Larry Brody's Blog

by Larry Brody

Now that you’ve had time to digest my self-serving words (in the previous post) it’s time to turn to the only other human being I’ve ever loved more than myself. Ladies and gents, I give you, or rather have given you above, my wife of just a couple of weeks shorter than thirty-two years, Gwendolyn Lea Manns Brody.

Many of you already know our story by having read the Live! From Paradise! articles on various websites and newspaper pages. The way I’ve always seen our relationship is that unlike most other people I know, ours isn’t about sharing ups and downs but rather about sharing the ups and the higher ups.

Yep, wonder of wonders, it’s been that kind of world for us. Just a few months ago, however, that changed. Last January 14th, I awoke to the sound of a huge THUMP!!! I looked across the bed and saw Gwen lying face down – very face down – on the floor at her side of the bed.

One of the things I didn’t mention in my previous post is that the only recognizable effect of my cancer is that I have difficulty walking. I have to take all my movement very slowly and seriously. When I saw Gwen lying immobilized, I forgot everything but her and thrashed my way over the bed to see what was going on.

The good news was that I made it there and she was alive and making sounds that sounded almost like words.

The not so good news was that she couldn’t get on her feet until I managed to pull, push, and otherwise arrange her stance.

She tried to walk but couldn’t get her feet to move to the right place. Left was right and right was left. Nor could she talk. It took more than a little time to maneuver her back into bed, after which I called for an ambulance and got dressed while waiting for it to arrive.

The local ambulance teams are all male. More than that, they’re all very handsome males. We ended up with two ambulances and six EMTs, each one of them looking like a film star and with a particular list of questions about what happened. I couldn’t answer much of it because I’d been asleep when the actual misstep occurred, and neither could Gwen because she still couldn’t form words.

Within half an hour, all of us were at the local E.R. Within another half hour, we all heard the various test results. Gwen hadn’t had time to protect herself as she fell, so her face took the full brunt of the fall. The result: her brain was heavily concussed, and she had a subdural hematoma that took up twenty-five percent of her skull.

What does a subdural hematoma do? It doesn’t just sit there. Oh, no. It bleeds.

“I’m afraid your wife needs immediate surgery,” the E.R. doctor said. “Without it, she’ll die.”

All I could do stand by helplessly as Gwen was whisked off to the helicopter pad and flown to Seattle, where she was quickly admitted to our friendly out of the neighborhood trauma center, where the specialists took over.

It was a huge relief when more tests determined that surgery wasn’t needed after all because the brain bleed was getting smaller on its own. This was a very good sign, but still Gwen stayed in the trauma center for five days of observation and repeated tests. During that time, she began to regain the abilities to walk, see, hear, talk, even think, but at a terrifyingly low level.

When we took her home, Gwen was Gwen, but a sort of over-simplified version. Many memories were gone, and her eyesight, which was just a hair away from making her legally blind due to a stroke twenty-two years ago, had become much worse, as did all her other abilities.

In the four months since, Gwen and I have had at least one home health care pro at the house daily, and every day Gwen improves. On the surface, she looks and sounds, and usually behaves, in a way that seems about ninety percent of who she was. And, strangely, she has become more self-confident than ever before, because she is continuingly facing new challenges that force her to regard daily life in a whole new light.

Gwen’s new days are more than the same old, same old. They are opportunities that require her to approach everything in a creative way. I’ve been in love with this woman for her beauty and intelligence since we first met. Now I’m in awe of her bravery as well. Doing all I can to help her move onward and fully become Gwen the Beautiful Point Two is a true honor.

Although I have to admit that doing all the laundry and the dishes and helping her interpret what she can’t quite see sometimes leaves me in tears.

Time now for a QUICK NOTE OF THANKS to my next-door neighbor Paul Wynkoop, who helped me through the very rough first ten days after the fall. As we used to say back in the ‘Sixties, “Love you, man.”

But nowhere near as much as I love Gwen.

LYMI,

LB

by Larry Brody

I haven’t been a very active blogger or user of social media in general for a while now and am flattered by how many people have gotten in touch to ask why. It’s a question all of you deserve to have answered, and my brain seems clearer this morning than usual (probably because Princess Loquacious Laylapalooza – the black Lab formerly known as Layla – let Gwen the Beautiful and me sleep later than usual) so here goes.

About a year ago, I was officially diagnosed with Stage Four Prostate Cancer. This was after five years and two surgeries that were both declared “successful.” Unfortunately, stage four cancer of any kind means that whatever treatment has gone before was as far from successful as you can get. Stage four means terminal, kids.

In my case that means that my illness has spread from my prostate gland to throughout the interior of my body, with a special concentration in my spine and lymph glands.

Which means that for all practical purposes I’m now a dead man walking writing.

I’ve died before, 48 years ago, when I had a heart attack while bench pressing in my home gym. While being transported from there to the closest E.R., I went through the whole out-of-body-heading-toward-the-light thing and found the experience so rhapsodic that I was angry as hell when I was brought back to consciousness and life on a gurney and being stared at by a resident who kept saying, “Look at those pecs! What pecs!” until my family doctor got him the hell out of there.

I recovered so completely and remembered the warmth of near-death so, well, gratefully in its way, that I’ve never again feared dying and in fact found myself looking forward to it from time to time, as my way of living changed the way so many people’s lives changed, complete with a second heart attack thirty-five years later. So last year’s diagnosis would have been good news.

It wasn’t, of course. G the B and I have been joyfully married for over thirty years, and we weren’t about to let go of our marriage and my life without a fight. My way of looking at my current situation has become, “All right, my death is inevitable, but so is everybody’s. What can be done to keep me alive and comfortable until I go on to pastures that I no longer see as greener because – Gwen.

Bottom line: For the past year I’ve been taking a combination of two meds whose purpose is to keep my cancer from spreading any further. They are Zoladex, which I take by injection every three months, and Xtandi, which I take by mouth every day. Zoladex is no big deal, lifestyle wise, but Xtandi is a bitch. It’s a type of oral chemo that sells for somewhere between $17,000 and $18,000 per month, which isn’t exactly in the Brody Fam price range so we’ve had to cut a deal with its manufacturer.

(A very major deal, which luckily didn’t involve giving up any firstborn children, quite a relief because in far too many ways I’d already done that when I dedicated my life to my writing instead of my family and already am carrying that mistake across my shoulders.)

When I first began this treatment, my doctors said it could extend my life anywhere from six months to five years. It’s been one year since that conversation, and the two drugs have been doing their jobs. I’m still breathing, and I feel no cancer pain. The only ongoing problem I’ve had has been two side effects, loss of energy (which means I’m exhausted by three o’clock in the afternoon and have to lie down and rest – read “sleep” – until dinner) and hot flashes, which, manly man, that I am, I like to refer to as “night sweats.”

Oddly (according to my oncologist), I’ve pretty much got the night sweats under control. The secret has been to sleep with a rolled-up and absorbent towel around my shoulders and neck…and to scream and yell “Stop it, goddam it!” as soon as Gwen and/or I feel my skin starting to get clammy.

Believe it or not, the yelling thing works. Bang! Just like that.

Fun side effect: “Stop it, goddam it!” also works on Laylapaluza. Unfortunately, the result is that she immediately leaps off the bed where she’s been sleeping with us, giving me a whole ‘nuther thing to feel bad about.

MORE TO COME: Gwen’s recent accident and how it’s changing our lives. I’ve been able to face the reality of it and am hoping that means I’ll be able to face putting in on the page as well.

Love you mean it,

LB