50 Tries

Lights

Santa shut down due to low-carb dieting craze…all his stock in Krispy Kreme has tanked, thought it was a sure bet. Elves are unionizing (Wal-Mart). Look at business pages.

That’s all I’ve got right now.

Adam helped me put some little lighted Christmas trees in our front yard this afternoon. He has even agreed to let me place a fiber-optic polar bear on the lawn, which I can only describe as one of the deepest attestations of his love for me that I have ever seen. I’m now obsessing over whether Target will run out of the polar bears, because, you know, the reindeer are tacky.

(Oh my god, I really kind of want the Fiber Optic Outdoor Santa).

We’re seeing my oncologist for the CAT scan results tomorrow morning. I’ve got a bad feeling, though not for any rational reason. Something just hit me late Friday night and I haven’t been able to shake it.

Thanksgiving

Lynda Carter thinks I’m too thin. When a woman who used to make her living in a bustier tells you you’re too thin, I guess it’s time to bulk up. I am actually trying.

Actually, speaking of Lynda (she’s my husband’s stepmother’s sister-in-law, and she rocks, just like I thought she would when she was my hero when I was six) brings up an important point. My mother-in-law (well, stepmother-in-law, but whatever), Nancy Altman, is an expert on Social Security and has published numerous Op-Ed pieces in the Times and elsewhere. I imagine she might know of someone to call. But then I’d have to tell her what I’m working on, and my father-in-law would know, too, which brings up my central paradox: Look at me! Look at me! Don’t look at me.

(We spent Thanksgiving with my father-in-law’s family, in Washington, and Chip, Nancy, Lynda, and the entire Lupu/Altman/Carter clan is comprised of very positive, highly intelligent, deeply generous people. It was a very relaxing weekend, even with my protracted struggle to keep Kylie from licking the window of the train on the way home.)

As I write this, I’m also noticing that the Snowman of Despair has returned. The neighbor puts up his Christmas display every year right outside my study window, consisting of lights on the shrubs and an old-fashioned, plastic, light up snowman. The first year we were here he left it up until February, and I remember spending so many nights staring out at that snowman, weak and miserable from chemotherapy, and then surgery, and then radiation, and wondering what the rest of my life would be like.

Submission #10

Number 10, all done. That’s 20 percent of the way to my goal, though I wouldn’t mind JUST HAVING SOMETHING ACCEPTED before #50.

That’s also it for submitting as Kiersten Conner-Sax. Now I’ll have to assume a new identity, which sounds like fun, except that I think it should be the identity of a middle-aged man.

I’m in bad shape tonight. I had a CAT scan this afternoon. The appointment was for 12:30, so I didn’t think that it would take up the entire day, but of course it did. You have to drink more than a pint of this barium solution, which is, needless to say, repulsive, and I thought that the worst moment came when I went into the room with the machine and they handed me another cup to drink. But no—even though it hasn’t affected me this way in the past, all that barium on an empty stomach (I couldn’t eat after 9:30) caused a lot of what I believe is politely described as “gastric distress.” Which caused a lot of time to do nothing but sit in the bathroom and wish things were different.

I should write more (I'm not crazy about this piece; even though it’s funny, it feels kind of icky) but I can’t. Kylie is walking around in her penguin pajamas and pink faux shearling coat and saying “lal lal lal,” and I’d rather think about that.

Christmas in November

So I realized that I’m kind of an idiot—I write about trying to get out in front of closing deadlines, and then submit an essay that’s incredibly topical. It’s not like people are going to want to be reading satires about cabinet resignations next June. It’s just so hard to come up with anything.

Although frankly I sort of wouldn’t mind being a Shih Tzu named Buttons.

Kylie has one joke, which involves calling my mother “Poopie,” or substituting the word “poopie” for something else. I try really hard not to laugh when she does it, so as not to encourage the behaviour, but, well, it’s funny.

I’ve got something I’ll be able to submit tomorrow morning, which is good, because I’ve got a CAT scan in the afternoon and I doubt that I’ll be feeling like being much of a wit after that. It’s a Christmas letter. I just need to look some things up about those plushophile freaks (okay, ew) and "Desperate Housewives."

(Just as a side note, I think it's misogynistic for any show to cast Teri Hatcher as the plain one, even though they don't market her that way in the show's publicity.

Oh my god--Teri Hatcher's bio page has a huge ad for plastic surgery right next to it. Thank you, ABC, for proving my point (although I don't want to imply that I think Teri Hatcher has had plastic surgery.).)

(And as a second side note, I recognize that "plushophiles" aren't hurting anyone, so don't e-mail me, but, still, ew. Although it's sort of hard to believe--oh, ew, ew, EW.)

Everything will be about Christmas or New Year’s for the next three weeks. And I have to keep on schedule. I’d like to take time off for the holidays, but I assume that their regular contributors do the same thing, so maybe I’ll sneak something in this way.

Happy/Sad

This morning I received my second e-mail message asking for contact information for pitching reality television pilots. I'm really glad that people are reading the site. But does that mean that the essay was so not funny that people think those really ARE upcoming reality television pilots? 

Also: I just got home from chemo. My white cells are down pretty low, and Kylie and my mother were up all night with fevers. If I catch what they have, it could land me in the hospital in a hurry.

