Two Lucky

Week in review 

In a few weeks, I will be back in Singapore to put an exit plan together. Even with all the drama that’s going on with the melanoma, we are making the best of our time together in New York. Here’s an update:

1. This week, Rusty and I got my editor, who was visiting, acquainted with some sweet wheat and whiskey, then took her to a gay club, Duvet, by walking 30 blocks from midtown. Which proves the old adages true: That there are just no cabs when you need one, and that Times Square does look bigger and brighter when you’re kickin’ it with Mary-Jane.

2. We also watched off-Broadway musical Altar Boyz with Uncle Bernie, who later took a photo with the cast. Uncle Bernie is celebrating his 70th birthday in New York. It is so good to see him again.

3. Since our decision to re-locate back to New York, Rusty and I have looked at 12,374 apartments in the East Village and lower Manhattan. The hunt continues.

4. We also had some beautiful lunches at the expense of Uncle Ernie, for his 70th birthday. We went to Le Bernardin and db Bistro Moderne. Though both are highly regarded restaurants in New York, I thought both fell below expectations. db Bistro’s signature dish - the sirloin burger stuffed with braised spare ribs and foie gras - was disappointing. I should have ordered the Coq Au Vin instead. Next time I will defer to Uncle Bernie.

5. The last two days we wandered around the city shopping for furniture for our new home in New York. Rusty wants to get a nice leather couch, a 42-inch plasma TV and a mosaic-tiled coffee table. I am in charge of the bed and lights. It is a great, new feeling to be putting a home together with Rusty to call our own.

Between New York, Paris & Singapore

The murder trial in New Jersey has kept me busy. In the meantime, Rusty’s back in Seoul readying to leave. He has decided to re-locate back to the US for good. As for me, I will wrap up work here, then head back to Singapore. It will take me a few weeks to settle my things - work, family, friends - before I join him back in New York.

We had new scans done on Monday, and the results are in. The tumors in his lungs are stable, but the ones in his liver are growing. There used to be only two. In the latest report, it now says “multiple”.

It was a very difficult three-hour wait at Dr Pavlick’s office at NYU yesterday. By the second hour we had convinced ourselves that the cancer had spread everywhere. Even though the cancer is moving quickly, we comfort ourselves that it remains isolated in one organ.

Today we will meet with Dr Jedd Wolchok from Sloan-Kettering to discuss starting on a clinical trial. The drug is called Medarex, or MDX-010. Manufactured by Bristol-Meyers Squibb, it has shown some promise with melanoma patients and was granted orphan drug status to be fast-tracked through the FDA.

In the meantime, the fall winds in New York grow colder.

Soho shooting

So much stuff happens in New York that it’s hard to keep up. It’s part of what’s so seductive about the city: There’s always an infinite number of events and activities that go on. You are one cell of a multi-cultural mosaic that affords you the anonymity of being completely distinct, but unremarkable.

Last night, a film crew was shooting a movie outside our apartment in Soho. The flood lights set up made it seem like noon, although it was already past midnight when Rusty and I got home. Earlier in the day, we had walked through Washington Square Park, and there was a movie being filmed there, too. I overheard someone say it was a “Will Smith” movie.

I know walking through movie sets is hardly consequential in any way, but I can’t help but feel a greater sense of the present when life is being recorded.

I think it’s because any attempt to preserve our present only makes its impermanence more evident. Sometimes I wish we had better, bigger brains to hold our memories - every scent, smile and touch.

But I suppose there is something to be said for the delight and gratification in re-discovering an old memory, and for forgetting.

by Yen Feng

Seeing the light

Train stations, like airports, make plain momentary pockets of human emotion.

Wait long enough at one, and you get to see all types play out on this transitional, flattened stage. But standing among the moving crowd, I am responding to only one emotion. I am humbled by the constancy of love. In New York’s Grand Central Station, that emotion is further magnified by the diverse people that demonstrate it.

Take that Latino mother in the right corner, for example. When she sees her daughter come in from the gate, they hug and she clasps her head in her hands with jubilant tears. Their black curls are the same, but the mother’s hands are tougher, her eyes more grateful.

By the ticket booth, an Asian boy greets his father from a small distance. It is only their eyes that touch. But as they walk out the exit, I see the father put a tentative arm over the boy’s shoulder.

Every gesture I see is a gesture of love. Their waiting is a commitment, a promise to another. Even at the station docks, travelers who board and unboard must walk with full hearts.

Cancer nutrition

Readers of this blog will know that I am not a big fan of macrobiotic food. The views of two of our oncologists collaborate with what I’ve thought all along: An important and simple principle to fighting cancer is keeping your weight up.

More than a few people have lost the battle because their bodies - weakened by lack of nourishment - could not tolerate the punishing chemotherapy. But this is Rusty’s favorite restaurant in the city. The macrobiotic food Souen serves - no meat except white fish, steamed vegetables and grains - is fairly tasty, but I think Rusty’s dedication to this culinary philosophy speaks more to its symbolism of hope.

He knows of one person whose late-stage melanoma went into remission from a strict diet of macrobiotics. I, too, am hoping for a miracle, but I am afraid it may do more harm than good to his health.

It’s not the greatest news in the world when your oncologist starts to talk to you about “quality of life”. At the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, it was difficult to hear, for the first time, that we may not have much time left. Rusty has returned to Seoul to pack his things to move back to New York.

On my end, I’ve sent an email to my editor to let her know what’s been going on. She spoke to management and one option is for me to take no-pay leave indefinitely. I would stay here in New York with Rusty when he returns. This was not how I envisioned my return to the city.

We have a plan. New York University has a clinical trial that Rusty may be eligible for. It is a Phase II trial with Pfizer testing a drug that to date has had three complete responses (CR) among patients with wildly metastatic melanoma. It is a long shot, but it is a shot nonetheless. Rusty returns to New York on Oct 23 and he will take an MRI to see if the cancer has spread to his brain. If so, he will not be eligible for this trial.

A Snapshot

Fall in New York is sitting out on the fire escape with a glass of wine, cigarettes and friends.

There’s Rusty with his friends Melissa and Kevin. We’d just come back from a walk down Broadway. The sky is turning a shade of cool dusk. We talk about politics, housing prices and Tibetan mastiffs. Below us there are two women talking. The gallery they just walked out of is spectacular, one says. It is. Rusty and I poked in for a look this morning. One of the sculptures is a long piece of thick bark inlay with pearl and black stone, stretching almost 50m long.

New York is as I remembered - noisy, irreverent, overpriced, and I love it. It’s hard to put into words my sense of belonging to this crazy town. But getting out of the cab, stepping foot in front of my Soho apartment, I couldn’t help but think this: It feels good to be home.

It feels even better when I take Rusty’s hand as we walk to dinner. My head is on his shoulder and it smells just as I remembered, mingled in the cold as it was when we first met. We cry a little. In that moment, for now, the city is quiet.

I don’t have anything new to say about airports. It’s a curious feeling to be stationed here with so many different people, likewise present and transient. Each time I am here, I am packed with anticipation, hope and love.

Airports for me have become holding terminals of our relationship. Wherever my destination, they bring me home to Rusty. These same plastic shops, polished smiles, the ragged travellers with bags and busy looks - they are the witnesses to this love; the travelator the aisle I must walk to meet my groom.