The which-cancer-will-kill-you-first sweepstakes

The contest no one wants to win.

It was supposed to be me. 

When you get to my age—79--stuff happens, and the worst thing is you never know when.

 For me failing health has been a constant since my forties.  First, diabetes, then COPD, then in my seventies a bum heart valve, then lung cancer. This is just the life-threatening stuff, not the mere inconveniences like no teeth, bad hearing, painfully dry eyes, bad back which means hobbling around with a cane or walker-- even after back surgery.  I’m a walking ad for the medical profession’s ability to keep a body going even when it’s crumbling. 

My friend Terri, on the other hand, who is my age, was in perfect health—she never took a pill.  She didn’t drink or smoke except for a few tokes of weed now and then. She was slim and fit.  She did have an arthritic hip, but after hip surgery she was walking a mile in no time.

Terri and I are former New York magazine writers, fellow cynics and Trump bashers who bonded with each other in a writers group, and with Angela, a fellow Floridian and screenwriter who is trying to make her mark in Hollywood late in life.  Angela, who had her own brush with death earlier in life, is the baby of our trio, still in her sixties with boundless energy. We were all searching for signs of intelligent life in South Florida.  We met in a writers group and fell on each other like long lost friends.  We met on Zoom every week for the entire pandemic.  Lately we’d gotten back to meeting for happy hours at a favorite watering hole. 

 I know I’m past my expiration date, but I try to be philosophical about it. Terri, who is my age, was in denial about aging—a strategy that works well—until it doesn’t.  Even when she was diagnosed with some weird pre-cancerous condition called smoldering myeloma, she didn’t take it seriously.  She felt the name suited her femme fatale image.   Denial worked since she was in watch and wait mode--there was no treatment recommended at this stage.  It certainly wasn’t as bad as lung cancer, so I was ahead in the what-cancer-will-kill-you-first sweepstakes.  

Until I wasn’t.

 One day Terri woke up with such excruciating back pain she couldn’t move.  She had no idea what hit her.  We postponed happy hour for weeks.  She finally showed up one day looking ten years older and painfully thin.  She was barely able to walk. Her orthopedist prescribed the usual—physical therapy, painkillers, steroids.  No one suspected the real problem—her smoldering myeloma had burst into flames, virtually overnight.  Seems it’s a really sneaky disease.  It attacks your bones and one of the first symptoms is hairline back fractures.   Terri had a broken back—no wonder she couldn’t move.  

Shame on the orthopedist for not figuring that out right away.  She probably doesn’t know how to use Google.  Angela, Google doc that she is, figured it out before the doc.

Terri lost her cherry overnight.   All of a sudden, she was on the medical merry-go-round--juggling orthopedists, oncologists, radiologists, hematologists. While flat on her back in horrible pain, she had to deal with a whole phalanx of specialists none of whom answered the phone or called her back in a timely fashion.  Soon she was getting toxic chemo which knocked the shit out of her and cement injected into her back.   She’d been accustomed to smoking her drug of choice not popping pills or getting injections.  Then she wound up in the hospital with other complications, which was a relief to me and Angela.   It was clear she needed more help than she was getting.  They were giving her more pain meds at least. 

I offered to visit.  She didn’t want visitors but asked me to come and bring her a few things.  She wanted lip balm, and “maybe something silly to put on when I have a visitor.  A boa or a little bed jacket without arms.”  

Terri was a generous gift giver who always gave me perfect gifts.  She brought me a cat tree when I got a cat, gave me wine that I loved, brought chocolate cherries—my favorite candy—for a luncheon.

Lip balm was easy.  I actually make my own since I needed gallons of it when I was getting chemo and my whole body dried up like a prune.  The best remedy is Aquaphor which I put in little pots I get from Amazon.  But a boa?  And bed jacket?   I saw this as a shopping challenge.  Even though I hadn’t been in a store without an electric cart for years due to my own problems walking, I decided to brave the stores leaning on a cart. 

First, I hit The Party Store.   They had feather boas in every garish color imaginable.  I had no idea which color Terri wanted but I decided hot pink was suitably silly.  As for a bed jacket, I knew what she had in mind.  One of those pretty, flimsy things women wore to cover up back when women wore lingerie to bed.   The only problem was I hadn’t seen one since the 1950s.  Terri is a fashionista who dresses casually but only in quality, often designer, clothes.  I’m a Walmart woman (they have electric carts) who depends on a wardrobe of cheap jogging pants and t-shirts.  But I was raised by a fashionista so I was up to the challenge.   I scored a silky short sleeved pajama outfit with a top decorated with pineapples in T.J. Maxx.  I decided that was suitably silly plus the material felt luxurious not cheap.

Then on to visit Terri at a local hospital with very long halls and no shopping carts to lean on. I knew this because I’d had surgery there.  So, I hauled my walker out of the car and schlepped to her room.  She was weak but feisty—she told me how she’d reamed out a nurse who nearly stabbed her to death while searching for a vein to draw blood.

She loved the gifts and put the boa on for my visit.   She later texted me a pic of herself in the pajamas.  “PT person wants to know where you got them.  Everyone thinks they’re cute”  Whew!  I’d hit the jackpot gift-wise.  However she told me the boa had to go because it was shedding pink feathers all over her room.

After a couple of weeks in the hospital rehab unit she texted me that she’s finally going home with the help of an aide and a geriatric care manager. Both of our mothers had geriatric care managers when their health failed.  She is not happy about it, but she’s no longer in denial.  She knows that she needs the help. I wish I had one to manage my health care. 

Terri may be down but she’s not out yet.  Neither am I.  Though I wouldn’t lay bets on how long.  

The “Which-cancer-will-kill-you-first sweepstakes” is not a contest either of us wants to win.

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