Hello Darlin' (30 page)

She earned my complete admiration. I don’t know how she did it without killing anyone.
When the carpenter doesn’t show up, the electrician can’t do his job; when the electrician
can’t do his job, the
plumber can’t do his job; and when the plumber can’t do his job, the gardener can’t
do his job, and so on. Maj stepped in when our first contractor didn’t work out, and
she stood tall. Having heard remodeling or construction is a surefire way to break
up a relationship if both partners are involved, I stayed out of the way and contented
myself with earning the money and letting Maj indulge her remarkable talents.

She’s made our home a showplace that we enjoy and use for fundraisers for politicians,
be they Republican, Democrat, or independent, and causes we believe in. We also host
charity events for the Ventura County Museum of History & Art, the Ojai Music Festival,
Ventura’s Rubicon Theatre Company, among many others. We believe that when you live
in a community, you have to support it, help it grow, and in the case of a unique
little town like Ojai and the surrounding environs, protect the quality of life.

We knew the site of our home was special. Not a day went by when I didn’t stop at
the gate and admire the view of the house, to say nothing of what I saw when I stood
on the terrace looking across the Oxnard plain to the ocean and the Channel Islands
beyond. Our house is situated on an escarpment twenty-three hundred feet above sea
level. About two hundred yards from the terrace, it drops almost a thousand feet straight
down. When the sea breezes hit that, they’re pushed upward in a giant wave of air.
In the afternoons, sometime after one, we can look out and see buzzards, hawks, crows,
and occasionally, when we’re lucky, half a dozen condors all circling and playing
some kind of game with the wind that only they know. It’s a magnificent sight.

One day while Maj and I were watching this phenomenon, I asked her what we should
name our home. I suggested Hagmans’ Hideaway and Hagmans’ Haven. After a long pause,
mesmerized by the circling birds, Maj quietly whispered, “Why don’t we call it Heaven?”

I thought about it for a couple of minutes and said, “Maj, that’s a fantastic name.
And I think it’s the closest I’m ever going to get.”

So, Heaven it is. I’m Heaven’s keeper and Maj is the abbess.

*   *   *

Shortly after staking our claim to Heaven, we found ourselves fighting to preserve
that and perhaps much more, including our lives. On the day before Thanksgiving, we
awoke to find the National Weather Service pouring foundations for what we would come
to know as the NEXRAD Doppler radar tower, part of what the Weather Service described
as a new generation of detection systems that warned of storms, flash floods, and
tornadoes. Less than a thousand yards from our property, the tower was ninety-six-feet
tall and topped by a thirty-foot ball that loomed over the neighborhood like a science
fiction monster. It was painted green to blend in with the trees. It towered about
sixty feet above them.

The Weather Service never informed anybody they were going to put it in. Nor did they
tell us that it would pulse twenty-four hours a day, every day, emitting microwave
radiation, which they maintained was safe even after I pointed out their board of
review didn’t include a single medical professional. My neighbors and I formed a group
called VCARE (Ventura Coalition Against Radiation Emissions) and commissioned a study,
which found what all of us considered to be unacceptable levels of radiation. We were
up in arms (“The federal government has come in and raped me,” David Hedman, an environmental
engineer, claimed), and after living with it for a while we were downright scared.

On March 3, 1994, we aired our concerns on
The Montel Williams Show.
One man told about his two pet parakeets, both born after the tower went up, that
were unable to grow feathers. He also had two pigeons that were born with defects;
one had a giant beak, the other was a dwarf. One of my dogs miscarried, then lost
a lung for no apparent reason. Another dog died suddenly of another mysterious lung
disease. Hedman’s children complained of headaches and earaches. And there was more
that didn’t get on. One woman, too ill to attend the taping, developed three tumors
in her ovaries. Then a woman who
lived in the shadow of the tower gave birth to a child with a hyperthyroid condition.

Then I joined the list. In early spring 1995, shortly after I finished playing a Texas
millionaire in Oliver Stone’s movie
Nixon,
one of my blood tests came back irregular. I had an awful, sinking feeling as I received
the news, but Dr. Vierling wasn’t alarmed. He ordered additional tests, including
a CAT scan and MRI, and they indicated a slight growth.

