Healing, Life

Where we left off was that I was about to have a hysterectomy. It was an “everything” hysterectomy – uterus, cervix, ovaries. That was because I had developed early-stage uterine cancer and needed to fix that. The surgery was at El Camino hospital in Mountain View. The surgeon was the second-opinion Dr. Dwight Chen. I saw the anesthesiologist for about three minutes on the morning of the surgery; he gave me sedative and told me that I would be out before I made it to the OR. I remember nothing.

I woke up to a nurse asking me about pain. “Nine,” I told her. Did I want ice chips?” Yes. They sat me up in the electric bed and I passed out again before I was able to string two bites together.

The day was mostly a blur. There was a student nurse who kept practicing on me. I tried so hard to be nice. In my altered state the real me was not to be suppressed. I could not stand the student nurse, and I managed to have her sent away. Dr. Chen showed up and told me I looked like I got hit by a train. I told him was a Mac truck. Later he told me that I healed so well because I had a good attitude. I am sure of this. And love. I am sure that love is a great healer.

I cant quite figure out what the loss of a uterus means for a 60-year-old woman. I had not been using it for a while.

My menopause happened at 50. It was relatively easy for me, with very few hot flashes and other disruptions of life. Now, 10 weeks away from the hysterectomy I seem to be plagued with hot flashes and sleep disruptions that were worse than before. If you get emails from me at 4 in the morning, this is the reason why.

For the record. All the biopsies came back clean. I am really happy about this. I will see Dr. Chen in a few months, and then I will see Dr. Salvay once a year. The interesting note is that in the three months it took to actually have the surgery, the staging of the cancer moved from one to two. I told you before I think they moved too slowly.

Ultimately, the big question is, “What happens to a vagina when it is not attached to anything?" I know that they sew or staple at the end. But what does it do? Does it look like the giant red balloon man in front of the Honda dealership on Soquel? Or is it more like a stoic, lonesome monument hanging out in an abandoned cemetary? These are the ridiculous things I worry about when I think about the surgery.

I must get back to making art.

Other than that, I have been so happy that the Spurs beat the Heat in the NBA playoffs because I love Greg Popovich, etc and cannot abide LeBron James in any form.

I traveled to Provincetown for the Eighth International Encaustic Conference. It was great to see so many people that I either know or have admired from afar for years now. I got to hang out with my friend since 1982, Janice Walk. She is the subject of one of my more popular oil paintings, “The Human Birdfeeder.” We got to drive through Beach Forest, where the feedings used to take place. It was probabally Janice, more than any other person, who taught me about the simple beauty of nature, and I came home reminded of this. Traveling home was hard, but I will be going back next year.

Now I am fascinated with World Cup Soccer and baseball. I am following the Red Sox, the As and my favorites, the San Francisco Giants. Because I love the Red Sox so much, I can never really be a fan of the As, but it is so interesting to see them on top. The G-men. They are still on top, and I suspect they will survive this current correction and a few more before September. The complexities of baseball have always fascinated me. I don’t know why I love Basketball and Baseball so much, but I suspect I have a mutated sports gene that managed to escape from the Hockey/Football Fernows.

An Army of Lovers … (RMB)

In the late 70s, there was an all-girl rock band called Fanny. The front-woman was June Millington. I believe she was the first female rocker. Somewhere in her discography there was a song that said, “Open Up Your Heart, Let it in.” I am not good at this. My recent health issue has put me in a place where I had to work on receiving help, receiving love. “Open Up Your Heart” has become a mantra.

Since I was diagnosed with Uterine Cancer, there has been a shower of love. While sometimes it freaks me out, I am often in the place where I am so grateful and overwhelmed with what people are doing for me. Accepting love is a big order. My heart is full of tears.

