Esprit de Green

In fifth or sixth grade, I declared that I would wear nothing but Esprit for the entire school year. For some reason, the parents and Roxy gave into this absurd request. (Today, even I wouldn't want to be glued to one brand for a year. How boring.)

On one of our first Griswold-esque family vacays, we arrived at a hotel in D.C. only to find out that Dad had booked us for the entire wrong week. Randomly, we ran into the Rosenblums, and ending up hanging out with them. We took a limo ride around D.C. to see the sites. And apparently Lee Ann and I did some amateur modeling. She found this photo amongst her brother's stuff.

This was also the year that I insisted on wearing my hair slicked back on one side with mousse. Yeah, so the right side of my Sun-In-d hair was poufy Jewfroish, and the left side was slicked down with so much mousse that Dana's mom Nancy thought a bird had shit in my hair one day. I am so not kidding. Ask Dana.

We're all so lucky to have friends like these, whose grandparents were BFFs. They lived a much more glam life than we do though—summers in Europe, yachts everywhere and Chanel suits as uniforms.

But anyway . . . My first Herceptin treatment is tomorrow. Friday I found out the full results of the PET scan. Some of the nodes in the sternum shrunk; others grew. The nodes in the neck shrunk by 50 percent in some cases. Unfort, the PET picked up on a new area of concern on my right pelvic bone—I don't even know where the fuck this bone is. My vjayjay? Aside from my hip bones, I don't feel any bones down there. So, the new spot on the pelvic bone is too small for the PET to determine what it is. Obv it's Ca, but small enough not to worry too much about. Apptly, PETs are notoriously bad with bone reads—that's why people get MRIs and CTs. Although it won't change treatment protocol, I will likely get an MRI for peace of mind.

Sooo, the new treatment regiment: Herceptin infusions (in the fucking chemo ward) every three weeks combined with Tykerb and possibly Xeloda—Norton and Schwartz will talk tomorrow about whether to keep the Xeloda. As bad as the side-effects are, I think I'd be more comfortable with some kind of chemo mixed into the cocktail.

I was planning on going solo tomorrow, but then the rents offered to come so Dad is driving down today. I warned him that I'd be glued to the Golden Globes fashion coverage—YAAAAAAAAY Joan is back on E! One good thing to come out of all this Cancer crap is that it's def brought dad and I closer together, given that he's had Prostate Ca and knows what Cancer feels like. I get my temper and my bawdy side from Dad, and I still remember when he was on out-of-control hormones, him almost getting us kicked out of Asia de Cuba in New York. Ha.

So how am I feeling? Like a guinea pig. There is no common sense in Cancer. It's a crap shoot and I'm the chips (or whatever the fuck is used in craps. Dice?). Schwartz and Norton are optimistic this will work. I'm beyond not. I mean, nothing else has worked. Nothing. Not the strongest Jet Fuel chemo out there. Herceptin is my last chance before being told I should go back on real chemo. Which, well, fuck that.

Tomorrow will indeed be tough as hell. I know that as soon as I step back into the chemo ward, see my nurses, etc I'm going to have a terrible visceral reaction and break down. No happy photos this time. No "1 down 7 to go signs." Maybe video, I dunno. In the two years of horrific treatments, I rarely cried at the hospital, now I walk around bawling and not giving a fuck.

This disease may have some mind-over-matter component, but that doesn't mean I have to be positive. I do not have a positive attitude people. I can believe I can beat this, but I don't have to be "positive" shiny happy about it. Just because I have a sense of humor about this doesn't equate to me having a positive attitude.

Moreover I've changed up my talismen. Clearly, they didn't work. I've shelved the Wiccan health candle. And switched out the Indian pendant Brother got me for an old ring of my grandpa, Mom's dad, Stanley, who was a total bad-ass and I know is looking down on me.

That's all for now. I'm heading to NY for Fashion Week just for the helluv it. Must book flight today.

I won't be able to type during chemo now, as I have no port and the needle will be in my arm or hand I guess. The infusion lasts 90 minutes. So Mondays are chemo days once again. What a life I'm leading. What a fucking life.