Take Me Home From the Oscars by Christine Schwab

Author:Christine Schwab [Schwab, Christine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Biography & Autobiography, Los Angeles (Calif.), Biography, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯), Health & Fitness, Diseases, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Fashion Editors - California - Los Angeles, Television Journalists - California - Los Angeles, United States, Patients, Case Studies, Treatment, Women Journalists, Image Consultants - California - Los Angeles, Schwab; Christine - Health, Rheumatoid Arthritis - Patients - United States, Women Journalists - United States, Rheumatoid Arthritis - Treatment
ISBN: 9781616082642
Google: 4k6xcQAACAAJ
Amazon: 161608264X
Barnesnoble: 161608264X
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2011-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

11

Stable Until Ready

FEBRUARY 1993

My life, three years after my diagnosis, was now totally defined by my chronic rheumatoid arthritis. My secret was still safe even though my health was not. Over the last year I had been on Azulfidine, Imuran, Plaquenil, Epogen shots for anemia, and Cytoxan, gold Shots, and of course lots of Zantac to coat my stomach for the drug onslaught. After reading the information on Cytoxan, a drug used in cancer chemotherapy, I stopped reading. It was too depressing to learn all the side effects when I didn’t have a choice. Without medication I wouldn’t be able to walk. Still Dr. Kalunian kept holding out hope.

“There’s some really good drugs in testing programs, we just need to keep you stable until they’re ready,” he told me. Stable was something I couldn’t relate to. Up to now he would start me on a new combination of drugs and even if they helped my RA, it was only a matter of time before my lab work came back with issues. We had to constantly change medications because my system wouldn’t tolerate the side effects. Or my hair started falling out in tufts, or my hearing was affected. It was always something.

“Christine, I think you need to get your hearing checked. I’ve noticed that you don’t seem to hear a lot of what I say,”

Shelly said to me one morning as he called me to the phone and I didn’t respond. “It seems to be getting worse.”

I barely noticed. I was consumed with medications and doctors’ appointments. My work schedule now revolved around my time at UCLA. My social life revolved around my medical life. I felt like a revolving door running in circles out of control.

I also felt like a supersleuth, always padding the lies. If I slipped and let anyone know the state of my health my career could be in jeopardy. Television was a small world.

“Sorry, I can’t join you for lunch. I have a meeting with my literary agent,” I lied to my girlfriends.

“I hate to cancel at the last minute but Shelly and I have to go out of town,” I said to our couple friends so I could cancel dinner plans that my queasy, overmedicated stomach wouldn’t allow me to attend.

I had come up with other excuses at work. “Just going to pick up a few things,” I told my New York assistants as I rushed into a doctor’s office at Eighty-ninth and Park for the weekly gold Shots Dr. Kalunian had arranged for me to get when I was in New York. Travel didn’t matter, the continuity of the medicine was mandatory. I’d run into the doctor’s office, climb up on the exam table, and lay on my stomach as they pumped what was called gold into my tush. It might have been gold, but it was thick and it hurt as it was plunged in with a big needle, and no, I didn’t turn a golden bronze tan color, nor set the security alarms off at the airports.

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