Sarah says, “All you need is love.” We all know that Lennon and McCartney made that idea popular when they were writing about love. Later, John Lennon said, “Love is the answer.” Sarah also says that when she is having a hard time with someone she just tells herself, “Love More.” I think she learned that from Robert. Regardless, she is very good at it. She sent me this little painting:

Angie makes gratitude lists and reads a lot of stuff from the self-help gurus. She is about love and sunshine. She gets up early every single day and makes a list. If Angie is around, I promise you will hear something about “Good morning Sunshine.” She gives real hugs. From her, I learn that there are ways to be happy and grateful even when life is full of lemons. Wow.

My wonderful friends, Daniella Woolf and Kim Tyler wanted to set up a “Lotsa Helping Hands” account for me that would allow people who knew I would need help an opportunity to help me. Bringing me meals, and giving rides are the two things that I really need help with. I resisted. How hard could it be? I’ll just stock up on food and cook for myself, I thought. They persisted, and I relented. Ok. Let’s see what happens. I gave them a list of people, and most of them responded. My hospital was 40 miles away. I would need rides. Food has been everyone’s favorite.

Once a day, people come by with food. Food that is ready to eat. Often the go an buy take out food at places like “the Palm” in Aptos and Gayles Bakery. My friend Ana Paula, who has three kids and nothing to do (: - made me a beautiful beef stew. Two days in to the project, I got it. I wasn’t as strong as I wanted to be. Standing up was not so easy. The gift of “Lotsa…” was a great thing. And I was learning to ask for help. Chris Miroyan, who got me to the hospital at 5 a.m. on the day of surgery called from Costco. Did I need something. Normally, I would have just said, “No Thanks,” and let it go. But I really needed a case of water, and asked for it. She brought it over, he had a short visit, and that was that. People who are participating, I will never forget what you have given me. As for the pushy Kim and Daniella, you have not only helped me enormously, but you have taught me accepting acts of kindness is another way of being a friend. I already knew this, but you know how it goes.

A while ago I had a dinner where the main reason was to tell people I finally realized that I am happy. It was a long struggle. I have had a few “dark nights” in my past. Through that process, I have had to rethink my understanding of what some people, most people, call God. Sometime on the dark road, I began to read about Agnes Martin. I have beatified her and named her my spirit guide. In case you don’t know about her, she was a well-known artist, a minimalist.

When asked about God, Agnes said she would rather leave God behind and concentrate on Love. That is what I work on.


How do I do this? Mostly by being grateful. As a kid in Sunday School, we used to make prayers called, “We thank you God.” As five-year-olds, we would make long litanies of our thankfulness for things created by a God who sat in a golden throne surrounded by an English country garden of flowers and a white fence, creating goodness for all the world. The prayer would go like this:

For flowers that grow: We thank you God.
For chocolate bunnies: We thank you God.
For Niagara Falls: We thank you God.
For my baby brother: We thank you God.

The litany is no longer my solution. Though I am grateful for many “things.” I am mostly grateful for ideas – an all-encompassing state of grace. I catch myself wondering what Agnes would do. But today, I don’t make a list. I am not naming names here or simple little things like chocolate bunnies. I am grateful for the state of my life, my own state of being. Don’t get me wrong. I do appreciate a nice chocolate bunny.

I’m grateful that if I had to have cancer in my sixties, it was the kind that let me know it was there before it turned into a big nightmare. Endometrial Uterine Cancer starts to bleed as soon as it can, saying “Hey. Get yourself to a doctor.” This Cancer is called “self contained.” I wasn’t going to say anything about it until my doctor appointment a few weeks later, but the Medical Assistant at my doctor’s office, Sarah Sousa, noticed when a urine sample I gave did not come back clean and called me right away. “Are you bleeding, by any chance?” she wondered. By the time I got to the doctor, I may have forgotten about the bleeding. Sarah Sousa may have saved me from a far worse situation.

I am grateful that I have an amazing support system. Chris jokes that my friends fight over who gets to help me in this journey. I am not sure that is true, but I want for nothing right now. Rita Mae Brown once wrote that an “army of lovers cannot fail.” I know for certain that an army of friend/artists is a right powerful thing.

81 days later ...

