Dear WBW Friends,
Well, here we are again, back on the WBW hamster wheel. Buckle your seatbelts, I’m a little out of practice. And this WBW is such a monster I have overdrawn my account and have to split it in two.
This note was supposed to go out last Sunday, but I got . . . distracted. Or rather, I let myself get distracted. I hadn’t grocery shopped for 16 days, which was getting to be a point of honor, but serendipitously decided at 6:40 AM to head out and stock up for the next 10 days. I threw on some clothes, grabbed a mask and trundled down to the car to head to ShopRite in Tuckahoe for Senior Hour, which is the new Happy Hour these days. This was my third excursion to Westchester since climbing on the quarantine bandwagon. The Supermarket Sweep didn’t take all that long but by the time I got up there and back and then got my bounty (yes, including a Bounty six pack) up to the apartment and put everything away, it was close to nine – and I hadn’t had my coffee yet.
At ten there was a Zoom call with the Brookdale team to discuss the day before’s disclosure that a resident in ET’s Memory Care dormitory had tested positive on May 1. This was their third resident that fell ill, one each in Memory Care, Assisted Living and Independent Living. While this was inevitable, it was a kick in the gut for me and I wanted to hear what the other families had to say. There were 52 people logged in when the Zoom started, including at least three Lowengards. I had already fired an email off to the troika in charge (executive director, head of nursing and program director of the memory care unit) that was immediately – I mean seconds after hitting the send button – responded to. ET tested negative on Tuesday. Which is good for now. It’s at once comforting that she’s being well cared for in a highly vigilant environment but unnerving at the same time.
My brother Jeremiah was on the call and we texted throughout it like kids passing notes in algebra. The administration reported that an industrial antimicrobial super-scrubbing and sanitizing company would deep clean the building on Monday, in Hazmat suits, and that loud music would be played to drown out the sound of the machinery. Jeremiah suggested Led Zeppelin, but I thought that was too Guantanamo. We went back and forth a bit but it’s hard to banter and be snarky when something so sinister and dire is unfolding. Especially when that something involves your beautiful, brilliant, gracious, progressive, fair-minded, accomplished, PBK-BA-MA and ABD holding first-female-senior-VP of a major Connecticut bank, German-French-and-a bit-of-Italian fluent (and let’s not forget Latin and Greek!) 91-year-old mother who is in the throes of a slow fade. The irony that we may pull her out of the very place we spent so long getting her settled into, for her own safety, is not lost on us.
So that ate up another 45 minutes.
After frittering away another half hour, I set up to watch the Cuomo presser, which has become as much a part of my daily life as brushing my teeth. It’s a game to figure out what time it will take place; it’s not reliably posted on the Governor’s website and has variously and sometimes spontaneously started at 10:30 AM, 10:45 AM, 11:30 AM, noon and 12:30 PM over the last few weeks. Once I found out that Sunday’s show would broadcast at noon, I had just enough time to clean the toilets, which involved no more than raising the seats, figuring out how to open the damn childproof cap on the Clorox clinging-gel-bleach-bowl cleaner and squirting it under the rim. Then I rushed back to find my way out of Netflix and into CNN, which is a rather twisted path (two hits of the EXIT button on the Samsung remote; one hit on EXIT button on the Fios remote, press 6-0-0 and say two Shehecheyanu’s in French and hope for the best) to watch the recitation of statistics and a few lamentations and the daily Cuomo homily. It was a good day; only 9700 hospitalized! 790 new cases! 280 deaths!
I next repaired to the kitchen to prepare a flan. There was milk on the verge of spoiling in the fridge and there’s nothing worse – well, there’s little worse – than breaking five eggs, heating milk you assume is still good, and then having the whole thing curdle into a horrid, stringy mess when you go to temper the eggs. So, I got that going and into the oven, without burning myself on the caramel for once. Making flan is an ongoing Covid-19 project of which Elise and Aaron are the beneficiaries. Any day now I expect them to text, “Enough with the flan!”
Next, I caught up on email, to the mellifluous muzak of dialog from Law & Order. This morning’s concert was sponsored by WETV. I did discover that my “free” (for a month) Sundance Now subscription offers Law & Order UK which is the only L&O permutation I allow myself, but these airings require sitting and watching so I am reserving them for downtimes. The UK version recycles the US scripts translated and anglicized; I generally recognize the crime but not much more after that. Closed captions are often necessary.
At two it was back to the kitchen where I started putting together a Nigella Lawson flourless chocolate cake. I took a pause while the melted chocolate cooled to put together a lunch salad, hoping it might deter me from licking the bowl. Another seven eggs were broken for this endeavor; I threw the eggshells in a bowl (and the extra whites in the fridge for future use), making a mental note to check Etsy and other cutesy websites to see if there was something useful I might do with them.
