Back In July...

Back in July, I got news from an old friend of mine about another old friend of mine. I was on the floor in my living room, playing with my baby girl, Cosette (also known as Coco), who was only about three months old at the time and already just insanely cute and funny and alert. A genius, I might say, but then, I’m her mom and when she poos, I think it’s genius. My point is I was playing with her when my dear friend Jana said, “Did you hear about Karen Stapleton?” I said, “No, how is she?” I hadn’t heard anything about her in a long time and though Karen and I had a blast doing plays together in Portland in the late nineties, when I was (gasp) an actor, I hadn’t kept in touch with her for some time. I have this permanent image of her in my head, as Lydia Languish in Sheridan’s restoration comedy, “The Rivals.” She was perfectly pouty, flouncing around the stage in what had to be thirty pounds of white lace. And she had this mane of red hair that a lesser woman than I might kill for (I thought about it, just never did it) and she is young and insanely talented and gorgeous. That’s my memory of her anyway, so imagine my surprise when Jana told me that Karen – who changed her name some time ago to Kalena (which is Hawaiian for Karen) had been diagnosed with Stage Four Breast Cancer.

Full stop.

That’s what happened in my mind and in my heart.

Full stop.

Kalena is my age or thereabouts and I turned 36 yesterday (October 24th.) Kalena has a three year old daughter. And she has cancer that started in her breast and is now in her lungs and spine and liver and femurs. As I mentioned above, I have a daughter too. She has transformed my world. She has changed the color of my every day. She is my heart and my breath and my life. And the news about Kalena? It has rocked me to my soul. It has changed me, fundamentally. Before that day in July, I aspired to many things. And since that day, my most passionate and pressing aspiration, the only one that matters anymore, is that I want to live long enough to see my daughter grow up. Kalena is a mom. Her daughter is gorgeous, just like her. And I haven’t asked, but I have no doubt that when she received her diagnosis, Zaiden was her very first thought.

Here’s why else this story is so devastating and scary and earth shattering. Kalena did everything right. She found a lump. She went to her doctor. She had an ultrasound and it said benign. Unconvinced, she then went to a breast specialist, who told her that the lump was likely milk related (as she was still breast-feeding Zaiden). She saw that specialist THREE MORE TIMES over the course of the next year. And somehow, it was seventeen months after Kalena found the lump that her cancer was finally diagnosed.

If you’re reading this, you probably already know that I write for “Grey’s Anatomy.” I write stories every week in which doctors are heroes. In which medicine saves lives against every possible odd. In order to write those stories, we do a lot of research and read a lot of medical horror stories. It’s enough to make a relatively well-adjusted person something of a hypochondriac. There’s a lot of scary stuff out there. But this story has been scarier to me than just about anything I’ve ever heard or read. Maybe because I know the victim. Maybe because she did everything you’re supposed to do. Maybe because I have a daughter who I’m breastfeeding. Maybe because this problem – lumps being mistaken as milk-related and diagnosed way too late – is common enough that we already did a Grey’s episode about it last season. Maybe because I don’t want it to happen to me, to my sisters, to my family, to my friends. Maybe because I desperately want for it to not be happening to Kalena.

Kalena is in the fight of her life – the fight for her life. She stayed in the hospital for 25 days of chemo and she nearly died from it. They wanted her to stay another 45 days and all who loved her knew she would not survive that attack on her system. She had already lost thirty pounds and she couldn’t afford to lose much more. She had sores in her mouth and she was crippled with pain all over her body and she couldn’t enjoy her beautiful Zaiden anymore. And that was when she knew it was time to leave the hospital. She wrote on her website that the doctors had assured her that the chemo was not saving her life, it was simply prolonging it for a few months and she decided that if that were the case, this was no way to live. She decided to leave the hospital and try to prolong her life the natural way – with alternative medicines, with vitamins and herbs and energy and prayer. Since leaving the hospital about a month ago, her very aggressive disease has not progressed. She is willing it away, I swear to you. She is all positivity, all light, all love. And she is playing with her daughter again.

The Dream Foundation sent the family to Disneyland last week and I had a chance to see them all. I brought Zaiden a blue, petal filled tutu and she put it on and went tearing around the grass, less like a prima ballerina than like a racecar wearing a tutu. They are doing just fine, this beautiful family. They have all the love they could need for a lifetime. What they don’t have, is all the money they need. Alternative medicines and therapies are expensive and most of them are not covered by insurance. And Kalena and Rick are both actors – theater actors – which pretty much automatically says they didn’t have much savings. And here’s the thing, I can’t make Kalena’s cancer go away. I can’t see to it that she lives to see Zaiden graduate high school. But I can do something about this. I can try to help them with the money situation, so that whatever time Kalena does have left (and I hope I hope I hope that it’s many, many years) can be just a little less stressful, a little less scary, and she can have a little more time to play with her beautiful girl.

So here’s what I’m thinking – what if we all sent 10 dollars? Or 20. Or 50. Or 5. Or 1? If you are reading this, you are a friend of mine in which case you know that I have never made this kind of request in my life, or you are a friend of one of my friends, in which case I should probably tell you that I have never made a request like this in my life. But here’s the thing: we are so often divided – along party lines, along community lines, along age lines – just so many freakin’ lines. And here, I think, is a thing that can unite us. We are so often left feeling powerless – about Darfur, about Iraq, about terrorism and diseases and poverty and insurance companies that don’t cover the medicines people need and so many things that feel so big and so completely insurmountable. And here, I think, I hope, is a thing we can actually affect. The way it’ll work is that we’ll all send what we can. And then I will report back to you here on this blog and I will let you know how much we raised – and together, we can feel like we did something. Something pretty great. So, if you want to, and I really hope you do, you can send a check to:

Kalena and Rick von Schnier

13359 N. HWY 183 STE B-406 Number 232

Austin, TX 78750

And if you want to see Kalena’s website, hear her story in more detail, or just gaze at her loveliness, click here: http://www.kalena.org/ . There, you will also find a paypal account, where you can donate with a credit card, or you can click the button below.

I send you thanks and love. And I wish you good health.

Xoxo, Krista