I kept vigil for five days in Carrie’s hospital room, sleeping in the vinyl recliner. And finally—she sat up and ate some Jell-O. The antibiotics were working, the whole thing the result of a raging asymptomatic UTI.
Now it was John’s turn.
82
Déjà Vu
CHRISTMAS 2013. I decided I would try to make a fancy meal—a rare occurrence. I bought a standing rib roast from the hot neighborhood butcher, Evan. I also whipped up some creamed spinach （my mom’s recipe, which meant squeezing the water out of frozen cooked spinach and adding a can of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup）。 A salad of Bibb lettuce, sliced pears, and Gorgonzola, even Yorkshire pudding! By the time we sat, I was exhausted.
After dinner, John said, “I need to lie down.”
Wait a second—I made the entire meal and you aren’t even going to help with the dishes? I was so annoyed.
At the Sundance Film Festival, he spent most of the time sleeping. In early February, at a baby shower back in New York, he couldn’t manage appetizers or a Bloody Mary.
“You look really thin,” one of John’s golf buddies remarked. When I seemed surprised, he added, “It’s not something you notice when you’re with someone every day.”
Where had I heard that before? Managing a busy life and a demanding career, too distracted to see changes in the person you live with…
“Molner,” I said, “this is insane. Please go see Felice.”
Felice Schnoll-Sussman, MD, the director of the Monahan Center. Imagine what that was like, sending my sick fiancé to the facility named for my dead husband.
The minute John walked in, Felice knew he was seriously unwell. When she pushed on his abdomen, she couldn’t feel his internal organs. Had his regular doctor not even put a hand on his belly?
Felice went into her office. She thought she was going to throw up. Then she collected herself, returned to the exam room, and told John, “You need to go across the street and get a CT scan.”
Felice ordered a “wet read,” a fast peek at the results the minute they have them. She called John and asked him to come to her office. He assured her she could say whatever she had to say over the phone.
“We found a mass,” she said. What she didn’t tell him was that it was a tumor.
Call me right away.
Déjà vu. As I sat on the floor of my dressing room, trying to absorb this terrible news, I thought, Wasn’t I in a dressing room at work when I received terrible news about Jay? Are you kidding me, God?
John’s fear came pulsating through the phone and directly into my heart—I was having trouble breathing. I realized I’d have to start consulting with doctors, devising a plan, white-knuckling it as we waited for lab results and surgical outcomes. After Jay, after Emily, all I could think was I can’t do this again.
I’ll do this again.
THEY SCHEDULED JOHN for an upper endoscopy. Tom met me in the waiting area, along with our friend Dave Helfet. When John went in for the procedure, Dave whispered to me, “God, I hope it’s not liver cancer.”
I felt like he’d punched me in the gut and seriously considered returning the favor.
When John came to, we met him in the recovery area. His eyes were damp. I touched his cheek.
“It’s going to be okay,” I whispered, having no idea if that was true.
All I knew was that John had a tumor on his liver the size of a coconut. Jay’s mass was the size of an orange; Jeff Zucker’s, a plum. In my early thirties I had a fibroid tumor they compared to a lemon. I was so sick of the fruit salad of tumors.
John’s small intestine was also inflamed and appeared ulcerated. And he had horrible esophagitis. （“His esophagus looked like raw meat from vomiting so much,” Felice told me later.）
In other words, John was a mess. And he was in trouble.
The tumor had to be removed, pronto. Since Dave was a trauma surgeon, he knew just the person for the job.
We went for a consultation with Peter Allen at Sloan Kettering. Not When my baby smiles at me I go to Rio Peter Allen but a brilliant surgeon who’d done a yearlong tour of duty sewing up wounded soldiers in Iraq.
Once inside the nondescript building on York Avenue, we waited to go up to Dr. Allen’s office on the third floor. As people piled into the very slow-moving elevator, John whispered, “Please keep your head down and don’t do your Katie Couric thing.”
And of course, that’s the second someone did a double take and said, “Hey, aren’t you Katie Couric?”