This, like many aspects of this whole coronamess has me feeling like a frontier woman from Little House on the Prairie here in my center-of-the-pandemic-universe apartment. If you had told me four months ago I’d be making my own cut flower food I would have fallen off my chair laughing. And the same if you had told me then that I’d fall head over heels for a pudgy balding Israeli counter-terrorism operative 17 years my junior, but that’s happened too.
At three I settled in again in front of my Zoom stack. What’s a Zoom Stack? It’s the tower I built to elevate my Zoomer so the camera is aimed at the top of my head. This vanity tip came from Tom Ford, via Maureen Dowd, embedded in the 14th paragraph in her profile of Larry David. My vintage Chromebook is perched atop two Food 52 cookbooks, The Macmillan Visual Dictionary and An Incomplete Education, two reference books critical to my writing back in the pre-Internet era. Then there’s a boxed set of The Magic Flute cassettes and a raggedy copy of Janssen’s History of Art. I logged into a call with Bill Bedcarre in LA and Cathy Russo in Boca Raton, two longtime b-school buddies. We got caught up on whereabouts and kids, work and essential don’t-pass-this-on gossip. The call died on us as I have yet to buy Zoom; 45 minutes is my allowance. We weren’t quite done so we all piled on Bill’s free Disney-sponsored line for another 15 minutes. Then, back to the kitchen.
Sunday is a Meals on Wheels Day for Elise and Aaron. I prepare and deliver a meal in a socially distant manner thusly. I pack the repast for them into a Trader Joe’s shopping bag and place it in the trunk of my car. When I leave my apartment I text them I’m on my way. When I arrive, the code word is “HERE.” One or the other runs out of their building, lifts the gate, grabs the bag, slams the gate and runs back into the building yelling “Love you!”
On the menu for Sunday was curried chicken, which also would be shared with my neighbors upstairs, Jamie and Robert Black. I had already researched recipes, and had my mother’s Ladies Home Journal Cookbook version in my head as a backup. ET made two seriously spicy dishes back in the day when we were kids: curried chicken and a Barbados chicken sauté heavily seasoned with cinnamon and cloves. The former she famously once served to a young couple new to the Loomis faculty she’d invited to dine with the family. They’d previously been posted with the Peace Corps in Indonesia. We gobbled down the curry; they pushed it around their plates; it was too hot. Jeremiah ate a mustard sandwich.
The recipe I picked was Meera Sodha’s, and I read each of the 118 comments tagged “most helpful,” taking notes about the hints, variations and improvements I intended to incorporate. I was particularly enthused because Sodha’s recipe called for garam masala, not curry powder which I only recently learned was a British invention tailored for the British palate. I had bought a tin of garam masala several months ago (note: not years) that I could now use for this recipe.
Except, I couldn’t find it anywhere. Not on any of my spice racks, not in the box of duplicate spices I took out of Cottage 40 for Elise that’s been sitting in a shoebox on a shelf in “her” bedroom, not in the uppermost cabinet high above where I keep my spices. I could SEE that tin on the shelf and it just wasn’t there. After an hour of searching, giving up, doing something else, deciding I’ll search again, I stopped looking and read up on how to create garam masala myself and forged on.
The curry progressing, and I turned my attention to finishing the cake. The plan had been to make Persian steamed rice but I was running out of time. Plain old boiled basmati would have to suffice. I also jazzed up two packages of store-bought naan, a lame substitute for making it fresh but I’ve only recently started working with yeast and I didn’t want to push my luck. By seven I was packing up the bags to deliver upstairs and then to 100th Street and Lex, On returning, I scraped the final portion of curry onto a plate and added a dollop of chutney and poured myself a glass of Great Goose over a gigantic piece of ice with a slice of lime. I needed that.
The night was young yet. I watched episodes 7 and 8 of Season 2 of Fauda, my heart in my throat and my hand held throughout it (via text) by my friend and Fauda coach Carolyn Greene, who had previewed and survived these episodes, by her own admission, by the skin of her teeth. She strongly recommended alcohol and drugs before clicking the play arrow on the remote. I had the alcohol and in lieu of drugs I chased the two episodes with 26 minutes of Schitt’s Creek, which continues to reliably pull me out of v-tach. After that, I was then feeling strong and just sober enough to tackle the kitchen, which was total fauda – Arabic for “chaos.”
I left the casserole dish soaking and crawled into bed just after midnight.
Another day, another dollar.
