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Do they laugh
that they ripped her into half
of who she was before?
A gross game
of tug-of-war.
They made sport until
she danced no more
and dreamed no more.
Oh, the Great Gods
tug-of-war.
Whatever for?
Diana wrote this verse in 1993, the year of her surgeries and the year when,
finally, she took an overdose of pills. Having done so, she realized death
simply wasnt what she wanted — not yet. She called a friend, who rushed to her
side and took her to the hospital.
As all this was happening, Steve didnt know any of it — none of it. "I was only vaguely aware she was a ski racer," he says as he sits outside a Dana Farber hospital room, whence he has just been shooed so that Diana can speak privately for a few minutes with Dr. Garber. Its a Thursday, Dianas weekly chemo day. These used to be dreaded days, and so Diana changed their nature, insisting that family and friends visit, asking Steve if he would accompany her from Bristol. Today Dianas mother and sister are here — her father is deceased — as is Midnight Sun. The dog is Dianas constant companion and courier — his saddlebags are filled with her gear — and is famous throughout the clinic. Moments ago, a nurse dropped by to briefly rub the big dogs big head. "Ahh, that relieved some stress." The nurse left, and then Diana asked Steve and the relatives to wait outside for just a bit while she consulted with Dr. Garber. Midnight Sun got to stay.
"I didnt know Diana had become this big, famous athlete," says Steve. "Not at all. Ive still never seen Diana Golden ski.
"I had admired her at Dartmouth, and even though she has no memory of even seeing me up there, I always remembered her, like everyone does who meets Diana — one-legged, attractive, has that smile. Then, apparently, she went off to become famous, and I went to Bristol. I knew the kind of life I wanted, and I set about creating it. I started cartooning for local papers, and established a nice, low- overhead lifestyle. I made some close friends, and I was comfortable."
Steve is a deliberate, thoughtful young man, intensely loyal to his friends and dedicated to helping others when and if he can. He found that his cartooning brought some small joy to patients at the Childrens Hospital in Providence, and he started visiting regularly. (His cartoons now decorate the walls and clocks here at Dana Farber, too.) Each summer he worked at a local camp for kids with cancer. "In 1993 I saw in the paper that Diana had done a commencement address in Rhode Island," Steve remembers. "I wrote to her, wondering if she might be able to do something at Camp Hope. She called me back. We had a nice chat, but finally it was, sort of, Talk to my manager. And this person told me, No, she just cant fit it in. Id been blown off."
Steve smiles, and continues: "I knew, then, that I wanted to get in her company. But there was no way. She was traveling in an orbit that was a little beyond my reach. And so I kind of gave it up. Until Newport."
A nurse approaches, and says Steve can return to Dianas room. He does so, and sits on the edge of her bed, holding her hand as the chemo cocktail enters one vein, and a different drip enters another. "Thats to strengthen my bones, which the chemo attacks and weakens," Diana explains. "The tumors are in my spine and ribs, and since I get around on crutches, I cant afford to have my back break." Shes on her fourth different chemotherapy protocol since returning to Dana Farber in early 1996. Each of them has worked for a while, and then hasnt. "Toxol was doing the job, then the numbers were getting weird," says Steve. "Right now the tumor-markers are better than theyve been in a year." Diana has, during Steves absence, confirmed this with Dr. Garber, but she has also learned that this doesnt alter the prognosis, which still forsees death within six months to — outside chance — five years.
Diana says this latest chemo is a "friendlier drug." Shes happy her hair is growing back, however slowly. Steve gives her a kiss on the top of her head. The phone rings. Its Dianas lawyer, who usually visits on Thursdays. Hes got a cold and cant make it today. But he wants to give her an update on his dealings with the insurance company. He gives her good news, but it doesnt really matter — a Dana Farber administrator has already cornered Steve this morning, to reassure him that, no matter what happens with the insurance, Diana will get the treatment she needs.
"Its a strange situation," says Diana. "Ive got a million-dollar maximum on the policy. And it certainly seems like I wont outlive the coverage. I wont even use it all up. But you just cant let yourself start thinking that way, and so we act as if were going to need more coverage than we have. Wishful thinking."
That Diana is engaged in any kind of wishful thinking shows how far she has
climbed from her nadir of despair. "Even after the suicide try, I was at a
loss," she says. She recalls the night she "decided it was time to confront
myself" and stood naked before a mirror. She gazed hard for many minutes, trying
to come to terms with her more thoroughly scarred new self. The exercise did
help. She wrote down what she had felt: "I found that the scars on my chest and
my leg were a big deal. They were my marks of life. All of us are scarred by
life; its just that some of those scars show more clearly than others. Our
scars do matter. They tell us that we have lived." Some of her writing in those
difficult days, especially her poetry, indicated that while she may have been
finding release, solace came tougher.
But never did I think that I
could die
from It.
Others did, but not me,
till now.
As she reads this silently to herself, and then hands it across, she is slouching on the couch in the airy sitting room in Bristol. Time is being kept by the ticking of an oven clock, which will momentarily tell her that the bread is baked. She has, in the last 15 minutes, hopped about the kitchen with pan and dough as nimbly as. . .as nimbly as the athletic woman she still is. "I figured I wouldnt try that again — killing myself. But you just dont know. This place I would go to, it was so dark and bleak. Thats what Ive always been so afraid of with this thing — going crazy, losing my mind. Thats what always scared me most.
"I still have times when I go to that place. But its less now, and I come back quicker."
The buzzer sounds. Diana goes to retrieve the bread. Midnight Sun, awoken from his snooze, trundles after her.
After her suicide attempt, Diana was frantically seeking reasons to continue. She invested far too much hope and love in a Malamute puppy named Prizzy, short for Prisoner of Love. A month after coming home with Diana, the dog had a grand mal seizure and had to be put to sleep. That did it. Diana, who was living in Longmont, Colo., at the time, jumped into her Jeep and drove hard for the Rockies, intending to leap into the 2,000-foot-deep Black Canyon of the Gunnison River. But, again, life itself called her back. In the town of Gunnison she phoned a crisis hotline run by the clinic where she was receiving psychiatric treatment. Rather remarkably, Diana and the woman concluded one answer might be another puppy. And so, Midnight Sun — "my light in the night."