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only a few hours seemed to be stretching into a few days.
    I felt scared, worried, misunderstood. I mean, even if the bruising and stool change weren’t significant, the bleeding and cramping signaled something wasn’t right, and at this point I wasn’t even connecting them to my intense mood swings. The perverse contrast between my own life and my character on The Nanny was beyond ironic. There I was fearing the worst about my health situation, while Fran Fine was healthy as a horse. I was conflicted about having a baby, while she was pregnant with twins. She’d found the man of her dreams, while my marriage was coming apart at the seams. As 9377 Cancer Schmancer 2/28/02 4:18 PM Page 30
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    topsy-turvy as it all was, I frankly relished the time I got to play Miss Fine, because her life was so much better than mine. She was funnier, happier, and less complicated. She became my refuge. It sounds sad because it was sad.
    I remember one taping when I felt so vulnerable and under attack by Peter, who was directing from the control booth while watching my image on all four camera feeds. He scrutinized my costume and seemed overly critical about how I looked in it. In front of everyone. He asked me to change three separate times, and he still wasn’t satisfied.
    It might not have bothered me at all if I wasn’t in such bad shape emotionally, but it sure bothered me then. I screamed to him through the camera, “You wouldn’t treat another star this way!” I felt attacked, as though Peter were wielding his power as a weapon. Elaine sat in the booth with him as my image yelled at him on four separate screens. Later she’d tell me that he leaned over and whispered, “She’s got to get on hormones.” I definitely needed something. Maybe I was just being hypersensi-tive. Who knows?
    Then my face started to break out, which really got me down.
    As an actress, I couldn’t help feeling self-conscious going before the cameras with a huge headlight on my chin. The makeup department would make special provisions to try and conceal it, but I always knew it was there. Spackle might have been better. I remember saying I was glad this acne hadn’t happened during my teens, because even as an adult with some perspective I was having trouble coping.
    They weren’t like regular pimples, either, but rather the kind that took forever to go away. And my breakouts began to occur with greater frequency until finally I was getting maybe two or three days of reprieve a month. The rest of the time I was frantically trying to arrest the situation. I’d go home and sit in front of my 9377 Cancer Schmancer 2/28/02 4:18 PM Page 31
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    vanity and take off my makeup, exposing the acne I’d made best efforts to hide. All alone at night, I’d stare at my reflection in quiet desperation and weep. I swear, I was beginning to feel like Camille.
    The strangest part of it all was how closely linked to my menstrual cycle my symptoms and emotional flare-ups were. Still, the blood tests that came back from the hematologist were all normal.
    No leukemia, diabetes, lupus. Hormone levels normal, platelets normal. Everything was fuckin’ normal but me!
    I was still in therapy and I remember describing what I thought was PMS and how hard it was when I felt like I was under its spell. One afternoon I was holding a writing session at my house when I noticed a favorite potted jade tree missing. Ramon had chopped it down and discarded it in the alley. I couldn’t believe it. “Why did you do that? It was one of my favorite plants!”
    I ranted. Ramon had gotten the idea from someone that I didn’t like it. He apologized and promised me it would grow back. So I walked over to the dining table where the writers were working and rejoined the session.
    But I just couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t get over this travesty and so I put down my pen, picked myself up, and marched back out to him, where I really went ballistic. Ramon