A day consumed by confinement, cooking, cleaning, Covid-19, Cuomo, chaos and @covidclassics, the Instagram account that, no contest, takes the prize for ingenuity and best use of a college survey course in Art History.
And no WBW. So here I am. Way past deadline and unapologetic as ever.
MBL’s 19-Rule Covid-19 Quarantine Game Book
1. Stay in the apartment except for the exceptions below. Let no one in the apartment, no exceptions. When leaving the apartment, wear a mask and use the stairs. On returning to the apartment, remove mask and wash hands while singing New York State of Mind twice.
2. It’s OK to lay in bed for 40-60 seconds upon awakening inventorying to note presence of any one (1) symptom of Covid-19 (headache, dry cough, fatigue, feverishness, chilblains). Then get up, smell the coffee and move on.
3. If feeling mopey, read or reread The Diary of Anne Frank, Don Quixote, Soul on Ice, The Pilgrim’s Progress or anything by O.Henry.
4. No composting for the duration. The world will survive (maybe).
5. Grocery shopping is permitted only once every 10 days. Stock up like there’s no tomorrow. Embrace Senior Hours. Yes, seniors are so annoying but at least there are no germy kids underfoot while you run down the aisles throwing things in the cart.
6. Graciously accept offers from neighbors who volunteer to pick up a thing or two when they’re out shopping. Thank you, neighbors! I’ll be needing 10 pounds of flour and five pounds of sugar real soon.
7. At all times, there should be no fewer than five (5) white and five (5) milk chocolate Kit Kats and two (2) bottles of Sauvignon Blanc in the fridge. Ask bravest neighbors to stop into the creepy bodega on Lenox and 110th for the Kit Kats where they are $1/piece. When reordering wine, K&D will pick out and deliver the best money can buy for under $9.00/bottle.
8. Masks, always, everywhere. Since they’re basically useless, reuse (turn inside out, upside down, etc..) but discard after drooling in them. Research and experiment with internet-inspired hacks like lining with (fresh) coffee filters or ultra-thin sanitary napkins. (Note, tampons won’t work here.) Eschew cloth masks especially those made from underwear.
9. Check in weekly on dear ones on the front lines: Lupe (working at Mary Manning Walsh, 37 resident deaths as of May 3), Suki (at Riker’s, 10 staff members dead as of a week ago) and all friends stuck with small children who have at any time exhibited a homicidal bent.
10. No need to get dressed ever but change the bedsheets weekly and do wear make up for Zoom.
11. Ordering large quantities of Zoom-friendly makeup online is acceptable, stockpiling deeply discounted ski equipment is not.
12. The Subaru is a “Safe Place.” Use it to deliver Meals on Wheels to Elise and Aaron, or to get to and from ShopRite or to take Sunday drives on Tuesday evenings past apartments of friends who deserted them (and you) in March. Chin up! I wouldn’t have been able to socialize with them anyway.
13. Visit Central Park but ONLY in the early AM and preferably running at least at a walking pace. No stopping for nothing. Beware Covid Alley – the row of benches lining the path along the north side of the Meer. Just don’t breathe as you pass through.
14. One (1) dark hour per week is permitted. Make it productive, dammit. Put stickers on jewelry and on art ID’ing who it should get it on my demise; repack hospital go-bag; work on obituary or call musically inclined brothers to ask them to commit to learning Paul Simon songs for an unspecified later use. After an hour, time’s up for the week.
15. Tulips, always in the house. My recipe for homemade cut-flower food: 1 quart fresh water, 1 teaspoon each of bleach and white vinegar (or lemon juice), 1 tablespoon sugar. Try it, it works!
16. Limit “business” calls requiring long waits and multiple transfers to reach the “right person” to two/day (i.e., to Citibank, Charles Schwab, Social Security, Medicare, Empower Retirement, CVS, Duane Reade, Sanofi) whether for my benefit or ET’s. That’s it. If the first call exceeds two hours including hold time, close up shop and return tomorrow.
17. It’s OK to get up at 3:30 AM, 4:30 AM or 5:30 AM if sleep ain’t happening, and do something less frustrating than try to fall asleep, then return to bed and catch another two or three hours of zzzzzzzzz’s.
18. Stick to an allowance of two long, leisurely phone conversations with old, new, close by or far-flung friends per day. Cut the complaining to a minimum, and try to use this as an opportunity to pare down otherwise long-winded stories. Practice makes perfect.
19. Reserved for future use.
Canceritis
For the benefit of those who read the WBW to get updates on my health, let me address this here and now and then you can leave the room and skip the rest of the slog.
