republican or a whale...She had just picked a word out of the air and attached her signature anger to it. Always very effective.

A woman came into the drip room today...Breasts first...OhmyGod...These breasts were so enormous they made it impossible not to stare. Luckily...or sadly...There were no men in the room. So she sits down with these enormous things and looks very glum and says that she used to be an exotic dancer (oh what a surprise) but now she is suffering from traumatic stress syndrome. (Could the stress be having to carry those things around all day?) And she had this teeny tiny voice and she was taking vitamin c for her stress and then she said she'd had a head injury and all I could picture was her getting out of the bathtub and tripping and getting hit on the head with one of her boobs. I'm telling you, they were lethal. But that's all she said. Never did completely explain the trauma. They gave her the IV and she was out like a light. I hope she doesn't live in a three story walkup. (What the hell does that mean!)

Yes, the Super Bowl was great. First time I ever rooted for a team beause of the quarterbacks name. Go Eli Go Eli Go Eli..........Oh, it was such a pleasure to yell and scream about a football game and not some horrible thing happening in my life.

Today was a good day. If I go to sleep right now it will end that way. But it's only five thirty. You know, dammit, I'm going stay up until midnight and make this entire day a truly Super Tuesday.

But just in case...Where are my pajamas?