“It could be the liver rejuvenating itself,” he said.

“That’s good news?”

“Maybe. Sometimes the nodules revivify.”

“What do we do about this?” I asked.

“We watch it for now.”

On June 22, I went back for another checkup. The growth had gotten a little bit larger.
It wasn’t good news. Dr. Rudnick called in Dr. Leonard Makowka, Cedar-Sinai’s director
of transplantation services. We already knew each other from when he’d operated on
my mother five years earlier. He ordered his own battery of tests. I had CAT scans,
PET scans, MRIs, ready-to-eat meals—everything the hospital could throw at me.

I marveled at the machinery, the high-tech equipment that dissected my body without
leaving so much as a scratch, and thanked my lucky stars I had the insurance to pay
for it. Thank God for strong unions like the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors
Guild. The tests revealed a small tumor. Dr. Makowka couldn’t tell me whether or not
it was malignant without a biopsy, but he said it was situated next to a major vein
in the liver, which wasn’t good.

“This isn’t uncommon with a cirrhotic liver,” Makowka said. “They’re hotbeds for tumors.
Like pearls in an oyster. They love to grow in there.”

I entered Cedars on a Thursday afternoon through a back entrance and checked in under
an assumed name while wearing a fake mustache,
as my publicist was paranoid the tabloids would find out. Dr. Makowka did the procedure
early Friday morning. At three o’clock that afternoon, less than twenty-four hours
after I’d snuck in, Maj, her sister Bebe, and my publicist, Richard Grant, smuggled
me back out—but only after Makowka’s chief coordinator, Michel Machuzsek, scouted
the underground parking lot and reported back it was all clear.

Despite all our precautions, the following day Richard got a call from a reporter
from a London tabloid asking if it was true I had been in the hospital for chemo.

“No,” Richard said.

“Is J.R. dying?”

“No, he’s not. That’s absolutely false.”

We hadn’t even gotten the results.

But the story came out anyway:
CAN J.R. BE SAVED?

It didn’t speak highly of the security at Cedars-Sinai. Richard was livid. I was anxious
to know the results.

Maj and I went to Santa Fe. Movement is always good, especially when waiting for test
results. It gives you something to do. We didn’t have to wait long. The telephone
rang on Monday morning, and it was Dr. Makowka. He told us the tumor was malignant.

I put the phone down and looked at Maj, who up till this point had managed to keep
her emotions in check. But this caused her to lose it. Not completely. But she cried
and felt scared. Rightfully so. Hearing a doctor who specializes in treating terrible
diseases say the words “malignant tumor” is terrifying. You’re allowed to lose it.
We’d been married forty years. We were still having the time of our lives together.
Maj suddenly realized that that time might be running out.

We hugged for a long time.

I reacted differently. I kind of stepped out of myself. Instead of panicking or worrying,
I got very calm and asked, “What do we do about the situation?”

We flew back to L.A. and discussed the options with Makowka, who explained the tumor
was positioned against a vein. If the cancer got into the vein, it could get into
my bloodstream and travel throughout my body, none of which was good. He recommended
a liver transplant. I got a second opinion from Dr. Don Morton, the medical director
and chief surgeon of the John Wayne Cancer Institute. He brought up another method,
that of freezing the tumor, though both he and Makowka agreed it was too far along
and too close to the vein to seriously consider this method.

There was also a third option. I could do nothing and die.

“We don’t want a remission,” Dr. Makowka explained. “We want a cure, and the only
cure for a bad liver in your condition is to replace it with a better one.”

One thing about liver disease: it makes you lethargic, and encephalopathy sets in—in
other words, you just don’t think straight. I didn’t. I didn’t realize it, but it
took me a long time to assimilate things. When Makowka and Vierling mentioned a liver
transplant, I said, “Look, I’ve had sixty-four years of a fabulous life. I don’t want
to walk around a cripple. I’ll bow out gracefully when it gets too painful or inconvenient.
I’ll take a pill like I intended to give my dad and shuffle off this mortal coil.”