To review ancient history, at the end of January I was given a get-out-of-jail-free card following a clean PET scan, the result of my hard labor of nine months of chemo and five rounds of Chernobyl-level radiation.
The PET trumped a previous scan in December that had alarmingly (to me) shown the radiation target had actually increased in size. Following the PET, I was directed to go forth and live the good life (note: NOT in The Good Place), at least for the next three months, like a normal person, coming and going as I wished, no treatment plan, no maintenance meds, no need to fear even fear itself. I was able to focus my attention on traveling, closing on the sale of 727, moving ET into a new chapter of her assisted living adventure and complain about the annoying itching I was experiencing, all of which I did – travel, close, move, complain and scratch. I was given an appointment for three months hence, April 28, 2020, a lifetime away, with a CT scan scheduled for the week before. I had been told, though was not guaranteed, that I might get a good run, two or three years even, before recurring. That sounded great. Where do I sign up?
Then the sky fell in the first week in March. I locked myself up and was sure the late April appointment would be postponed out into the clear blue yonder. But it wasn’t. The clinic called, informing me I’d be meeting the doc via teledoctoring. Alas, there was no way to get the blood test and scan through Zoom (though I’m sure they’re working on it), so I was told to show up for these appointments, unless I was too nervous to go to the outpatient facility to get the tests. Was I?
Hell no. Though in truth I was incented to make the trip to 66th Street for two reasons, neither having to do with the scan. One, my port hadn’t been flushed since the end of January. It’s supposed to get cleared out every four weeks. Sadly, this is not something I can take care of myself. Is it TMI to tell you this procedure involves punching a long needle into the center of the port, inserting saline, withdrawing a vial of cloudy blood that is then thrown out (I always object to this, but this is the way it’s done and no, I can’t keep the blood for future use), pumping in more saline and anticoagulants, pulling the needle out and applying a band aid.? Yes, it probably is. There’s a lot of handwashing and cleaning of the area involved as well. Thusly I am cleared from the ugly possibility of having a clot clog it up or other yucky occlusion or infection, outcomes I don’t care to deal with.
The other reason I was willing to break out of captivity was I was down to my last half-dozen paper surgical masks that I had stockpiled back in 2017 while in frontline treatment. I was handed fistfuls, packed in ziplocked HAZARD bags, every time I left the hospital, which was early and often. So, I had a goodly supply when the shit hit the fan in March but it was rapidly diminishing. And I needed to keep a few on reserve for when I cleaned Speedy’s tank, a monthly task arguably more dangerous than walking into the Mount Sinai ER and asking to use the bathroom. You might think I was prescient for saving these masks, but then what would you say if I told you I tossed an entire box of N95’s in February I’d bought to protect my brother and myself when we were cleaning out the moldy basement at 727.
By the third week of April mask purchasing had become a vexing proposition. Amazon offered delivery in July. The bodegas in the neighborhood (according to reliable sources) were selling packets of 10 at $1.99 EACH. I was theorizing that a trip to the hospital might give me opportunity to replenish my inventory. I intended to wear a jacket with deep pockets and bring a large tote bag.
So there I was that Thursday morning (the appointment had to be rescheduled because someone had written it down in their plan book for Wednesday instead of Tuesday), as excited as a kid going off to sleepaway camp for the first time, dressed for success, bursting out of my little cozy Covid cave on my first big expedition into the Big Bad Virally Loaded Up World since March 18th. I drove, leaving a tad on the late side, turning at 106th Street onto perennially clogged Second Avenue at eightish. And this is what I saw:
You see that light? After it turned green, I drove straight to 66th Street without hitting a single red light. Typically, there are only three ways to get south on Second Avenue on a weekday rush hour, and none of them are in an automobile (instead, try the Q, the M15 bus or Citibike).
I parked in the Sloan Kettering garage and skipped back to Second Avenue to my appointment where I was screened at the door, given a crisp new mask and sent on to get my bloods drawn, port cleaned, and eventually proceeded to an empty waiting room in Radiology.
Sadly, I failed to find an opener for a compelling conversation about masks either at the blood draw or any of the three reception desks or while on my back in the scanner, rolling in and out. I rifled (ok, gingerly opened) the drawers in the exam rooms, nothing. All the masks are under lock and key. Epic fail for this mission.
However, nothing could squelch my glee when I picked up my car ($18 for three hours, such a deal!), then swung by Starbucks on First Avenue -- so desolate and bereft of traffic I half expected to see tumbleweed rolling by -- where a barista associate brought my online order to my car window. This was followed by the most thrillingly dangerous thing I’d done all day: filled up my gas tank at $1.99 /gallon. I wasn’t planning to go anywhere, but if I had to, I could make Richmond without stopping.