My sense of speed and the modern medicine sense of speed are two different things. They say cancer, and I want to show up the next day for the surgery that will certainly make it all go away. When Dr. Salvay said I needed a D+C, it was supposed to be "next week." It was five weeks later. When they said 2 p.m., it did not happen until 8 p.m. The biopsy results were supposed to happen four business days after the d+C. It was a week later that Dr. Salvay called with the bad news.

The surgery was scheduled for April 16. They called the next day to move it up a day to April 15. Of course, I had to be "cleared for surgery." "Cleared for Surgery" turned out to be a danger zone, because of of an EKG I had on Feb. 18 that was read as abnormal.

Trying to make an appointment with a cardiologist at PAMF/Santa Cruz, aka Sutter Health, to be cleared was a nightmare. Thanks to an effective woman named Pam, she managed to schedule me for a meeting with Ryan Brandt MD, the guy who read the original test. After hearing a mantra of "we are understaffed, we are understaffed..." I was scheduled for April 10, a Thursday. That did not seem like enough time, but that was the best I could do. Then Pam, called the morning of the 10th to say there had been an all-day emergency and needed to move it back a day. Now I was to see the cardiologist on Friday, April 11 for a surgery on Tuesday, April 15. Not a lot of room for testing, etc. Dr. Brandt, who said he was "out yesterday" looked at me to say that my EKG suggested that I had experienced a heart attack. I am aware that heart attacks in women often go un-detected. He suggested that I have a nuclear stress test that would give him an accurate review of how my heart is functioning. My surgery date was pushed back to the 23rd. I had the stress test on April 14, also my baby brother's 54th birthday. A few days later, I learned that "everything was normal", and on Friday, April. 18, I was pronounced cleared and confirmed for April 23 - 81 days after the first symptoms appeared.

I am not good with uncertainty. I like to know how things are going to end. I often read the last chapter of a book before I get to the end. This process just made me nuts! I don't like waiting. I don't like not knowing what is going on behind the scenes. I have been there before.

That part is all good. Since I have been talking about this, I have heard many hard stories about people waiting for long periods of time to reschedule surgery. The surgery is going to be at 7:30 a.m. I have to be there at 5 a.m. Unfortunately, the surgery is at ElCamino Hospital in Mountain View. That means I have to leave home at about 3:45. The absolutely heroic Chris Miroyan will be driving me over on the morning of the surgery. I will most likely stay up all night. Dr. Chen will do the surgery using the DaVinci machine, and barring any trouble they will send me home the next morning. Mrs. Beebe, known as Jean Beebe by most people, will be bringing me home. That blows my mind.

Mrs. and Mrs. SoHapi, also known as Daniella Woolf and Kim Tyler, will be coordinating the "help from friends for the next few weeks" detail. I am guessing that I will mostly be sleeping for the first few days and then I will begin to figure out how my life is going to unfold while I heal and move on to the next chapter.

I just don't know how I am going to feel, but my normal m.o. is to avoid the opioids and rely on the NSAIDs. We will see. I won't be driving for a while or lifting anything over 15 pounds. That leaves enough room for cooking 12 pounds of medium and shipping it in 10-pound boxes! I've been working on paintings that weigh more than 15 lbs. I will need to make some adjustments.

To everyone out there from blood family, to extended family, to friend, to neighbors, studio neighbors and Tannery neighbors I hardly know, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your kindnesses and helps.

I will try to write some more after the surgery, but I will make a post on the mighty FaceBook when it is all over.

having a choice, finding a surgeon

When it came right down to it, I realized that I had a choice about who my surgeon would be. Salvay gave me three names. At first I went for the woman, whom he described as a "non-nonsense Lesbian." But after dealing with her office, and feeling somewhat abused by her process, I said no to Dr. O. There is something I don't like about feeling like a Chevy on an assembly line. Instead, I made an appointment with Dr. Dwight Ming-Teh Chen. I did some research and liked what I found. My dear friend Anita drove me over to his office in Los Gatos. We had not seen each other in a long time so we had a lot of catch-up chat on the ride. I was relaxed by the time we got there. The women in the office were very nice, offering kindness in the form of coffee and other things. After the Chevy Plant approach, it was nice to wind up at such a cozy office.