Well, this didn’t set well with Maj. She called me a bunch of names and said she didn’t
go along with that idea and that I was going to have a liver transplant if I could
find a donor no matter what I thought about it. She has always had a way of persuading
me to see the light. This time she just set her foot down and said, “No way, Jose.”

That spurred my interest in a liver transplant. I had several more meetings with my
doctors, and they persuaded me that if I got a donor liver and took a few pills every
day I could lead a normal, happy existence—you know, if I was inclined toward happiness.

When it was put like that, I said, “God knows I’ve always been a pretty happy person.”

*   *   *

On July 19, my name went on a nationwide list along with five thousand other people
awaiting a new, healthy liver. The news got out and spread quickly. I got calls from
friends. Baseball great Mickey Mantle had just undergone a liver transplant amid criticism
that his notoriety had helped him, a lifelong alcoholic, receive a liver quicker than
others. I looked up the statistics. The average wait was between thirty days and a
year. Decisions on who got a liver were based on medical condition, blood type, size,
and proximity to the donor organ. I had no idea why Mantle got his. Nor did I know
when
or if
I’d get mine.

Richard sent out a press release. “In spite of this latest development, Mr. Hagman
remains in excellent health and spirits and his prognosis for a full recovery and
long life is excellent, according to his medical team.”

I believed that was true. I had no reason not to.

*   *   *

Michel Machuzsek coordinated everything that had to go on between the patient and
all the doctors. She called to ask how I was feeling, scheduled appointments, blood
tests, MRIs, and all the other stuff that goes into preparing for a liver transplant.
If Makowka, who performed the surgery, was God, she was the angel Gabriel tending
the gates.

One day she asked me if I still drank. I said no. She asked if I was in any support
program. Again I said no, explaining that I didn’t feel I needed one. I’d been able
to give up alcohol for the last two years and didn’t miss it at all. And if it wasn’t
for the goddamn encephalopathy, I’d be thinking straighter than I had in forty years.

Michel smiled as if to say, “Good for you,” and then said she’d like me to meet Dallas
Taylor, the original drummer for Crosby, Stills and Nash. Makowka had performed a
liver transplant on him a few years earlier. Now Dallas ran a men’s group of recovering
alcoholics and drug addicts. I called him up and arranged to get together.

We met at the Newsroom Cafe on Robertson Boulevard, a wonderful restaurant where you
can get newspapers and magazines from around the world as well as delicious food.
Dallas handed me a copy of his book,
Prisoner of Woodstock,
which would show me what a simple and naive life I’d led. Over lunch, he told me
about his career, the gory depths to which his addiction had taken him, and how Makowka
had saved his life with a transplant. He also told me about the Monday night meetings
and invited me to come to the next one in Beverly Hills.

Two Mondays later, he and comedian Richard Lewis picked me up and took me to a meeting.
It was held at someone’s home. There were about thirty guys in a room, many of whom
I knew or recognized. The meeting was simple. One guy started it by reading “How It
Works,” or the twelve steps to sobriety, from the AA Blue Book, then said his name
and described his week since the last meeting, staying within the three-minute time
limit, which gave everyone a chance to speak.

“I’m glad to be here,” I said when it was my turn. “Dallas dragged me in. I haven’t
had a drink in nearly three years and I don’t plan to.”

It went around the room like that until the last person had shared his story. Then
all of us stood up and said the Serenity Prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept
the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom
to know the difference. Amen.”

Since that day those Monday night meetings have become an essential part of my life
and I’ve said the prayer every morning after I brush my teeth while looking at a framed
photo of my liver donor, which I have courtesy of the
National Enquirer.
It’s proved to be one of the most important prayers I’ve ever known. As soon as I
began meditating on it, it opened up a whole new avenue of living—compassion, strength,
conviction, and wonder. And of course, at that time as I wondered whether or not I’d
get a donor liver, I needed all of that and more.

A
t the hospital, I’d been given a beeper and told it would go off when a compatible
liver became available. As Maj and I drove to Malibu, we made several different plans
for getting to the hospital quickly when the time arrived. In lieu of having a specific
date, we prepared down to the smallest details, from packing bags and writing down
important phone numbers to keeping a helicopter at the Camarillo airport on call.