By the time I got home the blood results had come in, whaaaaaaaa? Big buzzkill. The cancer blood marker, which for three years has not once breached the no-fly zone even when I was actually really honestly recurring, had quintupled from the last draw in January. While the number was not stratospheric, it does portend trouble in River City. I checked the “other reasons” CA 125 can be elevated: pregnancy (noooooo), endometriosis (nope), uterine fibroids (naw), menstruation (nyet), cirrhosis of the liver (unlikely).
With nothing to do but wait for the scan report to come in, I put my hospital-issued mask to good use: I fixed the turtle tank filter which had been rattling for days. One of Speedy’s scutes had gotten stuck in the tubing, causing an unpleasant racket I was afraid might be keeping him up at night. After all, he is a red-eared slider, so he obviously has ears. Interacting with reptiles is a pleasant distraction.
The next morning, I logged into my MSK account, looking for the report but it still wasn’t posted. I checked for it throughout the day to no avail. Then, the doctor called at 7:30 PM, not a good sign on a Friday night. He asked if I’d seen the reports. I told him only the bloods. He had the scan, and yes, it was showing progression. But not so much he felt it would warrant a full-on chemo attack, particularly when this would put me out and about playing dodgeball with coronavirus and whatever else is floating around out there that requires the services of one’s white blood cells.
In a moment of magical thinking I mentioned the phenomenon of the flare up of the itching I’d been experiencing since November, which had been particularly gruesome the first two and a half weeks of April. This had been diagnosed as eczema and I was coping poorly with it. You know about the heartbreak of psoriasis? Moderate-to-severe eczema is pretty heartbreaking too. Large patches of scaly skin on my legs, arms and back were morphing into angry red lesions, and it got so that wearing anything tight — and all my clothes are tight — was painful. About a week and a half into April I noticed that clear fluid leaking out of my one of my gross and scaly and reddish ankles. After finding it merely curious for 24 hours, I realized this was not an opportune time to rock an infection, so under instructions issued by Dr. Ann Kenney I began a routine of soaking it in a wastebasket (no bucket in the house) of Epsom salts twice daily, and then dressing it with antibiotic cream and gauze, and hoping like hell it would heal up. I sent Ann daily Ankle Porn shots. No, dousing it with Lysol and putting it under a light bulb did not occur to me.
Yes, Dr. Sabbatini said, inflammation could be reflected in my CA 125 and might even be what was showing on the CT, though that excuse had already been used the last time and was wearing thin. However he was intrigued by the timing — and and how the day after I was “seen” on a video call with the derm it had started clearing up on its own — the scaly patches subsided, the itching diminished to a manageable level and the angry red leaking ankle bone grew baby-like new skin.
The discussion continued the following Tuesday. In the meantime I’d had time to round up a wide range of opinions from my Medical Cabinet: Dr. Einstein, my triple threat Hartford-based oncologist/ gynecologist/surgeon with the gastro husband, Dr. Morgenstern, the gastro with the derm wife (both of these twofers for bonus medical info), Dr. X, my inside operative at MSK, Dr. Kenney, who’s watching my back (and helping me keep from scratching my ankles), Dr. Khattri, the Sinai derm treating my eczema, and of course Dr. Internet. Dr. Sabbatini was keen on trying an aromatase inhibitor – I know, that sounds like something that will block my olfactory abilities, but what it inhibits is hormones. It’s typically prescribed for breast cancer but sometimes works for ovarian as a “maintenance” gambit.
Behind Door #2 was W&W – Wait and Watch, not really my cup of tea. I’m more of a let’s-throw-the-spaghetti-on-the-wall- and-do-it-now gal. Dr. Sabbatini put in the prescription for the anti-hormone drug and orders for another round of tests in a month. He also said he was going to add an order to check for Covid-19 antibodies at this next blood test. It’s possible – a long shot for sure – that the eczema flare in April was due to an asymptomatic case of coronavirus, the two hallmarks of which are blood clots and inflammation. If my WBW distribution list included Jake Barnes, I am sure on reading this he would email back, “Isn’t it pretty to think so.”
So, on the bright side, I got the Starbucks and some cheap gas. And I’m feeling just fine. I’ve been on the Exemestane (which I can barely pronounce and sounds like something to add to your gas tank to boost performance) a week now with no discernible side effects. Will it ruin my tennis game? Time will tell. That’s the only contraindication I refuse to tolerate.
THIS CONCLUDES PART 1.
PLEASE CONTINUE WITH THE STORY IN PART 2. BUT ONLY IF YOU WANT TO.
WHERE IS PART TWO?