MERYL STREEP, ZEN MASTER
New York used to host something called the New York Awards in mid-December. That year, the awards were given out at a lunch at The Four Seasons. Hillary Clinton, Caroline Kennedy, and P. Diddy were among the honorees. So was Kevin Kline. Meryl Streep, a friend of Kline’s, was asked to give him his award. The woman who coordinated the event knew I was sick and let me choose who I wanted to sit next to. I chose Streep.

Streep and I were introduced at the cocktail reception, and when she saw my cane, she asked what the problem was.

“I’ve got a bum hip,” I said, hoping she’d leave it at that.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Long story,” I said.

I kept trying to change the subject, but she wouldn’t stop asking about my hip. Finally, I ran out of bullshit and blurted out, “Actually, I have bone-marrow cancer. There’s a tumor on my hip.”

I can tell you that Meryl Streep is either the most sincere person in the world or she’s an even better actor than we all know. What she did was reach over, put her hand on my forearm, look into my eyes, and somehow convey more genuine human concern than anyone I’ve ever known.

Later, as we were saying our good-byes, she wished me the best. I responded with some throwaway remark like, “What are you going to do?” And she looked at me again with that look—the close-up-at-the-end-of-the-third-reel look—and said, “That’s what life is. Shit happens, and you deal with it.” Buddhism by Streep.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS
Didi and I have thought long and hard, but we can’t remember what she and Abby and I did for the holidays that year. It’s a blank. What we do recall is spending most of the rest of December and January preparing for my treatments.

There were fertility questions, for starters. Didi and I had always agreed that we wanted one child, and no more than two. We were well aware of how lucky we were to have Abby, but now, if we wanted to consider having a second child, I’d have to bank my sperm. Being radiated in my hip wasn’t certain to leave me infertile, but it might.

Didi and I had one of those conversations a couple never thinks they’ll have. The gist of it was, if I die, would you rather have just Abby or Abby and someone else?

We punted and decided that for a couple of hundred dollars’ handling and storage fee, and a few minutes spent watching a bad porn video, I might as well go ahead and freeze my swimmers. We could decide another time whether to use them.

And so, on December 16, a clear and sunny Tuesday, I found myself leaving work at lunch hour and walking from my office on Madison and 49th to a fertility clinic on Park Avenue South. I called my sister, Jen, on the cell phone, and said, “Okay, this is what it’s come down to. I’m 37 years old. I have cancer. I have to have radiation therapy, which may or may not make me better, and I’m about to go jerk off on Park Avenue.”

There was nothing remarkable about the experience except that I remember thinking the receptionist was cute. Even in the face of their potential demise, it appears, men are still checking out their options.

THE HARVEST
I also needed to do something called a stem-cell harvest. Should my disease develop into multiple myeloma, I might need a bone-marrow transplant. You can get marrow from a donor, but finding a match can be difficult. In recent years, doctors have developed a new method. They harvest your stem cells and freeze them so you can, in effect, give yourself a transplant.

On December 19, I saw Dr. Luis Isola, a marrow-transplant specialist at Mount Sinai. In Isola’s waiting room, there was a loud middle-aged woman who was talking to the woman next to her. She blurted out, in full voice, “Yes, but they caught it too late, and it ate through her spine.” From that point on, I started wearing headphones to my appointments.

To prepare for a stem-cell harvest, you inject yourself with a drug called Neupogen, which boosts your stem-cell count, for three days prior. They give you a little kit, and teach you how to give yourself the shots.

You have to keep the Neupogen in your refrigerator. For four days, every time Didi or I went for a glass of O.J. or the leftover lo mein noodles or a bottle of milk for Abby, there was cancer, in eight tidy little white boxes, right there in the crisper.

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