Anyone who had a heart

Managed to make it through Monday. In the morning I had an appointment with Dr. Dempsey (I so want to say Dusty) Springfield up at Mt. Sinai. He seemed like a very nice proper Southern gentleman with his hand-tied bow tie. Unfortunately, I didn't have with me the one piece of information that would have helped him diagnose whether I have a fibrosarcoma or a fibromitosis: my latest biopsy slides. And this was the whole reason I was there to see him. I did have my most recent MRI and CT scan but those weren't much help. His assistant called Dr. Kenan's office and had them fax over the written results and found out that with the last biopsy, the pathologist wouldn't call it a sarcoma or mitosis, which is why Dr. Kenan was having me get a second opinion. Why I was finding this out NOW since I had the biopsy in APRIL is a mystery to me. So the whole appointment was me describing my long, stupid leg journey and him looking at me with disbelief before telling me that if I have a sarcoma in my leg, I'm living with a time bomb and should have my leg amputated yesterday. They honestly could not understand what I was doing there without my pathology slides and I left feeling like I had wasted my time and his. Nice guy, though.

Then when I got back I had to change quick and head over to Rick's memorial service. Unfortunately, I got there about halfway in (I was late due to crying and nerves) and missed the music they were playing, which was mostly The Buzzcocks, which is not exactly standard memorial service music but was one of his favorite bands. I came in at the middle of Bruce's tribute to him (probably his closest friend) and couldn't hear it because it was so crowded I had to wedge myself between a fat man and the air conditioning unit. I did hear other people's rememberances and stories and honestly, I don't know when he had time to sleep. There were all sorts of stories of him calling people at 4am just to chat and tales of him spending days and weeks with people having fun and introducing them to new experiences and always knowing where to find great food. Here's a great Rick story: this guy Howard had a lot of health problems and had to go into the hospital. While he was hooked up to an IV, he started to get funky smelling because he couldn't change his shirt. Rick went to Howard's apartment and took two of his shirts to a tailor and had them open the seams along the arms and put velcro in so he'd be able to get a new shirt on while still attached to the IV unit. That's the kind of friend Rick was. I was crying throughout the service and afterwards I really started to lose it because there was a big board of photos of Rick in the main room. Childhood photos, pics of his parents, headshots of when he was trying to be an actor. I really started to lose it so I went to the Great Jones for the after service drinking. I was like a cartoon of the mourning friend, sobbing into my beer. Of course, some git had to make it worse by first saying, 'you're too pretty to be crying.' and then, 'Rick wouldn't want you to be sad'. I left there soon afterward. One nice thing though, I did find another picture I managed to sneak of Rick in San Francisco. I'm carrying a copy of it in my Filofax now so I can always remember how special he was.