Dr. Chen: smart, confident and kind. It was such a great combination as he described the procedure, the pre-op and the post op processes.

He explained my situation. After the local lab looked at the tissue captured by Dr. Salvay during the D+C, he sent it to Stanford where it was examined by someone he described as a "world famous" pathologist. I am guessing that he got it right. Stage One, Grade One Cervical Cancer. I believe he called it "hardly developed" and "well contained." Like Dr. Salvay, he said the hysterectomy should be the end of it. But Dr. Chen is, perhaps, a better "promise keeper" than Salvay and declared that he would let me know about that after he saw what was in there.

They gave me some papers. I signed them. The surgery was originally scheduled for April 16, but they moved it up to April 15.

On Surgery Day, I show up two hours before the surgery. They do all the wiring stuff and get me ready, and then it is show time. The process is laparoscopic, using the rockstar machine of the moment known as DaVinci. A good omen for an artist. I spend the night at the hospital and barring complications, they send me home the next day.

One of the great lessons I have been learning is that I am a consumer of medical services. I get to choose. I get to feel safe and confident about this.

What Happened?

When a uterus is sick, she starts to bleed. This is why the survival rates are so high.

I cannot begin to tell you about the amazing notes and phone calls that I have received over the last two days, not to mention the time before that that.

This part of my journey started some time around Feb. 1, when I started bleeding – a good ten years after menopause. My doctor sent me to Dr. Howard Salvay, a long time Santa Cruz ob/gyn. After a trans-vaginal ultrasound (we all know what those are these days) he determined that there was a mass in my uterus, but it did not appear that there were any fibroids. He said he wanted to do a D+C sometime the next week, and that wound up being March 14, five weeks later. Dr. Salvay said that things looked good and that I stood a good chance of dying with my uterus intact. I was happy about that. I realized that something was up because the biopsy results did not come back as scheduled. The tissues had been sent to Stanford for grading and staging of the tissue that had already been determined to be endometrial carcinoma. The call came Friday morning. It was the bad news/good news talk. I had cancer, but it was caught so early that having a hysterectomy should take care of it.

While I was expecting something like that, I am pretty overwhelmed. There were so many people who knew I was waiting for the results of the D+C, I let as many people as possible know what was happening. I made calls to family, sent notes to the east coast people, and then to all of the locals. Wow, did you guys show up in amazing ways.

My friend Chris Miroyan often jokes that my friends fight each other for the right to help me out. Today, I totally get it that this is true. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Quickly, Ann Ostermann took me off the docket for doing Open Studios Application Assistance workshops. Anita called from Hawaii. Kim sent an amazing note telling me of her own experience with Dr. Salvay and suggested that I set up a web site that will help to organize helpers and rides and keep people updated. Susanna, my dear friend and studio neighbor, who had been listening to me complain about the slowness of the process, remained steadfast. My friend Janice, a brave survivor of both breast and uterine cancer, turned me on to the Hyster Sisters. Roberta, who is not a hugger, gave me a hug. Ronna, my longest Santa Cruz friend, came back to my studio every day to check on me. Mrs. Beebe wrote, "Old Movies, Sleep and Work." (she was right, except for the sleep part.) You all sent lovely notes and called. I found I was able to work, but I was walking in fog, just like Kim said. Sleep, not so much. Old movies.... there is nothing like Netflix and Morning Joe at 3 in the morning. To quote my friend Jane Harlow, "I have the best friends."

Some of you know that I have been moving toward having weight loss surgery. That process, which is, perhaps, what led to the early detection of this cancer, will be on basic hold until the cancer is resolved.

Sarah says, “all you need is love.” More and more I believe this to be true. Please believe me when I say that I know that the healing has begun.

Next: It is sinking in.