It's Kylie's birthday today, and her being sick is breaking my heart. I want to hug her and kiss her and throw her up in the air. Instead, she feels terrible and I shouldn't touch her. 

My oncologist's research fellow came in to talk to me while I was getting treatment, and I have to give him credit: he fully apologized. He even used the words "I'm sorry," and said that he had meant to track the Green Vibrance ingredients down and it got lost in the shuffle. It's amazing how much of a difference that makes to me. I will suspend the "jackass" title for the duration.

Trying hard to come up with a premise to write tomorrow and send on Saturday, thus getting me back on schedule. I keep thinking that there must be something in Desperate Housewives. Or--to try to get out in front of closing deadlines--maybe everything I write for the next few weeks should be Christmas-focused. I'm hoping that regular contributors get busy around the holidays, and the editors will be forced to search the murky depths of the bottom of the barrel, where I'll be stealthily lying in wait. 

Unless the aforementioned barrel is awfully big, that was one hell of a mixed metaphor.

Submission #9

Okay, all done with number nine. I decided to send it to the Times first.

I think that I might have a turnaround problem, hence the choice (they must close their issues MUCH more quickly than the New Yorker). All of the events I’m describing are, well, current, and it’s taking me a week to write the essays. The turnaround time probably has to be more like a day.

Ironically, as a stay-at-home mom with a babysitter two days a week, my mother taking care of almost everything, and Kylie in pre-school two and a half hours every day, I’m finding it hard to make the time.

I know I should add “cancer patient” to that list. Entire days are consumed with waiting rooms and trips into the city and needles and tests that involve nuclear radiation and huge machines. Other times I either need to rest, or want to be with Kylie, even if I’m not really the one taking care of her.

Oh, it always comes back to the cancer, doesn’t it? Wah wah wah, my life’s so hard, I have trouble making up 600 words per week.

Maybe I should go festoon myself with pink ribbons. Does that make anybody feel better? I mean, I wore a flag pin after September 11th, and that actually did make me feel better. I guess I just don't want to think about cancer when I don't have to; hence my not purchasing the pink KitchenAid "Cook for the Cure" line of appliances, which I otherwise find attractive.

I sent a rather harsh e-mail message to my nurse at Sloan-Kettering yesterday, regarding the research fellow's lack of follow-through when I told him, weeks ago, about the Green Vibrance, and how I found out later that it was providing my tumor, which likes to eat estrogen, with plenty of estrogen, etc. He left a message today, while I was out taking Kylie to school, asking me to call back, and saying that he’d try to reach me again later.

I didn’t call him back. Take that, medical establishment. I don’t want to talk to this doctor, who is actually a senior fellow, not a real grown-up oncologist, and whom I have considered more and less of a jackass. He has not called back. Maybe I’ll threaten to quit their precious study and see if that really gets their attention.

Maybe it's not fair to call him a jackass in a semi-public forum. But he was the one who told me that the median time to tumor recurrence, after chemo, was 13 months, "so there's hope." When I choked out "13 months?" he explained to me that that was the median, which meant that half the people involved didn't see their tumors recur for more than 13 months.

I was too much in shock to thank him for explaining what the word "median" meant (jackass) or to point out that the median also meant that half the patients saw theirs tumors recur before 13 months.

Having just relived this little exchange, I have concluded that even should this doctor see this post and recognize himself, I am comfortable referring to him as a jackass.

A Little Less Vibrance

I’m tired. It took me all day to come up with this premise: the resignations of the various members of Bush’s cabinet indicate that he’s a whack job. But right now IT’S WAY TOO SHORT.

I moved the site to TypePad because Blogger just wasn’t flexible enough. I’ve been tweaking it for hours.

I feel better today, after a hellish weekend—I felt so sick after chemo on Thursday, and Kylie had a playdate on Friday that I felt like I had to be up up up for (look at me! I’m not at all sick with a deadly disease!), and then I just crashed and felt sick until Sunday afternoon.

The chemo nurse gave me some new anti-nausea drug on Thursday that either a) doesn’t work as well as Zofran or b) made me even more nauseous, which I guess is just the same as a). And then today I found out that Green Vibrance, my wonderful Green Vibrance that had been making so many of the worst side effects go away, had lots of pseudo-estrogens (I think that’s what they’re called) that are kinda bad to take if you’ve got an estrogen-receptor positive tumor, like I have. So much for succor and comfort.

Kylie is playing with trains in the living room (with my mother) and I feel like I should go in there and play too. But I don’t want to play with trains, I just want to work, and I can’t figure out what’s selfish and what’s reasonable and what to do about anything anymore.

I just heard my mother tell Kylie that she had finished reading Mugsy (my dog) a story about the adult film industry, and he just loved it, and did Kylie want to hear a story. I know I get my sense of humor from her, but I think I’d better go in there.

Why I Chose the New Yorker

Gina Smith, who keeps an incredible blog on a broad range of subjects, also keeps a record of great excerpts from recent New Yorker articles. It definitely helped remind me why I'm doing this.

My Version of the Mainstream Media

It's sad how much more accurate I find the Onion and The Daily Show than, say, the Today Show or CBS News.

Hmmmmm.

This survey is from 2002, but it doesn't bode particularly well for me. Or something.